Signified and signifier facts for kids
In a field called semiotics, which is the study of signs and symbols, the terms signified and signifier (from French: signifié and signifiant) are two main parts of any sign. The signified is the idea or concept you think of. The signifier is the actual word, sound, or image that represents that idea. This important idea was first suggested by a Swiss linguist named Ferdinand de Saussure. He is one of the people who helped start the study of semiotics.
What Are Signs?
People have studied signs for a very long time. Famous thinkers like Plato and Aristotle looked at them. The word semiotics comes from a Greek word meaning 'interpreter of signs'. In the early 1900s, Saussure and an American philosopher named Charles Sanders Peirce made the study of signs more common.
Saussure and Peirce both helped us understand signs better. But they had different ways of looking at them. Saussure was the one who created the terms signifier and signified. He used them to explain what a sign is made of. Saussure focused on how language works now when we communicate. He did not focus on how words changed over time.
Other thinkers followed Saussure. They used his ideas to explore new concepts. For example, Umberto Eco, an Italian semiotician, said that signs can be used to tell the truth, but they can also be used to lie. Another thinker, Roland Barthes, used signs to explain connotation (cultural meanings of words) and denotation (the literal meaning of words). Saussure's basic idea of breaking down signs was very important for all these later studies.
How Signifier and Signified Connect
In his 1916 book, Course in General Linguistics, Saussure explained that a sign has two parts. These are the signifier (the 'sound-image' or word) and the signified (the 'concept' or idea). For Saussure, both parts are mental ideas. They are about the form of something, not its physical substance.
Today, we often think of the signifier as the physical form a sign takes. This could be something you can see, hear, touch, smell, or taste. The signified is the idea or concept it refers to. The connection between the signifier and the signified is usually arbitrary. This means there is no natural or logical reason why a certain word means a certain thing. For example, there's no logical reason why the word "tree" means the tall plant with leaves. This is different from a symbol, which often has some natural connection.
Saussure used a diagram to show that the signifier and signified are always connected. They work together to create the full sign. To understand how they relate, you need to be able to interpret signs. A sign only makes sense because people agree on the connection between its two parts. Saussure said that the meaning of a sign depends on how it relates to other words. For example, to understand "tree," you also need to know what a "bush" is and how they are different.
Because signs are different from each other, people can communicate. But signifiers and their meanings can change over time. They can become "dated." This shows that we all use signs every day, even if we don't realize it. Words are the most common signs, but signs are everywhere. They are in advertisements, objects, body language, and music. So, the idea of signs and their two parts can be used in many parts of our daily lives.
Images for kids
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A generic diagram from de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics illustrating the relationship between signified (French: signifié) and signifier (signifiant)
