If you live in an urban environment you simply cannot escape it, and if you spend your time in the wilderness it’s not uncommon. Semiosis is what the modern human exists by. It’s how we find our food, how we perform our jobs, it is our entertainment and the backbone of finding our way from one place to the next.
A sign is an indication, or representation, of a thought. All humans rely on signs for every form of communication: from speech to writing, sign language to smoke signals (the first form of telegraph).
American logician, mathematician, philosopher, and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce defines Semiosis as follows:
“An action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant.”
If you live in an urban environment you abide by and adhere to the signs that create civilization, law, and order. In the wilderness humans tend to find stories in patterns of the stars and characters in the clouds. We search endlessly for recognizable patterns so we can utilize the meaning of objects and actions. Street signs, for example: if numbered streets run east to west and the numbers increase as you move south you can now orient yourself with your cardinal directions and get from one place to another on a grid. A street sign is made up of both a set of recognizable characters (letters) and a set of coded cultural symbols (we know green signs with white letters indicate guide messages). Without this set of coding it would be an extremely difficult task to find a location for the first time.
Assigning objects and actions meaning is part of what separates humans from other species. Our ability to preconceive the potential outcome of an event is the reason we dwell in houses during thunderstorms and have as much food in the winter as in the summer. These things are our very being and yet Semiotics is a relatively seldom mentioned study.
We are in an age of awareness, where consumers are constantly demanding to know more about the products they purchase. This discretion should be applied to the information we take in as well. Thinking about and knowing how you respond to your surroundings should be as vital a lesson as grammar.
For further reading: Saussure and C.S. Peirce:
