Thomas Sebeok | |
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.jpg) Sebeok giving a lecture inTartu | |
| Born | Sebők Tamás (1920-11-09)November 9, 1920 |
| Died | December 21, 2001(2001-12-21) (aged 81) Bloomington, Indiana, U.S. |
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| Institutions | Indiana University |
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Thomas Albert Sebeok (Hungarian:Sebők Tamás,pronounced[ˈʃɛbøːkˈtɒmaːʃ]; November 9, 1920 – December 21, 2001) was a Hungarian-born Americanpolymath,[1]semiotician, andlinguist.[2][3][4][5][6] As one of the founders of thebiosemiotics field, he studied non-human and cross-species signaling and communication.[7] He is also known for his work in the development oflong-term nuclear waste warning messages, in which he worked with theHuman Interference Task Force (established 1981) to create methods for keeping the inhabitants of Earth away from buried nuclear waste that will still be hazardous 10,000 or more years in the future.[8]
Thomas Sebeok was born on November 9, 1920, inBudapest,Hungary. He attended secondary school at the famousFasori Gimnázium, which educated notables such asJohn von Neumann andEugene Wigner. After a brief stint at Cambridge University (Magdalene College) in England, he moved to the United States at the age of 17 and became anaturalized citizen in 1944.[9]Sebeok earned a bachelor's degree in 1941 at theUniversity of Chicago. He earned a master's degree inanthropological linguistics, under the external guidance ofRoman Jakobson, atPrinceton University in 1943 and, in 1945, a doctorate atPrinceton University; his dissertation was titledFinnish and Hungarian case systems: their form and function.[10]
In 1943, Sebeok started work atIndiana University inBloomington, assisting theAmerindianistCarl Voegelin in managing the country's largest Army Specialized Training Program in foreign languages. He then created the university's department ofUralic andAltaic Studies, covering the languages of Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia. He was also the chair of the university's Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies.
As a professor at Indiana University, Sebeok studied both human and non-human systems of signaling and communication, as well as thephilosophy of mind.[11] He was among the founders ofbiosemiotics, and coined the term "zoosemiotics" in 1963 to describe the development of signals and signs by non-human animal species.[12] He also continued his work as a linguist, publishing several articles and books analyzing aspects of theMari language (referring to it by the name "Cheremis"). His transdisciplinary work and professional collaborations spanned the fields of anthropology, biology, folklore studies, linguistics, psychology, and semiotics.[11]
Sebeok was the editor-in-chief of the journalSemiotica, the leading periodical in the field, from its establishing in 1969 until 2001.[13] He was also the editor of several book series and encyclopedias, includingApproaches to Semiotics (over 100 volumes),Current Trends in Linguistics, and theEncyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics.[11]
In 1980, Sebeok along with Robert Rosenthal participated in a conference named "TheClever Hans Phenomenon: Communication with Horses, Whales, Apes and People" held by theNew York Academy of Sciences which casts doubt upon the research efforts regarding ape communication, including but not limited to the works ofHerbert S. Terrace, Duane Rumbaugh andSue Savage-Rumbaugh.[14][15] In particular, the conference suggests that the apes could have been cued or their communication had been misinterpretated.[15]
Later in the early 1980s, Sebeok composed a report for the US Office of Nuclear Waste Management titledCommunication Measures To Bridge Ten Millennia,[16] discussing solutions to the problem ofnuclear semiotics, a system of signs aimed at warning future civilizations from entering geographic areas contaminated by nuclear waste.[17] The report proposed a "folkloric relay system" and the establishment of an "atomic priesthood" of physicists, anthropologists, and semioticians to create and preserve a common cultural narrative of the hazardous nature of nuclear waste sites.[18]
In addition to his academic work, Sebeok organized hundreds of international conferences and institutes, held leadership roles in organizations such as theLinguistic Society of America,International Association for Semiotic Studies,Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and theSemiotic Society of America, and supported the creation of linguistic and semiotics teaching programs and scholarly associations throughout the world.[1]
Sebeok's personal library on semiotics, comprising more than 4,000 volumes of books and 700 journals, is preserved at the Department of Semiotics at theUniversity of Tartu in Estonia.[19] His correspondence and research files are held by the Indiana University Archives.[10]
Sebeok married Mary Eleanor Lawton (1912–2005) in 1947. They had one child, Veronica C. Wald, and later divorced. Sebeok married Donna Jean Umiker (born 1946, now D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok), a fellow semiotic scholar and his frequent collaborator and co-author, in 1973, and they had two children, Jessica A. Sebeok and Erica L. Sebeok. Sebeok retired from Indiana University in 1991, but he contributed to the field of semiotics until his death in 2001.[10]
The Sebeok Fellow Award "recognizes outstanding contributions to the development of the doctrine of signs" and is the highest honor given by theSemiotic Society of America. It is awarded every 2 to 4 years. Recipients have includedDavid Savan (1992),John Deely (1993), Paul Bouissac (1996),Jesper Hoffmeyer (2000),Kalevi Kull (2003), Floyd Merrell (2005),Susan Petrilli (2008),Irmengard Rauch (2011),Paul Cobley (2014),Vincent Colapietro (2018), Nathan Houser (2019),Marcel Danesi (2024),Lucia Santaella (2025).[11][20]
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