With a reference to socially established signs and symbols, people shape the patterns of their behaviors and give meanings to their experiences. A symbol is a type of sign. Rather, culture lies in individuals’ interpretations of events and things around them. A sign is a thing that we can perceive that has a meaning.

As it emerged from symbolic anthropology during the 1970s, the concept of culture drew from the predominant model of language as an underlying grammar, structure, or system of symbols and meanings (see Culture: Contemporary Views). Beginning in the 1960s, anthropologists began to place much more focus on the symbols used in a culture. Symbolic anthropology studies how people create meaning out of their experiences or construct their own concept of reality through the use of shared cultural symbols, such as myths or body language. The theoretical school of Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropologyassumes that culture does not exist beyond individuals. Everything one does throughout their life is based and organized through cultural symbolism. A symbol is an object, word, or action that stands for something else with no natural relationship that is culturally defined. Semiotics is the study of signs and sign systems. Some good examples of symbols/symbolism would be objects, figures, sounds, and colors. Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology. Symbolic anthropologystudies the way people understand their surroundings, as well as the actions and utterances of the other members of their society. These interpretations form a shared cultural system of meaning–i.e., understandings shared, to varying degrees, among members of the same society (Des Chene 1996:1274). Symbolism is when something represents abstract ideas or concepts.