Demonstrating how semiotic theory and method can be applied to decoding false representations and dangerous discourses, this book explores how semiotics can be used as a potentially powerful science of conscience. Confronting the sometimes negative perception of semiotics as academically inward-looking and lacking in morality, Marcel Danesi turns this view on its head. Instead, Danesi highlights how the same techniques that have allowed the use of semiotics for self-serving commercial purposes, such as advertising or marketing, could also be applied to deciphering current world problems. Through describing the semiotic notions and methods that can be used to analyze misrepresentations, propaganda, or meaning collapses, the book enables readers to become conscientiously aware of their hidden meanings and the harmful effects that they have on society. Identifying key issues of concern, such as climate change and anti-science discourses, it shows how they can be interpreted in terms of basic semiotic theory. This analysis of crucial issues demonstrates how semiotics can be used to raise awareness of critically important matters in modern society, and to encourage the development of more robust and ethical attitudes towards them.

Interrogating the relatively new field of cognitive semiotics, this book explores shared issues in cognitive science and semiotics. Building on research from recent decades, Per Aage Brandt investigates the potential of a cognitive semiotic approach to enhance our understanding of language, thought and semiosis in general. Introducing a critical, non-standard approach both to cognitive science and to semiotics, this book discusses the understanding of meaning and mind through four major dimensions; mental architecture, mental spaces, discourse coherence and eco-organization. Encompassing a rich variety of topics and debates, Cognitive Semiotics outlines several bridges between 'continental' and 'analytic' thinking in the study of semantics, pragmatics, discourse and the philosophy of language and mind.

Contemporary culture is as much visual as literary. This book explores an approach to the communicative power of the pictorial and multimodal documents that make up this visual culture, using Peircean semiotics. It develops the enormous theoretical potential of Peirce's theory of signs of signs (semiotics) and the persuasive strategies in which they are employed (visual rhetoric) in a variety of documents. Unlike presentations of semiotics that take the written word as the reference value, this book examines this particular rhetoric using pictorial signs as its prime examples. The visual is not treated as the 'poor relation' to the (written) word. It is therefore possible to isolate more clearly the specific constituent properties of word and image, taking these as the basic material of a wide range of cultural artefacts. It looks at comic strips, conventional photographs, photographic allegory, pictorial metaphor, advertising campaigns and the huge semiotic range exhibited by the category of the 'poster'. This is essential reading for all students of semiotics, introductory and advanced.

A comparative study of how drinks and drinking, as embodied semiotic and material forms, mediate modern social life.

The Semiotics of Happiness examines the rise of 'happiness' (and its various satellite terminologies) as a social and political semiotic, exploring its origins in the US and subsequent spread into the UK and across the globe. The research takes as its starting point the development of discussions about happiness in UK newspapers in which dedicated advocates began to claim that a new 'science of happiness' had been discovered and argued for social and political change on its behalf. Through an in-depth analysis of the written and visual rhetoric and subsequent activities of these influential 'claims-makers', Frawley argues that happiness became a serious political issue not because of a growing unhappiness in society nor a demand 'on the ground' for new knowledge about it, but rather because influential and dedicated 'insiders' took the issue on at a cultural moment when problems cast in emotional terms were particularly likely to make an impact. Emerging from the analysis is the observation that, while apparently positive and light-hearted, the concern with happiness implicitly affirms a 'vulnerability' model of human functioning, encourages a morality of low expectations, and in spite of the radical language used to describe it, is ultimately conservative and ideally suited to an era of 'no alternative' (to capitalism).

Integrates structural and historical perspectives on the semiotics of religion and gives an account of the distinctive features of religious language and symbolism.

This volume stresses the contemporary relevance of semiotics. The introductory chapter shows how the collection of papers emphasises crossings at the material level of physical reality as well as in their semio-cognitive and cultural implications, questioning the delimitation of interdisciplinary borders between the social sciences and humanities and STEM disciplines. The volume shows how semiotics continues to provide a framework for emerging knowledge traditions without completely disregarding its past. Through explorations in fields as wide apart as ecological psychology and visualisation systems, by finding correspondences between the arithmetic of music and cosmic energies or between the pedagogic significance of images and habitat facilities, as well as using investigation tools ranging from the mathematical representation of concepts to science education, this book addresses multifarious aspects and implications of culture and cognition, standing convincing proof that semiotics is as alive, productive and scholarly useful as ever.

Provides information that a student needs when encountering semiotics for the first time or as a more advanced reader wishing to do in-depth semiotic readings. This book provides a brief historical overview of the field, an explanation of semiotic theory, key term definitions, outlines of the work of key thinkers, and key readings for students.

"In his Course in General Linguistics, first published in 1916, Saussure postulated the existence of a general science of signs, or Semiology, of which linguistics would form only one part. Semiology, therefore aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification . . . The Elements here presented have as their sole aim the extraction from linguistics of analytical concepts which we think a priori to be sufficiently general to start semiological research on its way. In assembling them, it is not presupposed that they will remain intact during the course of research; nor that semiology will always be forced to follow the linguistic model closely. We are merely suggesting and elucidating a terminology in the hope that it may enable an initial (albeit provisional) order to be introduced into the heterogeneous mass of significant facts. In fact what we purport to do is furnish a principle of classification of the questions. These elements of semiology will therefore be grouped under four main headings borrowed from structural linguistics: I. Language and Speech; II. Signified and Signifier; III. Syntagm and System; IV. Denotation and Connotation."--Roland Barthes, from his Introduction

A much-needed guide to the terms and models used in the semiotic approach. Over the past few decades, semiotics has increasingly gained in popularity and yet, to many, the very term remains an enigma. But, until now, there has never been a dictionary that simply expresses the terms and models. The Dictionary of Semiotics' entries are based on the theory evolved by the Paris School of semiotics founded by A.J. Greimas. This invaluable guide combines a wordbook with detailed explanation of theory and a host of practical illustrations-all accessible to students of all levels. A specialized lexicon of semiotics' metalanguage follows an initial definition of the concept, coupled with a brief historical overview of the elaboration of European semiotic theory. The definitions are expressed in lucid terms and further clarified by easily understood examples. Finally, a semiotic analysis of "Sleeping Beauty" provides a practical example of the method, both illustrating how semiotic models can be helpful in probing effects of meaning on the textual surface and showing how to integrate them into wider contexts.