Signifier and Signified

In "Image and Representation, Key Concepts in Media Studies" Nick Lacey writes that "At the heart of semiotics is the study of language and how it is the dominant influence shaping human beings' perception of and thoughts about the world. Semiotics is also a wonderful tool for analysing images."

To me this sums up semiotics perfectly. The "science of signs" is a very broad field and there are many complicated aspects to it, a lot of which I won't be exploring in this blog as they do not pertain to game analysis, but at it's most useful semiotics is excellent at decoding texts of all kinds into signs, which we can then further decode. In this post I'll be talking about how semiotics defines these signs structurally.

In the study of semiotics, texts are broken down into signs, these signs refer to any form of communication including pictures, words and even taste or smell. These signs can be further broken down into the Signifier and Signified. The Signifier is how we perceive the texts physical presence, whilst the Signified is what we associate with the text.









For instance, without the concept of a keyboard (the signified), all I am typing on is a square of plastic with meaningless symbols painted onto it (this is the signifier). This is also true of the word keyboard. When we see these letters placed together the concept of a keyboard is signified to us.

Though we strongly associate Signifier and Signified, the connection between the two is often superficial. A keyboard could be called any number of things and that wouldn't change it's function or how we think about it. This is because the signifier does not determine the signified.