The absence of rational coordination or an intrinsic (or natural) basis.
Relativity was perceived as one of if not the most important characteristics of the sign.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure and his followers, the sign is a relative relationship between the signifier and the signified.
For example, there is no internal connection between the signifying “dog” and the four-legged fast animal, which is denoted by these letters. There is only one relative (unmotivated) relationship.
The two leading traditions in modern semiotics differ sharply in their interpretation of the importance to be given to the relativity of signs. For the nascent tradition rooted in Saussure’s semiology, relativity is crucial; for the one derived from the semiotics of Charles Peirce, this is not the case. For Saussure, the sign is a relative relationship with the significant. This is a general definition of the sign, based on the acceptance of linguistic signs as a paradigm or as a model for all other signs.
The relative nature of these interrelationships must be seen in the light of the social nature of language itself. As Saussure is quick to point out, “relativity” should not be taken in the sense that the actual choice of meaning is left to the individual speaker. Each actual language represents a certain series of relative interrelations over which individual speakers exercise little if any, control.
What linguistic and other signifiers point out is what the linguistic and semiotic systems dictate. Here we do not see a clear emphasis on structuralist thought (structuralism has its roots in Saussure‘s linguistics): the emphasis is on the system as a network of tensions, the ego as a source of innovation is subordinate, in extreme cases its status is denied.
Throughout the history of thought, questions of the relationship between nature and convention have been central.
In the ancient and medieval periods of Western culture, the tendency was for nature to be privileged and for a convention to be neglected (as the term “purely conventional” suggests). Today is a dramatic turn. For example, most appeals to human nature are tested almost instantly, even outright; for what we call “human nature” is seen by many as only one social construction (in other words, historically including a network of conventions).
The Saussurean and structuralist emphasis on the relativity of the sign is one example of this dramatic turn in the shift of emphasis from the natural (and often the divine) to the conventional. It used to be assumed that what nature and God had created could not and should not be repaired; it is now accepted that what people have created in their historical struggles to gain power over nature and over each other can and should be questioned, even reworked.
If language is primarily a network of relative interrelations and if it is further (as Saussure thinks) the only heuristic model through which all other sign systems must be understood, then it provides us with many “mythologies” and “ideologies” created constructed by people and maintained in the interest of certain groups, inevitably to the detriment of other groups.
So when Roland Barthes comments on a cover photo of “Paris Match” in which a black African in a French uniform pays homage to the French flag, the photographer not only denotes this figure and its posture but also produces connotations: “France is a great colonial empire to which loyal black citizens who serve in its army belong, etc.”
During the conflict between France and Algeria, such a message clearly served the cause of continuing colonialism. By denoting something relevant (black Africans loyal to French imperialism), photography propagates something ideological and, in a sense, mythological. As Barthes notes, “myth does not deny things … [but purifies] them; it” makes them innocent, gives them natural and eternal coherence. ”
Semiotics, created not as a theoretical study of semiotic phenomena but as a cultural critique of our current semiotic practices, often seeks to see through this presumed innocence the issue of “natural and eternal coherence,” as possessed by the least problematic and unjustly exploited causes.
