significazione

Significazione is a term used in linguistics, semiotics, and philosophy to refer to the meaning or semantic content conveyed by signs or sign systems. It can denote the content a sign expresses as well as the process through which signs acquire meaning within communicative practices.

Etymologically, the word derives from the Latin significatio, from significare meaning “to signify.” In scholarly usage it appears across disciplines to discuss how signs carry sense, how that sense is produced, and how it can shift with context, culture, and usage.

In Saussurean linguistics, the sign is composed of a signifier (the form) and a signified (the concept). Signification describes the relationship between these terms within a language system. Meaning is seen as a function of systematic differences among signs rather than as a fixed link between a sign and an object in the world; it emerges from the structure of language itself.

In semiotics more broadly, including Peirce’s tradition, signification is the broader process of semiosis—how signs represent objects to interpreters and generate further signs and interpretations. Here, meaning is dynamic and context-dependent, shaped by cultural conventions, discourse, and situational use.

Applications of signification appear in linguistics, literary theory, media studies, translation, and anthropology. The term is often contrasted with related notions such as denotation (reference) and connotation (associated or emotional meaning). Depending on the theoretical framework, signification may be treated as the precise technical term for meaning in a sign system or used as a general synonym for meaning and sense.