Semiotics (/ˌsɛmiˈɒtɪks/SEM-ee-OT-iks) is the systematic study ofsign processes and the communication ofmeaning. In semiotics, asign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter.
Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs. Signs often are communicated by verbal language, but also by gestures, or by other forms of language, e.g. artistic ones (music, painting, sculpture, etc.). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that generally studies meaning-making (whether communicated or not) and various types of knowledge.[1]
Semiotics is frequently seen as having importantanthropological andsociological dimensions. Some semioticians regard every cultural phenomenon as being able to be studied as communication.[2] Semioticians also focus on thelogical dimensions of semiotics, examiningbiological questions such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semioticniche in the world.
Fundamental semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study. Applied semiotics analyzes cultures and cultural artifacts according to the ways they construct meaning through their being signs. The communication of information in living organisms is covered inbiosemiotics includingzoosemiotics andphytosemiotics.
The importance of signs and signification has been recognized throughout much of the history ofphilosophy andpsychology. The term derives from Ancient Greek σημειωτικός (sēmeiōtikós)'observant of signs'[3] (from σημεῖον (sēmeîon)'a sign, mark, token').[4] For the Greeks, 'signs' (σημεῖονsēmeîon) occurred in the world of nature and 'symbols' (σύμβολονsýmbolon) in the world of culture. As such,Plato andAristotle explored the relationship between signs and the world.[5]
It would not be untilAugustine of Hippo[6] that the nature of the sign would be considered within a conventional system. Augustine introduced a thematic proposal for uniting the two under the notion of 'sign' (signum) as transcending thenature–culture divide and identifying symbols as no more than a species (or sub-species) ofsignum.[7] A monograph study on this question was done by Manetti (1987).[8][a] These theories have had a lasting effect inWestern philosophy, especially throughscholastic philosophy.[citation needed]
The general study of signs that began in Latin with Augustine culminated with the 1632Tractatus de Signis ofJohn Poinsot and then began anew in late modernity with the attempt in 1867 byCharles Sanders Peirce to draw up a "new list ofcategories". More recentlyUmberto Eco, in hisSemiotics and the Philosophy of Language, has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers.[citation needed]
John Locke (1690), himself a man ofmedicine, was familiar with this "semeiotics" as naming a specialized branch within medical science. In his personal library were two editions of Scapula's 1579 abridgement ofHenricus Stephanus'Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, which listedσημειωτική as the name for'diagnostics',[9] the branch of medicine concerned with interpreting symptoms of disease ("symptomatology"). Physician and scholarHenry Stubbe (1670) had transliterated this term of specialized science into English precisely as "semeiotics", marking the first use of the term in English:[10]
"...nor is there any thing to be relied upon in Physick, but an exact knowledge of medicinal phisiology (founded on observation, not principles), semeiotics, method of curing, and tried (not excogitated, not commanding) medicines...."
All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, first, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness: or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts.
Locke then elaborates on the nature of this third category, naming itΣημειωτική (Semeiotike), and explaining it as "the doctrine of signs" in the following terms:[12]: 175
Thirdly, the third branch [of sciences] may be termedσημειωτικὴ, or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed alsoΛογικὴ, logic; the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others.
Juri Lotman introduced Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopted Locke's coinage (Σημειωτική) as the name to subtitle his founding at theUniversity of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal,Sign Systems Studies.
It is...possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greeksemeîon, 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge.
Thomas Sebeok[c] would assimilatesemiology tosemiotics as a part to a whole, and was involved in choosing the nameSemiotica for the first international journal devoted to the study of signs. Saussurean semiotics have exercised a great deal of influence on the schools of structuralism and post-structuralism.Jacques Derrida, for example, takes as his object the Saussurean relationship of signifier and signified, asserting that signifier and signified are not fixed, coining the expressiondifférance, relating to the endless deferral of meaning, and to the absence of a "transcendent signified".
In the nineteenth century,Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he would sometimes spell as "semeiotic") as the "quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs," which abstracts "what must be the characters of all signs used by...an intelligence capable of learning by experience,"[14] and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.[15][16]
Peirce's perspective is considered as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial, and sign processes, modes of inference, and the inquiry process in general. The Peircean semiotic addresses not only the external communication mechanism, as per Saussure, but the internal representation machine, investigating sign processes, and modes of inference, as well as the whole inquiry process in general.[citation needed]
Peircean semiotic is triadic, including sign, object, interpretant, as opposed to the dyadicSaussurian tradition (signifier, signified). Peircean semiotics further subdivides each of the three triadic elements into three sub-types, positing the existence of signs that are symbols; semblances ("icons"); and "indices," i.e., signs that are such through a factual connection to their objects.[17]
Peircean scholar and editor Max H. Fisch (1978)[d] would claim that "semeiotic" was Peirce's own preferred rendering of Locke's σημιωτική.[18]Charles W. Morris followed Peirce in using the term "semiotic" and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals.
While the Saussurean semiotic is dyadic (sign/syntax, signal/semantics), the Peircean semiotic is triadic (sign, object, interpretant), being conceived as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial.
Peirce would aim to base his new list directly upon experience precisely as constituted by action of signs, in contrast with the list of Aristotle's categories which aimed to articulate within experience the dimension of being that is independent of experience and knowable as such, through human understanding.[citation needed]
The estimative powers of animals interpret the environment as sensed to form a "meaningful world" of objects, but the objects of this world (orUmwelt, inJakob von Uexküll's term)[19] consist exclusively of objects related to the animal as desirable (+), undesirable (–), or "safe to ignore" (0).
In contrast to this, human understanding adds to the animalUmwelt a relation of self-identity within objects which transforms objects experienced into 'things' as well as +, –, 0 objects.[20][e] Thus, the generically animal objective world asUmwelt, becomes a species-specifically human objective world orLebenswelt ('life-world'), wherein linguistic communication, rooted in the biologically underdeterminedInnenwelt ('inner-world') of humans, makes possible the further dimension of cultural organization within the otherwise merely social organization of non-human animals whose powers of observation may deal only with directly sensible instances of objectivity.[citation needed]
This further point, that human culture depends upon language understood first of all not as communication, but as the biologically underdetermined aspect or feature of the human animal'sInnenwelt, was originally clearly identified byThomas A. Sebeok.[21][22] Sebeok also played the central role in bringing Peirce's work to the center of the semiotic stage in the twentieth century,[f] first with his expansion of the human use of signs (anthroposemiosis) to include also the generically animal sign-usage (zoösemiosis),[g] then with his further expansion of semiosis to include the vegetative world (phytosemiosis). Such would initially be based on the work ofMartin Krampen,[23] but takes advantage of Peirce's point that an interpretant, as the third item within a sign relation, "need not be mental".[24][25][26]
Peirce distinguished between the interpretant and the interpreter. The interpretant is the internal, mental representation that mediates between the object and its sign. The interpreter is the human who is creating the interpretant.[27] Peirce's "interpretant" notion opened the way to understanding an action of signs beyond the realm of animal life (study of phytosemiosis + zoösemiosis + anthroposemiosis =biosemiotics), which was his first advance beyond Latin Age semiotics.[h]
Other early theorists in the field of semiotics includeCharles W. Morris.[28] Writing in 1951,Jozef Maria Bochenski surveyed the field in this way: "Closely related to mathematical logic is the so-called semiotics (Charles Morris) which is now commonly employed by mathematical logicians. Semiotics is the theory of symbols and falls in three parts;
logical syntax, the theory of the mutual relations of symbols,
logical semantics, the theory of the relations between the symbol and what the symbol stands for, and
logical pragmatics, the relations between symbols, their meanings and the users of the symbols."[29]
Color-coding hot- and cold-water faucets (taps) is common in many cultures but, as this example shows, the coding may be rendered meaningless because of context. The two faucets (taps) probably were sold as a coded set, but the code is unusable (and ignored), as there is a single water supply.
Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they aretransmitted. This process of carrying meaning depends on the use ofcodes that may be the individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. Tocoin a word to refer to athing, thecommunity must agree on a simple meaning (adenotative meaning) within their language, but that word can transmit that meaning only within the language'sgrammatical structures andcodes. Codes also represent thevalues of theculture, and are able to add new shades ofconnotation to every aspect of life.[citation needed]
To explain the relationship between semiotics andcommunication studies,communication is defined as the process of transferring data and-or meaning from a source to a receiver. Hence, communication theorists construct models based on codes, media, andcontexts to explain thebiology,psychology, andmechanics involved. Both disciplines recognize that the technical process cannot be separated from the fact that the receiver mustdecode the data, i.e., be able to distinguish the data assalient, and make meaning out of it. This implies that there is a necessary overlap between semiotics and communication. Indeed, many of the concepts are shared, although in each field the emphasis is different. InMessages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics,Marcel Danesi (1994) suggested that semioticians' priorities were to studysignification first, and communication second. A more extreme view is offered byJean-Jacques Nattiez who, as amusicologist, considered the theoretical study of communication irrelevant to his application of semiotics.[31]: 16
Semiotics differs fromlinguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense. The branch of semiotics that deals with such formal relations between signs or expressions in abstraction from their signification and their interpreters,[32] or—more generally—with formal properties of symbol systems[33] (specifically, with reference to linguistic signs,syntax)[34] is referred to assyntactics.
Peirce's definition of the termsemiotic as the study of necessary features of signs also has the effect of distinguishing the discipline from linguistics as the study of contingent features that the world's languages happen to have acquired in the course of their evolutions. From a subjective standpoint, perhaps more difficult is the distinction between semiotics and thephilosophy of language. In a sense, the difference lies between separate traditions rather than subjects. Different authors have called themselves "philosopher of language" or "semiotician." This difference doesnot match the separation betweenanalytic andcontinental philosophy. On a closer look, there may be found some differences regarding subjects. Philosophy of language pays more attention tonatural languages or to languages in general, while semiotics is deeply concerned with non-linguistic signification. Philosophy of language also bears connections to linguistics, while semiotics might appear closer to some of thehumanities (includingliterary theory) and tocultural anthropology.
Semiosis orsemeiosis is the process that forms meaning from any organism's apprehension of the world through signs. Scholars who have talked about semiosis in their subtheories of semiotics includeC. S. Peirce,John Deely, andUmberto Eco. Cognitive semiotics is combining methods and theories developed in the disciplines of semiotics and the humanities, with providing new information into human signification and its manifestation in cultural practices. The research on cognitive semiotics brings together semiotics from linguistics, cognitive science, and related disciplines on a common meta-theoretical platform of concepts, methods, and shared data.
Cognitive semiotics may also be seen as the study ofmeaning-making by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences. This involves conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental investigations. Cognitive semiotics initially was developed at the Center for Semiotics atAarhus University (Denmark), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst the prominent cognitive semioticians arePer Aage Brandt, Svend Østergaard, Peer Bundgård,Frederik Stjernfelt, Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Jordan Zlatev. Zlatev later in co-operation with Göran Sonesson established CCS (Center for Cognitive Semiotics) atLund University, Sweden.
Finite semiotics, developed by Cameron Shackell (2018, 2019),[35][36][37][38] aims to unify existing theories of semiotics for application to the post-Baudrillardian world of ubiquitous technology. Its central move is to place the finiteness of thought at the root of semiotics and the sign as a secondary but fundamental analytical construct. The theory contends that the levels of reproduction that technology is bringing to human environments demands this reprioritisation if semiotics is to remain relevant in the face of effectively infinite signs. The shift in emphasis allows practical definitions of many core constructs in semiotics which Shackell has applied to areas such ashuman computer interaction,[39]creativity theory,[40] and acomputational semiotics method for generatingsemiotic squares from digital texts.[41]
Pictorial semiotics[42] is intimately connected to art history and theory. It goes beyond them both in at least one fundamental way, however. Whileart history has limited its visual analysis to a small number of pictures that qualify as "works of art", pictorial semiotics focuses on the properties of pictures in a general sense, and on how the artistic conventions of images can be interpreted through pictorial codes. Pictorial codes are the way in which viewers of pictorial representations seem automatically to decipher the artistic conventions of images by being unconsciously familiar with them.[43]
According to Göran Sonesson, a Swedish semiotician, pictures can be analyzed by three models: the narrative model, which concentrates on the relationship between pictures and time in a chronological manner as in a comic strip; the rhetoric model, which compares pictures with different devices as in a metaphor; and the Laokoon model, which considers the limits and constraints of pictorial expressions by comparing textual mediums that utilize time with visual mediums that utilize space.[44]
The break from traditional art history and theory—as well as from other major streams of semiotic analysis—leaves open a wide variety of possibilities for pictorial semiotics. Some influences have been drawn from phenomenological analysis, cognitive psychology, structuralist, and cognitivist linguistics, and visual anthropology and sociology.
Studies have shown that semiotics may be used to make or break abrand.Culture codes strongly influence whether a population likes or dislikes a brand's marketing, especially internationally. If the company is unaware of a culture's codes, it runs the risk of failing in its marketing.Globalization has caused the development of a global consumer culture where products have similar associations, whether positive or negative, across numerous markets.[45]
Mistranslations may lead to instances of "Engrish" or "Chinglish" terms for unintentionally humorous cross-cultural slogans intended to be understood in English. Whentranslating surveys, the same symbol may mean different things in the source and target language thus leading to potential errors. For example, the symbol of "x" is used to mark a response in English language surveys but "x" usually means'no' in the Chinese convention.[46] This may be caused by a sign that, in Peirce's terms, mistakenly indexes or symbolizes something in one culture, that it does not in another.[47] In other words, it creates a connotation that is culturally-bound, and that violates some culture code. Theorists who have studied humor (such asSchopenhauer) suggest that contradiction or incongruity creates absurdity and therefore, humor.[48] Violating a culture code creates this construct of ridiculousness for the culture that owns the code. Intentional humor also may fail cross-culturally because jokes are not on code for the receiving culture.[49]
A good example of branding according to cultural code isDisney's internationaltheme park business. Disney fits well withJapan's cultural code because the Japanese value "cuteness", politeness, and gift-giving as part of their culture code;Tokyo Disneyland sells the most souvenirs of any Disney theme park. In contrast,Disneyland Paris failed when it launched asEuro Disney because the company did not research the codes underlying European culture. Its storybook retelling of European folktales was taken aselitist and insulting, and the strict appearance standards that it had for employees resulted in discrimination lawsuits in France. Disney souvenirs were perceived as cheap trinkets. The park was a financial failure because its code violated the expectations of European culture in ways that were offensive.[50]
However, some researchers have suggested that it is possible to successfully pass a sign perceived as a cultural icon, such as thelogos forCoca-Cola orMcDonald's, from one culture to another. This may be accomplished if the sign is migrated from a more economically developed to a less developed culture.[50] The intentional association of a product with another culture has been called "foreign consumer culture positioning" (FCCP). Products also may be marketed using global trends or culture codes, for example, saving time in a busy world; but even these may be fine-tuned for specific cultures.[45]
Research also found that, as airline industry brandings grow and become more international their logos become more symbolic and less iconic. The iconicity andsymbolism of a sign depends on the cultural convention and are, on that ground, in relation with each other. If the cultural convention has greater influence on the sign, the signs get more symbolic value.[51]
The flexibility of human semiotics is well demonstrated in dreams.Sigmund Freud[52] spelled out how meaning in dreams rests on a blend of images,affects, sounds, words, and kinesthetic sensations. In his chapter on "The Means of Representation," he showed how the most abstract sorts of meaning and logical relations can be represented by spatial relations. Two images in sequence may indicate "if this, then that" or "despite this, that." Freud thought the dream started with "dream thoughts" which were like logical, verbal sentences. He believed that the dream thought was in the nature of a taboo wish that would awaken the dreamer. In order to safeguard sleep, the midbrain converts and disguises the verbal dream thought into an imagistic form, through processes he called the "dream-work."
Kofi Agawu[53] quotes the distinction made by Roman Jakobson[54] between "introversive semiosis, a language with signifies itself," and extoversive semiosis, the referential component of the semiosis. Jakobson writes that introversive semiosis "is indissolubly linked with the esthetic function of sign systems and dominates not only music but also glossolalic poetry and nonrepresentational painting and sculpture",[55] but Agawu uses the distinction mainly in music, proposing Schenkerian analysis as a path to introversive semiosis and topic theory as an example of extroversive semiosis. Jean-Jacques Nattiez makes the same distinction: "Roman Jakobson sees in music a semiotic system in which the 'introversive semiosis' – that is, the reference of each sonic element to the other elements to come — predominates over the 'extroversive semiosis' – or the referential link with the exterior world."[56]
Semiotics can be directly linked to the ideals of musical topic theory, which traces patterns in musical figures throughout their prevalent context in order to assign some aspect of narrative, affect, or aesthetics to the gesture. Danuta Mirka'sThe Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory presents a holistic recognition and overview regarding the subject, offering insight into the development of the theory.[57] In recognizing the indicative and symbolic elements of a musical line, gesture, or occurrence, one can gain a greater understanding of aspects regarding compositional intent and identity.
Philosopher Charles Pierce discusses the relationship of icons and indexes in relation to signification and semiotics. In doing so, he draws on the elements of various ideas, acts, or styles that can be translated into a different field. Whereas indexes consist of a contextual representation of a symbol, icons directly correlate with the object or gesture that is being referenced.
In his 1980 bookClassic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, Leonard Ratner amends the conversation surrounding musical tropes—or "topics"—in order to create a collection of musical figures that have historically been indicative of a given style.[58] Robert Hatten continues this conversation inBeethoven, Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (1994), in which he states that "richly coded style types which carry certain features linked to affect, class, and social occasion such as church styles, learned styles, and dance styles. In complex forms these topics mingle, providing a basis for musical allusion."[59]
Subfields that have sprouted out of semiotics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Biosemiotics: the study of semiotic processes at all levels of biology, or a semiotic study of living systems (e.g.,Copenhagen–Tartu School). Annual meetings ("Gatherings in Biosemiotics") have been held since 2001.
Cognitive semiotics: the study of meaning-making by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences. This involves conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental investigations. Cognitive semiotics initially was developed at the Center for Semiotics atAarhus University (Denmark), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst the prominent cognitive semioticians arePer Aage Brandt, Svend Østergaard, Peer Bundgård, Frederik Stjernfelt, Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Jordan Zlatev. Zlatev later in co-operation with Göran Sonesson established the Center for Cognitive Semiotics (CCS) atLund University, Sweden.
Comics semiotics: the study of the various codes and signs of comics and how they are understood.
Cybersemiotics: built on two already-generated interdisciplinary approaches: cybernetics and systems theory, includinginformation theory and science; and Peircean semiotics, including phenomenology and pragmatic aspects of linguistics, attempts to make the two interdisciplinary paradigms—both going beyond mechanistic and pure constructivist ideas—complement each other in a common framework.[60]
Film semiotics: the study of the various codes and signs of film and how they are understood. Key figures includeChristian Metz.
Finite semiotics: an approach to the semiotics of technology developed byCameron Shackell. It is used to both trace the effects of technology on human thought and to develop computational methods for performing semiotic analysis.
Hylosemiotics: an approach to semiotics that understands meaning asinference, which is developed through exploratory interaction with the physical world. It expands the concept of communication beyond a human-centered paradigm to include other sentient beings, such as animals, plants, bacteria, fungi, etc.[61]
Marketing semiotics (or commercial semiotics): an application of semiotic methods and semiotic thinking to the analysis and development of advertising and brand communications in cultural context. Key figures includeVirginia Valentine, Malcolm Evans, Greg Rowland, Georgios Rossolatos. International annual conferences (Semiofest) have been held since 2012.
Music semiology: the study of signs as they pertain to music on a variety of levels.
Artificial intelligence semiotics: the observation of visual symbols and the symbols' recognition by machine learning systems. The phrase was coined byDaniel Hoeg, founder ofSemiotics Mobility, due to Semiotics Mobility's design and learning process for autonomous recognition and perception of symbols by neural networks.[64][65] The phrase refers to machine learning and neural nets application of semiotic methods and semiotic machine learning to the analysis and development of robotics commands and instructions with subsystem communications in autonomous systems context.[66]
Semiotics of mathematics: the study of signs, symbols, sign systems and their structure, meaning and use in mathematics and mathematics education.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) ascribed great importance to symbols in a religious context, noting that all worship "must proceed by Symbols"; he propounded this theory in such works as "Characteristics" (1831),[67]Sartor Resartus (1833–4),[68] andOn Heroes (1841),[69] which have been retroactively recognized as containing semiotic theories.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), anoted logician who founded philosophicalpragmatism, definedsemiosis as an irreducibly triadic process wherein something, as an object, logically determines or influences something as a sign to determine or influence something as an interpretation orinterpretant, itself a sign, thus leading to further interpretants.[70] Semiosis is logically structured to perpetuate itself. The object may be quality, fact, rule, or even fictional (Hamlet), and may be "immediate" to the sign, the object as represented in the sign, or "dynamic", the object as it really is, on which the immediate object is founded. The interpretant may be "immediate" to the sign, all that the sign immediately expresses, such as a word's usual meaning; or "dynamic", such as a state of agitation; or "final" or "normal", the ultimate ramifications of the sign about its object, to which inquiry taken far enough would be destined and with which any interpretant, at most, may coincide.[71] Hissemiotic[72] covered not only artificial, linguistic, and symbolic signs, but also semblances such as kindred sensible qualities, and indices such as reactions. He came c. 1903[73] toclassify any sign by three interdependent trichotomies, intersecting to form ten (rather than 27) classes of sign.[74] Signs also enter into various kinds of meaningful combinations; Peirce covered both semantic and syntactical issues in his speculative grammar. He regarded formal semiotic as logicper se and part of philosophy; as also encompassing study of arguments (hypothetical,deductive, andinductive) and inquiry's methods including pragmatism; and as allied to, but distinct from logic's pure mathematics. In addition to pragmatism, Peirce provided a definition of "sign" as arepresentamen, in order to bring out the fact that a sign is something that "represents" something else in order to suggest it (that is, "re-present" it) in some way:[75][H]
A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), the "father" of modernlinguistics, proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating thesignifier as the form of the word or phrase uttered, to thesignified as the mental concept. According to Saussure, the sign is completely arbitrary—i.e., there is no necessary connection between the sign and its meaning. This sets him apart from previous philosophers, such asPlato or thescholastics, who thought that there must be some connection between a signifier and the object it signifies. In hisCourse in General Linguistics, Saussure credits the American linguistWilliam Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) with insisting on the arbitrary nature of the sign. Saussure's insistence on the arbitrariness of the sign also has influenced later philosophers and theorists such asJacques Derrida,Roland Barthes, andJean Baudrillard. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the termsémiologie while teaching his landmark "Course on General Linguistics" at theUniversity of Geneva from 1906 to 1911. Saussure posited that no word is inherently meaningful. Rather a word is only a "signifier." i.e., the representation of something, and it must be combined in the brain with the "signified", or the thing itself, in order to form a meaning-imbued "sign." Saussure believed that dismantling signs was a real science, for in doing so we come to an empirical understanding of how humans synthesize physical stimuli into words and other abstract concepts.
Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) studied thesign processes in animals. He used the German wordUmwelt,'environment', to describe the individual's subjective world, and he invented the concept of functional circle (funktionskreis) as a general model of sign processes. In hisTheory of Meaning (Bedeutungslehre, 1940), he described the semiotic approach tobiology, thus establishing the field that now is calledbiosemiotics.
Valentin Voloshinov (1895–1936) was aSoviet-Russian linguist, whose work has been influential in the field ofliterary theory andMarxisttheory of ideology. Written in the late 1920s in the USSR, Voloshinov'sMarxism and the Philosophy of Language (Russian:Marksizm i Filosofiya Yazyka) developed a counter-Saussurean linguistics, which situated language use in social process rather than in an entirely decontextualized Saussureanlangue.[citation needed]
Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965) developed a formalist approach to Saussure's structuralist theories. His best known work isProlegomena to a Theory of Language, which was expanded inRésumé of the Theory of Language, a formal development ofglossematics, his scientific calculus of language.[citation needed]
In his 1938Foundations of the Theory of Signs, he defined semiotics as grouped into three branches:
Syntactics/syntax: deals with the formal properties and interrelation of signs and symbols, without regard to meaning.
Semantics: deals with the formal structures of signs, particularly the relation between signs and the objects to which they apply (i.e. signs to their designata, and the objects that they may or do denote).
Pragmatics: deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, including all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena that occur in the functioning of signs. Pragmatics is concerned with the relation between the sign system and sign-using agents or interpreters (i.e., the human or animal users).
Roland Barthes (1915–1980) was a French literary theorist and semiotician. He often would critique pieces of cultural material to expose how bourgeois society used them to impose its values upon others. For instance, the portrayal of wine drinking in French society as a robust and healthy habit would be a bourgeois ideal perception contradicted by certain realities (i.e. that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He found semiotics useful in conducting these critiques. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were second-order signs, or connotations. A picture of a full, dark bottle is a sign, a signifier relating to a signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage—wine. However, the bourgeois take this signified and apply their own emphasis to it, making "wine" a new signifier, this time relating to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing wine. Motivations for such manipulations vary from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes very much in line with similar Marxist theory.
Algirdas Julien Greimas (1917–1992) developed a structural version of semiotics named, "generative semiotics", trying to shift the focus of discipline from signs to systems of signification. His theories develop the ideas of Saussure, Hjelmslev,Claude Lévi-Strauss, andMaurice Merleau-Ponty.
Thomas A. Sebeok (1920–2001), a student of Charles W. Morris, was a prolific and wide-ranging American semiotician. Although he insisted that animals are not capable of language, he expanded the purview of semiotics to include non-human signaling and communication systems, thus raising some of the issues addressed byphilosophy of mind and coining the termzoosemiotics. Sebeok insisted that all communication was made possible by the relationship between an organism and the environment in which it lives. He also posed the equation betweensemiosis (the activity of interpreting signs) andlife—a view that theCopenhagen-Tartu biosemiotic school has further developed.
Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was an Italian novelist, semiotician and academic. He made a wider audience aware of semiotics by various publications, most notablyA Theory of Semiotics and his novel,The Name of the Rose, which includes (second to its plot) applied semiotic operations. His most important contributions to the field bear on interpretation, encyclopedia, and model reader. He also criticized in several works (A theory of semiotics,La struttura assente,Le signe,La production de signes) the "iconism" or "iconic signs" (taken from Peirce's most famous triadic relation, based on indexes, icons, and symbols), to which he proposed four modes of sign production: recognition, ostension, replica, and invention.
Michael Silverstein (1945–2020), a theoretician of semiotics and linguistic anthropology. Over the course of his career he created an original synthesis of research on the semiotics of communication, the sociology of interaction, Russian formalist literary theory, linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, early anthropological linguistics and structuralist grammatical theory, together with his own theoretical contributions, yielding a comprehensive account of the semiotics of human communication and its relation to culture. His main influence wasCharles Sanders Peirce,Ferdinand de Saussure, andRoman Jakobson.
Representation of amethodology for the analysis of "texts" regardless ofthe medium in which it is presented. For these purposes, "text" is any message preserved in a form whose existence is independent of both sender and receiver;
By scholars and professional researchers as a method to interpret meanings behind symbols and how the meanings are created;
Potential improvement ofergonomic design in situations where it is important to ensure that human beings are able to interact more effectively with their environments, whether it be on a large scale, as inarchitecture, or on a small scale, such as the configuration of instrumentation for human use; and
Marketing: Epure, Eisenstat, and Dinu (2014) express that "semiotics allows for the practical distinction of persuasion from manipulation in marketing communication."[77]: 592 Semiotics are used in marketing as apersuasive device to influence buyers to change their attitudes and behaviors in the market place. There are two ways that Epure, Eisenstat, and Dinu (2014), building on the works ofRoland Barthes, state in which semiotics are used in marketing:Surface: signs are used to create personality for the product, creativity plays its foremost role at this level;Underlying: the concealed meaning of the text, imagery, sounds, etc.[77]
In some countries, the role of semiotics is limited toliterary criticism and an appreciation of audio and visual media. This narrow focus may inhibit a more general study of the social and political forces shaping how different media are used and their dynamic status within modern culture. Issues of technologicaldeterminism in the choice of media and the design of communication strategies assume new importance in this age of mass media.[citation needed]
^Locke (1700) uses the Greek word "σημιωτική" [sic] in the4th edition of hisEssay concerning Human Understanding (p. 437). He notably writes both (a) "σημιωτικὴ" and (b) "Σημιωτική": when term (a) is followed by any kind of punctuation mark, it takes the form (b). In Chapter XX, titled "Division of the Sciences," which concludes the 1st edition of Locke'sEssay (1689/1690), Locke introduces "σημιωτική" in § 4 as his proposed name synonymous with "the Doctrine of Signs" for the development of the future study of the ubiquitous role of signs within human awareness. In the 4th edition of Locke'sEssay (1700), a new Chapter XIX, titled "Of Enthusiasm," is inserted into Book IV. As result, Chapter XX of the 1st edition becomes Chapter XXI for all subsequent editions. It is an important fact that Locke's proposal for the development of semiotics, with three passing exceptions as "asides" in the writings ofBerkeley,Leibniz, andCondillac, "is met with a resounding silence that lasts as long as modernity itself. Even Locke's devoted late modern editor,Alexander Campbell Fraser, dismisses out of hand 'this crude and superficial scheme of Locke'" Deely adds "Locke's modest proposal subversive of the way of ideas, its reception, and its bearing on the resolution of an ancient and a modern controversy in logic." In the Oxford University Press critical edition (1975), prepared and introduced by Peter Harold Nidditch, Nidditch tells us, in his "Foreword," that he presents us with "a complete, critically established, and unmodernized text that aims at being historically faithful to Locke's final intentions";: vii that "the present text is based on the original fourth edition of theEssay;: xxv and that "readings in the other early authorized editions are adopted, in appropriate form, where necessary, and recorded otherwise in the textual notes.": xxv The term "σημιωτική" appears in that 4th edition (1700), the last published (but not the last prepared) within Locke's lifetime, with exactly the spelling and final accent found in the 1st edition. Yet if we turn to (the final) chapter XXI of the Oxford edition (1975, p. 720), we find not "σημιωτικὴ" but rather do we find substituted the "σημειωτικὴ" spelling (and with final accent reversed).Note that inModern Greek and insome systems for pronouncing classical Greek, "σημιωτική" and "σημειωτική" are pronounced the same.
^The whole anthology,Frontiers in Semiotics, was devoted to the documentation of thispars pro toto move of Sebeok.
^Max Fisch has compiled Peirce-related bibliographical supplements in 1952, 1964, 1966, 1974; was consulting editor on the 1977 microfilm of Peirce's published works and on theComprehensive Bibliography associated with it; was among the main editors of the first five volumes ofWritings of Charles S. Peirce (1981–1993); and wrote a number of published articles on Peirce, many collected in 1986 inPeirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism. See alsoCharles Sanders Peirce bibliography.
^"The distinction between the being of existingDasein and the Being of entities, such as Reality, which do not have the character ofDasein...is nothing with which philosophy may tranquilize itself. It has long been known that ancient ontology works with 'Thing-concepts' and that there is a danger of 'reifying consciousness'. But what does this 'reifying' signify? Where does it arise? Why does Being get 'conceived' 'proximally' in terms of the present-at-hand and not in terms of the ready-to-hand, which indeed liescloser to us? Why does reifying always keep coming back to exercise its dominion? This is the question that theUmwelt/Lebenswelt distinction as here drawn answers to."Martin Heidegger 1962/1927:486
^Detailed demonstration of Sebeok's role of the global emergence of semiotics is recorded in at least three recent volumes:
Semiotics Seen Synchronically. The View from 2010 (Ottawa: Legas, 2010).
Semiotics Continues To Astonish. Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs (Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 2011)—a 526-page assemblage of essays, vignettes, letters, pictures attesting to the depth and extent of Sebeok's promotion of semiotic understanding around the world, including his involvement with Juri Lotman and the Tartu University graduate program in semiotics (currently directed by P. Torop, M. Lotman and K. Kull).
Sebeok'sSemiotic Prologues (Ottawa: Legas, 2012)—a volume which gathers together in Part I all the "prologues" (i.e., introductions, prefaces, forewords, etc.) that Sebeok wrote for other peoples' books, then in Part 2 all the "prologues" that other people wrote for Sebeok.
^SeeSebeok, Thomas A. "Communication in Animals and Men." A review article that covers three books: Martin Lindauer,Communication among Social Bees (Harvard Books in Biology, No. 2; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. ix + 143); Winthrop N. Kellogg, Porpoises and Sonar (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. xiv + 177); and John C. Lilly,Man and Dolphin (Garden City, New York: Doubleday), inLanguage 39 (1963), 448–466.
^For a summary of Peirce's contributions to semiotics, see Liszka (1996) or Atkin (2006).
^Deely, John. 2009.Augustine & Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development. Scranton:University of Scranton Press. [provides full details of Augustine's originality on the notion of semiotics.]
^Romeo, Luigi. 1977. "The Derivation of 'Semiotics' through the History of the Discipline."Semiosis 6(2):37–49.
^Manetti, Giovanni. 1993 [1987].Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity, translated by C. Richardson. Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press. [Original:Le teorie del segno nell'antichità classica (1987). Milan:Bompiani.]
^"Semiotics."Oxford English Dictionary (1989). ["The branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of symptoms."]
^Stubbes, Henry. 1670.The Plus Ultra reduced to a Non Plus. London. p. 75.
^Atkin, Albert (2023),"Peirce's Theory of Signs", in Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.),The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved2023-03-21
^Fisch, Max H. (1978), "Peirce's General Theory of Signs" inSight, Sound, and Sense, ed. T. A. Sebeok. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 31–70.
^2001. "Umwelt".Semiotica 134(1). Pp. 125–135. [special issue on "Jakob von Uexküll: A paradigm for biology and semiotics," guest-edited byK. Kull.]
^Sebeok, Thomas A. 1986. "Communication, Language, and Speech. Evolutionary Considerations." Pp. 10–16 inI Think I Am A Verb. More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. New York:Plenum Press. Published lecture.Original lecture title "The Evolution of Communication and the Origin of Language," inInternational Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural StudiesColloquium on 'Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Communication Systems' (June 1–3, 1984).
^Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1934 [1907] "A Survey of Pragmaticism." P. 473. inThe Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce 5, edited byC. Hartshorne and P. Weiss. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press. [originally titled "Excerpt from "Pragmatism (Editor [3])"]
^Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1977 [1908]. "letter to Lady Welby 23 December 1908" [letter]. Pp. 73–86 inSemiotic and Significs: The Correspondence between C. S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, edited by C. S. Hardwick and J. Cook. Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press.
^1971, orig. 1938,Writings on the general theory of signs, Mouton, The Hague, The Netherlands
^Jozef Maria Bochenski (1956)Contemporary European Philosophy, trans. Donald Nichols and Karl Ashenbrenner from 1951 edition, Berkeley, CA: University of California, Section 25, "Mathematical Logic," Subsection F, "Semiotics," p. 259.
^Shackell, Cameron, and Laurianne Sitbon. 2018. "Cognitive Externalities and HCI: Towards the Recognition and Protection of Cognitive Rights." Pp. 1–10 inExtended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI '18. Montreal:ACM Press.doi:10.1145/3170427.3188405.ISBN978-1-4503-5621-3.
^"Pictorial Codes".Oxford Index. Oxford University Press, n.d. Web. Archived fromthe original on 2014-10-31. Retrieved2014-10-31.
^Sonesson, Göran (1988),Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics, pp. 2–98
^abAlden, Dana L; Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E. M; Batra, Rajeev (1999). "Brand Positioning Through Advertising in Asia, North America, and Europe: The Role of Global Consumer Culture".Journal of Marketing.63 (1):75–87.doi:10.2307/1252002.JSTOR1252002.
^Chandler, Daniel. 2007 [2001].Semiotics: The Basics. London:Routledge.
^Spotts, Harlan E; Weinberger, Marc G; Parsons, Amy L (1997). "Assessing the Use and Impact of Humor on Advertising Effectiveness: A Contingency Approach".Journal of Advertising.26 (3): 17.doi:10.1080/00913367.1997.10673526.
^Beeman, William O (1981). "Why Do They Laugh? An Interactional Approach to Humor in Traditional Iranian Improvisatory Theater: Performance and Its Effects".The Journal of American Folklore.94 (374):506–526.doi:10.2307/540503.JSTOR540503.
^abBrannen, Mary Yoko (2004). "When Mickey Loses Face: Recontextualization, Semantic Fit, and the Semiotics of Foreignness".Academy of Management Review.29 (4):593–616.doi:10.5465/amr.2004.14497613.JSTOR20159073.
^Thurlow, Crispin; Aiello, Giorgia (2016). "National pride, global capital: A social semiotic analysis of transnational visual branding in the airline industry".Visual Communication.6 (3): 305.doi:10.1177/1470357207081002.S2CID145395587.
^Kofi Agawu,Playing with Signs. A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music, Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 23.
^Roman Jakobson, "Language in Relation to Other Semiotic Systems",Selected Writings II,Word and Language, The Hague, Mouton, (pp. 697-708) p. 704.
^Jakobson,"Language in Relation to Other Semiotic Systems", op. cit., pp. 704-705.
^Jean-Jacques Nattiez, "The Contribution of Musical Semiotics to the Semiotic Discussion in General",A Perfusion of Signs, Th. A. Sebeok ed., Indiana University Press, 1977, p. 125.
^"Classical Music: Expression, Form, and Style." (1980).
^Hatten, Robert S.Musical meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, correlation, and interpretation. Indiana University Press, 2004.
^Brier, Søren (2008).Cybersemiotics: Why Information Is Not Enough!. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.ISBN978-0-8020-9220-5.
^Storm, Jason Ānanda Josephson. "Hylosemiotics."Metamodernsim: The Future of Theory, The University of Chicago Press, 2021, p. 149-203.
^Keir Elam,The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, Routledge, 2003.
^Sonesson, Göran (1989).Pictorial concepts. Inquiries into the semiotic heritage and its relevance for the analysis of the visual world. Lund: Lund University Press.
^See Peirce, excerpt from a letter to William James, March 14, 1909,Collected Papers v. 8, paragraph 314. Also see under relevant entries in theCommens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms. On coincidence of actual opinion with final opinion, see MS 218,transcription atArisbe, and appearing inWritings of Charles S. Peirce v. 3, p. 79.
^He spelt it "semiotic" and "semeiotic." See under "Semeiotic [etc.] in theCommens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms.
^Peirce,Collected Papers v. 2, paragraphs 243–263, written c. 1903.
^He worked on but did not perfect a finer-grained system of ten trichotomies, to be combined into 66 (Tn+1) classes of sign. That raised for Peirce 59,049 classificatory questions (59,049 = 310, or 3 to the 10th power). See p. 482 in "Excerpts from Letters to Lady Welby",Essential Peirce v. 2.
^Dewey, John (1946). "Peirce's Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning".The Journal of Philosophy.43 (4):85–95.doi:10.2307/2019493.JSTOR2019493.
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