Iconic and Arbitrary

Having studied semiotics for 4 years during Media A levels AND GCSE, I was really really not looking forward to this lecture! But actually I learnt quite a lot (just shows you can't always assume things). I was particularly interested by 'Iconic and Arbitrary' signifiers. I decided to show my friend (who also studied media at a level) some iconic and arbitrary images and she just didnt get it! From this I feel the idea that an 'iconic' signifier isn't necessarily a more realistic signifier for everyone, for example, in different cultures different signifiers mean different things. Therefore, surely depending on cultural aspects of your life, you will gain a different signified from different images you are shown? This jogged my memory a bit and I remembered something I had been shown a couple of years ago regarding the way that film posters are designed differently for other countries. I can't remember the exact film that it was, however it had a cartoon (arbitrary) image of a woman dressed in little clothing, but in the Indian version of the poster the woman was covered up with another picture. This all comes down to culture, because even though the picture was an arbitrary one, what was signified to an eastern audience, was a different message or value, than it was to a western audience

I've been trying to find some interesting pictures that are relevent to my essay topic... took me a while but heres what i've found...


Arbitrary image, e.g a cartoon drawing, painting



Iconic image, such as a photograph, or even better a moving image

By encorporating this semiotic related theory into society we start to understand a lot more about semiotics and how the notion of the 'sign' is extremely important in the analysis of media texts, and also everyday life.
Some interesting further reading on this I have found is "semiotics for begginners" (Chandler,D,2007)