The meaning of meaning

Martin Silvertant
Nov 2 · 3 min read

Meaning is a relationship between signs and the things that are meant by it, which already seems almost circular, though what is meant is what it signifies (a referent to meaning), and not meaning itself. Signs consist of signifiers (word, image or sound) and the signified (concept or meaning).

Augustine of Hippo states, a sign is “something that shows itself to the senses [signifier] and something other than itself to the mind [signified]”(Signum est quod se ipsum sensui et praeter se aliquid animo ostendit).¹ A sign is a denotation, whereas what speaks to the mind is a connotation. However, this is only true if the sign is an object.

In linguistics, the sign itself can both denote and connote. This is because words are referents and have no intrinsic meaning. But of course, meaning itself is a construction — the framework of which is language. As such, it’s impossible to define meaning in isolation of words. Indeed, definitions and descriptions inherently rely on language. There are various kinds of meaning that can be described:

  1. Things in the world, which might have meaning — or rather, they might have meaning attributed to them.
  2. Things in the world that are also signs of other things in the world, and this relationship or referent has meaning.
  3. Things like words and symbols, which are necessarily meaningful.

So it’s impossible to cite words and language as somehow objective representations of reality, since they are constructing that reality. So in linguistics, the signifier (form) and the signified (concept) work together to create the sign, the latter of which carries meaning. This is semiotics.


Roland Barthes takes this a step further with the following diagram:²

As you can see the sign itself becomes a signifier, which, accompanied by the signified, becomes yet another sign. This diagram can be a useful tool in analyzing signs and their denoted and connoted meaning, and as you might guess, it can be extended indefinitely in principle. This is what Nick means when he says:

It’s not the person interpreting the sign: it’s the interpretation of the sign — which is itself a sign. Turtles all the way down.

As you can see in the diagram, the second-order signification — the sign itself being used as a signifier, which adds a second layer of meaning — is what Barthes calls a myth. Here is an example:³


All good and well. But how does this work for meaning?

As you can see, rather than adding a second layer of meaning, since meaning is a referent to meaning, the whole thing can only be self-referential, and only extends the question: what is the meaning of meaning of meaning of meaning of meaning — philosophically speaking?


Martin Silvertant

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Fights fierce dodecahedragons during sleep onset. Ironically silver award-winning graphic designer. Contact me if you need any design work done.

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