Do You See What I See?

From my understanding, the term "semiotics" was developed by two prominent intellectuals. The origin was defined by the linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure as the "science of signs". Based on his theory, a sign is composed of TWO parts:

• a signifier - the image/text
• the signified - the concept

The philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce's definition was a little bit different. Based on his model, a sign consisted of THREE parts:

• a sign - signifier (e.g: raindrops)
• object - signified (e.g: rain signified by the raindrops)
• interpretant - our understanding of the sign/object relation

Even so, both models are similar enough to be universally understood.

When I first learned of semiotics, the only examples I could think of were limited to visuals. Photographs, commercials, and print advertisement clouded my imagination. I didn't consider that words can also be categorized as semiotics. In fact, literally everything around us is apart of the semiotics study.

In Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling book, Outliers, there is a chapter devoted to geniuses. Overall, Gladwell was aiming to refute a popular notion: the higher the IQ, the more successful the person.

He writes about an exercise conducted on middle school students in the States. They were given 10 minutes to write their opinions on a certain word. The word was "blanket". Before I explain any further, let's try it together, shall we? Leave your answers in the comments below.

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Here are some of my answers:

• for warmth when sleeping
• to put out fires
• to smother people
• as a makeshift swing
• as a partition in a recording studio
• as a picnic mat
• as a substitute towel
• can be tore up into pieces and sewn up again into handmade bags

Now, my answers may not make sense to you, and perhaps your answers may not make sense to me either. But that's perfectly fine. The purpose of the exercise was to gauge the imagination of the children. Based on the findings, the answers of the child with the highest IQ was less imaginative than another child whose IQ was slightly lower. The research results were basically saying:

In order to win a Nobel Prize, you don't have to be the smartest kid in class. You just need to be smart ENOUGH.

Semiotics can be used to sharpen our cognitive skills. Sometimes, even our imagination can be bogged down  by reality. When I was doing the exercise,  I was hesitant to list out some of my answers. Personally, they made complete sense to me, but I knew others wouldn't exactly associate my answers to the word given.

But that's the beauty of individuality. We are able to paint our own colours onto the canvas. Through an ordinary word like 'blanket', we inject our life into it. Our memories, personalities, and opinions will never be 100% similar with the people around us, and that's a good thing for the advancement of humanity. 

Friction produced fire.