reading media texts journal

i actually ended up reading this before i began the course, because id looked in the tute notes and had no idea what semiology was. i feel *sort of comfortable with the idea: semiotics is the “science of signs”.
in the tute we discussed what a sign is. we decided that a sign is anything which has meaning. a gesture, an image, a facial expression etc. in my mind they were almost exactly identical to texts, and i said so. the general consensus was that a sign is different to a text because a text can constitute many signs, whereas a sign is a singular thing. a sign is the building block of a text, i noted. but i still dont really understand the difference.
“’semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification’ (Barthes 1967, 9). ” (this quote is taken from the website mentioned earlier).
it is a system of relationships of between signs. Signs do not have an inherent meaning, they are defined by what is around them. you cannot construct a meaningful sentence without many words which create a kind of context for all the other words in the sentence. none of the words make sense without any of the other words. this Shakspeare quote from romeo and juliet came to mind in the lecture:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.”
it seems to me (and i am possibly completely wrong) that this sentence sums up semiotics to me. it is saying there is a system of signs which connects the word “rose” to the idea of the smell and appearance of a rose (i think this is the signified, signifier thing), but that without that everything in the system is reliant upon everything else in the system. a rose WOULD smell the same if it was named something else because it relies on the system of signs around it, not in the name itself.