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