A sign is what? A dialogue between a semiotician and a would-be realist
A sign is what? A dialogue between a semiotician and a would-be realist

Summary/Abstract: Everyone knows that some days are better than others. I was having one of those, "other" days, when a colleague approached me to express interest in the forthcoming Annual Meeting — the 26th, as it happened — of the Semiotic Society of America. "Come on", said the colleague. "Tell me something about this semiotics business." "What's there to say?" I said, not in the mood for this at the moment. "Semiotics is the study of the action of signs, signs and sign systems." I knew it would not help to say that semiotics is the study of semiosis. So I let it go at that. But inwardly I cringed, for I could see the question coming like an offshore tidal wave. "Well, what do you mean by a sign?" my colleague pressed. Who in semiotics has not gotten this question from colleagues a hundred times? In a way it is an easy question, for "everyone knows" what a sign is. How else would they know what to look for when driving to Austin? All you have to do is play on that, and turn the conversation elsewhere. Maybe it was a change in mood. Maybe it was the fact that I liked this particular colleague. Or maybe I wanted to play advocatus diaboli. Whatever the reason, I decided not to take the easy way out, not to play on the "common sense" understanding of sign which, useful as it is and not exactly wrong, nonetheless obscures more than it reveals, and likely as not makes the inquirer cynical (if he or she is not such already) about this "new science" of signs. You know the routine. Someone asks you what a sign is. You respond, "You know. Anything that draws your attention to something else. Something that represents another." And they say, "You mean like a traffic sign?"

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