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The first stage of development in semiotics related to the spoken and/or written form of language. Later, it was expanded to cover all sign systems that have an informational content. As [[Umberto Eco]] says, "A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else." (1976)
Semiotics studies the relationship between the form of the sign (the ''signifier'') and the meaning expressed (the ''signfied''), and thereby attempts to reveal the process of communicating understanding. In each case, a message is to be sent by an addresser to an addressee. For this to occur, the addresser and addressee must use a common code, Hence, language evolves dynamically. The community will identify a [[lexical]] thing that needs to be communicated. By common agreement, a sign (sometimes called a signal) will be selected. Of the many possible shaes of meanings that it can be used to convey, one or more will be selected and ''encoded'', i.e. the chosen meaning(s) will be [[denotation (Semiotics)|denoted]] or associated with the sign within the broader framework of [[syntactic]] and [[semantic]] systems available within the community. When the audience is exposed to the sign, the expectation is that they will be able to decode the meaning. As [[Roman Jakobson]] adds, there will also be an emotional element or ''value'' which represents the addresser's attitude towards the ''thing''. This will either become a [[connotation (Semiotics)|connotative]] meaning attached directly to the sign itself, or it will be communicated by the context in which the sign is used by the addresser.
In [[lexicography]], the fact that a [[neologism]] is used marks its acceptance into the language. This will not be a difficult process so long as each sign has a limited and immediately useful meaning. The problem arises when several possible meanings or shades of meaning become associated with the sign. This is a shift from denotational to connotational meanings. Rules of interpretation are required to resolve uncertainty. Within the community, such rules are, for the most part, experiential and applied unconsciously. Members of a community have a shared memory of language patterns and norms which, for the most part, are stable over long periods of time. Individuals are therefore able to build up a cognitive framework which identifies the possible meanings from any grouping of signs and selects one considered the most appropiate from the context. This intuitive system is continuously tested through the audience's responses. If the responses are satisfying, intuition prevails. If the responses are obviously inappropriate, the audience will consciously review the thought process and decide whether to modify the framework. Semiotics has developed a more precise methodology for this interpretive process.
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