Examples like advertising may be approaching triviality, but they are less trivial than Phil’s example of “the ‘C’ on a cold-water faucet signifies cold water.”
Why don’t the introductions to semiotics give these examples? Maybe they do and Phil exaggerated the triviality of the examples he saw? Maybe they did and they were cloaked in such language that he didn’t notice?
I’d guess that they’re introductions to how to actually do semiotic theory. So when you examine how to tell that ‘C’ signifies cold, it’s like going to the first day of linear algebra and proving that x * 0 = 0; the point is that you’re learning a framework. The question is whether the framework later enables you to go on to learn things you couldn’t have without it.
Examples like advertising may be approaching triviality, but they are less trivial than Phil’s example of “the ‘C’ on a cold-water faucet signifies cold water.”
Why don’t the introductions to semiotics give these examples? Maybe they do and Phil exaggerated the triviality of the examples he saw? Maybe they did and they were cloaked in such language that he didn’t notice?
I’d guess that they’re introductions to how to actually do semiotic theory. So when you examine how to tell that ‘C’ signifies cold, it’s like going to the first day of linear algebra and proving that x * 0 = 0; the point is that you’re learning a framework. The question is whether the framework later enables you to go on to learn things you couldn’t have without it.