the sign

Sign: A sign has three essential characteristics: it must have a physical form, it must refer to something other than itself. And it must be used and recognized by people as a sign. Barthes gives the example of a rose: a rose is normally just a flower, but if a young man presents it to his girl friend it becomes a sign, for it refers to his romantic passion, and she recognizes that it does.
Signs, and the ways they are organized into codes or languages, are the basis of any study of communication. They can have a variety of forms, such as words, gestures, photographs or architectural features. Semiotics, which...