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Columbia Encyclopedia entry: semiotics
Semiotics or semiology, discipline deriving from the American logician C. S. Peirce and the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. It has come to mean generally the study of any cultural product (e.g., a text) as a formal system of signs. Saussure's key notion of the arbitrary nature of the sign means that the relation of words to things is not natural but conventional; thus a language is essentially a self-contained system of signs, wherein each element is meaningless by itself and meaningful only by its differentiation from the other elements. This linguistic model has influenced recent literary criticism, leading away from the study of an author's biography or a work's social setting and toward the internal structure of the text itself (see structuralism). Semiotics is not limited to linguistics, however, since virtually anything (e.g., gesture, clothing, toys) can function as a sign.

See R. Barthes, Elements of Semiology (1967); A. A. Berger, Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics (1988).

Wikipedia search results for: Semiotics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
''' Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes, or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches:
Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata
Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
Pragmatics: Relation between signs and their effects on those who use them Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions; for example, Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication. However, some...more »
Columbia Encyclopedia search results: semiotics
Results 1 - 6  of 6
  • deconstruction

    Deconstruction, in linguistics, philosophy, and literary theory, the exposure and undermining of the metaphysical assumptions involved in systematic attempts to ground knowledge, especially in...

  • Kristeva, Julia

    Kristeva, Julia, 1941–, French critic, psychoanalyst, semiotician, and writer, b. Sliven, Bulgaria. Writing in French, she has explored many subjects including structuralist linguistics and se...

  • Eco, Umberto

    Eco, Umberto, 1932–, Italian novelist, essayist, and scholar. His first novel, The Name of the Rose (tr. 1983), is a medieval mystery. A pastiche of detective fiction, medieval philosophy, and...

  • structuralism

    Structuralism, theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material things in themselves. This method found wide use...

  • Peirce, Charles Sanders

    Peirce, Charles Sanders, 1839–1914, American philosopher and polymath, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1859; son of Benjamin Peirce. Except for occasional lectures he renounced the regimen...

  • sign language

    Sign language, gestural communication used as an alternative or replacement for speech. Sign languages resemble oral languages in every way other than their modality. As with oral languages, s...

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