The following
outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to semiotics:
Semiotics – study of
meaning-making, signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Also called semiotic studies, or semiology (in the Saussurean tradition).
Classification of semiotics
Semiotics can be described as all of the following:
Academic discipline – branch of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined (in part), and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to which their practitioners belong.
Social science – field of study concerned with society and human behaviours.
Branches of semiotics
Three main branches
Semantics – relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or
meaning
Syntactics – relations among signs in formal structures
Pragmatics – relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them
Subfields
Biosemiotics – growing field that studies the production, action and
interpretation of
signs and
codes in the
biological realm. Biosemiotics attempts to integrate the findings of scientific biology and
semiotics, representing a
paradigmatic shift in the
occidental scientific view of
life, demonstrating that
semiosis (sign process, including
meaning and interpretation) is its immanent and intrinsic feature.
Cognitive semiotics – study of meaning-making by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences as well as in the human sciences. It involves conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental and ethnographic investigations.
Product semiotics – study of the use of signs in the design of physical products. Introduced by
Rune Monö while teaching Industrial Design at the Institute of Design,
Umeå University, Sweden.
Literary semiotics – approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics. Semiotics, tied closely to the structuralism pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, was extremely influential in the development of literary theory out of the formalist approaches of the early twentieth century.
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)).
Organisational semiotics – examines the nature, characteristics and features of information, and studies how information can be best used in the context of organised activities and business domains. Organisational semiotics treats organisations as information systems in which information is created, processed, distributed, stored and used.
Semiotic anthropology – semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce and Roman Jakobson applied to anthropology.
Semiotic engineering – views HCI as computer-mediated communication between designers and users at interaction time. The system speaks for its designers in various types of conversations specified at design time. These conversations communicate the designers' understanding of who the users are, what they know the users want or need to do, in which preferred ways, and why.
Semiotic information theory – considers the information content of signs and expressions as it is conceived within the semiotic or sign-relational framework developed by Charles Sanders Peirce.
Social semiotics – expands the interpretable semiotic landscape to include all cultural codes, such as in slang, fashion, and advertising. It considers social connotations, including meanings related to ideology and power structures, in addition to denotative meanings of signs.
Urban semiotics – study of meaning in urban form as generated by signs, symbols, and their social connotations.[1] It focuses on material objects of the built environment, such as streets, squares, parks, and buildings, but also abstract cultural constructs such as building codes, planning documents, unbuilt designs, real estate advertising, and popular discourse about the city,[2] such as architectural criticism and real estate blogs.
^Gottdienier, M., and Lagopoulos, Alexandros, eds. The City and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. p.5
Semiotiche, Gian Paolo Caprettini, Managing Director; Andrea Valle & Miriam Visalli, Editors. Some articles in English. Home site seems gone from Web, old url
[1] no longer good, and Wayback Machine cannot retrieve.