1. SEMIOTICS
ITS PLACE IN INFORMATION SCIENCE

2. OVERVIEW
 Definitions
 Meanings and Semiotics
 Goals
 The Role of Semiotics in IS
 History
 Modern Roots

3. DEFINITIONS
 Semiotics
is the “science of produced
meanings” (Danesi, 2007).
 Semiotics
applies to how people represent things
in a meaningful way.
 Socialcontext establishes the meanings that
signs convey.
 The meaning a word conveys in one context may
differ from the meaning a word conveys in a different
context i.e. “Seminole.”

4. MEANINGS AND SEMIOTICS
 Semiotics looks at how meaning is ascribed to
texts (all kinds—musical scores, advertisements,
narratives, paintings).
 Semiotics focuses on what information is and
how it is interpreted.
 This is directed related to the issue of the nature of
information.
 Anything in a culture can be a sign: text, image,
building, design of a car, a hairstyle.
 These signs are read and a meaning is imputed to
them.
 Interpretation allows us to make sense of the
meanings we encounter.

5. GOALS OF SEMIOTICS
 Semioticsseeks to explain the “how and what of
signs” (Danesi, 2007).
 What is the social function of signs?
 What role do signs play in communication and
linguistics?

6. BRIEF HISTORY
 Hippocrates: Coined the term as a medical
concept that referred to symptoms as warning
”signs” of a medical condition.
 Plato: Distinguished between physical and
human made or conventional semeions.
 Aristotle disputed Plato’s notion that words
reflect innate forms—he believed that words
were simply a practical means of identifying
things.
 Plato’s method is referred to as a “mentalist”
perspective while Aristotle’s process of reasoning
is empirical.

7. SEMIOTICS IN MEDIEVAL THOUGHT
 Roger Bacon: (13th c.) Developed the first
typology or classification of signs.
 Poinsot: (17th c.) is noted as particularly
important in the development of sign theory.
 Poinsot believed that signs function as an
intermediary between thoughts and things.
 JohnLocke: (18th c.) adopted Poinsot’s notion and
proposed a formal study of signs in his famous
work titled, “Essay on Human Understanding.”
 Locke: Locke viewed signs as a method of inquiry in
philosophy, rather than a separate discipline or
branch of philosophy.

8. THE MODERN ROOTS OF SEMIOTICS
 Saussure(19th c. Swiss linguist) Viewed as the
father of modern semiotics.
 Saussure described signs within their social
context.
 Social context determined the meaning of signs.
 Signs are a product of human sensory and emotional
experience of the world.

9. THE MODERN ROOTS OF SEMIOTICS
 Pierce (19th c. American linguist)
 Pierce
viewed a sign as anything that could be
taken as standing for something else.
 Pierceviews signs as representations that are
basically “containers” for an object.
 Pierce’s model is three-dimensional
 Representation, interpretation, and object
 The interaction among these dimensions produces
meanings.

10. SEMIOTICS THE MODERN PERIOD
 Morris (20th c.): Divided the study of signs into sign
collections—he called these collections syntactics.
 Syntactics—refers to the analysis of signs and their
relations. This analysis between signs and their relations,
he termed, semantics. He termed the study of the
relationship between signs and their users as pragmatics.
 Jakobson (20th c.): Known widely for his model of
communication.
 This model indicates that messages or “exchanges” are
rarely neutral; they are generally subjective and involve
goal attainment.
 Barthes (20th c.): Known for his work in decoding
hidden meanings in pop culture and films.

11. SEMIOTICS: THE MODERN PERIOD
 Eco (20th c.)
 The universe of semiotics can be “postulated in the
format of a labyrinth.” (Eco, 1986).
 In other words, signs are interpreted as one’s perception
and experience directs.
 Such a view relates to the interaction of culture, worldview,
context, education, and perception.
 A sign is everything that can be taken as significantly
substituting for something else.

12. THE SEMIOTIC FRAMEWORK
 Semiotics and “Meaning”
 The word meaning in English has more than 20
definitions –to avoid confusion, semiotics employs the
terms reference, sense, and definition.

13. REFERENCE, SENSE, AND DEFINITION
 Reference
(denotation)—points out or identifies
something
 Definition—representation between mental
signifier and referential object (Hockett)
 Sense(connotation)—refers to what something
evokes psychologically, historically, and socially
(context).
 Connotive senses of the word “cool.”
 How many uses or senses of the word “cool” can you
think of? Or, “Super,” “Great,” “Sorry,” etc.

14. SEMIOTICS AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
 Raber(2003) views semiotics and information
science as concerned with “representation and
the production of culture.”
 “…the
relationship between representation and
what is being represented, are at the heart of
information science,” (Raber 2003 p. 225).

15. SEMIOTICS AND ISSUES IN IS
 Arbitrary nature of language and signs.
 Meanings are cooperatively generated.
 Theconcept of information, itself, conveys many
meanings – depending upon its users, their
purpose, and the context.

16. APPROACHES TO ISSUES
 Buckland
– information-as-thing, information-as-
knowledge, information-as-process
 Ingwersen – aboutness and interpretation or
identification of authorial intent
 Raber– the indeterminable nature or ambiguity
of signs or objects; context and user needs – user
interpretation.