Semiotics 'Yes lets do it'

Signs and myths
Semiotics originates mainly from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles pierce. Both of their ideas are relatively similar however there are a few minor differences between the outline of semiotics.
Saussure was an academic who taught Linguistics at the University of Geneva in the early 20th century. His book was published 3 years after his death (shame he would have never have seen it!) which consisted of a series of lectures he gave on language assembled from the notes of some of the students which were found by colleagues. Both semiotics and semiology are from the greek word semeion which means sign. Both of these refer to the study of how signs communicate meaning and the way in which he believes language to also be made up of signs. He stated that signs such as an non- linguistic item like a photograph means something to an individual as it may carry certain memories that would not exist to an outsider. 
Saussure's semiotic perspective recognises that the sign 'children' enables us to think of these very young people as a group who are distinct from 'adults' and who share common features such (an eye, nose, mouth and baby teeth! :D)  However different cultures, different people at different times in history have used the distinction between a 'child' and 'adult' differently. Being referred to as a 'child' might be to do with age, legal status, religious status, or many other things. Culture and society decide what the sign for child means rather than nature and biology.

Instead of focusing on language from a sociological or psychological point of view he decided to focus on a clearly defined object of study - the linguistic sign (wow) He then moved swiftly from the focus of children and moved on to a more interesting example that I am sure you all will enjoy.. cats! As we have all discovered the linguistic sign 'cats' has no relation to either it's sound, or it's visual shape, with what cats are really like. In other languages the sign for cat will be different from the linguistic sign in English (there must be a agreement among the users of our language that the sign 'cat' refers to a group of four legged animals, or even your daughter if her name is Kat!) However as language was here well before our time that is how we were all taught, as linguistic signs need to be meaningful as it depends on their existence in a social context and on their how they are used in specific context. 

Yes this is my cat, his name
is Sherbert :)

Then he moves on to 'chess' and how language is a system of rules where we have to select signs in speech or writing and use them according to rules like you would do when making a decision in chess on where and how to move a black?! (I think as I don't particularly know how to play chess!) He described language as a system which has positive  terms, by this he meant the signs have no special right to mean something in particular and not something else. Instead they are used by contrasting to what they are not, for example (oh here we are back to the cat) 'cat' is not a 'bat' or a 'cot'. This means that language is a system of differences between one sign and all of the others.

Codes & Components of the sign.
The systems in which signs are organised into groups are called 'codes', which is also a familiar term 'dress codes' which in our society the dress code that governs what men should wear for a formal wedding includes a top hat and a tail jacket. The code of male formal dress communicates the message of 'formality'. There are linguistic codes for everything we do in society which are meaningful because of their difference from all other signs. Saussure
 drew a distinction between the evolution of linguistic signs through time, called 'diachronic linguistics', and the study of signs existing at a given point in time called 'synchronic linguistics'.  An example of this is the word 'thou', from a diachronic point of view we might investigate how it is used now in a religious context  but used to be used as part of the English language. But from a synchronic point of view, it would be the use of 'thou' in our own historical moment that is or interest not how it has gained it's current role. In his analysis of linguistic signs, he showed that there are two components to every sign. One is the vehicle which expresses the sign which is called 'the signifier' such as a pattern of sounds which make up a word and exists in the material world. The other is the 'signified' which relates to the concept of a thought in your mind when you look at the signifier. So when you perceive the the letters c, a, and t which are the signifier it immediately calls up in your mind what you know to be a cat (yes we have discovered that Saussure loves cats). The sign cat, does not refer to a particular cat such as Bagpuss, but to a mental concept. However in context a particular cat can be referenced for example a note saying 'please feed the cat' can be related to my own cat as I wouldn't expect the neighbour to feed every cat in the street!

Sequences of linguistic signs
Language is always dependant on time, is a distinction between linguistic signs and other kinds of sign. In photographs, paintings and an outfit or a set of clothes, each sign is present at the same time as the items are distributed across space rather than in time as it is just a hard copy of something that will not move or change, whereas television has both space and time as the images are distributed at certain times as the programme progresses.
'The dog bites the man' the meaning is unfolded from the left to the right as this is the way we read across the paper.  This determines the reading as if we read the sentence in a different way such as the 'man bites the dog' we gain a different perspective on the situation, this is know as the 'syntagmatic' aspect of the sentence. 

Visual Signs
The semiotic analysis of images and non verbal signs come from the idea of the American Philosopher Pierce. Images, dress codes, television and newspapers etc are all kinds of media which use visual signs. Visual signs also belong to dress codes, and are arranged in syntagms  and selected from paradigms (different words). The 'symbolic sign' are the colours and shapes of an image which can referee us to its actual meaning. For example an image can look like a specific cat, however the colour and shape relates it to the real cat that the image was based around. An indexical sign has a link with the sign and is usually a cause from it - 'there is no smoke without fire'.


Connotation & Myth
It appears that the function of signs is to 'denote' something, to label it. The linguistic sign 'Rolls-Royce' denotes a particular type of car however the connotations (associations) that link to it is the status and power that it has in society as it is considered a 'rich' luxury in society. The bringing together of signs and their connotations to shape a particular message is known as 'myth' (Barthes). Myth takes hold of an existing sign, and makes it function as a signifier on another level in order to play a particularly social role.