Semiotics is the study of signs and sign processes — how meaning is made, communicated, and interpreted. The field has two major founding traditions: Peirce’s triadic semiotics, grounded in logic and philosophy, and Saussure’s dyadic semiology, grounded in structural linguistics. This module focuses primarily on the Peircean tradition, which treats the sign as a three-place relation among representamen, object, and interpretant, and semiosis as the open-ended process by which signs generate further signs.
Semiotics is not confined to language. Any system in which something stands for something else to some interpreter — visual symbols, mathematical notation, gestures, architecture, software interfaces — falls within its scope. The generality of sign theory is what makes it useful as a foundation for understanding diverse knowledge systems.
Contents
- Curricula — structured lessons on semiotics
- Terms — key concepts in semiotics
- Semiotic Practice