Semiotics

Abstract

Semiotics is defined as the discipline studying and documenting signs, sign behavior, sign creation, and sign functions. It also comes under the rubric of semiology, significs, and even structuralist science, although semiotics is the designation adopted by the International Association of Semiotic Studies during its founding meeting in 1969 and, as a consequence, the most commonly used term. A sign is any physical form – a word, a picture, a sound, a symbol, etc. – that stands for something other than itself in some specific context. A cross figure, for instance, constitutes a sign because it stands for various things, such as “crossroads” and “Christianity.” It all depends on who uses it and in what context it is used. Today, semiotics is an autonomous discipline, but it has become a powerful cross‐disciplinary methodological tool in the study of such sign‐based phenomena as body language, aesthetic products, visual communication, media, advertising, narratives, material culture (fashion, cuisine, etc.), and rituals. One of its modern‐day founders, the Swiss philologist Ferdinand de Saussure, defined it as the science concerned with “the role of signs as part of social life” and “the laws governing them” (1958[1916]: 15).