Places at Crossroad Are Important: A Semiological Perspective

Abstract

Places at the crossroad of streets are signs. These signs can be analyzed from a semiological point of view. By means of semiological framework broadened from Saussure by Roland Barthes (1967), I examined the places at the crossroad of streets from the perspective of the binary opposition of signs: langue/parole, signifier/signified, syntagm/system, and denotation and connotation. Then, the perspective was adopted to analyze the real situation in Weinan City, one of the ordinary cities in China. The examination of places as signs will benefit linguistic and semiotic study in a particular culture.