deconsructon of meaning in Pinter's The basement

Semiotics is a methodology for studying the production of meaning through analysis of the signs that cumulatively form the messages and texts that that we understand as having meaning. As a methodology for analysis it is particularly useful for studying performance. When we go to see a performance, what is it that we see? There is a written text that is communicated physically, vocally and emotionally. There is a set, an actual performance venue, there are lights, props etcetera. There is also time and place in the world around us that resonates with the time and place of the world of the performance. Within all these elements there are innumerable separate signs that combine in relation to each other to contribute to how we interpret and understand the meaning of any particular performance. A sign is anything that has cultural meaning. It is made up of a signifier and a signified. These signs cumulatively make up codes that we read and interpret. A code consists of particular signs from a paradigm of possibilities of all signs that are combined together syntagmatically (in a sequence) to form a pattern that is easily recognised and has a relatively stable meaning. The central relationship in semiotics is the relation between the sign and its object. There are three ways in which the sign can stand for its object: as icon, index or symbol.
An icon is a sign that stands for an object by resembling it, not merely visually, but by any means. Included in this category of sign are obvious examples like pictures, maps and diagrams and some not so obvious ones like algebraic expressions and metaphors. The essential aspect of the relation of an icon to its object is one of similarity, broadly defined.
Indexes refer to their objects, not by virtue of any similarity relation, but rather via an actual causal link between the sign and its object: smoke is an index of fire, a weather vane is an index of wind direction, a mark on a fever thermometer is an index of body