What is the difference between a sign and a symbol? Is there one? Share your opinion on this topic below! Swannie 12:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Responses
A symbol represents something,while a sign directsUser:Serprex 15:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with Serprex, basically a Symbol represents something while a Sign tells information on something. --Pdgator29 23:41, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Let us get more concrete: Both signs and symbols point. And the same marker can be at the same time both a sign and a symbol. But the sign fuction of the marker and its symbol function will not overlap. A sign is an organic part of what it signifies. For example, a pink sky in the evening traditionally signifies good weather on the following morning. "Pink sky at night; sailor's delight." If you see a pink sky in the evening, you see it as a sign that the weather will be fine tomorrow. This is so whether the weather is in fact fine on any given tomorrow. If I paint a pink sky into a picture, however, that pink sky becomes not a sign but a symbol, a symbol perhaps of optimism. But of course this is not the "same" sky. A painted sky is not a real sky. But if I take instead a wedding ring: a wedding ring is both sign and symbol. It is a sign that the wearer is married. (It's not proof that the wearer is married.) It's also a symbol of any number of things we may choose to associate with it: love for example. The preacher says "It is a circle, it has neither beginning nor end; like love, it is eternal. It functions therefore as both sign and symbol." But its sign function remains distinct from its symbol function. Geimle 23:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)Geimle 23:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)Geimle