Week 10, Bundle 6

Goal: clarify the three modes of representation within the sign.

Textbook background: Ch. 1, 42-55.

It's pretty easy to understand how a visual sign can be iconic: it simply shows the object that it signifies. But how does this operate in case of other senses?
Here's an amazing video ad for the Honda Civic which demonstrates the iconic mode of relationship between representamen and interpretant in terms of sound, i.e., audio.
Q1. Explain what it means to state that this demonstrates the iconic mode. How do we wrap our heads around that relationship?

Here's a radio interview from NPR in which they interview a perfume maker who works on designing chemical-based scents that stand in for other smells.
Q2. Explain how the chemical-based scents discussed in the interview match the definition of "iconic" in terms of olfactory perception.
- Side Note: Smell seems to be a remarkable sense, even in people, and scientists are just beginning to understand how it works, with very rapid progress being made nowadays. The coronavirus actually helped us understand it better and prioritize it as an object of study. Many people who come down with a mild case of Covid-19 lost most or all of their sense of smell. It has nothing directly to do with this assignment, but I read a fantastic article in the New York Times about people studying smell in the Covid clinical environment and I wanted to share it with any of you who are interested. Here's the direct link, and I also made a free-standing pdf of the article.

The symbolic mode of representation is defined by the complete lack of any natural connection between signifier and signified (or representamen and interpretant, if you prefer).
- One example is any written word in English. Consider a word like word. Is there anything about the letters in this written form which inherently conveys any aspect of the meaning (the signified)? No. What about the spoken form of the word, i.e., the way we pronounce it aloud? No, again. The only way we know that word means 'word' is because we have learned to make that arbitrary (symbolic) connection.
- If we consider the written form of the onomatopoeic word pop, it is again completely symbolic. There is nothing about those three written letters p o p which connects to the meaning of the word, the signified of it as a sign. However, this time there is an inherent connection between the sound of the spoken word and the meaning. So in that case the word is largely iconic, with perhaps a partial symbolic relation as well.
There are two ways to sign "I love you" in American Sign Language.
- One is a single sign made with one hand
Q3. Is the relation between the signifier and signified in this sign symbolic? Why or why not?

A second method of signing "I love you" expresses it not as a single concept, but as a phrase consisting of three signs, or gestures. This method is demonstrated in this very short video clip.

Q4. Are these symbolic or something else (i.e., iconic or indexical)? Explain your answer for each of the three signs in the phrasal expression of "I love you".

Here's a well-known image used to mark poisons.
- Of course, there are several signs in this image. It is obvious that the words danger and poison are symbolic, as noted above. But consider the skull and crossbones in isolation (and consider them to be a single sign).
Q5. What is the mode of representation represented by the signifier and signified of the skull and crossbones sign? Explain why you selected that answer.