semiotic

All too familiar word / all too elusive understanding of the meaning

Definition of semiotics or semiology: n.
1. "the theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication, and comprising semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics." (answers.com)

2. "discipline deriving from the American logician C. S. Peirce and the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. It has come to mean generally the study of any cultural product (e.g., a text) as a formal system of signs. Saussure's key notion of the arbitrary nature of the sign means that the relation of words to things is not natural but conventional; thus a language is essentially a self-contained system of signs, wherein each element is meaningless by itself and meaningful only by its differentiation from the other elements. This linguistic model has influenced recent literary criticism, leading away from the study of an author's biography or a work's social setting and toward the internal structure of the text itself (see structuralism). Semiotics is not limited to linguistics, however, since virtually anything (e.g., gesture, clothing, toys) can function as a sign." (answers.com)

Where I ran across it:
1/15/08 NYT review, “Candidate Clinton Scrutinized by Women” by Michiko Kakutani, concerning a new book, Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary - Reflections by Women Writers.

“...In the end, this volume of reflections corroborates Mrs. Clinton’s own long-ago observation that she is “a Rorschach test” for voters. It also suggests that like three other famous blondes (Marilyn, Madonna and Princess Di), she’s in danger of being turned into one of those indeterminate semiotic texts academics love to deconstruct, made to signify everything from the aging of boomer dreams to the future of feminism, even as her every gesture and inflection is sifted, measured and weighed, and her actual résumé and record are increasingly shoved to the side.”

My two cents:
Ms. Kakutani calls the book “an intriguing but highly uneven anthology of reflections about Mrs. Clinton by a spectrum of well-known female writers.” I'll take her word. Right now I'm too obsessed with one little word in her review to care about the book. Somebody help me.

I have a block, I guess, about this word, semiotic(s). Actually, there's no guessing about it. I have a block about this word. Period. And it ticks me off. How many times can a person run across a word and still refuse to totally understand it? I’m an intelligent woman. I can read and understand a definition. I have read the definition for semiotic(s) – multiple times. On one level, I get it. Totally. That would be the same level at which I understand nuclear physics and the fact that I need to go on a diet. It’s an impermanent, catch-and-release level, like dealing with a slippery trout: engage, disengage, and it's over -- erase, erase, erase. I’d really like to take this word to the next level, however; to bond with it; to invite it in to be a part of my inner furnishings until it becomes frayed and worn from use, like my husband’s armchair in the den. Maybe then it – we - will be so comfortable it won’t ever leave. Yeah, wish me luck with that. In the meantime, here's your sign.