Semiotic anthropology is the process of using the cognitive tools of

semiotics Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is a ...

(theory of signs) to understand social structures from the anthropological perspective. The phrase was first used by Milton Singer (1978), whose work brought together the

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...

and

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (, ; 18 July 1982) was a Russian linguist and literary theorist. A pioneer of structural linguistics, Jakobson was one of the most celebrated and influential linguists of the twentieth century. With Nikolai Trubetzk ...

with theoretical streams that had long been flowing in and around the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, where Singer taught. In the late 1970s,

Michael Silverstein Michael Silverstein (12 September 1945 – 17 July 2020) was an American linguist who served as the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology at the University of Chicago. He was a theoretician ...

, a young student of Jakobson's at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, joined Singer in Chicago's Department of Anthropology. Since that time, anthropological work inspired by Peirce's semiotic have proliferated, in part as students of Singer and Silverstein have spread out across the country, developing semiotic-anthropological agendas of their own.

Overview

Semiotic

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

has its precursor in Malinowski's

contextualism Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the ''context'' in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the a ...

(which may be called anthropological semantics), which was later resumed by John Rupert Firth.

Winfried Nöth Winfried Nöth (born September 12, 1944 in Gerolzhofen) is a German linguist and semiotician. After graduating from high school in 1963 in Brunswick, from 1965 to 1969 Nöth studied English, French and Portuguese in Münster, Geneva, Lisbon and ...

(1995) ''Handbook of semiotics'
p.103
/ref> Anthropological approaches to semantics are alternative to the three major types of semantics approaches:

linguistic semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

, logical semantics, and

general semantics General semantics is a school of thought that incorporates philosophy, philosophic and science, scientific aspects. Although it does not stand on its own as a separate list of schools of philosophy, school of philosophy, a separate science, or ...

. Other independent approaches to semantics are philosophical semantics and psychological semantics.

Notes

References

*Singer, M. B. (1978). "For a Semiotic Anthropology," in Sight, Sound and Sense. Edited by T. Sebeok, pp. 202–231. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. *{{cite journal , author = Mertz, Elizabeth , title = Semiotic Anthropology , journal = Annual Review of Anthropology , year=2007 , pages = 337–353 , issue = 1 , doi = 10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094417 , volume = 36

Overview

See also

Notes

References

Further reading