The sign or the nature of the lingual sign is a central topic for both linguistics, structuralism and culture theory at large. The debate about how signs function became to be closely related with the debate about how society it self functions.
The
initial idea was that a sign 'denotes' or 'refers to' something 'out there in
the real world' (called referent). Words are labels
attached to things. That seems a pretty
sensible idea at first - we can readily see how 'London
Swiss linguist Fredinand de Saussure
tried to get around this problem by saying that 'the linguistic sign does not
unite a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound image’.
Structuralism
(i.e. the philosophy which derived later from Saussurean linguistics), then,
'brackets the referent'. In other words, the thing referred to (the referent)
is taken out of the relationship and is replaced by 'concept'.
To put is more simply, the definition of the sign is not a symbol that points at something in the world but rather a symbol which points to a meaning, detached from any material objects.
The sign according to de Saussure as made up of two parts: the signifier (the material aspect: sounds of written signs) and the signified (the mental meaning). For more on this matter see our summary on signifier and signified.
These ideas by de Saussure may seem irrlevant at first glance but when they are combined with his entire theory you can see that they go a very long way.
For more on the nature of the sign an de Saussure's thought:
Ferdinand de Saussure's Linguistic Revolution- summary, analysis and review
Ferdinand de Saussure and structuralism
Ferdinand de Saussure and structuralism
You might be interested in:
