Semiotics of Semiotics: When the study itself is arbitrary
It is Tuesday, April 3, 2018. I lie on my bed basking in my last few moments of teeth extraction recovery — since I am close to approaching what everyone calls reality, due to a vacant excuse. During these moments of laziness (I mean intense productive crunch time), I find an image:
In this image, the signifier of the large space between the other signifiers of the “Signified” and “Referent,” triggers the following far-reaching implication: the signified is the physical existence of the word “GAP” instilling endless anxiety, like a gaping black hole that never decides to shrink and eventually close. Through the use of semiotics, the image programs society (technically just me) to think there is coherence in a non-coherent world that utilizes something as complex as language to communicate complexities. The referent, Semiotics, can be a language itself. Any study or form of meaning-making is language.
The misinformation communicated here is that Semiotics is a tool for demolishing the obstructions of language, when ironically itself can be an obstructed language; Saussure is just a hard-working man trying to make language fit. The creation of theory after theory calls for — let’s be honest — increases the rate of experiencing a potential for misinterpretation. Theories such as Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction, Roland Barthes’s Death of the Author, and anything by Noam Chomsky are access ways and desires to claim legitimacy in a world that is infamous for being anything but “legit.”
At the end of the day, our job as truth-seeking humans is “to find words for our space-lessness.”
Disclaimer: I can further discuss this far-reaching implication with contemporary examples like E.T., but that, in and of itself, is unhealthy.
