Signified

“The appeal of the house for Americans, going back into the 20th century, was that it signified autonomy. You know, every home is a castle,” says Louis Hyman, an economic historian and assistant professor at Cornell University. “So, it has these echoes of signifying independence and achievement.”

The signifier is not identical to the signified.

The men pointed to the west, and signified that they would soon come to a village where they could obtain what they wanted.

The signifiers are the same, but not the signified.

Here things are getting better and better for women and people of color, and gay men and lesbians, more and more integrated and open, and all you can think about is some stupid, lame problem with signifiers and signifieds.

In Peircean terms, topics are interpretants: signifieds that become new signifiers in the endless semiotic chain of interpretations.