Semiotics

A sign is anything that communicates a meaning, that is not the sign itself, to the interpreter of the sign. Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign.

Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems.

A sign system is a key concept in semiotics and is used to refer to any system of signs and relations between signs.

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.

Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor.

In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics).

Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος bios, "life" and σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikos, "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, or production and interpretation of signs and codes in the biological realm.

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

Ferdinand de Saussure (26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist and semiotician.

In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics).

Zoosemiotics is the semiotic study of the use of signs among animals, more precisely the study of semiosis among animals, i.e. the study of how something comes to function as a sign to some animal.

Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the study of sign process (semiosis), which is any form of activity, conduct, or any process that involves signs, including the production of meaning.

The term was introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) to describe a process that interprets signs as referring to their objects, as described in his theory of sign relations, or semiotics.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he sometimes spelled 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", and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.

Today he is appreciated largely for his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, scientific methodology, semiotics, and for his founding of pragmatism.

Yuri Lotman introduced Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopted Locke's coinage as the name to subtitle his founding at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal, Sign Systems Studies.

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman (Ю́рий Миха́йлович Ло́тман; Juri Lotman; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent literary scholar, semiotician, and cultural historian, who worked at the University of Tartu.

Saussurean semiotics have been challenged with serious criticism, for example by Jacques Derrida's assertion 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'.

Jacques Derrida (born Jackie Élie Derrida; July 15, 1930 – October 9, 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts, and developed in the context of phenomenology.

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.

Charles William Morris (May 23, 1901 – January 15, 1979) was an American philosopher and semiotician.

Yuri Lotman introduced Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopted Locke's coinage as the name to subtitle his founding at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal, Sign Systems Studies.

The language of instruction in most curricula is Estonian, some more notable exceptions are taught in English, such as semiotics, applied measurement science, computer science, information technology law, and European Union – Russia studies.

Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

Semiotics is the study of signs, symbols, and signification as communicative behavior.

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.

In semiotics, a code is a set of conventions or sub-codes currently in use to communicate meaning.

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, ) consist exclusively of objects related to the animal as desirable, undesirable, or "safe to ignore" (0).

However, his most notable contribution is the notion of Umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok and philosopher Martin Heidegger.

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).

In semiotics, denotation is the surface or the literal meaning.

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).

Semantics (from sēmantikós, "significant") is the linguistic and philosophical study of meaning in language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics.

Codes also represent the values of the culture, and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life.

In semiotics, the value of a sign depends on its position and relations in the system of signification and upon the particular codes being used.

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.

Linguistic anthropologists often draw on related fields including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, semiotics, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis.

Codes also represent the values of the culture, and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life.

In semiotics, connotation arises when the denotative relationship between a signifier and its signified is inadequate to serve the needs of the community.

Yuri Lotman introduced Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopted Locke's coinage as the name to subtitle his founding at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal, Sign Systems Studies.

Sign Systems Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press.

Hence, communication theorists construct models based on codes, media, and contexts to explain the biology, psychology, and mechanics involved.

In semiotics, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, context refers to those objects or entities which surround a focal event, in these disciplines typically a communicative event, of some kind.

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.

Decoding, in semiotics, is the process of interpreting a message sent by an addresser to an addressee.

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.

The concept is discussed in communication, semiotics, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and political science.

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.

Communication studies shares with cultural studies an interest in how messages are interpreted through the political, cultural, economic, semiotic, hermeneutic, and social dimensions of their contexts.