Ferdinand de Saussure developed the field of semiology, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "the branch of science concerned with the study of [...] signs and symbols." The field looks at how signs work and how we use them. A sign is the sum of the signifier, which is the form of the sign, and the signified, which is the concept of the meaning or the actual thing itself (i.e. "cat" versus the actual animal). To clarify, here's an example: The word "open," in the context of it being hung on a shop door, is a signifier signifying that the store is operating business at this time. It is deceivingly simple and has theoretical potency.
But what does semiotics have to do with InQueery? Just as I try to question varying aspects of society from a queer perspective in my column, semiotics lends itself to destabilizing what is assumed and accepted as natural because it looks at language, communication and representation as a coherent whole. This allows us to understand that certain values become entrenched in a culture over time through their accepted usage and meanings and that they can and do differ cross−culturally. For example, smiling does not translate into the same signification in different cultures. Our norms, standards and perspectives then lose the legitimating power of a connection to biology and notions of naturalness. We cannot deny the role of social constructs involved in the creation of realities.
Along the same lines, since we understand the outside world though language or signs, semiotics points markedly to the illusion of an objective reality, for what we know derives significance from its mediation through signs. Our system of signs shapes and informs what we know and see. What we understand as reality cannot then be objective but is subject to our interpretations. Though this assertion may seem obvious in this context, the common, accepted and widely used signification of reality includes objectivity, yet applying semiotics denaturalizes such a meaning.
Semiology offers us an approach that cultivates a consciousness of the powers that function to characterize sign systems as natural. Conventional usages and conventional responses to signs create a feedback system that transmits from generation to generation intelligible forms of communication. Because we can communicate thanks to social conventions, we often take them for granted and forget the constructed nature of the relationships between the signifiers and the signified. And because of their ability to escape scrutiny, sign systems can easily work within the dominant forces to frame reality in a certain way, while reinforcing such a reality as absolute and natural. We cannot sift the ideology out, for it permeates our very sign systems that reify and reinforce it. Thus, as much as sign systems allow us to communicate and create discourses, even transgressive and radical ones, they also entrap us in a closed system that reinforces itself as legitimate and natural.
We must be aware of what versions of reality the "texts" presented to us through various media naturalize and privilege. The perspective and ideology pervading the cultural product determines what subjective reality gains mainstream acceptance and application. As always, we cannot ignore who are the producers and disseminators of these signs.
Within a queer context, we can think about the pernicious, simplistic adherence to biological determinism, the problematic conflations of sex and gender and the resultant significations of an individual's morality, humanity and sexuality based on the ways in which an outsider reads that person's queer body and self−presentation. Lastly, to expand to feminism, the issues surrounding the signifier "woman" in relation to transwomanhood and ciswomanhood also are just as applicable.
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