Semiotics

A sign opens a path from something perceived to something understood.

Suppose a poster shows a reusable water bottle beside a green leaf. Below it appear the words “Refill tomorrow.” The bottle presents an object; the leaf invites associations with nature; the slogan connects a present action with a future. Together they build a message about how to live.

Semiotics examines how such connections work. It studies signs, the relationships through which they signify, and the codes and contexts that make them intelligible.

A word, photograph, gesture, melody, uniform, road marking or screen button can function as a sign. The inquiry begins by asking what makes that form significant in a particular setting.

Follow the making of meaning

The leaf in the poster has a visible shape. Its work in the message depends on its relation to the bottle, the colour scheme, the slogan and familiar environmental imagery. A semiotic analysis follows those relations.

Ask what has been selected, how the elements are combined and which associations the arrangement invites. Then ask whose knowledge and experience make that reading available.

Read media as texts

In media analysis, a text is an organised object of interpretation. It can be a film, photograph, advertisement, programme, web page, meme or performance. The term lets us examine how several signs work together.

A television report combines speech, pictures, captions, sound, sequence and presentation. An outfit combines garments, colours and ways of wearing them. Each gives us a meaningful arrangement to investigate.

Make an interpretation accountable

A strong reading points to evidence. If you argue that the poster presents environmental responsibility as a consumer identity, identify the objects, words and contrasts supporting that claim.

Also consider alternatives. The same poster might serve as a practical reminder near a refill station. Its placement and purpose help determine which explanation fits.

Carry this question through the chapter: how does this arrangement make a particular meaning available?

Different approaches illuminate different relationships within signs.

Modern semiotics developed through several intellectual routes. Two foundational approaches are associated with the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.

Saussure proposed semiology as a study of signs in social life. His Course in General Linguistics, compiled from lecture materials and published posthumously in 1916, became a major source for structural approaches. Peirce developed a theory of signs within his work on logic, inquiry and interpretation.

Semiology and semiotics

Semiology is closely associated with Saussure’s project; semiotics is associated with Peirce and is also widely used as a broader name for the field. Particular writers develop the terms through their own theoretical commitments.

Begin with the question and the model you are using. This keeps a familiar word from concealing a change in assumptions.

From linguistic structure to cultural practice

Structural approaches investigate the relationships that organise a system of signs. A word acquires value through its differences from other words; a visual choice acquires significance among available alternatives.

Cultural and social approaches extend attention to use, institutions, history and power. They ask how conventions become established, how people use them and how meanings shift between settings.

A connected reading route

Start with Saussure’s account of the linguistic sign and Peirce’s account of sign relations. Move to Barthes for advertising, images and myth, then to work on reception and multimodal communication.

Saussure ↓ · Peirce ↓ · Barthes ↓ · Eco ↓

A linguistic sign binds a form to a concept.

For Saussure, the linguistic sign combines a signifier with a signified. The signifier is the sound-image; the signified is the concept. Their association constitutes the sign.

Begin with the word “cat”

The English form “cat” is associated with a concept that speakers recognise. In writing, the letters provide a visible representation of the word. Media analysis often extends the vocabulary of signifier and signified to images and other forms.

Different languages organise naming through different conventions. English “cat,” Hindi बिल्ली and Bengali বিড়াল illustrate how recognisable linguistic forms vary across communities.

Arbitrariness concerns the bond

The relation between a linguistic form and its concept is arbitrary in the sense that it rests on a language’s conventions. The sound of the English word supplies no inherent requirement that it name this animal.

Shared use gives the association stability. A speaker learns the conventions of the community and works with them when communicating.

Difference gives signs their value

A sign belongs to a system of contrasts. “Cat” differs from “cap,” “bat” and other forms; its conceptual value also depends on distinctions available within the language.

Apply the question to a design. A large heading gains prominence in relation to smaller text. A colour stands out against its background. Examine the surrounding alternatives and contrasts that make the selected form consequential.

Langue and parole

Langue concerns the shared linguistic system; parole concerns particular acts of language use. The distinction helps relate a community’s conventions to a particular utterance.

In an advertisement, the slogan uses familiar vocabulary and grammar while combining them into a specific message. Ask which shared resources make the utterance intelligible and which choices give it a distinctive force.

For the foundational account, read the sections on the linguistic sign, value and syntagmatic relations in Course in General Linguistics ↓.

A sign represents an object through an interpretant.

Peirce’s account connects three terms: a representamen, an object and an interpretant. Together they describe how something functions as a sign of something else.

The representamen

This is the sign in its representative role: a mark, sound, image or other form functioning within the relation. In the example, the wet footprint is encountered as significant.

The object

The object is what the sign represents. Here the footprint directs interpretation towards a person’s passage. Other signs can concern a general category, a rule or an imagined situation.

The interpretant

The interpretant is the understanding or further sign-effect generated through the relation. Someone reads the footprint as evidence that a person passed through. That interpretation can prompt another sign, such as the statement “Someone has just come in.”

Semiosis names the activity of signification. An interpretation can enter further interpretation as inquiry continues: the footprint’s direction, condition and location may support a more specific account.

Follow the relation in a media example

Suppose a news report displays a photograph of a damaged bridge. Identify the image being used, the bridge or event it represents and the understanding the presentation invites.

The caption, date and reporting context can guide that understanding. Further investigation can assess what the photograph supports and which questions require other evidence.

Read Peirce’s What Is a Sign? ↓ alongside the selected writings in The Essential Peirce ↓.

Signs connect with their objects through different relationships.

Peirce’s distinction among icon, index and symbol asks how a sign represents its object. Resemblance, an actual connection and a convention offer different grounds for signification.

Icon: examine the resemblance

A sketch can resemble the outline of a building. A diagram can preserve relationships while changing appearance. Identify the particular feature that makes the resemblance meaningful.

A transit map may simplify distances while preserving connections between stations. Its usefulness depends on the relationships selected for representation.

Index: establish the connection

An index directs attention through a connection: a trace, a causal effect or a situated indication. A wet footprint is connected with a foot’s contact; a pointing gesture directs attention within a shared setting.

In analysis, state the connection and the evidence supporting it. A drawing of smoke represents smoke through resemblance. Smoke rising from a particular source can function as an index of combustion there.

Symbol: identify the convention

A linguistic word gains significance through shared usage. A flag can invoke a nation, organisation or movement through established associations.

Ask which community knows the convention and how its use is being framed. The same form can acquire different associations in a ceremony, an advertisement or a protest.

One sign can combine several relations

A photograph can resemble a person and, when produced through photographic capture, also bear a physical connection with what was before the camera. Its caption can add symbolic language.

A road sign can combine a diagram resembling a junction, a convention governing its shape and colour, and a location pointing towards a particular stretch of road. Explain each relationship separately.

Ask about motivation

In semiotic discussion, motivation concerns the extent to which features of a sign are connected with what it represents. A likeness can make part of the relation perceptible; a conventional word requires knowledge of shared usage.

Onomatopoeic words imitate aspects of sound while still taking forms learned within languages. This provides a useful way to examine resemblance and convention working together.

Shared conventions help a sign become intelligible.

A code is a set of conventions that helps organise the production and interpretation of signs. Codes can concern language, genre, dress, photography, editing, gesture or the design of an interface.

Umberto Eco’s A Theory of Semiotics (1976) connects the study of codes with the production of signs. It offers a route from individual forms towards the systems and practices through which they signify. Read the book ↓

Context changes the available reading

A white coat appears differently in a laboratory, a costume shop and a comic sketch. The garment supplies a recognisable form; the setting helps establish how it is functioning.

Record the surrounding signs. A name badge, a test bench, a laughter track or a slogan can shift the interpretation.

Conventions have histories

Colour associations, gestures and ways of displaying authority develop through use. Ask which period, community and communicative setting your analysis concerns.

For the refill poster, green may invite an environmental reading through familiar design practices. Establish that reading through the combined leaf, bottle and slogan, then consider the audience and location.

Difference and opposition

Media texts often organise contrasts: old and new, crowded and open, formal and casual, wasteful and careful. Examine how the contrast is constructed and which side receives approval.

Suppose an advertisement places a crumpled disposable bottle beside a polished reusable one. Lighting, arrangement and wording can assign different values to the objects. Identify those choices before developing a wider claim about consumption.

Recognise the implied reader

Every communicative design presumes some knowledge. A joke may require familiarity with a film; a campus poster may presume a shared building name; an instruction may presume recognition of a symbol.

Ask what the text expects its reader to know, and what happens when that expectation is unmet.

Meaning emerges through selection and combination.

A text selects some possibilities and combines them into an arrangement. Paradigmatic relations concern alternatives that could occupy a position. Syntagmatic relations concern the combination of elements within the text.

Paradigm: identify the available choice

For a poster, the designer could select a photograph, sketch or diagram. A headline could call a proposal a reform, a cut or a change. Each choice draws on a set of alternatives relevant to that position.

Define the set in relation to the task. Film transitions, headline verbs and clothing choices offer different kinds of paradigm.

Syntagm: examine the arrangement

A sentence combines words in an order. A film sequence combines shots and sounds through time. A poster combines image, caption and layout across space.

Relations among elements matter. A leaf beside a bottle can associate the product with nature; the same leaf placed in an instruction diagram can identify a botanical category.

The commutation test

Replace one element while holding the rest of the arrangement steady. Then examine what changes in the available meaning. This is a practical way to investigate a choice.

In the refill poster, replace the green leaf with a price label. The emphasis may shift towards economy. Replace “Refill tomorrow” with “Refill here” and the poster becomes a more immediate instruction.

State the comparison carefully: what changed, what remained and which interpretation the contrast supports. Audience interviews can investigate whether readers actually perceive the proposed shift.

Read absence through alternatives

An absent option becomes analytically useful when you can establish its relevance. Compare a report that names a decision-maker with one that uses a passive construction. Ask how each makes agency visible.

Saussure’s discussion of relations and Barthes’s Elements of Semiology provide foundations for this structural inquiry. Saussure ↓ · Barthes ↓

Signs can transfer qualities and make connections stand for larger meanings.

Rhetorical figures organise relationships between what a text presents and what it invites us to understand. They work in words, images, sound and sequences.

Metaphor transfers a selected quality

The car–cheetah sequence invites viewers to connect the vehicle with the animal’s speed or agility. Identify the quality being transferred and the signs that support the comparison.

A metaphor can work within a single image. A bottle pictured as a growing tree may associate reuse with renewal. The analysis asks how the design establishes that relation.

Metonymy works through association

A microphone may invoke broadcasting; a press badge may invoke a journalistic role. The relation draws on practices and institutions through which these objects become meaningful.

Choose a precise account of the association. A building can invoke the organisation housed there. A name can invoke an office or institution. The context helps establish which relationship is active.

Synecdoche makes a part carry a whole

Marching feet can stand for an army; a pair of hands can represent a worker or a collective activity. Ask what the selected part makes prominent and what remains outside the frame.

Synecdoche is often treated within the wider family of metonymic relations. A useful analysis names the part–whole connection explicitly and develops its consequence for the representation.

Irony depends on a recognisable tension

A picture of an overflowing bin under the caption “Perfectly managed” invites a critical reading through the contrast. The words and image supply evidence for the implied evaluation.

Recognition depends on context and shared knowledge. Investigate how the tension becomes legible to the intended audience.

A linguistic extension

Roman Jakobson’s discussion of metaphor and metonymy in Fundamentals of Language (1956), written with Morris Halle, connects similarity and contiguity with broader patterns of linguistic organisation. It offers a further reading route from these media examples. Read the book ↓

An ordinary representation can carry a larger cultural story.

Roland Barthes brings semiotic analysis into everyday culture. His work examines how photographs, advertisements, objects and practices carry meanings shaped by history and social convention.

Denotation: describe the represented scene

At the denotative level, identify the people, objects, actions and words presented. In the refill poster, describe a bottle, a leaf, their placement and the wording.

Keep the description concrete. “A green leaf appears beside the bottle” establishes a visible feature from which an interpretation can develop. Description itself draws on learned recognition and categories.

Connotation: trace cultural associations

Connotation concerns the associations a representation activates through codes and context. A leaf, green palette and refill slogan can work together to suggest environmental care or renewal.

Explain the supporting relation. Soft focus may contribute tenderness in a particular film sequence; formal dress may contribute authority in a particular portrait. The setting, genre and combination of cues help establish the reading.

Myth: follow the naturalisation of a cultural value

In Mythologies (1957), Barthes explains myth as a second-order semiological system. A sign already intelligible in one system becomes form for a further concept. This process can present historical values as the natural appearance of things. Read the book ↓

Develop the poster reading

The bottle and leaf make a particular action visible. The slogan extends that action towards a future. A mythic reading examines how this arrangement turns a lifestyle into an image of the responsible citizen.

Identify the account of agency. Who appears able to act? Which resources are already available? What role do refill infrastructure, public provision or collective decisions receive in the representation?

These questions give the analysis a social dimension. They examine how a meaningful action is woven into a larger account of responsibility.

Connect myth with repetition

One text can supply a close reading; a series can reveal a recurring association. Compare how advertisements, campaigns or news images repeatedly present success, health, family, modernity or citizenship.

State the pattern and its context. A claim about a wider cultural story needs a body of evidence suited to that scale.

Meaning takes shape across words, images, sounds and their arrangement.

A media text can distribute meaning across several modes. A photograph, caption, voice, musical phrase and edit each contribute resources that acquire force through their combination.

Gunther Kress’s Multimodality and Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s Reading Images examine socially situated resources for making meaning. They help turn attention towards composition, interaction and the work done across modes. Multimodality ↓ · Reading Images ↓

Anchorage: wording guides a reading

Barthes’s “Rhetoric of the Image” distinguishes anchorage and relay. Through anchorage, words guide the interpretation of an image by selecting or emphasising an available meaning. A news caption identifies people, place, time or an account of the event. Read the essay ↓

Suppose a photograph shows people running along a road. “Runners approach the finish” and “Residents leave the flooded street” organise different accounts. Examine the image and evidence to establish which caption is warranted.

Relay: modes supply complementary information

In relay, words and images contribute different parts of a larger message. A comic panel may show an action while dialogue supplies information needed to understand the exchange.

In film, a shot may establish a closed door while a voice reveals who is waiting behind it. Analyse how the combined sequence develops information.

Film builds relationships through sequence

A reaction shot can direct attention towards a character’s interpretation. A repeated image can build an association. A change in sound can alter the experience of the same visible action.

James Monaco’s How to Read a Film provides a broad route into the language and organisation of moving images. For a close analysis, describe the actual sequence and explain the relationship created by the edit. Read the book record ↓

Digital interfaces also organise signification

A folder image, bell, bin or speech bubble draws on familiar objects and learned interface conventions. Its meaning emerges through placement, labels, feedback and the action it enables.

Suppose a bell appears beside a changing number. Investigate what event changes the number, what the label promises and what happens when it is selected. This connects representation with use.

A text offers meanings that people encounter from particular positions.

Texts organise possible readings through their signs and conventions. People approach them with knowledge, commitments and experiences that can support agreement, negotiation or opposition.

Polysemy opens more than one route

Polysemy refers to the availability of multiple meanings. A leaf can belong to environmental advertising, botanical instruction, a seasonal motif or an inherited emblem. The text and setting help establish which readings are relevant.

Identify the alternatives and the cues supporting each. This gives a claim about ambiguity a concrete foundation.

Encoding and decoding

Stuart Hall’s 1973 paper on television discourse examines the relationship between the organisation of a message and its decoding. His approach gives a place to the cultural and social positions through which people encounter media. Read the paper ↓

A viewer may accept a poster’s invitation to identify with environmental care. Another may endorse reuse while questioning access to refill facilities. A further reading may challenge the product-centred account of responsibility.

These are possible responses to investigate. Invite readers to explain the text’s point and the details that led them to that interpretation.

Intertextuality brings other texts into the encounter

A meme can borrow a film scene, a news image or a familiar phrase. Recognition of that earlier text becomes part of the new one’s meaning.

Record the borrowed element, its earlier context and what the new use changes. A caption can redirect a heroic pose towards a joke about an ordinary inconvenience.

Interpretation has grounds

Umberto Eco’s work on the limits of interpretation examines the relationship between interpretive activity and the constraints of texts. It offers a useful extension for evaluating competing readings. Read the book record ↓

Explain why an interpretation fits the arrangement, context and relevant conventions. Compare it with alternatives that account for the same evidence.

Assess the contribution of semiotics

Semiotics makes familiar forms available for close examination. It reveals how a headline distributes agency, a photograph positions a viewer or an advertisement connects an object with a desirable identity.

Extend the inquiry with the evidence your claim needs. Production interviews can investigate design decisions. Reception research can investigate audience readings. Comparative content analysis can establish recurring patterns across a defined collection.

A well-supported study connects these forms of evidence with care. It identifies the interpretation offered, the evidence supporting it and the scale of the conclusion.

Move from visible detail to a supported interpretation.

Read each situation and outline your analysis before opening the discussion. Identify the signs, their relationships, the codes involved and at least one plausible alternative reading.

Bring the lecture into your reading of a media text.

In my lecture, Semiotics: The Study of Signs, I introduce the sign, Saussure and Peirce, icon–index–symbol relations, selection and combination, rhetorical figures and Barthes’s account of signification.

Watch my lecture on YouTube ↗

Pause and apply

Keep an advertisement, news image or short clip beside you. At each stage, select one detail and explain what the relevant concept helps you see.

After watching, develop a paragraph joining three details into one interpretation. State the context and identify the further evidence that would strengthen your reading.

Test the relationships that make the concepts useful.

Select an answer before opening its explanation. Return to the relevant example whenever a term remains uncertain.

Build a semiotic analysis that another reader can assess.

Activity 1 · Analyse a media text

Choose one advertisement, poster, news photograph or short sequence. Record the source, date, placement and intended context of circulation.

1. Describe: inventory the visible and audible elements, wording and arrangement.
2. Identify sign relations: explain selected iconic, indexical and symbolic relationships.
3. Examine codes: identify the conventions and knowledge the text draws upon.
4. Test choices: develop a commutation test and examine the syntagm.
5. Develop the reading: connect denotation, connotation and any supported account of myth.
6. Assess alternatives: compare a second interpretation against the same evidence.

Suggested output: a 1,000–1,200-word analysis including the text’s context, a concise description and a connected argument supported by particular details.

Activity 2 · Redesign one element

Create two versions of a campus information poster by changing one feature: the heading, image, colour contrast or placement of a label. Keep its practical purpose clear.

Explain the intended difference through a semiotic concept. Invite a small group of consenting adults to describe each version and identify the cues supporting their readings. Compare their accounts with your expectation.

A research design: compare representations

Research question: how do selected refill campaigns represent environmental responsibility?

Define a period, platform or institution and a reproducible way to select the material. Record objects, wording, depicted actors, available actions and the visibility of infrastructure or collective provision.

Combine close readings with a systematic comparison. A coding scheme can establish recurring features; interpretation can examine how the features work together in particular cases. Document coding decisions and examine disagreements.

A research design: compare readings

Research question: how does familiarity with a borrowed film scene enter interpretation of a meme?

Recruit readers with different familiarity, establish that familiarity through questions and show the same item in comparable conditions. Ask for an open account of the joke before supplying explanations.

Compare recognition of the pose, the source scene, the new caption and the relationship among them. Analyse readers’ explanations and the details they cite. This connects intertextuality with reception evidence.

Match the claim to the method

Close analysis develops a supported interpretation of signification. Interviews and viewing discussions investigate readings among particular audiences. Claims about changes in knowledge, attitudes or behaviour require a design that measures those outcomes and addresses competing explanations.

Examination and seminar prompts

• Compare Saussure’s and Peirce’s models using one example.
• Explain icon, index and symbol, including a sign that combines relations.
• Apply paradigm, syntagm and the commutation test to a media text.
• Distinguish metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche through images or film.
• Explain how denotation, connotation and myth enter a reading of advertising.
• Assess what semiotic analysis contributes and how production or reception research can extend it.

Read the detail, the relation and the cultural world together.

Key terms

Semiotics

The study of signs, signification and the relationships through which meaning is produced.

Semiology

A term closely associated with Saussure’s project of studying signs in social life.

Sign

Something functioning within a relation of signification; its theoretical definition depends on the model used.

Signification

The process or relationship through which something acquires meaning.

Text

An organised object of interpretation, including visual, verbal, sonic or mixed forms.

Signifier

In Saussure’s model, the sound-image associated with a concept; extended in media analysis to signifying forms.

Signified

The concept associated with a signifier in Saussure’s model.

Arbitrariness

The conventional character of the bond between linguistic form and concept.

Linguistic value

The place a sign acquires through its relations and differences within a language.

Langue

The shared linguistic system.

Parole

Particular acts of language use.

Representamen

The sign in its representative role within Peirce’s triadic account.

Object

What a sign represents within a sign relation.

Interpretant

The interpretive understanding or further sign-effect within Peirce’s account.

Semiosis

The activity of signification, including the development of further interpretations.

Icon

A sign relation grounded in resemblance or shared structure.

Index

A sign relation grounded in an actual connection with its object.

Symbol

A sign relation grounded in a learned rule, convention or habit.

Motivation

The extent to which features of a sign are connected with what it represents.

Code

Conventions that organise the production and interpretation of signs.

Paradigm

A set of relevant alternatives available for a position or function.

Syntagm

A meaningful combination of elements across sequence or space.

Commutation test

Substitution of one element to investigate its contribution to meaning.

Metaphor

Understanding one thing through another by a proposed similarity.

Metonymy

Representation through an associated element or relationship.

Synecdoche

Representation through a part–whole relationship.

Denotation

The represented scene or relatively direct level of description in an analysis.

Connotation

Cultural associations activated through signs, codes and context.

Myth

In Barthes’s account, second-order signification that can naturalise a cultural concept.

Anchorage

The guidance language supplies to the interpretation of an image.

Relay

Complementary contributions of words and images to a larger message.

Polysemy

The availability of more than one meaning.

Intertextuality

The relationships through which a text draws meaning from other texts.

Multimodality

The organisation of meaning across modes such as language, image, sound, gesture and layout.

Further reading

Begin with Saussure, Peirce and Barthes, then select a route through cultural interpretation, reception, film or multimodality. Return to one media text as you move between the approaches.

1. Saussure, F. de. (2011). Course in general linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.; P. Meisel & H. Saussy, Eds.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1916) Read ↗Read the sign, linguistic value, and relations within a system.
2. Peirce, C. S. (1998). The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, Volume 2 (1893–1913) (Peirce Edition Project, Ed.). Indiana University Press. Read ↗Explore Peirce’s evolving account of signs and inquiry.
3. Peirce, C. S. (1894). What is a sign? Read ↗Begin with a short primary text on likenesses, indices and symbols.
4. Barthes, R. (1968). Elements of semiology (A. Lavers & C. Smith, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1964) Read ↗Develop relations among signs, systems and cultural forms.
5. Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies (A. Lavers, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1957) Read ↗Examine everyday culture and the second-order system of myth.
6. Barthes, R. (1977). Rhetoric of the image. In Image–music–text (S. Heath, Trans., pp. 32–51). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1964) Read ↗Study the image, linguistic message, anchorage and relay.
7. Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Indiana University Press. Read ↗Connect codes with the production of signs.
8. Jakobson, R., & Halle, M. (1956). Fundamentals of language. Mouton. Read ↗Follow the discussion of similarity, contiguity, metaphor and metonymy.
9. Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and decoding in the television discourse (Stencilled Occasional Paper No. 7). Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. Read ↗Connect the organisation of messages with situated decoding.
10. Eco, U. (1990). The limits of interpretation. Indiana University Press. Read ↗Examine the grounds and constraints of interpretation.
11. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2021). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (3rd ed.). Routledge. Read ↗Investigate representation, interaction and composition in images.
12. Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge. Read ↗Follow meaning across socially organised modes and resources.
13. Monaco, J. (2009). How to read a film: Movies, media, and beyond (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. Read ↗Extend the analysis into film form, sound and sequence.
14. Chandler, D. (2025). Semiotics: The basics (5th ed.). Routledge. Read ↗Use a contemporary guide to consolidate concepts and analytical practice.

My lecture: Semiotics: The Study of Signs ↗

Six statements to retain

1. Signs function through relationships that make meaning available in a setting.
2. Saussure joins form and concept; Peirce relates sign, object and interpretant.
3. Resemblance, actual connection and convention identify different grounds of signification.
4. Selection and combination organise words, images, sounds and their arrangements.
5. Cultural associations and myth connect ordinary representations with wider values.
6. A convincing reading names the details, relationships and context supporting its interpretation.