Peirce's Three Categories of Sign Semiotics - Icons, indexes, symbols At about the same time as Saussure was developing semiology, the American philosopher C. S. Peirce was developing semiotics (as it tended to be known in the US and is now generally known across the world). Following Peirce, semiologists (or semioticians) often draw a distinction between icons, indexes and symbols. Icons Icons are signs whose signifier bears a close resemblance to the thing they refer to. Thus a photograph of me can be said to be highly iconic because it looks like me. A road sign showing the silhouette of a car and a motorbike is highly iconic because the silhouettes look like a motorbike and a car. A very few words (so-called onomatopoeic words) are iconic, too, such as whisper, cuckoo, splash, crash. Symbols Most words, though, are symbolic signs. We have agreed that they shall mean what they mean and there is no natural relationship between them and their meanings, between the signifier and the signified. In movies we would expect to find iconic signs - the signifiers looking like what they refer to. We find symbolic signs as well, though: for example when the picture goes wobbly before a flashback. Certainly the 'real world' doesn't go wobbly when we remember a scene from the past, so this device is an arbitrary device which means 'flashback' because we have agreed that that's what it means. The road sign with the motorbike and car has, as we have just seen, iconic elements, but it also has symbolic elements: a white background with a red circle around it. These signify 'something is forbidden' simply because we have agreed that that is what they mean. Indexes In a sense, indexes lie between icons and symbols. An index is a sign whose signifier we have learnt to associate with a particular signified. For example, if we see someone walking down the street with a rolling gait, we may associate the rolling gate with the concept of 'sailor'. We may see smoke as an index of 'fire'. A thermometer is an index of 'temperature'. Peirce gives the examples of a weathercock, a barometer and a sundial. In old movies, when they need to show the passing of time, they may typically show the sheets bearing the days of the month being torn off a calendar - that is iconic, because it looks like sheets being torn off a calendar; the numbers 1, 2, 3 etc., the names January, February etc. are symbols - they are purely arbitrary; the whole sequence is indexical of the passing of time - we associate the removal of the sheets with the passing of time. Don't think, though, that these three categories are mutually exclusive. A sign could very well be all three at the same time. For example, TV uses all three at the same time - a shot of a man speaking (iconic), the words he uses (symbolic) and the effect of what is filmed (indexical). Don't think either that because a sign is iconic then it is in some way more natural than any other sign. With any kind of sign, we always have to learn the cultural conventions involved: Convention is necessary to the understanding of any sign, however iconic or indexical it is. We need to learn how to understand a photograph... Convention is the social dimension of signs...: it is the agreement amongst the users about the appropriate uses of and responses to a sign. Fiske (1982)   Communication Studies Main Page