Everything around us sends messages in numerous ways that we unconsciously receive. We also send codes through everything we do, wear, listen to, eat, and say that tell so much about who we are and the environment we live in. However, we often are oblivious to this process of encoding and decoding, and the rules by which it operates are quite a mystery to most of us. Semiotics is the study of signs, symbols, and meaning, and “teaches us how we find meaning in all the objects and other kinds of messages to which we are exposed” (Pines (1982), as cited by Berger, 2013, p. 22).  

 

Semiotics owes its origins to Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce. Saussure’s book, Course in General Linguistics, in which the author compares language as a system of signs that express ideas to system such as writing, polite formulas, and military signals, is considered one of the most influential work published in the twentieth century (Berger, 2013). Saussure studies the life of signs, the smallest units of meaning, and divides it in two parts: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is any material thing that represents the sign such as an object, a sound, or a gesture. The signified is the concept generated by the signifier; their relation is arbitrary and based on conventions. According to Saussure, the production of meaning takes place as a result of social relation because language is a social construction.  

 

Saussure used semiology in his book, but Peirce used semiotics to design the science of signs and this latter became the dominant term. Peirce divided signs in three categories: the icons signify by resemblance, like a photograph; the indexes signify by cause and effect and could be identified to smoke and fire; finally, the symbols, like flags, signify on the basis of convention (Berger, 2013, p. 23). Saussure’s and Peirce’s concepts statements about signs, signifier, signified, icons, symbols, and indexes are the cornerstones of a semiotic perspective.  

 

Berger (2013) notes that if the meaning of signs and the relation between signifier and signified rest on conventions and consequently are not natural, society and its institutions are necessary in order to decode signs and symbols. Therefore, if meaning is a social product based on conventions that must be taught, “semiotics argues that we are social animals and the way we find meaning in the world is connected to the social milieu in which we are brought up” (Berger, 2013, p. 26). Accordingly, semiotics explains how to interpret signs and their meanings but also that meanings are created by society and that its codes can change through time and space.  

 

Signs are also interpreted differently according to different social groups; hence, the multiplicity of things in mass culture can be analyzed by semiotics.  Barthes (1964) suggests that “every object becomes sign of its own function. Thus an automobile functions not only as a mode of transportation but also as a commonly recognized sign of that function” (as cited by Gottdiener, 1985, p. 986). Baudrillard (1968) continued Barthes’ semiotic analysis of mass culture and noticed the transformation of the material world of commodities into a “symbolic world of ideological meaning attached to commodities” (Gottdiener, 1985, p. 987).  

 

The meaning of objects cab no longer solely based on their functions but on their sign values, “a meaning constructed through advertising and consumer manipulation by the logotechniques of capitalist corporations” (Gottdiener, 1985, p. 987). The ideology of consumerism deals with the relation between individuals, objects, signs and their roles in systems of signification as opposed as systems of communication. Thus meaning is created through “transfunctionalization”, a distinction between the immediate function of an object and its socially-sustained use (Gottdiener, 1985). For example, the distinction between an automobile used for transportation and one used to represent a particular social status. Therefore, the relation of individuals to objects can be explained through the study of mass culture and its codes. 

 

Finally, Nescolarde-Selva and Usó-Doménech (2013) mention that the existence of information is independent of facts and that in order to acquire meaning, a Subject must decode the information in a message. They also indicate that symbols at the central core of belief systems often emerge strongly in conflicts between two groups. Del Percio (2015) points out how some dominant groups will circulate ideological meaning of semiotic resources across time and space “as effective means of legitimizing social action and (re)producing inequality and relations of domination in society” (p. 519). Thus, the circulation and appropriation of semiotic objects take them out of their original context and place them into a new social frame in order to achieve specific purposes.