A SEMIOTIC STUDY OF SIGNS ON COMPUTER

ABSTRACT

This research entitled “A Semiotic Study of Signs on Computer” is intended to find out the types of icon on computer, the reasons to use icon on computer, the components of icon on computer, and the functions of icon on computer.

This research belongs to qualitative research. The data of this research focuses on words rather than numbers and there is no statistical procedure. The sources of the data in this research are books, the internet, program of Tune up utilities 2006, and computer. The writer uses descriptive qualitative method to analyze the data through text analysis.

The result of this research shows that there are five types of icons namely (1) image or representational icon, (2) diagram icon, (3) metaphor icon, (4) abstract icon and (5) arbitrary icon. Computer icon has several reasons to be used, namely, (1) icons are easily recognizable, (2) icons can cross language boundaries, (3) people can remember and find images more easily than words, (4) people can discriminate between distinctive icons more easily than between words, (5) icons assist non-literate, semi-literate users and "voluntarily illiterate" users, (6) people like pictures and (7) icons often take up less space than equivalent text. All of the icons have two components, namely structural and perceptual. The Structural component has three components, namely, (1) semantics, (2) syntactics, and (3) pragmatics. The perceptual component has three components, namely, (1) visibility, (2) discriminability, and (3) figural goodness. The computer icon has three functions, namely, (1) to represent the object of an image, (2) to deliver the message to other and (3) to convey purpose of functions.