When is a Symbol not a Symbol?

Stanley Fish has written another intelligent blog for the NYT the original of which I commend to your attentions http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/when-is-a-cross-a... --it is titled When is a Cross a Cross? Or, you may well ask, when is a cigar a cigar? Or, when is a symbol not a symbol? He is commentating on the recent Supreme Court decision which deemed a cross as a memorial on public land not to be a religious symbol but a secular sign or remembrance-the Salazar vs. Buono case http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-472.ZS.html .

There is much could be said of this.

So-of course-it brings up the key issue in the symbology of symbols: namely, when can one treat an object commonly taken to be a symbol of one thing as a symbol of another-or as no symbol at all-i.e. how to decode symbols. On the one side, one normally looks for the intentions (conscious or otherwise) of the person who has put up the symbol. On the other, one looks for the common interpretation to be found of that symbol at the time and place when and where it was put. Some of the greatest works of culture often derive much of their power from a tension between these two. I dunno--so, as a symbol of what I mean-think of-oh well, let's say The Cross. Then and there thought of as a symbol of execution-in Christian mythology it is turned into a symbol of resurrection. Cool.