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) . 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. Saussure.