The Study of Signs

Activity 1.1 — Sign Safari ★

Practices: a sign is perceptible and points beyond itself (§1.1); the three areas where signs matter: language, culture, cognition (§1.2).

Walk through a familiar Thai public space, such as a market (talat), a temple (wat), a BTS/MRT station, a night market, or your campus, and photograph ten different signs. Try to make them varied: not ten shop signs, but a mix of words, images, objects, gestures, sounds (photograph the source), smells (photograph the source), colors, and behaviors.

For each photo, fill in one row of this table:

#	What I photographed	Its perceptible form (what my senses detect)	What it stands for	How I learned to read it
1	Red light at a crossing	A red glowing circle	“Stop / do not cross”	Traffic code, taught as a child

Steps

1. Individually, collect your ten photos before class (or in the first 20 minutes).
2. In pairs, swap phones. Try to read your partner’s signs without their table, then compare with what they intended.
3. Mark any sign where you and your partner disagreed about “what it stands for.” These disagreements are the most interesting: they show that meaning depends on shared conventions and context.

Instructor notes

• The goal is range, not quantity. Push students beyond written shop signs toward indexical signs (smoke, wet street, a queue), iconic signs (a pictogram, a photo), and symbolic signs (a wai, a red traffic light).
• The last column previews convention and code (Ch 6). Signs that “just look like what they mean” (a fork-and-spoon for a restaurant) preview iconicity (Ch 4).
• Disagreements in step 3 are the payoff. Use them to make the point that a sign is not a private link but a shared, learned one and that context changes meaning (a whistle at a football match vs. in a library).
• Good exam-style follow-up: “Choose one photo and explain, in a paragraph, why it counts as a sign using the definition in §1.1.”

Activity 1.2 — A Morning in Signs

Practices: the ubiquity of signs and the shift from passive perception to active interpretation (§1.1).

The book imagines “a typical morning” full of signs. Write your own version (250–350 words) narrating the first two hours of a real morning where you live (waking up, commuting, arriving at work or campus) and underlining every sign you pass through.

For at least five of the underlined signs, add a footnote saying what it stands for and whether you are interpreting it consciously or automatically.

Prompts to notice: the alarm sound; the notification icon on your phone; the amulet (phra khruang) you or someone wears; the offering at the spirit house (san phra phum) you pass; the color of the shirt you chose for the day of the week; the smell of food from a street stall; the monk collecting alms (tak bat); the BTS “doors closing” jingle.

Instructor notes

• This mirrors §1.1 but forces personalization. Reward students who notice signs they normally ignore (the day-of-week shirt colour is a Thai-context example of a fully coded but near-invisible sign).
• Use it to introduce the idea that semiotic activity may be seen as a kind of internal dialogue mediated by signs (§1.2, “Cognition and thought”): most morning signs are read automatically, which is exactly why semiotics has to make them visible.
• Pairs well as a first entry in the term-long semiotic field journal (see capstone).

Activity 1.3 — “Everything Can Be a Sign”: One Object, Many Meanings

Practices: signs as culturally mediated; meaning varies across social groups (§1.2, "Culture and society").

Each group takes one everyday object and lists as many things as it can that the object “stands for,” for different people and in different situations. Suggested objects:

• a phuang malai (jasmine garland)
• a 500-baht note
• a school or university uniform
• a colored shirt
• a lotus flower (dok bua)
• a bottle of a particular energy drink

Draw a simple mind-map: object in the centre, meanings radiating out, each labelled with for whom / in what context.

Then answer together: Does this object have a single “true” meaning, or does its meaning depend on who reads it and where?

Instructor notes

• The intended discovery is that meaning is not a property of the object but of the relation between sign, interpreter, and context (a key idea of the whole book).
• The garland is rich with meaning: a welcome, a religious offering, a mark of respect to a teacher or elder, a taxi-mirror ornament, a market commodity. The 500-baht note previews §1.2’s point that money is worthless paper except as a sign of value within a system.
• Bridge forward: the different meanings of a single object are its connotations (Ch 6) and, when naturalized, they can work as myths (Ch 6.7).

Activity 1.4 — Do We Touch Reality? A Structured Debate

Practices: the claim that we access reality only through signs (§1.1); why semiotics matters (§1.3).

The book makes a strong claim: “we do not have direct or unfiltered access to reality.” Split the class in two.

• Team A defends the claim: all our access to the world is mediated by signs (perception, language, memory, images).
• Team B challenges it: some experiences (pain, hunger, the taste of som tam) seem immediate and pre-semiotic.

Give each team 10 minutes to prepare, using examples. Run two short rounds, then hold an open vote, not on who “won” but on where the line between mediated and immediate experience should be drawn.

Instructor notes

• There is no settled answer, and that is the point: this is the deep question behind Ch 4’s interpretant and Ch 8’s Umwelt. Keep it exploratory.
• A useful move: even “immediate” sensations become signs the moment we name, remember, or communicate them. For example, hunger becomes a sign (“time to eat”), pain a sign (symptom) of injury (medical semiotics, §7.7).
• Connect to §1.3: this is why studying signs matters; it changes how we understand knowledge itself.
• Keep it philosophical, not political.

Activity 1.5 — “Ten Signs on My Street” Micro-Video

Practices: identifying and narrating signs across modalities (§1.1–1.2); first practice of the vocabulary.

Record a 30–60 second phone video walking along a street, a soi, or a corridor. As you film, narrate the signs you pass in English: “This is a sign: it’s a [word / image / color / gesture / sound] and it stands for…”.

Aim for at least eight signs and try to include more than one modality (something visual, something auditory, something spatial). Upload to the shared class folder or play from your phone.

Optional challenge: include one sign that most people walk past without noticing, and explain why it is easy to miss.

Instructor notes

• This is the reviewer’s “video exercise” in its simplest form. Speaking the analysis aloud forces students to commit to an interpretation in real time.
• Low-tech is fine: no editing required. Assess for range of signs and clarity of the “stands for” statement, not production quality.
• Screen two or three in class and let the group add readings the narrator missed: a live demonstration that one sign supports many interpretants.
• Can be reused at the end of term: students re-record with the full vocabulary (icon/index/symbol, code, function) to see how far they have come.