Concept
Signified and signifier
Overview
In semiotics, signified and signifier (French: signifié and signifiant) are the two main components of a sign, where signified is what the sign represents or refers to, known as the "plane of content", and signifier is the observable aspects of the sign itself, known as the "plane of expression". The idea was first proposed in the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the two founders of semiotics.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Signified and signifier
Related ideas
- French language
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Francis Bacon
- Gilles Deleuze
- Course in General Linguistics
- Henri Bergson
- Jacques Lacan
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Slavoj Žižek
- Roland Barthes
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
- Augustine of Hippo
- Metaphor
- Poetry
- Plato
- Jean Baudrillard
- Denotation
- Semiotics
- Aristotle
- Umberto Eco
- William of Ockham
- Extension (metaphysics)
- Subject and object (philosophy)
- Abstract and concrete
Place in the tradition
Part of Deconstruction.