Sign Language

Man has long dreamed of an international language, but attempts to promote one have always failed, probably because no country wants to abandon its traditional tongue. Now a new means of international expression is beginning to catch on, one that carries no threat to national pride: the silent, visible language of graphic symbols. To spread the word about these substitutes for words, Industrial Designer Henry Dreyfuss has just compiled a Symbol Sourcebook (McGraw-Hill, $28.50) of 8,000 universally comprehensible signs.

Dreyfuss is both a serious student of semiotics, the science of signs, and a passionate crusader who believes that symbols can help break down the cultural barriers raised by the world's 5,800 languages and dialects. He believes, too, that signs are more efficient than words because they take up less space and that they promote safety because their meaning can be comprehended more quickly.

Who, for example, can fail to understand such representational symbols as these widely used warnings against thin ice and falling rocks? But the Sourcebook also includes such arbitrary signs as plus and minus in mathematics and the clefs in music. These require preliminary explanations, Dreyfuss observes, but "you can play Beethoven in any language once you've learned the symbolic notes."

Packages can be shipped--and protected--in any language, too. These symbols instruct shippers and cargo handlers to "keep frozen" and "keep dry." Equally clear are labels that depict a broken goblet ("fragile"), a crossed-out hook ("use no hooks") and a package separated from the sun by a heavy diagonal line ("protect from heat").

People as well as packages can travel without knowing any of the conventional languages. For instance, a foreigner in certain air and rail terminals can locate an information desk or a pickup point for lost children, if he looks around for these signs. "I got off the plane in Moscow some years ago," Dreyfuss remembers, "and I was able to find my way to my baggage, customs, the bank at the airport, a taxi and the hotel, and I don't speak a word of Russian--all by symbols."

That experience would not have seemed at all remarkable to members of the international fraternity of hobos, who have worked out 40 or 50 graphic hints that they chalk up on fences or walls to guide those who come after them. The cat, for example, conveys the welcome news that a "kind lady lives here," while the canine image warns of a "vicious dog here." Other signs are a cross ("religious talk gets free meal"), two intersecting circles ("police here frown on hobos"), two wavy lines supported by a pillar and sheltering a small circle ("you can sleep in hayloft") and an indescribable squiggle that translates "food here if you work."

Not all widely used symbols are as unequivocal as the hobo markings, however. Some, like the dagger, have multiple meanings. In publishing, the dagger signals a footnote; in biology, it means "obscure species" or "incorrect citation," and in medicine, it symbolizes death. To a farmer, a dot within a semicircle signifies a drinking trough, while to a meteorologist, it means rain that does not reach the earth.

But there is no mistaking the headlight or windshield-wiper symbols on the control knobs of some automobiles. Other similarly unmistakable symbols have begun to replace lettered instructions on machinery, enabling illiterate farm laborers to raise their standard of living by becoming machine operators. That, Dreyfuss points out, is just one example of the potential of universal symbols in a world that has 800 million illiterates.

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