Setting:
Two children, about 3-4 years old, were playing teacher teacher in the garden.
Child1: (holding a santan flower) Okay class, this is a flower. Repeat after me: flower.
Child 2: Flower.
Child 1: Very good.
Child 2: Where do flowers grow from, ma’am?
Child 1: It comes from a tree.
(Child1 cuts a stem from the santan plant. The stem is leafy on the top but bare the bottom to the middle. She holds it in front of Child 2.)
Child 1: Now this is a tree.
Structuralism
I incorporate the sign, signifier, and signified in the short literary piece above through the children’s game of teacher-and-student. The first example of sign is the flower. The sign itself unites the sound-image (signifier) or the impression of the word ‘flower’ it gives to our senses, and concept(signified) or the existence of such thing as a flower.
But the linguistic sign is arbitrary because a concept and its sound-image can have a different sign in other communities. As to the Children’s Game, the first child called the stem a ‘tree’. Thus, portraying that a sign is arbitrary because it can be a subject of change in different areas.
