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We can look at signs and sign systems in three ways:

Semantics – this is the 'how' of semiotics, and is concerned with this relationship between a signified and signifier – the sign and what it stands in for.

Syntactics – this refers to structural relations. One structural relation in language is grammar, but syntactics in semiotics refers to the formal relationship between signs that lets them build into sign systems.

Pragmatics – pragmatics, according to Morris (Morris, 1938), is the relationship of sign to the person reading or understanding that sign.

To explore this, lets look at a very familiar yet very arbitrary sign system – traffic lights.

If semantics is the 'how' of semiotics, concerned with the relationship between signifier and signified, how might we read semantically the traffic light? We might read red as stop, and green as go.

If syntactics is the formal relationship between signs in a sign system, then how might we read the syntax of traffic lights? We might see the relationships between red, amber, and green as three parts of a sign system that also refer to other sign systems (such as white lines on the road, or the shape of a stop sign). These sign relationship then make the structure of traffic lights as a sign system.

And finally, if pragmatics is the relationship between sign and reader, how might we pragmatically read the traffic light? If the light is red, for example, we know to stop.

The last useful concept from basic semiotics that is worth mentioning is the idea of syntactic indeterminacy (Messaris, 1994). Syntactics is the formal relationship between signs and sign systems. But as we've noted, sign systems are constantly changing and evolving, with the arbitrariness of the relationship between signifier and signified creating a kind of 'wriggle room' for meaning to change and evolve within context. This flexibility in meaning creates space where a sign that means one thing to me might mean something slightly or significantly different to you. Very savvy advertisers often exploit this syntactic indeterminacy to encourage audiences to draw their own meanings from a number of possible interpretations, or to imply rather than overtly state a message (which may turn off the ad's target audience), as this classic New Zealand ad for 'Instant Kiwi' lottery products demonstrates.

We each develop different interpretations of advertisements, or any set of signs, based on our own experience, interpretation and frame of reference. One way to think about the interplay of these factors when looking at signs is to use a semiotic triangle (Ogden and Richards, 1923).

There are a number of different versions of this triangle, and you will sometimes see different labels used at each of the points of the triangle (though they might be a different points, they are the same in relation to each other). But generally speaking, there are three main points to the triangle. The first point is the reference, the second is the sign (or sometimes the expression), and the third is the concept. Some versions also put in the centre of the triangle the actor or agent who makes these connections through experience.

This leads us to thinking about semiotics as part of the process of communication.

Discussion

Can you apply the semiotic triangle to the 'Instant Kiwi' ad linked to above?

What is the reference, symbol and thought presented within the sign system of this advert and how do they relate to each other?

References

Messaris, P. Visual Literacy: Image, mind, and reality, Westview Press, 1994.

Morris, C. Foundations of the Theory of Signs, University of Chicago Press, 1938.

A sign system is a key concept in semiotics and is used to refer to any system of signs and relations between signs.[1] The term language is frequently used as a synonym for a sign-system. However, the term sign-system is considered preferable[by whom?] to the term language for a number of reasons. First, the use of the term language tends to carry with it connotations of human language, particularly human spoken language. Human spoken language is only one example of a sign-system, albeit probably one of the most complex sign-systems known. In traditional forms of face-to-face communication, humans communicate through non-verbal as well as verbal sign-systems; colloquially, this can be referred to as body language. Hence, humans communicate a great deal by way of facial movements and other forms of bodily expression. Such expressions are also signs and an organised collection of such signs would be considered a sign system.

Tone of voice in spoken communication, conveys meaning. Depending on tone, a phrase can have several meanings; e.g. "you like that" can mean the speaker believes the listener likes something, or it can be a question, or it can convey disbelief.

Traffic signs, art, and fashion are all examples of sign systems.

Second, the same concept of a sign-system can be used in considering a vast range of communication forms such as animal communication, man-machine communication, machine to machine communication, and disease symptoms. Examination of simpler forms of such systems of signs within non-human communication can help to illuminate some of the essence of communication and in particular can help to provide tentative answers to the question of the nature and function of communication.

emiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional, such as a word uttered with a specific meaning; or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings (which are usually not considered meanings) and may communicate internally (through thought itself) or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge.[1]

The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological dimensions; for example the Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco proposed that every cultural phenomenon may be studied as communication.[2] Some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science, however. They examine areas also belonging to the life sciences—such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). 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 in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics).

Semiotics is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology, which is a subset of semiotics.[3][4]

History and terminology[edit]

The importance of signs and signification has been recognized throughout much of the history of philosophy and psychology. The term derives from Ancient Greek σημειωτικός (sēmeiōtikós) 'observant of signs'[5] (from σημεῖον (sēmeîon) 'a sign, mark, token').[6] For the Greeks, 'signs' (σημεῖον sēmeîon) occurred in the world of nature and 'symbols' (σύμβολον súmbolon) in the world of culture. As such, Plato and Aristotle explored the relationship between signs and the world.[7]

It would not be until Augustine of Hippo[8] 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 the nature-culture divide and identifying symbols as no more than a species (or sub-species) of signum.[9] A monograph study on this question would be done by Manetti (1987).[10][a] These theories have had a lasting effect in Western philosophy, especially through scholastic philosophy.

The general study of signs that began in Latin with Augustine culminated with the 1632 Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot and then began anew in late modernity with the attempt in 1867 by Charles Sanders Peirce to draw up a "new list of categories". More recently Umberto Eco, in his Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers.

John Locke[edit]

John Locke (1690), himself a man of medicine, 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 of Henricus Stephanus' Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, which listed "σημειωτική" as the name for 'diagnostics',[11] the branch of medicine concerned with interpreting symptoms of disease ("symptomatology"). Indeed, physician and scholar Henry Stubbe (1670) had transliterated this term of specialized science into English precisely as "semeiotics," marking the first use of the term in English:[12]

"…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.…"

Locke would use the term sem(e)iotike in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (book IV, chap. 21),[13][b] in which he explains how science may be divided into three parts:[14]: 174 

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 it "Σημειωτική" (Semeiotike), and explaining it as "the doctrine of signs" in the following terms:[14]: 175 

Thirdly, the third branch [of sciences] may be termed σημειωτικὴ, or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Λογικὴ, 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 would introduce Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopt Locke's coinage ("Σημειωτική") as the name to subtitle his founding at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal, Sign Systems Studies.

Ferdinand de Saussure[edit]

Ferdinand de Saussure founded his semiotics, which he called semiology, in the social sciences:[15]

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 Greek semeîon, '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 assimilate "semiology" to "semiotics" as a part to a whole, and was involved in choosing the name Semiotica 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 expression différance, relating to the endless deferral of meaning, and to the absence of a 'transcendent signified'.

Charles Sanders Peirce[edit]

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,"[16] and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.[17][18]

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.

Peircean semiotic is triadic, including sign, object, interpretant, as opposed to the dyadic Saussurian 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.[19]

Peircean scholar and editor Max H. Fisch (1978)[d] would claim that "semeiotic" was Peirce's own preferred rendering of Locke's σημιωτική.[20] 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's list of categories[edit]

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.

The estimative powers of animals interpret the environment as sensed to form a "meaningful world" of objects, but the objects of this world (or "Umwelt", in Jakob von Uexküll's term)[21] 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 animal "Umwelt" a relation of self-identity within objects which transforms objects experienced into things as well as +, –, 0 objects.[22][e] Thus, the generically animal objective world as "Umwelt", becomes a species-specifically human objective world or "Lebenswelt" (life-world), wherein linguistic communication, rooted in the biologically underdetermined "Innenwelt" (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.

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's "Innenwelt", was originally clearly identified by Thomas A. Sebeok.[23][24] 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 of Martin Krampen,[25] but takes advantage of Peirce's point that an interpretant, as the third item within a sign relation, "need not be mental."[26][27][28]

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.[29] 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 include Charles W. Morris.[30] 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, (1) logical syntax, the theory of the mutual relations of symbols, (2) logical semantics, the theory of the relations between the symbol and what the symbol stands for, and (3) logical pragmatics, the relations between symbols, their meanings and the users of the symbols."[31] Max Black argued that the work of Bertrand Russell was seminal in the field.[32]

Formulations and subfields[edit]

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 are transmitted (see modality). This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes 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. To coin a word to refer to a thing (see lexical words), the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their language, but that word can transmit that meaning only within the language's grammatical structures and codes (see syntax and semantics). Codes also represent the values of the culture, and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life.

To explain the relationship between semiotics and communication 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, and contexts to explain the biology, psychology, and mechanics involved. Both disciplines recognize that the technical process cannot be separated from the fact that the receiver must decode the data, i.e., be able to distinguish the data as salient, 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. In Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics, Marcel Danesi (1994) suggested that semioticians' priorities were to study signification first, and communication second. A more extreme view is offered by Jean-Jacques Nattiez who, as a musicologist, considered the theoretical study of communication irrelevant to his application of semiotics.[33]: 16 

Syntactics[edit]

Semiotics differs from linguistics 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,[34] or—more generally—with formal properties of symbol systems[35] (specifically, with reference to linguistic signs, syntax)[36] is referred to as syntactics.

Peirce's definition of the term "semiotic" 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 the philosophy 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 does not match the separation between analytic and continental philosophy. On a closer look, there may be found some differences regarding subjects. Philosophy of language pays more attention to natural 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 the humanities (including literary theory) and to cultural anthropology.

Cognitive semiotics[edit]

Semiosis or semeiosis 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 include C. S. Peirce, John Deely, and Umberto 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 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 at Aarhus University (Denmark), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst the prominent cognitive semioticians are Per 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) at Lund University, Sweden.

Finite semiotics[edit]

Finite semiotics, developed by Cameron Shackell (2018, 2019),[37][38][39][40] 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 as human computer interaction,[41] creativity theory,[42] and a computational semiotics method for generating semiotic squares from digital texts.[43]

Pictorial semiotics[edit]

Pictorial semiotics[44] is intimately connected to art history and theory. It goes beyond them both in at least one fundamental way, however. While art 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.[45]

According to Göran Sonesson, a Swedish semiotician, pictures can be analyzed by three models: (a) the narrative model, which concentrates on the relationship between pictures and time in a chronological manner as in a comic strip; (b) the rhetoric model, which compares pictures with different devices as in a metaphor; and (c) 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.[46]

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.

Globalization[edit]

Studies have shown that semiotics may be used to make or break a brand. 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.[47]

Mistranslations may lead to instances of "Engrish" or "Chinglish", terms for unintentionally humorous cross-cultural slogans intended to be understood in English. 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.[48] In other words, it creates a connotation that is culturally-bound, and that violates some culture code. Theorists who have studied humor (such as Schopenhauer) suggest that contradiction or incongruity creates absurdity and therefore, humor.[49] 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.[50]

A good example of branding according to cultural code is Disney's international theme park business. Disney fits well with Japan'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 as Euro Disney because the company did not research the codes underlying European culture. Its storybook retelling of European folktales was taken as elitist 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.[51]

On the other hand, some researchers have suggested that it is possible to successfully pass a sign perceived as a cultural icon, such as the Coca-Cola or McDonald's logos, from one culture to another. This may be accomplished if the sign is migrated from a more economically-developed to a less developed culture.[51] 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.[47]

Research also found that, as airline industry brandings grow and become more international, their logos become more symbolic and less iconic. The iconicity and symbolism 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.[52]

Semiotics of dreaming[edit]

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The flexibility of human semiotics is well demonstrated in dreams. Sigmund Freud[53] spelled out how meaning in dreams rests on a blend of images, effects, 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."

Musical Topic Theory[edit]

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's The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory presents a holistic recognition and overview regarding the subject, offering insight into the development of the theory. [54] 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 book, Classic 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. Ratner's discussion of topic theory primarily consists of musical topics that he finds to be particularly prevalent in Baroque-style music. [55]

Robert Hatten continues this conversation in his 1994 publication, Beethoven, Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation, 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." Hatten, therefore, is able to expand the realm in which musical topics are recognized as such.[56]

List of subfields[edit]

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.

Semiotic anthropology and anthropological semantics.

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 at Aarhus University (Denmark), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst the prominent cognitive semioticians are Per 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) at Lund University, Sweden.

Comics semiotics: the study of the various codes and signs of comics and how they are understood.

Computational semiotics: attempts to engineer the process of semiosis, in the study of and design for human–computer interaction or to mimic aspects of human cognition through artificial intelligence and knowledge representation. See also cybercognition.

Cultural and literary semiotics: examines the literary world, the visual media, the mass media, and advertising in the work of writers such as Roland Barthes, Marcel Danesi, and Juri Lotman (e.g., Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School).

Cybersemiotics: built on two already-generated interdisciplinary approaches: cybernetics and systems theory, including information 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.[57]

Design semiotics or product semiotics: the study of the use of signs in the design of physical products; introduced by Martin Krampen and in a practitioner-oriented version by Rune Monö while teaching industrial design at the Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden.

Ethnosemiotics: a disciplinary perspective which links semiotics concepts to ethnographic methods.

Film semiotics: the study of the various codes and signs of film and how they are understood. Key figures include Christian Metz.

Finite semiotics: an approach to the semiotics of technology developed by Cameron Shackell. It is used to both trace the effects of technology on human thought and to develop computational methods for performing semiotic analysis.

Gregorian chant semiology: a current avenue of palaeographical research in Gregorian chant which is revising the Solesmes school of interpretation.

Law and semiotics: one of the more accomplished publications in this field is the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, published by International Association for the Semiotics of Law.

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 include Virginia 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.

Organisational semiotics: the study of semiotic processes in organizations (with strong ties to computational semiotics and human–computer interaction).

Pictorial semiotics: an application of semiotic methods and semiotic thinking to art history.

Semiotics of music videos: semiotics in popular music.

Social semiotics: expands the interpretable semiotic landscape to include all cultural codes, such as in slang, fashion, tattoos, and advertising. Key figures include Roland Barthes, Michael Halliday, Bob Hodge, Chris William Martin and Christian Metz.

Structuralism and post-structuralism in the work of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Louis Hjelmslev, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, etc.

Theatre semiotics: an application of semiotic methods and semiotic thinking to theatre studies. Key figures include Keir Elam.[58]

Urban semiotics: the study of meaning in urban form as generated by signs, symbols, and their social connotations.

Visual semiotics: analyses visual signs; prominent modern founders to this branch are Groupe µ and Göran Sonesson (see also visual rhetoric).[59]

Semiotics of photography: is the observation of symbolism used within photography.

Artificial Intelligence Semiotics: the observation of visual symbols and the symbols' recognition by machine learning systems. The phrase was coined by Daniel Hoeg, founder of Semiotics Mobility, due to Semiotics Mobility's design and learning process for autonomous recognition and perception of symbols by neural networks.[60][61] 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.

Semiotics of Mathematics: the study of signs, symbols, sign systems and their structure, meaning and use in mathematics and mathematics education.

Notable semioticians[edit]

Signaling and communication between the Astatotilapia burtoni

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),[62] Sartor Resartus (1833–4),[63] and On Heroes (1841),[64] which have been retroactively recognized as containing semiotic theories.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), a noted logician who founded philosophical pragmatism, defined semiosis 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 or interpretant, itself a sign, thus leading to further interpretants.[65] 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.[66] His semiotic[67] 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[68] to classify any sign by three interdependent trichotomies, intersecting to form ten (rather than 27) classes of sign.[69] 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 logic per se and part of philosophy; as also encompassing study of arguments (hypothetical, deductive, and inductive) 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 a representamen, 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:[70][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 modern linguistics, proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating the signifier as the form of the word or phrase uttered, to the signified 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 as Plato or the scholastics, who thought that there must be some connection between a signifier and the object it signifies. In his Course in General Linguistics, Saussure credits the American linguist William 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 as Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term sémiologie while teaching his landmark "Course on General Linguistics" at the University 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 the sign processes in animals. He used the German word umwelt, "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 his Theory of Meaning (Bedeutungslehre, 1940), he described the semiotic approach to biology, thus establishing the field that now is called biosemiotics.

Valentin Voloshinov (1895–1936) was a Soviet-Russian linguist, whose work has been influential in the field of literary theory and Marxist theory of ideology. Written in the late 1920s in the USSR, Voloshinov's Marxism 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 Saussurean langue.

Louis Hjelmslev (1899–1965) developed a formalist approach to Saussure's structuralist theories. His best known work is Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, which was expanded in Résumé of the Theory of Language, a formal development of glossematics, his scientific calculus of language.

Charles W. Morris (1901–1979): Unlike his mentor George Herbert Mead, Morris was a behaviorist and sympathetic to the Vienna Circle positivism of his colleague, Rudolf Carnap. Morris was accused by John Dewey of misreading Peirce.[71]

In his 1938 Foundations 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).

Thure von Uexküll (1908–2004), the "father" of modern psychosomatic medicine, developed a diagnostic method based on semiotic and biosemiotic analyses.

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, and Maurice 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 by philosophy of mind and coining the term zoosemiotics. 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 between semiosis (the activity of interpreting signs) and life—a view that the Copenhagen-Tartu biosemiotic school has further developed.

Juri Lotman (1922–1993) was the founding member of the Tartu (or Tartu-Moscow) Semiotic School. He developed a semiotic approach to the study of culture—semiotics of culture—and established a communication model for the study of text semiotics. He also introduced the concept of the semiosphere. Among his Moscow colleagues were Vladimir Toporov, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Boris Uspensky.

Christian Metz (1931–1993) pioneered the application of Saussurean semiotics to film theory, applying syntagmatic analysis to scenes of films and grounding film semiotics in greater context.

Eliseo Verón (1935–2014) developed his "Social Discourse Theory" inspired in the Peircian conception of "Semiosis."

Groupe µ (founded 1967) developed a structural version of rhetorics, and the visual semiotics.

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was an Italian novelist, semiotician and academic. He made a wider audience aware of semiotics by various publications, most notably A 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.

Julia Kristeva (born 1941), a student of Lucien Goldmann and Roland Barthes, Bulgarian-French semiotician, literary critic, psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist. She uses psychoanalytical concepts together with the semiotics, distinguishing the two components in the signification, the symbolic and the semiotic. Kristeva also studies the representation of women and women's bodies in popular culture, such as horror films and has had a remarkable influence on feminism and feminist literary studies.

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 was Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Roman Jakobson.

Current applications[edit]

Chart semiotics of social networking

Some applications of semiotics include:

Representation of a methodology for the analysis of "texts" regardless of the 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 of ergonomic 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 in architecture, 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."[72]: 592  Semiotics are used in marketing as a persuasive 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 of Roland 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.[72] Semiotics can also be used to analyze advertising effectiveness and meaning. Cian (2020),[73] for instance, analyzed a specific printed advertisement from two different semiotic points of view. He applied the interpretative instruments provided by the Barthes' school of thinking (focused on the description of explicit signs taken in isolation). He then analyzed the same advertising using Greimas' structural semiotics (where a sign has meaning only when it is interpreted as part of a system).

In some countries, the role of semiotics is limited to literary 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 technological determinism in the choice of media and the design of communication strategies assume new importance in this age of mass media.

Main institutions[edit]

A world organisation of semioticians, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, and its journal Semiotica, was established in 1969. The larger research centers together with teaching program include the semiotics departments at the University of Tartu, University of Limoges, Aarhus University, and Bologna University.

Publications[edit]

Publication of research is both in dedicated journals such as Sign Systems Studies, established by Juri Lotman and published by Tartu University Press; Semiotica, founded by Thomas A. Sebeok and published by Mouton de Gruyter; Zeitschrift für Semiotik; European Journal of Semiotics; Versus (founded and directed by Umberto Eco), et al.; The American Journal of Semiotics; and as articles accepted in periodicals of other disciplines, especially journals oriented toward philosophy and cultural criticism.

The major semiotic book series Semiotics, Communication, Cognition, published by De Gruyter Mouton (series editors Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull) replaces the former "Approaches to Semiotics" (more than 120 volumes) and "Approaches to Applied Semiotics" (series editor Thomas A. Sebeok). Since 1980 the Semiotic Society of America has produced an annual conference series: Semiotics: The Proceedings of the Semiotic Society of America.

See also[edit]

Ecosemiotics

Ethnosemiotics

Index of semiotics articles

Language-game (philosophy)

Medical sign

Outline of semiotics

Private language argument

Semiofest

Semiotic elements and classes of signs

Social semiotics

Structuralist semiotics

Universal language

References[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

^ See also Andrew LaVelle's discussion of Romeo on Peirce-l.

^ Locke (1700) uses the Greek word "σημιωτική" [sic] in the 4th edition of his Essay 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's Essay (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's Essay (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 of Berkeley, Leibniz, and Condillac, "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 the Essay;: 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 in Modern Greek and in some systems for pronouncing classical Greek, "σημιωτική" and "σημειωτική" are pronounced the same.

^ The whole anthology, Frontiers in Semiotics, was devoted to the documentation of this pars 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 the Comprehensive Bibliography associated with it; was among the main editors of the first five volumes of Writings of Charles S. Peirce (1981–1993); and wrote a number of published articles on Peirce, many collected in 1986 in Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism. See also Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography.

^ "The distinction between the being of existing Dasein and the Being of entities, such as Reality, which do not have the character of Dasein...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 lies closer to us? Why does reifying always keep coming back to exercise its dominion?" This is the question that the Umwelt/Lebenswelt distinction as here drawn answers to." (Heidegger 1962/1927:486)

^ Detailed demonstration of Sebeok's role of the global emergence of semiotics is recorded in at least three recent volumes: (1) Semiotics Seen Synchronically. The View from 2010 (Ottawa: Legas, 2010). (2) 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). (3) Sebeok's Semiotic 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.

^ See Sebeok, 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), in Language 39 (1963), 448–466.

^ For a summary of Peirce's contributions to semiotics, see Liszka (1996) or Atkin (2006).

Citations[edit]

^ Campbell, C., Olteanu, A., & Kull, K. (2019). Learning and knowing as semiosis: Extending the conceptual apparatus of semiotics. Sign Systems Studies 47(3/4), 352–381.

^ Caesar, Michael (1999). Umberto Eco: Philosophy, Semiotics, and the Work of Fiction. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-7456-0850-1.

^ "Semiology vs. semiotics". University of Eastern Finland. Archived from the original on 18 January 2019.

^ "The science of communication studied through the interpretation of signs and symbols as they operate in various fields, esp. language", Oxford English Dictionary (2003)

^ Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. 1940. "σημειωτικός." A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and augmented by H. S. Jones and R. McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Available via Perseus Digital Library.

^ σημεῖον, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus

^ "Semiotics for Beginners: Signs". visual-memory.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-03-26.

^ 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.

^ Encyclopedia Britannica. 2020 [1998]. "Semiotics: Study of Signs." Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed 8 April 2020 Web.

^ Jump up to:a b Locke, John. 1963 [1823]. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

^ Cited in Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics for Beginners. "Introduction."

^ Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 2: para. 227.

^ Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1998 [1902]. "Logic, Regarded As Semeiotic," [manuscript L75] Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway, edited by J. Ransdell.

^ Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1998 [1902]. "On the Definition of Logic." [memoir 12]. Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway, edited by J. Ransdell.

^ 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, retrieved 2023-03-21

^ Fisch, Max H. (1978), "Peirce's General Theory of Signs" in Sight, 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 by K. Kull.]

^ Heidegger, Martin. 1962 [1927]. Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. p. 487.

^ Sebeok, Thomas A. 1986. "Communication, Language, and Speech. Evolutionary Considerations." Pp. 10–16 in I 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," in International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies Colloquium on 'Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Communication Systems' (June 1–3, 1984).

^ Sebeok, Thomas A. 2012. "Afterword." Pp. 365–83 in Semiotic Prologues, edited by J. Deely and M. Danesi. Ottawa: Legas.

^ Krampen, Martin. 1981. "Phytosemiotics." Semiotica 36(3):187–209.

^ Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1934 [1907] "A Survey of Pragmaticism." P. 473. in The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce 5, edited by C. 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 in Semiotic 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.

^ Peirce, Charles Sanders. 2009. "Semiosis: The Subject Matter of Semiotic Inquiry." Pp. 26–50 in Basics of Semiotics (5th ed.), edited by J. Deely. Tartu, Estonia: Tartu University Press. See especially pp. 31,38– 41.

^ "LOGOS – Multilingual Translation Portal". courses.logos.it. Retrieved 2017-03-26.

^ 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.

^ Black, Max. 1944. The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell 5. Library of Living Philosophers.

^ Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1990). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music. Translated by Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

^ "Definition of Syntactics by Merriam-Webster". Merriam-Webster Inc. Retrieved May 29, 2019.

^ "Syntactics definition and meaning". HarperCollins Publishers. Retrieved May 29, 2019.

^ "Syntactics". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on August 7, 2020.

^ Shackell, Cameron (2019-03-05). "Finite semiotics: Recovery functions, semioformation, and the hyperreal". Semiotica. 2019 (227): 211–26. doi:10.1515/sem-2016-0153. ISSN 0037-1998. S2CID 149185917.

^ Shackell, Cameron (2018-04-25). "Finite cognition and finite semiosis: A new perspective on semiotics for the information age". Semiotica. 2018 (222): 225–40. doi:10.1515/sem-2018-0020. ISSN 0037-1998. S2CID 149817752.

^ Shackell, Cameron (2019-07-26). "Finite semiotics: Cognitive sets, semiotic vectors, and semiosic oscillation". Semiotica. 2019 (229): 211–35. doi:10.1515/sem-2017-0127. ISSN 1613-3692. S2CID 67111370.

^ Shackell, Cameron. 2018. "Finite semiotics: A new theoretical basis for the information age." Cross-Inter-Multi-Trans: Proceedings of the 13th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS). IASS Publications & International Semiotics Institute. Retrieved 2020-01-25.

^ Shackell, Cameron, and Laurianne Sitbon. 2018. "Cognitive Externalities and HCI: Towards the Recognition and Protection of Cognitive Rights." Pp. 1–10 in Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI '18. Montreal: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/3170427.3188405. ISBN 978-1-4503-5621-3.

^ Shackell, Cameron, and Peter Bruza. 2019. "Introducing Quantitative Cognitive Analysis: Ubiquitous reproduction, Cognitive Diversity and Creativity." Pp. 2783–9 in Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2019), edited by C. Freksa. Cognitive Science Society. ISBN 978-1-5108-9155-5. Retrieved 2020-01-25.

^ Shackell, Cameron; Sitbon, Laurianne (2019-09-12). "Computational opposition analysis using word embeddings: A method for strategising resonant informal argument". Argument & Computation. 10 (3): 301–317. doi:10.3233/AAC-190467.

^ "Pictorial Semiotics". Oxford Index. Oxford University Press, n.d. Web.

^ "Pictorial Codes". Oxford Index. Oxford University Press, n.d. Web.

^ Sonesson, Göran (1988). "Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics": 2–98.

^ Jump up to:a b Alden, 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. JSTOR 1252002.

^ 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. JSTOR 540503.

^ Jump up to:a b Brannen, 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. JSTOR 20159073.

^ 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. S2CID 145395587.

^ Freud, Sigmund. 1900 [1899]. The Interpretation of Dreams. London: Hogarth

^ Mirka, Danuta, ed. The Oxford handbook of topic theory. Oxford Handbooks, 2014.

^ Ratner, Leonard Gilbert. "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. ISBN 978-0-8020-9220-5.

^ 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.

^ Butkovic, Marija. "Meet The Female Founder And Impact Investor On A Mission To Expand Investment Opportunities For BIPOC And Female Venture Capital Managers". Forbes. Retrieved 7 April 2023.

^ "semiotics.tech". semiotics.tech. Retrieved 7 April 2023.

^ Treadwell, James (1998-07-01). "'Sartor Resartus' and the work of writing". Essays in Criticism. 48 (3): 224–244. doi:10.1093/eic/48.3.224.

^ Jackson, Leon (1999). "The Reader Retailored: Thomas Carlyle, His American Audiences, and the Politics of Evidence". Book History. 2: 146–172. ISSN 1098-7371. JSTOR 30227300.

^ "Sincere Idolatry: Carlyle and Religious Symbols". victorianweb.org. Retrieved 2023-02-16.

^ For Peirce's definitions of signs and semiosis, see under "Sign" and "Semiosis, semeiosy" in the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms; and "76 definitions of sign by C. S. Peirce" collected by Robert Marty. Peirce's "What Is a Sign" (MS 404 of 1894, Essential Peirce v. 2, pp. 4–10) provides intuitive help.

^ See Peirce, excerpt from a letter to William James, March 14, 1909, Collected Papers v. 8, paragraph 314. Also see under relevant entries in the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms. On coincidence of actual opinion with final opinion, see MS 218, transcription at Arisbe, and appearing in Writings of Charles S. Peirce v. 3, p. 79.

^ He spelt it "semiotic" and "semeiotic." See under "Semeiotic [etc.] in the Commens 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.

^ Ryan, Michael (2011). The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-8312-3.

^ Dewey, John (1946). "Peirce's Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning". The Journal of Philosophy. 43 (4): 85–95. doi:10.2307/2019493. JSTOR 2019493.

^ Jump up to:a b Epure, M.; Eisenstat, E.; Dinu, C. (2014). "Semiotics And Persuasion In Marketing Communication". Linguistic & Philosophical Investigations. 13: 592–605.

^ Cian, Luca (2012). "A comparative analysis of print advertising applying the two main plastic semiotics schools: Barthes' and Greimas'". Semiotica. 2012 (190): 57–79. doi:10.1515/sem-2012-0039.

Bibliography[edit]

Atkin, Albert. (2006). "Peirce's Theory of Signs", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Barthes, Roland. ([1957] 1987). Mythologies. New York: Hill & Wang.

Barthes, Roland ([1964] 1967). Elements of Semiology. (Translated by Annette Lavers & Colin Smith). London: Jonathan Cape.

Chandler, Daniel. (2001/2007). Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge.

Clarke, D. S. (1987). Principles of Semiotic. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Clarke, D. S. (2003). Sign Levels. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Culler, Jonathan (1975). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Danesi, Marcel & Perron, Paul. (1999). Analyzing Cultures: An Introduction and Handbook. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

Danesi, Marcel. (1994). Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press.

Danesi, Marcel. (2002). Understanding Media Semiotics. London: Arnold; New York: Oxford UP.

Danesi, Marcel. (2007). The Quest for Meaning: A Guide to Semiotic Theory and Practice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Decadt, Yves. 2000. On the Origin and Impact of Information in the Average Evolution: From Bit to Attractor, Atom and Ecosystem [Dutch]. Summary in English available at The Information Philosopher.

Deely, John. (2005 [1990]). Basics of Semiotics. 4th ed. Tartu: Tartu University Press.

Deely, John. (2000), The Red Book: The Beginning of Postmodern Times or: Charles Sanders Peirce and the Recovery of Signum. Sonesson, Göran (1989). "Pictorial concepts. Inquiries into the semiotic heritage and its relevance for the analysis of the visual world". Lund: Lund University Press. Sonesson, Göran, 1989, Pictorial concepts. Inquiries into the semiotic heritage and its relevance for the analysis of the visual world, Lund: Lund University Press.(578 KiB)Pictorial concepts. Inquiries into the semiotic heritage and its relevance for the analysis of the visual world"Eprint" (PDF). (571 KiB).

Deely, John. (2001). Four Ages of Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Deely, John. (2003), "On the Word Semiotics, Formation and Origins", Semiotica 146.1/4, 1–50.

Deely, John. (2003). The Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

Deely, John. (2004), "'Σημειον' to 'Sign' by Way of 'Signum': On the Interplay of Translation and Interpretation in the Establishment of Semiotics", Semiotica 148–1/4, 187–227.

Deely, John. (2006), "On 'Semiotics' as Naming the Doctrine of Signs", Semiotica 158.1/4 (2006), 1–33.

Derrida, Jacques (1981). Positions. (Translated by Alan Bass). London: Athlone Press.

Eagleton, Terry. (1983). Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Eco, Umberto. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. London: Macmillan.

Eco, Umberto. (1986) Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Eco, Umberto. (2000) Kant and the Platypus. New York, Harcourt Brace & Company.

Eco, Umberto. (1976) A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana, Indiana University Press.

Emmeche, Claus; Kull, Kalevi (eds.) (2011) Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs. London: Imperial College Press. pdf

Foucault, Michel. (1970). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock.

Greimas, Algirdas. (1987). On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory. (Translated by Paul J Perron & Frank H Collins). London: Frances Pinter.

Herlihy, David. 1988–present. "2nd year class of semiotics". CIT.

Hjelmslev, Louis (1961). Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. (Translated by Francis J. Whitfield). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press

Hodge, Robert & Kress, Gunther. (1988). Social Semiotics. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Lacan, Jacques. (1977) Écrits: A Selection. (Translated by Alan Sheridan). New York: Norton.

Lidov, David (1999) Elements of Semiotics. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Liszka, J. J. (1996) A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of C.S. Peirce. Indiana University Press.

Locke, John, The Works of John Locke, A New Edition, Corrected, In Ten Volumes, Vol.III, T. Tegg, (London), 1823. (facsimile reprint by Scientia, (Aalen), 1963.)

Lotman, Yuri M. (1990). Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. (Translated by Ann Shukman). London: I.B. Tauris.

Morris, Charles W. (1971). Writings on the general theory of signs. The Hague: Mouton.

Menchik, Daniel A; Tian, Xiaoli (2008). "Putting Social Context into Text: The Semiotics of E‐mail Interaction" (PDF). American Journal of Sociology. 114 (2): 332–70. doi:10.1086/590650. hdl:10722/141740. S2CID 8161899.

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. (1990). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music. Translated by Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Translation of: Musicologie générale et sémiologue. Collection Musique/Passé/Présent 13. Paris: C. Bourgois, 1987).

Peirce, Charles S. (1934). Collected papers: Volume V. Pragmatism and pragmaticism. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.

Petrilli, Susan (2009). "Semiotics as semioethics in the era of global communication". Semiotica. 2009 (173): 343–67. doi:10.1515/SEMI.2009.015. S2CID 143553063.

Ponzio, Augusto & S. Petrilli (2007) Semiotics Today. From Global Semiotics to Semioethics, a Dialogic Response. New York, Ottawa, Toronto: Legas. 84 pp. ISBN 978-1-894508-98-8

Romeo, Luigi (1977), "The Derivation of 'Semiotics' through the History of the Discipline", Semiosis, v. 6 pp. 37–50.

Sebeok, T.A. (1976), Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN.

Sebeok, Thomas A. (Editor) (1977). A Perfusion of Signs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Signs and Meaning: 5 Questions, edited by Peer Bundgaard and Frederik Stjernfelt, 2009 (Automatic Press / VIP). (Includes interviews with 29 leading semioticians of the world.)

Short, T.L. (2007), Peirce's Theory of Signs, Cambridge University Press.

Stubbe, Henry (Henry Stubbe), The Plus Ultra reduced to a Non Plus: Or, A Specimen of some Animadversions upon the Plus Ultra of Mr. Glanvill, wherein sundry Errors of some Virtuosi are discovered, the Credit of the Aristotelians in part Re-advanced; and Enquiries made...., (London), 1670.

von Uexküll, Thure (1982). "Semiotics and medicine". Semiotica. 38 (3–4). doi:10.1515/semi.1982.38.3-4.205. S2CID 201698735.

Williamson, Judith. (1978). Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Boyars.

Zlatev, Jordan. (2009). "The Semiotic Hierarchy: Life, Consciousness, Signs and Language, Cognitive Semiotics". Sweden: Scania.

External links[edit]

Look up semiotics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Semiotics.

Library resources about

Semiotics

Resources in your library

Signo — presents semiotic theories and theories closely related to semiotics.

The Semiotics of the Web

Center for Semiotics — Denmark: Aarhus University

Semiotic Society of America

Open Semiotics Resource Center — includes journals, lecture courses, etc.

Peircean focus[edit]

Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway

Semiotics according to Robert Marty, with 76 definitions of the sign by C. S. Peirce

The Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms

Journals and book series[edit]

American Journal of Semiotics, edited by J. Deely and C. Morrissey. US: Semiotic Society of America.

Applied Semiotics / Sémiotique appliquée (AS/SA), edited by P. G. Marteinson & P. G. Michelucci. CA: University of Toronto.

Approaches to Applied Semiotics (2000–09 series), edited by T. Sebeok, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Approaches to Semiotics (1969–97 series), edited by T. A. Sebeok, A. Rey, R. Posner, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Biosemiotics, edited by M. Barbieri (eic). International Society for Biosemiotic Studies.

Cybernetics and Human Knowing, edited by S. Brier, (chief).

International Journal of Marketing Semiotics, edited by G. Rossolatos, (chief).

International Journal of Signs and Semiotic Systems (IJSSS), edited by A, Loula & J. Queiroz.

The Public Journal of Semiotics, edited by P. Bouissac (eic), A. Cienki (assoc.), R. Jorna, and W. Nöth.

S.E.E.D. Journal (Semiotics, Evolution, Energy, and Development) (2001–7), edited by E. Taborsky. Toronto: SEE.

The Semiotic Review of Books, edited by G. Genosko (gen.) and P. Bouissac (founding ed.).

Semiotica, edited by M. Danesi (chief). International Association for Semiotic Studies.

Semiotiche, edited by A. Valle and M. Visalli.

Semiotics, Communication and Cognition (series), edited by P. Cobley and K. Kull.

Semiotics: Yearbook of the Semiotic Society of America, edited by J. Pelkey. US: Semiotic Society of America.

SemiotiX New Series: A Global Information Bulletin, edited by P. Bouissac, et al.

Sign Systems Studies, edited by K. Kull, K. Lindstrom, M. Lotman, T. Maran, S. Salupere, P. Torop. Estonia: Dept. of Semiotics, U. of Tartu.

Signs and Society, edited by R. J. Parmentier.

Signs: International Journal of Semiotics, edited by M. Thellefsen, T. Thellefsen, and B. Sørensen, (chief eds.).

Tartu Semiotics Library (series), edited by P. Torop, K. Kull, S. Salupere.

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, edited by C. de Waal (chief). The Charles S. Peirce Society.

Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici, founded by U. Eco.

Ferdinand de Saussure (/soʊˈsjʊər/;[4] French: [fɛʁdinɑ̃ də sosyʁ]; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century.[5][6] He is widely considered one of the founders of 20th-century linguistics[7][8][9][10] and one of two major founders (together with Charles Sanders Peirce) of semiotics, or semiology, as Saussure called it.[11]

One of his translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the study of "the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology and anthropology."[12] Although they have undergone extension and critique over time, the dimensions of organization introduced by Saussure continue to inform contemporary approaches to the phenomenon of language. As Leonard Bloomfield stated after reviewing the Cours: "he has given us the theoretical basis for a science of human speech".[13]

Biography[edit]

Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857. His father, Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure, was a mineralogist, entomologist, and taxonomist. Saussure showed signs of considerable talent and intellectual ability as early as the age of fourteen.[14] In the autumn of 1870, he began attending the Institution Martine (previously the Institution Lecoultre until 1969), in Geneva. There he lived with the family of a classmate, Elie David.[15] Graduating at the top of class, Saussure expected to continue his studies at the Gymnase de Genève, but his father decided he was not mature enough at fourteen and a half, and sent him to the Collège de Genève instead. Saussure was not pleased, as he complained: "I entered the Collège de Genève, to waste a year there as completely as a year can be wasted."[16]

After a year of studying Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit and taking a variety of courses at the University of Geneva, he commenced graduate work at the University of Leipzig in 1876.

Two years later, at 21, Saussure published a book entitled Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Dissertation on the Primitive Vowel System in Indo-European Languages). After this he studied for a year at the University of Berlin under the Privatdozent Heinrich Zimmer, with whom he studied Celtic, and Hermann Oldenberg with whom he continued his studies of Sanskrit.[17] He returned to Leipzig to defend his doctoral dissertation De l'emploi du génitif absolu en Sanscrit, and was awarded his doctorate in February 1880. Soon, he relocated to the University of Paris, where he lectured on Sanskrit, Gothic and Old High German and occasionally other subjects.

Ferdinand de Saussure is one of the world's most quoted linguists, which is remarkable as he himself hardly published anything during his lifetime. Even his few scientific articles are not unproblematic. Thus, for example, his publication on Lithuanian phonetics[18] is mostly taken from studies by the Lithuanian researcher Friedrich Kurschat, with whom Saussure traveled through Lithuania in August 1880 for two weeks and whose (German) books Saussure had read.[19] Saussure, who had studied some basic grammar of Lithuanian in Leipzig for one semester but was unable to speak the language, was thus dependent on Kurschat.

Saussure taught at the École pratique des hautes études for eleven years during which he was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor).[20] When offered a professorship in Geneva in 1892, he returned to Switzerland. Saussure lectured on Sanskrit and Indo-European at the University of Geneva for the remainder of his life. It was not until 1907 that Saussure began teaching the Course of General Linguistics, which he would offer three times, ending in the summer of 1911. He died in 1913 in Vufflens-le-Château, Vaud, Switzerland. His brothers were the linguist and Esperantist René de Saussure, and scholar of ancient Chinese astronomy, Léopold de Saussure. His son Raymond de Saussure was a psychoanalyst.

Saussure attempted, at various times in the 1880s and 1890s, to write a book on general linguistic matters. His lectures about important principles of language description in Geneva between 1907 and 1911 were collected and published by his pupils posthumously in the famous Cours de linguistique générale in 1916. Work published in his lifetime includes two monographs and a few dozen of papers and notes, all of them collected in a volume of some 600 pages published in 1922.[21] Saussure did not publish anything of his work on ancient poetics even though he had filled more than of a hundred notebooks. Jean Starobinski edited and presented material from them in the 1970s[22] and more has been published since then.[23] Some of his manuscripts, including an unfinished essay discovered in 1996, were published in Writings in General Linguistics, but most of the material in it had already been published in Engler's critical edition of the Course, in 1967 and 1974. Today it is clear that Cours owes much to its so-called editors Charles Bally and Albert Sèchehaye and various details are difficult to track to Saussure himself or his manuscripts.[24]

Work and influence[edit]

Saussure's theoretical reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language vocalic system and particularly his theory of laryngeals, otherwise unattested at the time, bore fruit and found confirmation after the decipherment of Hittite in the work of later generations of linguists such as Émile Benveniste and Walter Couvreur, who both drew direct inspiration from their reading of the 1878 Mémoire.[25]

Saussure had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century with his notions becoming incorporated in the central tenets of structural linguistics. His main contribution to structuralism was his theory of a two-tiered reality about language. The first is the langue, the abstract and invisible layer, while the second, the parole, refers to the actual speech that we hear in real life.[26] This framework was later adopted by Claude Levi-Strauss, who used the two-tiered model to determine the reality of myths. His idea was that all myths have an underlying pattern, which form the structure that makes them myths.[26]

In Europe, the most important work after Saussure's death was done by the Prague school. Most notably, Nikolay Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson headed the efforts of the Prague School in setting the course of phonological theory in the decades from 1940. Jakobson's universalizing structural-functional theory of phonology, based on a markedness hierarchy of distinctive features, was the first successful solution of a plane of linguistic analysis according to the Saussurean hypotheses. Elsewhere, Louis Hjelmslev and the Copenhagen School proposed new interpretations of linguistics from structuralist theoretical frameworks.[citation needed]In America, where the term 'structuralism' became highly ambiguous, Saussure's ideas informed the distributionalism of Leonard Bloomfield, but his influence remained limited.[27][28] Systemic functional linguistics is a theory considered to be based firmly on the Saussurean principles of the sign, albeit with some modifications. Ruqaiya Hasan describes systemic functional linguistics as a 'post-Saussurean' linguistic theory. Michael Halliday argues:Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to express the conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe". This has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness of the rest to emerge with greater clarity. An example of something that is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different kinds of meaning in language are expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as appears when linguistic structure is interpreted in functional terms[29]Course in General Linguistics[edit]Main article: Course in General LinguisticsSaussure's most influential work, Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale), was published posthumously in 1916 by former students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, on the basis of notes taken from Saussure's lectures in Geneva.[30] The Course became one of the seminal linguistics works of the 20th century not primarily for the content (many of the ideas had been anticipated in the works of other 20th century linguists) but for the innovative approach that Saussure applied in discussing linguistic phenomena.Its central notion is that language may be analyzed as a formal system of differential elements, apart from the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension. Examples of these elements include his notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also have a referent, Saussure took that to lie beyond the linguist's purview.[citation needed]Throughout the book, he stated that a linguist can develop a diachronic analysis of a text or theory of language but must learn just as much or more about the language/text as it exists at any moment in time (i.e. "synchronically"): "Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas". A science that studies the life of signs within society and is a part of social and general psychology. Saussure believed that semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign, and he called it semiology.[31]Laryngeal theory[edit]Main article: Laryngeal theoryWhile a student, Saussure published an important work about Proto-Indo-European, which explained unusual forms of word roots in terms of lost phonemes he called sonant coefficients. The Scandinavian scholar Hermann Möller suggested that they might actually be laryngeal consonants, leading to what is now known as the laryngeal theory. After Hittite texts were discovered and deciphered, Polish linguist Jerzy Kuryłowicz recognized that a Hittite consonant stood in the positions where Saussure had theorized a lost phoneme some 48 years earlier, confirming the theory. It has been argued[citation needed] that Saussure's work on this problem, systematizing the irregular word forms by hypothesizing then-unknown phonemes, stimulated his development of structuralism.Influence outside linguistics[edit]The principles and methods employed by structuralism were later adapted in diverse fields by French intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Such scholars took influence from Saussure's ideas in their own areas of study (literary studies/philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, respectively).[citation needed]View of language[edit]Saussure approaches theory of language from two different perspectives. On the one hand, language is a system of signs. That is, a semiotic system; or a semiological system as he himself calls it. On the other hand, a language is also a social phenomenon: a product of the language community.Language as semiology[edit]The bilateral sign[edit]One of Saussure's key contributions to semiotics lies in what he called semiology, the concept of the bilateral (two-sided) sign which consists of 'the signifier' (a linguistic form, e.g. a word) and 'the signified' (the meaning of the form). Saussure supported the argument for the arbitrariness of the sign although he did not deny the fact that some words are onomatopoeic, or claim that picture-like symbols are fully arbitrary. Saussure also did not consider the linguistic sign as random, but as historically cemented.[a] All in all, he did not invent the philosophy of arbitrariness, but made a very influential contribution to it.[32]The arbitrariness of words of different languages itself is a fundamental concept in Western thinking of language, dating back to Ancient Greek philosophers.[33] The question whether words are natural or arbitrary (and artificially made by people) returned as a controversial topic during the Age of Enlightenment when the medieval scholastic dogma, that languages were created by God, became opposed by the advocates of humanistic philosophy. There were efforts to construct a 'universal language', based on the lost Adamic language, with various attempts to uncover universal words or characters which would be readily understood by all people regardless of their nationality. John Locke, on the other hand, was among those who believed that languages were a rational human innovation,[34] and argued for the arbitrariness of words.[33]Saussure took it for granted in his time that "No one disputes the principle of the arbitrary nature of the sign."[b] He however disagreed with the common notion that each word corresponds "to the thing that it names" or what is called the referent in modern semiotics. For example, in Saussure's notion, the word 'tree' does not refer to a tree as a physical object, but to the psychological concept of a tree. The linguistic sign thus arises from the psychological association between the signifier (a 'sound-image') and the signified (a 'concept'). There can therefore be no linguistic expression without meaning, but also no meaning without linguistic expression.[c] Saussure's structuralism, as it later became called, therefore includes an implication of linguistic relativity. However, Saussure's own view has been described instead as a form of semantic holism that acknowledged that the interconnection between terms in a language was not fully arbitrary and only methodologically bracketed the relationship between linguistic terms and the physical world.[35]The naming of spectral colours exemplifies how meaning and expression arise simultaneously from their interlinkage. Different colour frequencies are per se meaningless, or mere substance or meaning potential. Likewise, phonemic combinations which are not associated with any content are only meaningless expression potential, and therefore not considered as signs. It is only when a region of the spectrum is outlined and given an arbitrary name, for example 'blue', that the sign emerges. The sign consists of the signifier ('blue') and of the signified (the colour region), and of the associative link which connects them. Arising from an arbitrary demarcation of meaning potential, the signified is not a property of the physical world. In Saussure's concept, language is ultimately not a function of reality, but a self-contained system. Thus, Saussure's semiology entails a bilateral (two-sided) perspective of semiotics.The same idea is applied to any concept. For example, natural law does not dictate which plants are 'trees' and which are 'shrubs' or a different type of woody plant; or whether these should be divided into further groups. Like blue, all signs gain semantic value in opposition to other signs of the system (e.g. red, colourless). If more signs emerge (e.g. 'marine blue'), the semantic field of the original word may narrow down. Conversely, words may become antiquated, whereby competition for the semantic field lessens. Or, the meaning of a word may change altogether.[36]After his death, structural and functional linguists applied Saussure's concept to the analysis of the linguistic form as motivated by meaning. The opposite direction of the linguistic expressions as giving rise to the conceptual system, on the other hand, became the foundation of the post-Second World War structuralists who adopted Saussure's concept of structural linguistics as the model for all human sciences as the study of how language shapes our concepts of the world. Thus, Saussure's model became important not only for linguistics, but for humanities and social sciences as a whole.[37]Opposition theory[edit]See also: Binary opposition and MarkednessA second key contribution comes from Saussure's notion of the organisation of language based on the principle of opposition. Saussure made a distinction between meaning (significance) and value. On the semantic side, concepts gain value by being contrasted with related concepts, creating a conceptual system which could in modern terms be described as a semantic network. On the level of the sound-image, phonemes and morphemes gain value by being contrasted with related phonemes and morphemes; and on the level of the grammar, parts of speech gain value by being contrasted with each other.[d] Each element within each system is eventually contrasted with all other elements in different types of relations so that no two elements have the exact same value:"Within the same language, all words used to express related ideas limit each other reciprocally; synonyms like French redouter 'dread', craindre 'fear,' and avoir peur 'be afraid' have value only through their opposition: if redouter did not exist, all its content would go to its competitors."[e]Saussure defined his own theory in terms of binary oppositions: sign—signified, meaning—value, language—speech, synchronic—diachronic, internal linguistics—external linguistics, and so on. The related term markedness denotes the assessment of value between binary oppositions. These were studied extensively by post-war structuralists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss to explain the organisation of social conceptualisation, and later by the post-structuralists to criticise it. Cognitive semantics also diverges from Saussure on this point, emphasizing the importance of similarity in defining categories in the mind as well as opposition.[38]Based on markedness theory, the Prague Linguistic Circle made great advances in the study of phonetics reforming it as the systemic study of phonology. Although the terms opposition and markedness are rightly associated with Saussure's concept of language as a semiological system, he did not invent the terms and concepts which had been discussed by various 19th century grammarians before him.[39]Language as a social phenomenon[edit]In his treatment of language as a 'social fact', Saussure touches topics that were controversial in his time, and that would continue to split opinions in the post-war structuralist movement.[37] Saussure's relationship with 19th century theories of language was somewhat ambivalent. These included social Darwinism and Völkerpsychologie or Volksgeist thinking which were regarded by many intellectuals as nationalist and racist pseudoscience.[40][41][42]Saussure, however, considered the ideas useful if treated in a proper way. Instead of discarding August Schleicher's organicism or Heymann Steinthal's "spirit of the nation", he restricted their sphere in ways that were meant to preclude any chauvinistic interpretations.[43][40]Organic analogySaussure exploited the sociobiological concept of language as a living organism. He criticises August Schleicher and Max Müller's ideas of languages as organisms struggling for living space, but settles with promoting the idea of linguistics as a natural science as long as the study of the 'organism' of language excludes its adaptation to its territory.[43] This concept would be modified in post-Saussurean linguistics by the Prague circle linguists Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy,[44] and eventually diminished.[45]The speech circuit[edit]Main article: Langue and parolePerhaps the most famous of Saussure's ideas is the distinction between language and speech (Fr. langue et parole), with 'speech' referring to the individual occurrences of language usage. These constitute two parts of three of Saussure's 'speech circuit' (circuit de parole). The third part is the brain, that is, the mind of the individual member of the language community.[f] This idea is in principle borrowed from Steinthal, so Saussure concept of a language as a social fact corresponds to "Volksgeist", although he was careful to preclude any nationalistic interpretations. In Saussure's and Durkheim's thinking, social facts and norms do not elevate the individuals, but shackle them.[40][41] Saussure's definition of language is statistical rather than idealised."Among all the individuals that are linked together by speech, some sort of average will be set up : all will reproduce — not exactly of course, but approximately — the same signs united with the same concepts."[g]Saussure argues that language is a 'social fact'; a conventionalised set of rules or norms relating to speech. When at least two people are engaged in conversation, there forms a communicative circuit between the minds of the individual speakers. Saussure explains that language, as a social system, is neither situated in speech nor in the mind. It only properly exists between the two within the loop. It is located in – and is the product of – the collective mind of the linguistic group.[h] An individual has to learn the normative rules of language and can never control them.[i]