What Sign Is

Talking about semiotics, actually we study how to signify the things. There must be an object which result a sign. But before that, we must know what the sign is. Little John (Sobur, 2004:16) notes that signs are the basis of the whole communication. As Allah remind in the holy Al-Quran, as follows:

“He is who creates the night for you in order you can take a rest and creates the noon very bright( in order you search Allah’s gift) actually that are the signs (Allah’s authority) for the people whom hear it.(QS. Yunus: 67).

According to Eco, “Sign is everything that significantly can substitute the other thing. The other thing must not exist or presents topically.” (In Sobur 2004: 78)) Example, A STONE, as just a stone is not a sign but a thing or material. But when the stone is used for representing another thing, for example, as a talisman, so that the stone has changed to be a sign.

In Saussure’s book namely Cours de Linguistique Generale, published in 1916, he mentioned that sign is a unit of signifier with an idea or signified. In other words, signifier is a meaningful sound or a meaningful scratch. Thus, signifier is material aspect from language: what we say or hear and what we write or read. Signified is a concept, idea or thought, mentality illustration. Thus, signified is mentality’s aspect from language (Sobur. 2004:46). Then according to Peirce (Sobur, 2004:41), “sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity.”

From the opinion of the experts of definitions above, the writer can say that sign is a concept or idea that appears in commentator’s mind refers to the pointed object.

Posted by miasastra

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