Key language:

Semiotics

1. Sign – Something that can stand for something else.
2. Code – A combination of semiotic systems.
3. Convention – What signs are meaningfully organised into.
4. Dominant Signifier – Main signifier that stands out.
5. Anchorage – Describe how the combination of elements within a sign fit together and fix the meaning. 

Ferdinand de Saussure:

1. Signifier – Any material thing that signifies something.
2. Signified – The concept that a signifier refers to.
3. Paradigm – Collection of similar signs.
4. Syntagm – Order of in which signs go and how they link with each other.

C S Pierce:

1. Icon – A sign that looks like its object.
2. Index – A sign that has a link to its object.
3. Symbol – A sign that has an arbitrary or random link to its object.

Roland Barthes:

1. Signification – Structural levels of signification, meaning or representation.
2. Denotation –  The most basic or literal meaning of a sign.
3. Connotation – The secondary, cultural meanings of signs; or “signifying signs,” signs that are used as signifiers for a secondary meaning.
4. Myth – The most obvious level of signification, but distorts meaning by validating arbitrary cultural assumptions in a way similar to the denotative sign.
5. Ideology – codes that reinforce or are congruent with structures of power.
6. Radical – Something that challenges dominant ideas.
7. Reactionary – Something that confirms dominant ideas.

C.S. Peirce – Peirce’s seminal work in the field was anchored in pragmatism and logic. He defined a sign as “something which stands to somebody for something,” and one of his major contributions to semiotics was the categorization of signs into three main types: (1) an icon, which resembles its referent (such as a road sign for falling rocks); (2) an index, which is associated with its referent (as smoke is a sign of fire); and (3) a symbol, which is related to its referent only by convention (as with words or traffic signals). Peirce also demonstrated that a sign can never have a definite meaning, for the meaning must be continuously qualified.

Ferdinand De Saussure – Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century.

Roland Barthes – French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes’ ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of many schools of theory, including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, design theory, anthropology and post-structuralism.