Semiotics，Symbols，and Cultural Perspectives

What do we think of when we think of 'New Years', or 'summer,' 'home', or 'tea cup'? Whenever we happen to think of such seemingly commonplace events, places or things, we are inundated, internally, with a wide landscape of images and feelings at a very personal level. These reactions are, to a great extent, comprised of symbols of the particular time/event or thing to which our thoughts are pointing. This system of interpreting signs and symbols within our culture is called semiotics, and it is a way for us to understand how we communicate within our own linguistic domain, and how interpretation of signs and symbols is practiced in other cultures. As such, semiotics may be regarded through a variety of disciplines: linguistics, anthropology, art history, philosophy, and language education. We may see the word 'north,' for example, and one may call to mind an image of 'snow,' as in Hokkaido in winter or the North Pole. We can say that these images are being pointed to, as symbols of 'north.' In this case, the word 'north' is the sign or signifier, and the symbols we have for it-a field of white snow, polar bears, etc.-are the signified. Indeed, we are only able to know things and speak about them with the aid of signs, replacing them with signs that we hope are understood by others. In fact, according to Charles Peirce, considered the father of semiotics, "we think only in signs" (Peirce, 1931). The Swiss pioneer linguist Ferdinand de Saussure considered that the sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure, 1974). Both Peirce and Saussure endeavored to understand how we think and, then, communicate our thoughts to others, and along with the work of Roland Barthes, the field of semiotics was established as a linguistic as well as philosophical discipline. Barthes sought to explain the concepts of semiotics in textuality, or how words are arranged in sentences, in paragraphs, and ultimately as a presentation of a story through the medium of text. He believed that all signs and symbols in our culture already exist with their own inherent meaning before an author chooses to use them in a text. Barthes wrote, therefore, that since meaning cannot come from the author of a text-a story, poem, etc.-then it must be actively created by the reader through a process of textual analysis. ''We should not be bound by what the author said, or thought he was saying, but cede authority to the reader (Merquoir pp. 134-40)." This was the recognition that the reader is the ultimate 'authority' for his own interpretation of a text, as the meaning of imagery constructed from reading is done exclusively by the reader and for the reader, as an individual. It follows, then, that each of us has our own way to interpret signs and symbols, based on the way we acquired our understanding of them through education within our own culture. Yet of course, the most important aspect of Barthes' idea is that each of us possesses a deeper power of interpretation through our own individual, personal life experiences. Herein lies, too, the potential for personal adaptation according to the "needs" of the culture. An example is the 'swastika ': 卐. The author Salman Rushdie tells us, in his book ''Midnight's Children," that the word 'swasti' is the Sanskrit word for 'good', and is the Hindu symbol for power (Rushdie, p. 75). It can also be found in Tibetan culture, used to symbolize the never-ending, cyclical movement of the universe. Yet the very same symbol was adapted by the Nazi Party and its military of Germany as its own symbol, and became for many Jews in Europe a symbol of terror and genocide. What does this sign signify to a religious Hindu? And to a Jewish refugee from Poland? Certainly we would see radically different interpretations of the same sign, due mainly to the 'reader's' own life experience within their culture