Semiotics the study of "meaning"
People would apply semiotics in culture, "it's a tool to read a culture" Understanding the code to underline a system of symbols or signs we recognize, for example we understand different clothing and put them into classes such as someone with dark ripped clothing with instruments will sign a rock band. What we see is what it is represented as, for example a suit shows a smart professional.
To understand anything we need to go deeper into codes and conventions, codes are relied on shared knowledge withing the cultures, for example the statue of liberty, we automatically think of New York which is the culture its from. and there are many other codes we recognize that represent New York such as yellow taxi's.
We have reached a point where we can recognize a lot of symbols that we can point out things that we understand whereas some one else has a different understanding.
Many words are linked to things we see but this is denotations such as a dog is white with 4 legs, whereas the connotations which we link to something such as a dog is its royal, walks and companionship. And we do this on a daily basis which makes us unique in terms of having different words to describe something.
A theory From Ferdinand de Saussure, explains that the signifier is the sound of the image and the signified is the mental concept which we understand. By understanding these key terms we understand that it makes the signs which is a thing that gives meaning.
Not every object gives a meaning for example a stone or apple, people start to give meanings to objects and this is because of analyzing the object to give a meaning. such as a red apple can mean delicious, evil and power but this red apple can mean of something else such as a reference to Snow white and this proves that we all do have different meanings that we as people produce a meaning.
By looking and trying to identify the meaning of something we can understand the culture and this gives us more input as to how people live by this culture.
