Semiotics
Semiotics, or
semiology, is the study of
signs, both individually and grouped in sign systems. It includes the study of how
meaning is made and
understood. Semioticians also sometimes examine how organisms make predictions about and adapt to their semiotic niche in the world (see
Semiosis). Semiotics theorises at a general level about
signs, while the study of the communication of information in living organisms is covered in
biosemiotics.
The term, then spelt
semeiotics (
Greek: σημειοτικοσ,
semeiotikos, an interpreter of signs), was first used in English by
Henry Stubbes (1670, p. 75) in a very precise sense to denote the branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs.
John Locke (1690) used the term
semeiotics in Book 4, Chapter 21 of
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Here he explains how science can be divided into three parts:
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, 1823/1963, p. 174).
Locke then elaborates on the nature of this third category, naming it Σημειωτικη (
Semeiotike) and explaining it as "the doctrine of signs" in the following terms:
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,[That is, "thought out", "contrived", or "devised" (Oxford English Dictionary'').] not commanding) medicines. (Locke, 1823/1963, 4.21.4, p. 175).
Semioticians classify signs and 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 from a source to a receiver as efficiently and effectively as possible. Hence, communication theorists construct models based on codes, media, and contexts to explain the
biology,
psychology, and
mechanics involved. Both disciplines also recognise 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 (1987; trans. 1990: 16) who, as a
musicologist, considered the theoretical study of communication irrelevant to his application of semiotics.
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.
Perhaps more difficult is the distinction between semiotics and the
philosophy of language. In a sense, the difference is a difference of traditions more than a difference of 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 about non-linguistic signification. Philosophy of language also bears a stronger connection to linguistics, while semiotics is closer to some of the
humanities (including
literary theory and
cultural anthropology).
Semiosis or
semeiosis is the process that forms meaning from any organism's apprehension of the world through signs.
The importance of signs and signification has been recognised throughout much of the history of
philosophy, and in psychology as well.
Plato and
Aristotle both explored the relationship between signs and the world, and
Augustine considered the nature of the sign within a
conventional system. These theories have had a lasting effect in
Western philosophy, especially through
Scholastic philosophy. More recently,
Umberto Eco, in his "Semiotics and philosophy of language" has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers.
Charles Sanders Peirce (
1839–
1914), the founder of the philosophical doctrine known as
pragmatism, preferred the term "semeiotic." He defined
semiosis as "...action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of
three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs." ("Pragmatism",
Essential Peirce 2: 411; written 1907). His notion of semiosis evolved throughout his career, beginning with the
triadic relation just described, and ending with a system consisting of 59,049 (= 3
10, or 3 to the 10th power) possible elements and relations. One reason for this high number is that he allowed each interpretant to act as a sign, thereby creating a new signifying relation. Peirce was also a notable
logician, and he considered semiotics and logic as facets of a wider theory. For a summary of Peirce's contributions to semiotics, see Liszka (1996).
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, and to the
signified as the mental concept. It is important to note that, according to Saussure, the sign is completely arbitrary, i.e. there was 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 himself 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 has also greatly influenced later philosophers, especially
postmodern theorists such as
Jacques Derrida,
Roland Barthes, and
Jean Baudrillard. Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term semiologie while teaching his landmark "Course on General Linguistics" at the University of Geneva from
1906–
11. 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.
Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (
1899–
1965) developed a structuralist approach to Saussure's theories. His best known work is
Prolegomena: A Theory of Language, which was expanded in
Resumé of the Theory of Language, a formal development of
glossematics, his scientific calculus of language.
Charles W. Morris (
1901–
1979). In his 1938
Foundations of the Theory of Signs, he defined semiotics as grouping the triad
syntax,
semantics, and
pragmatics. Syntax studies the interrelation of the signs, without regard to meaning. Semantics studies the relation between the signs and the objects to which they apply. Pragmatics studies the relation between the sign system and its human (or animal) user. Unlike his mentor
George Herbert Mead, Morris was a behaviorist and sympathetic to the
Vienna Circle positivism of his colleague
Rudolf Carnap. Morris has been accused of misreading Peirce.
Umberto Eco 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 semiotic elements. His most important contributions to the field bear on interpretation, encyclopedia, and model reader.
Algirdas Julius Greimas 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, a student of Charles W. Morris, was a prolific and wide-ranging American semiotician. Though 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 it lives in. He also posed the equation between semiosis (the activity of interpreting signs) and life - the view that has further developed by Copenhagen-Tartu biosemiotic school.
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 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 Vsevolodovich Ivanov, and
Boris Uspensky.
Valentin Volosinov () (
1895–
June 13,
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 (tr.: Marksizm i Filosofiya Yazyka) attempted to incorporate Saussure's linguistic insights into Marxism.
Applications of semiotics include:
*It represents a
methodology for the analysis of texts regardless of
modality. For these purposes, "text" is any message preserved in a form whose existence is independent of both sender and receiver;
*Its concepts and methods are highly portable, and have enriched our understanding of many disciplines, e.g., biology, anthropology, computing, engineering, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, and psychology;
*It can improve
ergonomic design in situations where it is important to ensure that human beings can 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.
Semiotics is only slowly establishing itself as a discipline to be respected. In some countries, its role is limited to
literary criticism and an appreciation of audio and visual media, but this narrow focus can 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. The use of semiotic methods to reveal different levels of meaning and, sometimes, hidden motivations has led some to
demonise elements of the subject as
Marxist,
nihilist, etc. (e.g.
critical discourse analysis in
Postmodernism and
deconstruction in
Post-structuralism).
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 Sebeok,
Zeitschrift für Semiotik;
European Journal of Semiotics;
Versus (founded and directed by Eco), et al.; and as articles accepted in periodicals of other disciplines, especially journals oriented toward philosophy and cultural criticism.
Semiotics has sprouted a number of subfields, including but not limited to the following:
*
Biosemiotics is the study of semiotic processes at all levels of biology, or a semiotic study of living systems.
*
Computational semiotics attempts to engineer the process of
semiosis, say in the study of and design for
Human-Computer Interaction or to mimic aspects of human
cognition through
artificial intelligence and
knowledge representation.
* 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.
*
Music semiology "There are strong arguments that music inhabits a semiological realm which, on both ontogenetic and phylogenetic levels, has developmental priority over verbal language." (Middleton 1990, p.172) See Nattiez (1976, 1987, 1989), Stefani (1973, 1986), Baroni (1983), and
Semiotica (66: 1–3 (1987)).
*
Structuralism and
post-structuralism in the work of
Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault,
Louis Hjelmslev,
Roman Jakobson,
Jacques Lacan,
Claude Lévi-Strauss, etc.
*
Organizational semiotics is the study of semiotic processes in organizations. It has strong ties to
Computational semiotics and
Human-Computer Interaction.
*
Urban semiotics*
Law and Semiotics* 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. (2002).
Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge.
* 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.
* Deely, John. (2005 [1990]).
Basics of Semiotics. 4th ed. Tartu: Tartu University Press.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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, J.,
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 L. (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.
* Sebeok, Thomas A. (Editor) (1977).
A Perfusion of Signs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
* Stubbe, H. (
Henry Stubbes),
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.
* Williamson, Judith. (1978).
Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Boyars.
*
Communication studies*
Critical theory*
Cybernetics*
Information theory*
Inquiry*
Logic*
Logic of information*
Logic of relatives*
Meaning*
Media studies*
Pragmatics*
Semantics*
Semeiotic*
Semiotic dynamics*
Semiotic information theory*
Symbology*
Syntax*
Applied Semiotics / Sémiotique appliquée*
Communicology: The link between semiotics and phenomenological manifestations*
The Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms*
Arisbe, The Peirce Gateway*
Portal Louis Hjelmslev*
Semiotics for Beginners*
"What is semiotics?" by Eugene Gorny
*
The Semiotics of the Web*
Charles W. Morris*
Ryder, Martin,
Instructional Technology Connections: Semiotics,
Webpage*
Semiotics and the English Language Arts*
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Medieval Semiotics*
Semiotics and ontology: John Deely and John Poinsot
