semiotically impaired

So in an uncharacteristic attempt at being smart i have thought to check my notes on this weeks lecture BEFORE starting to write my blog. We'll see how helpful this turns out to be, I'm not holding much hope for it to be honest.

Anyway the theory of the lecture was to a large point based on the scale from arbitrary to iconic. Whilst this may sound like technical jargon at the moment, it does make a lot of sense. Essentially when we see something that is representative of something else, be it a photo, drawing or a name, we place it subconsciously on this semiotic scale, without ever knowing the words 'arbitrary' and 'iconic'. To explain this a bit more, if something is very obscured from the actual object it represents it will be more arbitrary, so a name, to someone without already knowing the name, would be totally useless, so its very obscured from the original object. However a photo, even without knowing what it is of in the first place would be far more representative of the object in question, and would therefore be classed as more iconic. Makes sense hey?

Now here's what intrigues me, as i have described above this semiotic scale is very much set in concrete. BUT, when the lecturer was showing slides of pictures that were on the scale from arbitrary to iconic, as he was doing this he put up a slide with various pictures of rats, the CGI rat from Ratatouille, a hand drawn rat from what looked like a Beatrix Potter novel, a photo of a rat and finally the word 'rat'. now this at first seemed fairly obvious where things would be on the scale but some clever sod at the back of the class, NOT me (shocking i know usually I'm right up there with the loud comments) said 'Isn't that a mouse?', everyone laughed and no one said anything about it... but what if they were right? I have no idea the difference between a rat and a mouse, except for by reputation, looks wise I probably couldn't tell them apart. So surely by definition of the scale, the word 'rat' is far more iconic for me than a picture of a rat... So when I asked various lecturers about this I got a fair few 'hmms' and no real answers...

Essentially this concludes this particular blog... a brief description of a form of semiotics and a big unanswered question about what I myself have just explained. But like I said semiotics is obvious stuff, it takes no real brain power or special thinking it is basically something we have known and have been continuing to learn since birth, but with fancy names on it... Which makes me wonder is this something good to know? or will this conflict with existing knowledge that I take for granted... Sometimes knowledge is good when its subconscious, but can send people made when it is brought forward to your conscious mind.