The Structure of Meaning: Signs, Codes, and Culture

The Sign: Definition, Function, and Value

The sign has different functions. One primary function is identification, which requires the sign to call upon and re-present the object identified.

Furthermore, the sign possesses value; that is, the sign is worth what it means or represents. The word itself has value, even if it is not used to express something specific.

The sign is an object that represents the idea of another object. It is also defined as a minimum unit that lends meaning to an object within a given culture. The heritage of a culture is composed of all the universes of meaning—the signs that shape that culture.

Components of the Sign

The sign consists of two essential parts:

• Shape: What is seen or perceived through the senses (the signifier).
• Content: The idea expressed by the sign (the signified).

Characteristics of the Sign

The sign serves to fix an idea or set a concept for the person who uses it to decode meaning. Key characteristics include:

• A symbol is a type of sign whose content is connotative.
• Any sign, for simplicity, is simple (repeatable, storable, reproducible, and displaceable in time and space).
• The sign is universal, meaning it always signifies the same thing for everyone (within a specific cultural context).

Culture and the Nature/Culture Boundary

Culture is a system evident through multiple codes that coexist in a shared world.

Where there are humans, there is culture. If they are absent, there is nature. Thus, the boundary between the natural and the cultural is humanity itself.

Note: Man naturally translates symbols, interprets them, and feeds them, and this process reflects underlying paradigms.

If underlying nature is subject to man, and man does what he wants with it, then the focus shifts to ecology rather than culture.

Everything that surrounds man is significant material (material that produces signs). For example, scientific research discovers things that must be named and culturalized.

The Code (Convention and Regulation)

Introduction: Man is a connected social being who lives in connection with others. Even if individuals may not connect directly, this connectivity must be regulated. This regulation is what is called a code or convention.

The code corresponds to the system of rules that allows intellectual and social interaction. Codes link the mental states that people share.

Defining Information

Information corresponds to a unit of choice, subject to any alternative reality with probability. It is ambiguous and represents one unit among other likely alternatives.

The total universe—matter, life, space, time, and daily life—is an endless fabric of multiple alternatives. Each alternative is materialized within the context of others. Examples of these alternatives include:

• Saying yes or saying no.
• Doing this or that.
• Winning one game or another.
• Studying this or that, or not studying at all.
• Speaking or not speaking.
• Being healthy or sick (sick of this, or that, or another thing).

Information is fundamentally a physical phenomenon that reveals the alternativeness of matter.