WHAT IS SEMIOTICS?

The term “semiotics” comes from seemeiootikee, the Greek word for “sign”. As generally conceived, a “sign” is anything that stands for or represents something. Semiotics – once and sometimes still called “semiology” – is the science that investigates the existence and usage of signs. Among the most obvious signs surrounding us are verbal languages, tones of music, visual messages, ads, logos, traffic signs, machinegenerated signals, national emblems, decorations, clothes, behavior, brands, products of media and marketing, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum.

Semiotics does not, however, study only such concrete and salient signs as those just listed. It also studies how signs acquire and transmit meanings. Hence semiotics plays a part in communication studies and computer-assisted research, as well as in philosophy, cognition, linguistics, aesthetics, ethics, theology, social sciences – that is to say, in all disciplines that deal with issues of meaning. Deep down we can think only in signs and, according to biosemiotics, all living organisms function as various sign processes.