Tokens alone do not state what is the subject of discourse; and this c — Semiotics

"Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures"

"Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning"

"Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them"

"As subjects, we are what the shape of the world produced by signs makes us become. Perhaps we are, somewhere, the deep impulse which generates semiosis. And yet we recognize ourselves only as semiosis in progress, signifying systems and communicational processes. The map of semiosis, as defined at a given stage of historical development (with the debris carried over from previous semiosis), tells us who we are and what (or how) we think."

"A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind. If this triple relation is not of a degenerate species, the sign is related to its object only in consequence of a mental association, and depends upon a habit. Such signs are always abstract and general, because habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main body of speech, and any mode of conveying a judgment. For the sake of brevity I will call them tokens."

"Not that I give a fuck about football, or about your superstitions — but if its me reading the signs, I dont send the Eagles guy whose personal motto is Excelsior to a fucking Giants game, especially when hes already in a legal situation."