CHAPTER 6: MEANING MAKING IN CITY ORIENTATION: INTERSEMIOSIS AND CONTENDING ISSUES

Abstract

INTRODUCTION  
The argument for signs in orientation design begins essentially from the clarification of some basic communication issues. Simple but significant functions of signs are used by this study to avoid any form of diversion from the fundamental study of visual communication. The intention is to guide the discussion by situating the study within the broader scope of environmental graphic design. Firstly, signs are elements in a communication process. That process is considered an operation or continuous 
action that takes place in a manner relevant to wayfinding activity. 
To comprehend how signs can be utilized in wayfinding, this essay analyzes the study of signs as visual language. A great consideration of the built environment and people’s perception and interpretation of symbols in wayfinding design is given in this essay. In a social-semiotic approach to meaning-making, imagery can be seen as both socially external and internal. There is outward social interaction in which meaning is constantly created, in a transformation process of interactions with and responses to the prompts of social order and culturally shaped environments. 
Fredric Jameson (1972) postulates about the breakdown of language, stating that: “the signifier in isolation becomes ever more material… As meaning is lost… A signifier that has lost its signified has therefore been transformed into an image”. This postulation shadows the independence of symbols and symbolism’s meaning-making attributes.  
This study is concerned with the usage of icons and symbols for urban wayfinding, and semiotics is seen as helping to understand how meaning is formed, how people interpret a sign, and how they draw on personal or cultural experience to understand a sign. Signs are the objective carriers of potential knowledge (Brier, 2004). Semiotics is about communicating ideas or concepts to users. Charles Sanders Peirce was less concerned with the linguistic aspect of semiotics pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 1900's, but rather he was more interested in how people made sense of the world around them. These signs referred to by Peirce often need interpretation, and this interpretation is based on the total semantic network and experience of the interpreter, which according to him, includes the emotional and social aspects (Brier, 2004). This insight leads to the need for a broader semiotic framework of communication and sign interpretation.