The importance of the sign has been widely recognized in the previous literature on advertising. Taking a simple case from language, Saussure observed that the relation between Signifier and Signified is arbitrary: the concept of "dog" is picked out by "dog" in English, "chien" in French, "Hund" in German, "inu" in Japanese, and "kay" in Korean, for example. Although each of these sound sequences has a history within its own language, from which we may come to understand why the word is currently the way it is, there is no specific sound sequence which is universally associated with any given meaning (with the possible exception of onomatopoeic words, though even these are quite culture-specific). Hence we say that the "dog"-dog Sign in English is arbitrary, just as the "Hund"-dog Sign in German is (equally) arbitrary.

The "arbitrariness of the sign", as it is called, may strike you at first as a cause for concern, as arbitrariness perhaps suggests randomness, sloppiness, or inattention. But in fact, the arbitrary relationship is a vital and fundamental part of any creative communication system, because new signs can be created as needed. And far from being subject to randomness, a sign-based system works only because all participants in the community agree on what given sr-sd relationships are. Hence, a sign looks like this:

The sr elements stand in opposition to one another, which is to say that they are differentiated by minimal changes in form: "dog" vs. "dock" vs. "dot" and so on. Hence this is known as a relational system --- each element is related to the others by some shared features, and some different features. More formally, we say that each sr stands in paradigmatic opposition to the other srs, and the choice of one element of the paradigm over another may carry some further meaning. Imagine, for example, what factors would be involved if you referred to an animal in front of you by "this dog" or "this doggie".

More surprisingly, Saussure observed that the sd elements (meanings) are themselves arbitrary cuts on the conceptual plane, and are therefore relational too. He gave the example of the French words "rivière" and "fleuve", both of which mean "river" in English, but a "fleuve" is a river which flows to the sea, while a "rivière" does not. This is a perfectly sensible semantic distinction, and one that speakers of any language can grasp; yet it is an arbitrary distinction, in the sense that one language can use it to classify words while another may not.

To recap, in language, meaning is conventional in the sense that what the meanings are, and what signifiers relate to them, are arbitrary choices that the community conventionally respects.

Going beyond language, the arbitrariness of the sign leads to this conclusion: anything can mean anything! And although we have focussed in this section on language, in fact all symbolic activity involves such a system of arbitrary relationships (e.g., monetary systems, writing systems, morse code, the pieces in a chess game).

In the world of advertising, we can apply the simple concept of a sign in many ways: the name of the product may well be novel and arbitrary (for example, before 1996 or so, what did the word amazon have to do with selling books?), as may any symbols, images or people associated with the product.

The arbitrary nature of the sign is used deliberately in 57dow, where the word green is presented against a red background, which creates an advertisement that is quite confusing to the reader. Upon investigation, we learn that the "green" is the green which is culturally associated with envy---your friends will envy you your Dow carpet product.

Take a look now at the Image of 32 State Farm, shown here:

What does this signify? Clearly, it is a picture of two people, but you may feel that there are further meanings. Are these people successful? Are they happy? Is the Image primarily about the woman, or about the man?

These various extra meanings take up from the level of denotation to the level of connotation, which is taken up in Unit 3.