Semiology is a science that deals with the study of signs in social life. The term is generally used synonymously with semiotics, although specialists make some distinctions between the two.
It can be said that semiology deals with all studies related to the analysis of signs, both linguistic (linked to semantics and writing) and semiotics (human and natural signs).
The Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was one of the main theorists of the linguistic sign, defining it as the most important association in human communication. For Saussure, the sign is made up of a signifier (an acoustic image) and a signified (the main idea we have in mind regarding any word).
For his part, the American Charles Peirce (1839-1914) defined the sign as a tripartite entity, with a signifier (material support), a meaning (the mental image) and a referent (the real or imaginary object that alludes to the sign).
Two authors are of vital importance within what is semiology but they are not the only ones because throughout history there have been others who have also left their deep mark on this discipline. This would be the case, for example, of the Frenchman Roland Barthes who bequeathed important theories and works on it to later generations, such as the book entitled "Elements of Semiology".
In this work, what makes it clear is that this discipline has as pillars and objects of study all sign systems, regardless of their limits or their substances, and also that its elements are the following: phrase, language, connotation, paradigm, signifier, signified and denotation.
In the same way, another important figure in the field of semiotics and semiology is the well-known writer Umberto Eco. This author, known at a more popular level for such interesting novels as "The name of the rose" (1980) or "Foucault's pendulum" (1988), who has also played a key role in the discipline that concerns us through of his studies on systems of meaning.
Semiology indicates that the linguistic sign has four fundamental characteristics, which are arbitrariness, linearity, immutability and mutability.
Among the branches of semiology are clinical semiology (in medicine, the study of the signs through which the disease manifests itself), zoosemiotics (exchange of signals between animals), cultural semiotics (study of the meaning systems created by a culture) and aesthetic semiotics (the study of the reading levels of works of art of various techniques or disciplines).
