Article:

The Semantics of Artefacts. How We Give Meaning to the Things We Produce and Use

Broadly defined, every result of a human action is an artefact. In a narrower sense, the term is used for material things resulting from human actions; in this sense, all artefacts together form the realm of material culture. Although meanings play an important role in our daily interaction with artefacts, they have never been treated in a comprehensive and systematic fashion. In de-sign theory, cultural semiotics, anthropology, and archaeology, different ap-proaches to the semantics of artefacts have been taken. The article draws on these findings to build a generalized approach to artefact semantics that con-centrates on the processes in which artefacts are connected with meanings (cf. section 3). In section 0 seven principles of semantization are proposed: semanti-zation through (1) frame connection, (2) style, (3) iconicity, (4) individual ex-periences, (5) cultural allusions, (6) connection to social groups, (7) specific contexts. These principles explain semantization as causal process depending on certain conditions. In section 4.2, a notation system for representing proc-esses of semantization is proposed that combines logical and semiotic nota-tion. For each of the seven principles of semantization, the proposed notation and one example are given.