Value (semiotics)

If two of the terms disappeared, then the remaining sign would take on their roles, become vaguer, less articulate, and lose its "extra something" because it would have nothing to distinguish itself from.

For de Saussure, this suggests that thought is a chaotic nebula until linguistic structure dissects it and holds its divisions in equilibriums.

This is akin to the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, who indirectly influenced Saussure[1] and believed that the mind could only grasp an idea through distinguishing it from something that it is not.

Hence, the lexical word or noun "box" evokes a range of possibility from cheap card to gold-encrusted container.

There is nothing inherently boxy about the component sounds or letters that comprise the noun "box"—the scope of onomatopoeia is limited when forming a language.

Further, Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) proposes that when a group of signs is used, there is an emotive function that reflects the speaker's attitude to the topic of his or her discourse.

Modern semiotics draws its inspiration from the work of, inter alios, Roland Barthes (1915–1980), who argued that semiotics should expand its scope and concern: "...any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification" (1967, 9).

In both systems, the specific processes of analysis examine these gaps to reveal whose interests are served by the omissions.

This reveals the significance of the choices made which might have been required because of technical production constraints or the limitations of the individual's own technique, or because of the tropes, generic conventions, style and rhetorical purpose of the work.