Introducing Semiotics (book)

"natural signs"  (freely occurring throughout nature)
"conventional" signs (those designed precisely for the purpose of communication)
page 5


teachings of St. Augustine (354-440)
William of Ockham (c. 1285 - 1349)
John Locke (1632-1704) Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
page 6 / 7


Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

published a paper : "Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages"
his students started the course "Cours de linguistique generale."


diachronic - linguistics which looks at the changes which take place over time in specific languages
synchronic "the state of language in general, an understanding of the conditions for existence of any language"
page 9

"Saussure defined the linguistic sign as a two-sided entity, a dyad. One side of the sign was what he called the signifier. A signifier is the thoroughly material aspect of a sign"
"Saussure described the verbal signifier as a sound image"
page 10

"inseparable from the signifier in any sign - and, indeed, engendered by the signifier - is what Saussure calls the signified"
page 11

(my notes : the signifier is the material used with the codes in it and the signified is the person receiving the codes who has the mental reaction)


Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)

paper "On a New List of Categories" 1867

"a triadic theory of the sign"
insert pic from phone (page 21)


"firstness, secondness and thirdness"
page 27



Roland Barthes

1915-80 he wrote essays in a French mag.
Les Lettres nouvelles
" set out to expose a "mythology of the month" , largely by showing how the denotations in signs of popular culture betray the connotation which are themselves "myths" generated by the larger sign system that makes up society. "

published book called Mythologies in 1957

published essay The Rhetoric of the image in 1964

A linguistic message - all the words
a "coded iconic"message - the connotations in the photograph
a non-coded iconic" message - the denotations in the photograph
page 47

Charles Morris

"Foundation of the Theory of Signs" 1938