In communication, especially in mass communication and the media, one of the most important means of influence is associated with the symbolic sphere, which creates a certain background or foundation for interaction. In this interaction, the leading role is assigned to the sign - the image of the object. Roland Barthes as a philosopher who pays tribute to poststructuralism, referring to the sign, distinguishes two sides in it: the material form (whether it be a word or an object) and the meaning that it carries and that is expressed in this form. The totality, the interaction of these two sides (form and meaning) is manifested in their relation to the object of the external world. This object can be "read" by referring to the sign. Gottlob Frege, a German logician of the late 19th century, pushed Barth to such an understanding of the sign, who considered the image-sign in its three hypostases: 1) the material form of the sign (characteristics of the image), 2) the object denoted by the sign, and 3) the interpretation of the sign (meaning, idea). A sign is both material (its name is denotation) and non-material (connotation). A sign coexists not only with the material, which has an exact content (the plan of content is the object signified by the sign, expressed in the characteristics of the image-sign), but also the semantic (symbolic), conveying the associative essence of the object, essence, concept the idea of the image of the object (the plane of expression).
As Barthes says, for a sign expressed in a certain form, meaning is the stock of history at hand, it is rich and subdued, it can be brought closer, then removed, rapidly alternating one and the other, “the form constantly needs to take root again in meaning and imbued with its naturalness; and most importantly, it needs him as a shelter" [1, p. 243]. Meaning changes, form changes.
But how can the power of the sign be used in the practice of communications? You can use it if you turn to some concepts of the philosophy of poststructuralism. The main principle of this philosophy, according to one of its adherents, Gilles Deleuze, is not to reflect the present, but to create concepts of what else will be, what else should become an object or event (that is, a firstorder entity) [4, p. 6]. Therefore, the business of philosophy is the “dismemberment” of images of things that are considered conceptually integral, and the grouping of new meanings, new images of a thing that should still become an object. Deleuze proceeds from the fact that an object or event lives in the sentence (sign) that expresses it and comes to life in things on the surface and the outside of being, that is, in signs-images. By changing the meaning-code of the sign, it is possible to influence the state of the verbal entity by changing it. To paraphrase the classics of political thought, we can say that the dialectic of ideas creates the dialectic of things [4, p. 52–53].