1 Definitions

Semiotics is usually defined as the study of the signs, where a sign is anything that someone interprets as signifying something (i.e., is anything that refers to or stands for something other than itself). Since object-oriented design involves abstraction it is clearly related to signs.

A token is a sign that represents by way of its particular place in time and space. By definition, every token is unique and every token can, in some sense, be ``pointed to''. A type, on the other hand, is a sign that represents a class or set. Types are real but cannot be ``pointed to''.

It is also useful to distinguish between the two different parts of a sign. Specifically, a sign is composed of a signifier (the form which the sign takes) and the signified (the concept it represents).

2 Semiotics and Object Oriented Programming

The distinction between an object and a class is is clearly related to the distinction between a token and a type.