Semiotics

From Geography

Semiotics

Study of signs and sign-using behaviour, especially in language. In the late 19th and early 20th century the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce led to the emergence of semiotics as a method for examining phenomena in different fields, including aesthetics, anthropology, communications, psychology, and semantics. Interest in the structure behind the use of particular signs links semiotics with the methods of structuralism. [1]

Semiotics is concerned not with the relations between signs and things but with the interrelationships between signs themselves, within their structured systems or codes of signification (see paradigm, syntagm). The semiotic approach to literary works stresses the production of literary meanings from shared conventions and codes; but the scope of semiotics goes beyond spoken or written language to other kinds of communicative systems such as cinema, advertising, clothing, gesture, and cuisine. [2]

For geographers, these signs may be in the landscape; landscapes may be ‘read’ in different ways, and may become part of the political process.

References

• 1 Unkown. Encyclopædia Britannica, Semiotics. Retrieved September 29, 2010 from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/534099/semiotics
• 2 Chandler, D. (2001, Februari 19). Semiotics for beginners. Encoding/decoding. Retrieved Septermber 29, 2010 from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html