A sign is anything that could signify a meaning. This could either mean a denotation, what is actually there. What you can see. Or a connotation, What you can pick out, what is inferred or how you interoperate something.
For example in this picture from the Labyrinth (1986) you can pick out the denotation is there is a girl in a white dress, with three other people surrounding her. The connotation of the white dress could be purity, showing she is good. The connotations of the people around here, from their posture and facial expresions could be that they intend to course trouble for the girl, the masks could show that it is a masquerade party, however as she has no mask it could show that they are evil and choose to hide who they are.
Signs can communicate their meaning in three different ways – Iconic, Indexical and symbolic.
Iconic meanings are based on the denotation of the sign with suggestions of its connotations. There are people surrounding her, are they friends or foe?
Indexical meanings are based more on the connotations that we associate with something. Her dress is white, we may associate this with purity
Symbolic meanings are connotations that are usually assigned by our culture. A white dress is normally worn on your wedding day, we would assume that she may be at her wedding by the clothes she is wearing.
In linguistics, all signs have two aspects to them – the signifier and the signified.
The signifier is whatever a thing is literally, and is the same as the denotation of something.
The signified is whatever a thing refers to, so it is the same as the connotation of something.
If we look at the word:
ROSE
We see that these are just letters on the page forming a word (signifier / denotation). But in our mind we see the image of a rose (signified / connotation).
If we look at the image of a rose:
We see that it is a rose (signifier / denotation). But in our mind we understand that a rose represents love, romance etc. (signified / connotation).
Another example of this
Look at the word:
FIRE
The signifier/denotation is they are just letters. The signified/connotation is we see an image of fire
When we look at the image of fire it can be associated with anger.
