Nicholas Humphrey Interview (1/4) - Richard Dawkins. Nicolas Humphrey interview. Signs. Daniel Chandler Signs We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings : above all, we are surely - meaning-makers. Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. Indeed, according to Peirce, 'we think only in signs' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.302) . Signs take the form of words, images , sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. 'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce (Peirce 1931-58, 2.172) .
The two dominant models of what constitutes a sign are those of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. A 'signifier' ( ) - the which the sign takes; and the 'signified' ( ) - the it represents. The is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified ( Saussure 1983, 67 ; Saussure 1974, 67 ). Modality and Representation.
Daniel Chandler Modality and Representation Whilst semiotics is often encountered in the form of textual analysis, it also involves philosophical theorising on the role of signs in the construction of reality. Semiotics involves studying representations and the processes involved in representational practices, and to semioticians, 'reality' always involves representation.
To semioticians, a defining feature of signs is that they are treated by their users as 'standing for' or representing other things. Jonathan Swift's satirical account of the fictional academicians of Lagago highlights the inadequacies of the commonsense notion that signs stand directly for physical things in the world around us.
A Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever... was urged as a great Advantage in Point of Health as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is in some Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortning of our Lives. 3D-flat. Saussure.