International Journal of Linguistics & Communication

Communication through Structured Significations at Public Places
Sonu Lohat

Abstract
Communication is a means to convey the intended feeling, idea or thought etc. through various ways. It is not only in the form of written treatises or verbal interaction like speech, monologue, dialogue, song etc. but more than that. Silence is also a way of communication through eyes, facial expressions, movements of the hands and gestures. Sign and symbol at public places represent the idea on things and this idea is communicated to the public; one’s collectively shared universal or cultural experiences making the binary of thoughts in his mind help in such communication. Such communication takes place on the basis of one’s own semiotics of finding analogy or difference to the present sign to decipher the meaning therein. The communication through signs like pictograms and symbols is cognitive process having multi-layered structures; we not only try to decipher the fixed meaning but associate one sign to other similar signs to arrive at the logic difference. Finding the image of woman on toilet door one tends to apply the logic that this is the image of ‘Not Man’ and he makes the right choice. Sign of ‘No Horn Please’ showing the picture of a trumpet can remind us the ideas and images of musical instruments like flute, drums, saxophone etc. Coming across with the ‘No Smoking’ message the poetics of smoking having some connotations also starts taking place in the mind apart from its desired meaning of prohibition of smoking. Ironically the idea of No Smoking brings in mind the idea of Smoking and the resultant images of cigarettes, biris and even that of hookah. In other words the sings and symbols at public places imply the complicated cognitive process in our mind; process of such communication involves the use of set structural binaries we collectively share in our mind.

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