Semiotics

During our lecture on semiotics we were first asked to imagine that the word “glog” meant “cat”, we were then asked if we owned a glog and if so why/why not. Through this we gathered that semiotics was when one word, in this case “glog”, is a signifier and that the object, in this case a cat is the signified.

So to explain it more a signifier is a word which is associated with an object, another example of this is what people call money, some people might say “I have a few pounds” whereas some one else will say “I have a few quid”. They both use a different signifier but the money is the signified object. Another example of semiotics is a toilet gender symbol, in the way that someone can differentiate between a man's toilet and a woman's toilet, by looking at a symbol which they have not encountered before they can tell which toilet is the right one for them.