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"The only reason that the signifier does entail the signified is because there is a conventional relationship at play." [8]: 4 That is, a sign can only be understood when the relationship between the two components that make up the sign are agreed upon. Saussure argued that the meaning of a sign "depends on its relation to other words within ...
A sign's ground is the respect in which the sign represents its object, e.g. as in literal and figurative language. For example, an icon presents a characteristic or quality attributed to an object, while a symbol imputes to an object a quality either presented by an icon or symbolized so as to evoke a mental icon.
A sign can be a word, sound, a touch or visual image. Saussure divides a sign into two components: the signifier, which is the sound, image, or word, and the signified, which is the concept or meaning the signifier represents. For Saussure, the relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary and conventional.
The sign stands for something, its object not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), the "father" of modern linguistics, proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating the signifier as the form of the word or phrase uttered, to the signified as the mental concept. According to Saussure, the ...
An interpretant (or interpretant sign) is the sign's more or less clarified meaning or ramification, a kind of form or idea of the difference which the sign's being true or undeceptive would make. (Peirce's sign theory concerns meaning in the broadest sense, including logical implication, not just the meanings of words as properly clarified by ...
Saussure's concept of the bilateral sign (signifier – signified) entails that the conceptual system is distinct from physical reality. For example, the spoken sign 'cat' is an association between the combination of the sounds [k], [æ] and [t] and the concept of a cat, rather than with its referent (an actual cat). Each item in the conceptual ...
Daniel Chandler defines the term as "a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified". [4] The concept of floating signifiers originates with Claude Lévi-Strauss, who identified cultural ideas like mana as "represent[ing] an undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning".
Adopting the classification of Charles Sanders Peirce, this would be considered an indexical sign, i.e. there is a direct connection between the signifier and the signified. While it is true that an unedited photograph may be an index, digital technology is eroding the viewer's confidence that the image is an objective representation of reality.