Semiotics

Semiotics according to my dictionary is "the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation." I almost see this as a word or a label of something that creates an instant visual in your head to where you automatically know what the person is talking about.  Like when you think "Goth"

You can or have probably already visualized and interpreted that to think this:

or

There is part of out mind that will interpret words such as "goth" into pictures. Some are more visual than others when it comes to interpretation, I would definitely say that I am one of those visual people. When I listen to others tell a story I visualize what is happening, however, it is up to them to be able to give the details to give me a full picture in my mind. But there remain those things that we hear the word and immediately interpret them into visuals... such as "Stop Sign", "Firetruck", even"Anger", or a "U-Turn sign"

We will see a stop sign like this and the meaning is apparent. We interpret it as we were all taught to in drivers ed and I'm sure most everyone understood what this meant even before that, it means we should do the obvious thing and STOP.  So we have translated this picture of a sign into meaning and turn that meaning into action.

I don't known about you... but when my parents faces look like this ^^^^ It is NOT a good sign and it would be a good idea to be as nice as you can to them.  We are capable of reading faces, like it shows on the picture we can take those three signs and put them together and from that we can drawl a conclusion that this person is full of anger.  

Signs like these are however, different from a stop sign, they have no words. So we cannot draw meaning from them the same way, but yet we still know what they mean. They each carry a specific meaning and it is vital tat we understand them. For instance you are getting on the highway and you see this yellow sign with an arrow, if we did not know that this sign meant merging lanes ahead than we are going to be very confused when your lane is getting smaller and then ends. so we know by seeing this sigh we are to merge into the lane next to you before the lane ends by completely merging. The sign on the right side we see often at intersections, is a "No U-turn" sign. Signs like these we must understand and if we disobey them we are in trouble with the police... its a violation to complete a U-turn when you see one of these signs. So what these signs mean are vital. How we interpret them is very important. So no matter if it is a style, a sign, a facial expression, or an object, we use semiotics when we interpret meaning to them all the same. And that my friend, is Semiotics.

And here is an additional video that helps to demonstrate the topic of semiotics: