I’m not familiar with semiotic theory at all, so I learned a lot from the Harrell reading but am still confused. Even though most of what they said was common sense, I have never thought about some of the points they raised explicitly. For instance, in the Harrell reading, I found the example when they compared the fictional Brawn’s criteria when making a purchase with the eBay seller information, I had never really thought about all the conscious and unconscious things I consider when making a purchase. I really love jewelry, and usually buy off of Etsy, which is an online platform and on Etsy, the things that are most highlighted in its interphase are the seller’s name, the ratings, and the number of reviews they have. Because those are the three criteria that are most readily available, I realize that they are all the three criteria that I look for to inform a purchase.

Later in the Harrell reading, they brought up the example of the swastika being representative of Tirthankara Suparshvanath within the context of Jainism or more broadly India whereas, for a Western audience, the same sign (except for a slight rotation) is interpreted very differently to represent the Nazis or fascism. We’ve already been introduced to this concept earlier with the comics readings, but it leads me to wonder, are there any signs that have a universal meaning? If not, is such a sign even possible?

To be honest, even though I read through Harrell’s definition of semiotic spaces, I still don’t quite understand what they are. For instance, if a Gregorian calendar is an example of a semiotic space, what would be examples of its sorts (months, dates, holidays, pictures), constructors, functions, and axioms (the actual size of the calendar)? Do a semiotic space have to have all four components?