Semiotics: Type-Token Distinction

Daniel Chandler's Questions:

• Is it one among many copies (e.g. a poster) or virtually unique (e.g. an actual painting)?
• How does this influence your interpretation?

Daniel Chandler's notes on the Type-Token distinction

How many instances are there of this sign vehicle? Is it basically unique, like a painting, or are there many instances, like a poster?

Eco lists three kinds of sign vehicles:

• signs in which there may be any number of tokens (replicas) of the same type (e.g. a printed word, or exactly the same model of car in the same colour);
  
  
• signs whose tokens, even though produced according to a type, possess a certain quality of material uniqueness' (e.g. a word which someone speaks or which is handwritten);
  
  
• signs whose token is their type, or signs in which type and token are identical' (e.g. a unique original oil-painting or Princess Diana's wedding dress).

Does the question of whether the sign vehicle is a type or a token affect your interpretation at all?

Walter Benjamin, in an important essay ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"), argues that the fact that we can now mechanically reproduce our images means that meaning has changed. What happens when we move from a world in which there are originals and copies, to a world in which there are multiple iterations of the same thing?

• How many soup cans are there here? One or a hundred?
• How many Marilyn Monroes are there here? One or nine?

"The Same"

What does it mean to be "the same" as something else? For example, if I sing a song that is currently on the radio, is it the same song? How different would it have to be, to be different? Different key? Off-key? How much difference would there have to be before it is not the same thing? Note that if you say that any difference at all is significant, that nullifies all copyright law, and the very idea of identity itself. You yourself are different today from yesterday, both physically and psychologically. If, on the other hand, you're willing to allow a wide latitude and still call something "the same", you also risk copyright law and the idea of identity, but for a different reason. If almost everything is the same as everything else based on small similarities, it's difficult to see how the term is meaningful any more at all.