• What is the linguistic sign?
• Elements of the linguistic sign
• Characteristics of the linguistic sign
• Types of linguistic signs

We explain what the linguistic sign is and the various elements that compose it. In addition, its characteristics and the types of signs that exist.

Every sign is a conventional representation of reality.

What is the linguistic sign?

The linguistic sign is called the minimum unit of verbal communication, part of a social and psychic system of communication between the Humans, which we know as language. This mechanism works by substituting the things of the reality by signs that represent them, and in the case of verbal language, by signs that we can receive through the senses and then decode and interpret to recover an original message.

Every sign is a conventional representation of the reality, which is part of a conventional, social system of substitutions: in the case of verbal language, it is about the word for the thing, or rather: a specific sound for the impression that the referred thing leaves on the mind.

On the other hand, the linguistic sign it appears as part of a spoken chain, in which one sign succeeds another, using silences to separate the ordered sets of signs that make up, for example, a word. That is why languages ​​have a logic, a sequence, a way to organize the information what do we callsyntax.

The linguistic sign was the subject of study of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce in the 19th century, whose studies laid the groundwork for the later linguistics modern. The playGeneral linguistics coursede Saussure is a mandatory reference on the subject.

Elements of the linguistic sign

Meaning is the mental image transmitted by language.

The elements of the linguistic sign, as defined by Saussure, are two:

• Significant It is the material part of the sign, the one that contributesshape and that is recognizable through the senses. In the case of spoken language, it is the mental image (the acoustic image) of the sounds articulated and transmitted by the air that are needed to communicate the sign.
• Meaning.It is the immaterial, mental, social and abstract part of the linguistic sign, which is part of what is communally contemplated in the language (and which are the patrimony of all), but also of the expressive capacities of the individual (their individual lexicon). The meaning would come to be the psychic image or thecontent that is transmitted through language.

Both the signifier and the signified are reciprocal facets of the sign, that is, they need each other like the two sides of a sheet of paper. For this reason, it is not possible to separate them, nor to handle just one. This type of relationship is known asdichotomy.

Pierce, for his part, attributed to the linguistic sign three faces, like a triangle:

• Represent. This is what is found instead of the real object, that is, that which is representing the thing: a word, a He drew, are forms of representation.
• Interpreting Every sign requires someone to read or listen to it and capture the senses in the sign, which necessarily addresses someone. This is the interpretant: the mental vision that the communicating individuals make of the representamen.
• Object. It is the concrete reality that one wishes to represent, that is, that in whose place the linguistic sign is found.

Characteristics of the linguistic sign

According to Saussure's studies, the linguistic sign has certain characteristics:

• Arbitrariness. The relationship between signified and signifier is generally arbitrary, that is, conventional, artificial. There is no similarity relationship between the sounds that make up a given word (say:sky) and the concrete meaning they seek to convey (the idea of ​​heaven). This is why languages ​​must be learned.
• Linearity As mentioned before, the signifiers of verbal language are part of a chain of signs whose order matters so that they can be understood correctly. This is understood as a linear character: the sounds that make up a word appear in line, that is, one in front of the other, not all at once, nor in a disorderly way:sky is not equivalent toociel.
• Mutability and immutability. This means that the linguistic sign canmutate: change, acquire new meanings, displace the specific link between signified and signifier, but as long as it does so throughout the weather. An example of this is etymology: the origin of modern words from old ones, which are slowly changing. But at the same time it tends to remain unchanging: within a community determined and at a specific moment in history, the relationship between signified and signifier tends to be static. An example of this is that we cannot alter the words of our language and impose that use on the rest of its speakers.

Types of linguistic signs

Religious emblems are considered symbols.

According to Peirce, there are three different types of signs, according to the relationship between the object and its interpreter:

• Indices. The sign has a logical, causal, proximity relationship of some kind with its real referent. For example: the footprints of a dog on the I usually, refer to the presence of animal.
• Icons In this case, the sign resembles what it represents, that is, it has a mimetic or resemblance relationship. For example: a onomatopoeia of the sound of an animal.
• Symbols. They are the ones that present the most complex relationship between the object and the referent, since it is totally cultural, arbitrary. For example: religious emblems, flags, coats of arms.