Tuesday, 17 October 2017

Signs, Symbols & Ciphers- Decoding the Message

By Georges Jean

Quotes/Theories/Notes

  • Tree - 'Universal tree situated at the ''centre of the world'' and connecting the tree planes: Heaven, Earth and Hades.' - Mircea Eliade
  • Eden - Biblical - 'In the middle of the garden stood the tree of life and the tree of good and evil.'
Documents
SIGN THEORY
  • 'The meanings of the word sign are many and complex. For linguists the sounds, or phonemes, of a language and the letters with which it is written are signs. For artists signs are emblems, symbols, logos.'
The Science of language
  • 'The Swiss Scholar Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) revolutionised the methodical study of language, seeing it as a highly structured system of signs...' - Semiology
Place of language in human facts: Semiology (pg. 135/136)

  • 'Language is a social institution; but several features set it apart from other political, legal, etc. institutions.'
  • 'Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing...'
  • 'the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics...'
  • 'The task of the linguist is to find out what makes language a special system within the mass of semiological data.'
  • 'If we are able to discover the true nature of language we must learn what it has in common with all other semiological systems; linguistic forces that seem very important at first glance.'
Signs & Origins of writing
  • 'Among the earliest images in prehistoric art are abstract sequences of marks, dots, and patterns.' - early writing, images.
The World of symbols
  • 'Universal, since it transcends history; particular, because it relates to a definitive period of history.'

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