When I think of symbols and symbolism, I am reminded of how the fabric of our lives is stitched together by the culture we share –– our words and images, music, art, fashion, food, and faith. Language engages the symbolic systems of knowing and being that provide a context for living.

Words, images, and ideas signify symbolic systems we use to shape reality. These are vehicles of culture that construct social meaning for us. Symbols are a common denominator of culture influencing many aspects of our lives. The sign systems we adopt –– the language and rituals of faith or our political beliefs define conceptions of self.

For Clifford Geertz (1993), culture “is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.”

Signs and symbols provide the cultural context for living. Metaphorically, the warp and weft are woven together by symbols we use to express what we know, believe, and remember. Symbols reassure us, from birth to death, of our existence.

I carry a few things in my pockets –– coins, car keys, a crumpled dollar bill, an old wallet, a driver’s license, credit cards, and a store receipt. I also wear a blue baseball cap with a fish symbol and a religious medal around my neck. I’ve learned to interpret objects as signs or symbols largely unconsciously through familiarity, naming, and remembering them –– the bright disk in the sky becomes the sun, and the vast expanse of water stretches out as far as the eye can see the ocean. 

I assign personal, historical, religious, ideological, or cultural values to every object, individual, or place I experience. The crumpled dollar bill, for instance, is a concrete, physical thing; at first, it is perceived denotatively or as a literal object made of cotton or linen form, color, length, and width. I am familiar with its purpose and its value in our economy. However, when I realize it is my last dollar, the meaning suddenly changes –– figurately, it means I am broke. My dollar bill is a sign but can also be a symbol. Signs, semiotician Charles Sanders Pierce said, “take the form of words, images, sounds, odors, flavors, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning.” Some things have more intrinsic meaning to me than the crumpled bill, and this is where the meaning of signs differs from symbols.

Knowing that the dollar is my last represents an idea beyond the object itself. Symbolism is how we invest our experiences with objects, places, events, and people with hidden symbolic meanings. At the heart of symbolism is the ability to recognize, name, and remember what we have learned through experience and knowledge. When we attach special meaning to things such as rings, rainbows, and red roses, our minds perceive experience as no longer having a physical existence. When we think symbolically, our ideas are abstract –– a cross, flag, swastika, or a Christmas tree. These all have meanings we must decode. Symbols are expressive or figurative –a symbol’s meaning extends beyond the literal interpretation. The concepts and ideas engendered by symbols are connotative.

In his book Language as Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke believes in using symbols to elaborate and qualify the reality that defines experience–reality. Burke said, “The symbol-using animal, yes, obviously. But can we bring ourselves to realize just what that formula implies, just how overwhelmingly much of what we mean by reality has been built up for us through nothing but our symbol systems?” 

We use language to label things in terms of what they are not. Symbol systems, words, images, gestures, music, dance, and art belong toward which we respond to the circumstances presented to us.

References:

Burke, K . (1968). Language as Symbolic Action. University of California Press.

Geertz, C. (1993).  Religion as a cultural system. In: The interpretation of cultures: selected essays, Geertz, Clifford, pp.87-125. Fontana Press, 1993.