Social Semiotics
Image courtesy of permanentculturenow.com Social semiotics is an evolutionary step forward in the methodology of its mother field “semiotics”. The theory of semiotics was first premised by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), de Saussure defined this field of study as, “the science of the life of signs in society”. (De Saussure, F) His basic theory dissected communication into various parts identified as “signifiers” , which are the form that a word takes (letters/sounds), and the “signified” (the mental concept of the meaning from the signifier) . Another contributor to these early works was Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914), credited as one of the original founders of American pragmatism. It was Pierce who proposed that human beings can only think in the form of semiotic signs and that it was possible that the whole universe was comprised of nothing more than these same signs. This is important because later it is surmised that the use of these signs is arbitrary, meaning there is
