لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Signs Are Interpreted
Peirce's definition suggests that signs are interpreted; they stand for something to somebody. It was one of Saussure's fundamental insights that the meanings of signs are arrived at arbitrarily via cultural convention. The idea that the meaning of signs rests not in the signs themselves but in the surrounding system is critical to our study of games. It is people (or players), after all, who bring meaning to signs. As semiotician David Chandler notes, There is no necessary reason why a pig should be called a pig. It doesn't look sound or smell any more like the sequence of sounds "p-i-g" than a banana looks, smells, tastes or feels like the sequence of sounds "banana." It is only because we in our language group agree that it is called a "pig" that that sequence of sounds refers to the animal in the real world. You and your circle of friends could agree always to refer to pigs as "squerdlishes" if you wanted. As long as there is general agreement, that's no problem-until you start talking about squerdlishes to people who don't share the same convention.[15]
Chandler's point has resonance when we consider players as active interpreters of a game's sign system. Children playing Tag during recess may change the sign for "home-base" from game to game, or even in the middle of a game, if circumstances allow. A tree in the corner of the playground might be used one day, or a pile of rocks another. Although a home base does have to possess certain functional qualities, such as being a touchable object or place, there is nothing special about the tree or rocks that make them "home base" other than their designation as such by the players of the game. Thus signs are essentially arbitrary, and gain value through a set of agreed upon conventions. Because "there is no simple sign = thing equation between sign systems and reality, it is we who are the active makers of meanings."[16]
[>.
