On Minggu, 13 Maret 2016
SYMBOL AND REFERENT
A symbol
is a person or a concept that represents, stands for or suggests another idea,
visual image, belief, action or material entity. Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures,
ideas or visual images and are used to convey other ideas and beliefs. For
example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a blue
line might represent a river. Numerals are symbols for numbers. Alphabetic letters may be symbols for
sounds. Personal names are symbols representing individuals. A red rose may
symbolize love and compassion. The variable x in a mathematical equation may
symbolize the position of a particle in space.
In cartography, an organized collection of symbols forms a legend for a map.
In considering the
effect of a symbol on the psyche, in his seminal essay The Symbol without
Meaning Joseph Campbell proposes
the following definition: A symbol is an energy evoking, and directing,
agent.
Later, expanding on
what he means by this definition Campbell says:
"a
symbol, like everything else, shows a double aspect. We must distinguish,
therefore between the 'sense' and the 'meaning' of the symbol. It seems to me
perfectly clear that all the great and little symbolical systems of the past
functioned simultaneously on three levels: the corporeal of waking
consciousness, the spiritual of dream, and the ineffable of the absolutely
unknowable. The term 'meaning' can refer only to the first two but these,
today, are in the charge of science – which is the province as we have said,
not of symbols but of signs. The ineffable, the absolutely unknowable, can be
only sensed. It is the province of art which is not 'expression' merely, or
even primarily, but a quest for, and formulation of, experience evoking,
energy-waking images: yielding what Sir Herbert Read has aptly termed a 'sensuous apprehension of
being'.
Heinrich Zimmer gives a concise overview of the nature, and
perennial relevance, of symbols.
"Concepts
and words are symbols, just as visions, rituals, and images are; so too are the
manners and customs of daily life. Through all of these a transcendent reality
is mirrored. They are so many metaphors reflecting and implying something
which, though thus variously expressed, is ineffable, though thus rendered
multiform, remains inscrutable. Symbols hold the mind to truth but are not
themselves the truth, hence it is delusory to borrow them. Each civilisation,
every age, must bring forth its own."
In the book Signs
and Symbols, it is stated that A symbol ... is a visual image or sign
representing an idea -- a deeper indicator of a universal truth.
Symbols are a means
of complex communication that often can have multiple levels of meaning. This
separates symbols from signs, as signs have only one meaning.
Human cultures use
symbols to express specific ideologies and social structures and to represent
aspects of their specific culture. Thus, symbols carry meanings that depend
upon one’s cultural background; in other words, the meaning of a symbol is not
inherent in the symbol itself but is culturally learned.
Symbols are the basis
of all human understanding and serve as vehicles of conception for all human
knowledge. Symbols facilitate understanding of the world in which we live, thus
serving as the grounds upon which we make judgments. In this way, people use symbols not only to make
sense of the world around them, but also to identify and
cooperate in society through constitutive rhetoric.
A referent
/ˈrɛfərənt/ is a person
or thing to which a linguistic expression or other symbol refers. For example, in the sentence Mary saw me, the
referent of the word Mary is the particular person called Mary who is
being spoken of, while the referent of the word me is the person
uttering the sentence.
Two expressions which have the same referent
are said to be co-referential. In the sentence John
had his dog with him, for instance, the noun John
and the pronoun him are co-referential, since they both refer
to the same person (John).
In
semantics
The triangle of reference,
from Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning.
In fields such as semantics and semiotics, a distinction is made between a
referent and a reference. Reference is a relationship in
which a symbol or sign (a word, for example) signifies something;
the referent is the thing signified.
The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions.
The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions.
Reference and
referents were considered at length in the 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning
by the Cambridge scholars C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. Ogden has pointed out that reference is a
psychological process, and that referents themselves may be psychological –
existing in the imagination of the referrer, and not necessarily in the real
world. For further ideas related to this observation, see absent referent and failure to refer.
SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS ARE TWO DIFFERENT OBJECTS
So the second most important thing to know about symbols and referents is that
they are two different objects. And because they are two different objects they
have two different quality sets, each one describing the object that the
quality set belongs to.
For example the picture of the cow is made of paper, made with ink, made with a
photographic process, is basically two dimensional and exists in a book.
That's a symbol, it has qualities and it is an object whichexists.The referent
is a real cow, its made out of skin and bones and blood and teeth and eats
grass and goes moo!So you can see that that the two different objects have two
different quality sets.
SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS HAVE DIFFERENT QUALITY SETS
So the third thing to know about symbols and referents is that some of the
qualities of the symbol will not exist in the referent at all. And some
of the qualities of the referent will not exist in the symbol at all.
For
example the picture of the cow is made of paper and ink, and yet there is no
paper or ink in the real cow.The real cow is made out of blood and bone.
The picture of the cow is not.So each one of these objects has qualities that
are unrelated to the other object.Yet the picture of the cow looks very much
like the actual cow, they have 'geometrical congruence or simiarity'.
Technically congruence means identical in shape and size, while similar means
same shape but different size. We use the two terms interchangably
through out this lecture. Also the paper that the picture is printed on has
'substance' and so does the real cow. Both have mass and weight etc. Thus
there will often be qualities between symbol and referentthat belong to both
symbol and referent.
SOME OF THE QUALITIES OF THE SYMBOL ARE MAPPED TO
QUALITIES
OF THE REFERENT
The fourth thing to know about symbols and referents is that some of the
qualities of the symbol are mapped to some of the qualities of the
referent. In other words some of the qualities of the symbol are used to
refer to some of the qualities of the referent. The quality in the symbol that
is mapped to the quality in thereferent may be two very different
qualities. It is not the similarity in qualities that matters but
consistency of mapping and use.
In this way the symbol can be used to refer to the referent, not just in a dumb
way where symbol refers to referent, but in a more meaningful way in which the
symbol's qualities point directly to the referent's qualities.For example in
the picture of the cow there is a pictogram of a cow, of Daisey in
particular. Its a space time drawing, with color, black and white spots,
outlines, projected in two dimensions, that has a one to one general spatial
correspondance to what Daisey actually looks like. We call this
geometrical congruence between symbol and referent. In this case it is
pretty easy to look at the symbol and tell what it symbolizes because a certain
subset of the symbol's qualities are very related to a subset of the referent's
qualities.
reference :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent
reference :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent
