Symbol and Icon

Symbol is broadly, a sign, object or act that stands for something

other than itself, by virtue of agreement among the members of the culture that uses it. The word is loosely used and each context should be studied to ascertain its particular use. Its main ones are:

1) Different scholars, such as Shannon and Weaver, Ogden and Richards, and Berlo, tend to use the word in a broad sense as referring to any type of sign. This use should, where possible, be avoided. More precise though sometimes contradictory uses follow.

2) Peirce uses the term to refer to a category of signwhere there is no resemblance between it and its object. He contrasts it with his other types of sign – icon and index.

3) Freud uses it to refer to an object or act that stands in place of something that is taboo or unpleasant to think of. In the Freudian use there is some resemblance between the symbol and what it stands for, even though this resemblance may be indirect or metaphoric.

4) Barthes uses it to refer to an object or act that stands for an abstraction or a value. A gold coin can symbolize wealth, a shepherd and lamb can symbolize the relationship of Christ to his followers. Religious practices and social ritualsare frequently symbolic in this sense, for example, a christening or the exchange of gifts at Christmas.

5) There is also a literary and artistic use of the term which is similar to uses (3) and (4) in so far as it includes a resemblance between symbol and object. In literature and visual art, the symbol demands attention in its own right, sometimes even demands more attention than that which it stands for. This word is used so variously that it is unwise to use it except in its specifically defined senses such as those of Peirce and Freud.

Icon (or iconic) is a type of signin which there is a marked physical or perceptual resemblance between the signifier and that for which it stands Thus the black pictorial element of some road signs – depicting rocks falling, deer, or a man with a shovel – may be said to be iconic. But the use of a red border or a blue background on road signs is not iconic because there is no necessary relation between the blue or the red and what the colours signify. In the latter case the relationship is purely arbitrary and conventional; in the former case it is motivated. Representational painting – traditional portrait painting, for example – may be considered iconic, as are most forms of photographic reproduction. Cinema and television, in particular, rely in their visual dimension principally upon iconic modes of signification. This ensures a more easy intelligibility than written prose (where the mode of signification is purely arbitrary); but conventions do none the less play their part even in these most natural-looking of media. One has only to consider how styles or genresof television and cinema have shifted so much over time for this to be evident. The term is particularly useful in communication studies precisely as a way of distinguishing between the types of signification predominant in the differing media.

Religious icons – images of Christ, for example, or of one of the saints – provide an interesting special case of the iconic: to some believers, they have the spiritual power of the person depicted, who is thus ‘present’ by virtue of the depiction in a particularly compelling fashion.