Literary Sign And Its Deciphering

Different readers come to different understandings of the same novel, for example, The Scarlet Letter. It is because literary meaning is not directly derived from the words or linguistic signs. From the angle of semiotic study, if we take a literary work as a sign, its signified is the message it conveys. According to semiology, the signifier cannot exist without its signified. The present thesis aims to find out the signifier of the artistic work based on The Scarlet Letter as a typical example.In the book Course in General Linguistic (1916) Ferdinard de. Saussure proposes a dualism of linguistic signs. The dualism describes the semiotic structure (signifier-signified) of the linguistic sign of "pure" language and those of common speech, which is the use of "pure" language. Literary language is the author's speech. Its meaning varies and develops constantly as time and space changes and so poles far apart from Saussure's "concept" (signified) . Saussure leaves the problem of the meaning of literary language to later scholars.In the study of the signs of literary speech, there exits an opposition between the dyadic theories and the triadic theories. Among the dyadic theories, Jackobson's "alienation" and Barthes's "ERC", both based on Saussure's dualism, cannot perfectly explain the generating process of literary meaning, although both theories are important improvement of Saussure's dualism. Peirce's are representative triadic theories. They introduce in "object" as a factor of the sign. It is an important break- though in the study of the semiotic structure of the sign. However, in the generation of literary meaning, the function of "object" is not brought into play. A break-through in solving the problem is made by Susanne Langer, who successfully distinguished art symbol (art sign) and signs used in art. Her theories of semiotics provide uswith a new insight and a new means to definite the literary sign.Just as the case of The Scarlet Letter, the work itself is an artistic sign that is made up by the signifier and the signified. The skillful use of words or language in the work is no more than the construction of the sign. They are, however, signs used in art.As to the work of literature taken as an art sign, its signified is the literary meaning (called themes by writers and critics), and its signifier, which is what the present study is to identify, is the verbal image presented by the work. It is a formal image created by the author with language or words. The derivation of the literary meaning or themes has might in the determination of this literary signifier, or the verbal image. This is the might approach to the meaning of the language used in literature.So far as the work as an art sign is concerned, its sign system is composed of major signs and specific signs and thus a system of signifiers and one of signifieds at different levels exist. What we call literary interpretations is none other than the location of the two related system.