Character body

As mark body (also: character shape) is referred to in semiotic views that physical entity that the character makes as a haptic, visual or auditory phenomenon noticeable. The term therefore includes both the spoken sound, the iconic symbol and the letter formed as a three-dimensional object on a book page from printer's ink. Natural objects (e.g. trees, landscapes, light) are also suitable as sign bodies, insofar as they can be connected to a sign meaning ( signified ) in a conventional way .

In semiotics, the term is predominantly used synonymously with that of the signified , partly separated as a material preliminary stage from the psychological representation of an object and in any case understood as arbitrary in its relation to the signified . Jan Assmann accordingly separates the "semanticity" of a sign from its "sensual appearance", the physically tangible carrier material. This relation between sign body and meaning can be described as the threefold distance that exists between object and perception, perception and verbalization as well as linguistic expression and cultural coding.

In typography , the difference between the signifier and the signified is marked, for example, by the difference between the three-dimensional graphic representation of the glyphs and their conventional reading as written characters .

In empiricism , on the other hand, sign bodies exist as acoustic or visual phenomena that relate to objectively existing objects by means of psychological processing processes.

See also

• Letter
• symbol
• icon

literature

• Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht , K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (ed.): Materiality of communication. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-28350-2 ( Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 750).

Web link

• Todesco, Rolf: Hypertext or What does construction mean in constructivist discourse? In: Rusch, G. / SJ Schmidt (ed.): Constructivism in psychiatry and psychology. ( Memento from March 1, 2001 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jan Assmann: In the shadow of young media bloom. Egypt and the materiality of the sign . In: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (ed.): Materiality of communication . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-28350-2 , pp. 143 .
2. ↑ Christian Haß, Daniela Luft, Peter Miglus: Meanings . In: Thomas Meier, Michael R. Ott, Rebecca Sauer (Eds.): Materiale Textkulturen. Concepts - Materials - Practices . De Gruyter, Berlin / Munich / Boston 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-037129-1 , pp. 74 .