Semiotics

Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings (which are usually not considered meanings) and may communicate internally (through thought itself) or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge.

The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological dimensions; for example the Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco proposed that every cultural phenomenon may be studied as communication. Some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science, however. They examine areas also belonging to the life sciences—such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). Fundamental semiotic theories take ''signs'' or sign systems as their object of study; applied semiotics analyzes cultures and cultural artifacts according to the ways they construct meaning through their being signs. The communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics).

Semiotics is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology, which is a subset of semiotics.

History and terminology

The importance of signs and signification has been recognized throughout much of the history of philosophy and psychology. The term derives (). For the Greeks, 'signs' occurred in the world of nature and 'symbols' in the world of culture. As such, Plato and Aristotle explored the relationship between signs and the world.

It would not be until Augustine of Hippo that the nature of the sign would be considered within a conventional system. Augustine introduced a thematic proposal for uniting the two under the notion of 'sign' (''signum'') as transcending the nature-culture divide and identifying symbols as no more than a species (or sub-species) of ''signum''. A monograph study on this question would be done by Manetti (1987).See als
Andrew LaVelle's discussion of Romeo on Peirce-l
These theories have had a lasting effect in Western philosophy, especially through scholastic philosophy.

The general study of signs that began in Latin with Augustine culminated with the 1632 ''Tractatus de Signis'' of John Poinsot and then began anew in late modernity with the attempt in 1867 by Charles Sanders Peirce to draw up a "new list of categories". More recently Umberto Eco, in his '' Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language'', has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers.

John Locke

John Locke (1690), himself a man of medicine, was familiar with this 'semeiotics' as naming a specialized branch within medical science. In his personal library were two editions of Scapula's 1579 abridgement of Henricus Stephanus' ''Thesaurus Graecae Linguae'', which listed "σημειωτική" as the name for 'diagnostics', the branch of medicine concerned with interpreting symptoms of disease (" symptomatology"). Indeed, physician and scholar Henry Stubbe (1670) had transliterated this term of specialized science into English precisely as "''semeiotics''," marking the first use of the term in English:Locke would use the term ''sem(e)iotike'' in ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (book IV, chap. 21),Locke (1700) uses the Greek word in th
4th edition
of his ''Essay concerning Human Understanding'' (p. 437). He notably writes both (a) "σημιωτικὴ" and (b) "Σημιωτική": when term (a) is followed by any kind of punctuation mark, it takes the form (b). In Chapter XX, titled "Division of the Sciences," which concludes the 1st edition of Locke's ''Essay'' (1689/1690), Locke introduces "σημιωτική" in § 4 as his proposed name synonymous with "''the Doctrine of Signs''" for the development of the future study of the ubiquitous role of signs within human awareness. In the 4th edition of Locke's ''Essay'' (1700), a new Chapter XIX, titled "Of Enthusiasm," is inserted into Book IV. As result, Chapter XX of the 1st edition becomes Chapter XXI for all subsequent editions. It is an important fact that Locke's proposal for the development of semiotics, with three passing exceptions as "asides" in the writings of Berkeley, Leibniz, and Condillac, "is met with a resounding silence that lasts as long as modernity itself. Even Locke's devoted late modern editor, Alexander Campbell Fraser, dismisses out of hand 'this crude and superficial scheme of Locke'" Deely adds "Locke's modest proposal subversive of the way of ideas, its reception, and its bearing on the resolution of an ancient and a modern controversy in logic." In the Oxford University Press critical edition (1975), prepared and introduced by Peter Harold Nidditch, Nidditch tells us, in his "Foreword," that he presents us with "a complete, critically established, and unmodernized text that aims at being historically faithful to Locke's final intentions"; that "the present text is based on the original fourth edition of the ''Essay''; and that "readings in the other early authorized editions are adopted, in appropriate form, where necessary, and recorded otherwise in the textual notes." The term "σημιωτική" appears in that 4th edition (1700), the last published (but not the last prepared) within Locke's lifetime, with exactly the spelling and final accent found in the 1st edition. Yet if we turn to (the final) chapter XXI of the Oxford edition (1975, p. 720), we find not "σημιωτικὴ" but rather do we find substituted the "σημειωτικὴ" spelling (and with final accent reversed). Note that in Modern Greek and in some systems for pronouncing classical Greek, "σημιωτική" and "σημειωτική" are pronounced the same. in which he explains how science may be divided into three parts: Locke, John. 1963 823 ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.''

Locke then elaborates on the nature of this third category, naming it "Σημειωτική" (''Semeiotike''), and explaining it as "the doctrine of signs" in the following terms:

Juri Lotman would introduce Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopt Locke's coinage ("Σημειωτική") as the name to subtitle his founding at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal, ''Sign Systems Studies''.

Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure founded his semiotics, which he called semiology, in the social sciences:

Thomas SebeokThe whole anthology, ''Frontiers in Semiotics'', was devoted to the documentation of this ''pars pro toto'' move of Sebeok would assimilate "semiology" to "semiotics" as a part to a whole, and was involved in choosing the name ''Semiotica'' for the first international journal devoted to the study of signs. Saussurean semiotics have exercised a great deal of influence on the schools of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Jacques Derrida, for example, takes as his object the Saussurean relationship of signifier and signified, asserting that signifier and signified are not fixed, coining the expression ''différance'', relating to the endless deferral of meaning, and to the absence of a 'transcendent signified'.

Charles Sanders Peirce

In the nineteenth century, Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he would sometimes spell as "semeiotic") as the "quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs," which abstracts "what must be the characters of all signs used by…an intelligence capable of learning by experience," and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.

Peirce's perspective is considered as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial, and sign processes, modes of inference, and the inquiry process in general. The Peircean semiotic addresses not only the external communication mechanism, as per Saussure, but the internal representation machine, investigating sign processes, and modes of inference, as well as the whole inquiry process in general.

Peircean semiotic is triadic, including sign, object, interpretant, as opposed to the dyadic Saussurian tradition (signifier, signified). Peircean semiotics further subdivides each of the three triadic elements into three sub-types, positing the existence of signs that are symbols; semblances ("icons"); and "indices," i.e., signs that are such through a factual connection to their objects.

Peircean scholar and editor Max H. Fisch (1978)Max Fisch has compiled Peirce-related bibliographical supplements in 1952, 1964, 1966, 1974; was consulting editor on the 1977 microfilm of Peirce's published works and on the ''Comprehensive Bibliography'' associated with it; was among the main editors of the first five volumes of ''Writings of Charles S. Peirce'' (1981–1993); and wrote a number of published articles on Peirce, many collected in 1986 in ''Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism.'' See also Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography. would claim that "semeiotic" was Peirce's own preferred rendering of Locke's σημιωτική. Charles W. Morris followed Peirce in using the term "semiotic" and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals.

While the Saussurean semiotic is dyadic (sign/syntax, signal/semantics), the Peircean semiotic is triadic (sign, object, interpretant), being conceived as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial.

Peirce's list of categories

Peirce would aim to base his new list directly upon experience precisely as constituted by action of signs, in contrast with the list of Aristotle's categories which aimed to articulate within experience the dimension of being that is independent of experience and knowable as such, through human understanding.

The estimative powers of animals interpret the environment as sensed to form a "meaningful world" of objects, but the objects of this world (or "Umwelt", in Jakob von Uexküll's term) consist exclusively of objects related to the animal as desirable (+), undesirable (–), or "safe to ignore" (0).

In contrast to this, human understanding adds to the animal "Umwelt" a relation of self-identity within objects which transforms objects experienced into ''things'' as well as +, –, 0 objects. Heidegger, Martin. 1962 927 ''Being and Time'', translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. p. 487."The distinction between the being of existing Dasein and the Being of entities, such as Reality, which do not have the character of Dasein...is nothing with which philosophy may tranquilize itself. It has long been known that ancient ontology works with 'Thing-concepts' and that there is a danger of 'reifying consciousness'. But what does this 'reifying' signify? Where does it arise? Why does Being get 'conceived' 'proximally' in terms of the present-at-hand ''and not'' in terms of the ready-to-hand, which indeed lies ''closer'' to us? ''Why'' does reifying always keep coming back to exercise its dominion?" This is the question that the Umwelt/Lebenswelt distinction as here drawn answers to." (Heidegger 1962/1927:486) Thus, the generically animal objective world as "Umwelt", becomes a species-specifically human objective world or "Lebenswelt" (life-world), wherein linguistic communication, rooted in the biologically underdetermined "Innenwelt" (inner-world) of humans, makes possible the further dimension of cultural organization within the otherwise merely social organization of non-human animals whose powers of observation may deal only with directly sensible instances of objectivity.

This further point, that human culture depends upon language understood first of all not as communication, but as the biologically underdetermined aspect or feature of the human animal's "Innenwelt", was originally clearly identified by Thomas A. Sebeok. Sebeok also played the central role in bringing Peirce's work to the center of the semiotic stage in the twentieth century,Detailed demonstration of Sebeok's role of the global emergence of semiotics is recorded in at least three recent volumes: (1) ''Semiotics Seen Synchronically. The View from 2010'' (Ottawa: Legas, 2010). (2) ''Semiotics Continues To Astonish. Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs'' (Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 2011)—a 526-page assemblage of essays, vignettes, letters, pictures attesting to the depth and extent of Sebeok's promotion of semiotic understanding around the world, including his involvement with Juri Lotman and the Tartu University graduate program in semiotics (currently directed by P. Torop, M. Lotman and K. Kull). (3) Sebeok's ''Semiotic Prologues'' (Ottawa: Legas, 2012)—a volume which gathers together in Part I all the "prologues" (i.e., introductions, prefaces, forewords, etc.) that Sebeok wrote for other peoples' books, then in Part 2 all the "prologues" that other people wrote for Sebeok. first with his expansion of the human use of signs ("''anthroposemiosis''") to include also the generically animal sign-usage ("''zoösemiosis''"),See Sebeok, Thomas A. "Communication in Animals and Men." A review article that covers three books: Martin Lindauer, ''Communication among Social Bees'' (Harvard Books in Biology, No. 2; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. ix + 143); Winthrop N. Kellogg, Porpoises and Sonar (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. xiv + 177); and John C. Lilly, ''Man and Dolphin'' (Garden City, New York: Doubleday), in ''Language'' 39 (1963), 448–466. then with his further expansion of semiosis to include the vegetative world ("''phytosemiosis''"). Such would initially be based on the work of Martin Krampen, but takes advantage of Peirce's point that an interpretant, as the third item within a sign relation, "need not be mental."

Peirce distinguished between the interpretant and the interpreter. The interpretant is the internal, mental representation that mediates between the object and its sign. The interpreter is the human who is creating the interpretant. Peirce's "interpretant" notion opened the way to understanding an action of signs beyond the realm of animal life (study of "phytosemiosis" + "zoösemiosis" + "anthroposemiosis" = ''biosemiotics''), which was his first advance beyond Latin Age semiotics.For a summary of Peirce's contributions to semiotics, see Liszka (1996) or Atkin (2006).

Other early theorists in the field of semiotics include Charles W. Morris. Writing in 1951, Jozef Maria Bochenski surveyed the field in this way: "Closely related to mathematical logic is the so-called semiotics (Charles Morris) which is now commonly employed by mathematical logicians. Semiotics is the theory of symbols and falls in three parts, (1) logical syntax, the theory of the mutual relations of symbols, (2) logical semantics, the theory of the relations between the symbol and what the symbol stands for, and (3) logical pragmatics, the relations between symbols, their meanings and the users of the symbols." Max Black argued that the work of Bertrand Russell was seminal in the field.

Formulations and subfields

Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted (see modality). This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be the individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. To coin a word to refer to a ''thing'' (see lexical words), the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their language, but that word can transmit that meaning only within the language's grammatical structures and codes (see syntax and semantics). Codes also represent the values of the culture, and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life.

To explain the relationship between semiotics and communication studies, communication is defined as the process of transferring data and-or meaning from a source to a receiver. Hence, communication theorists construct models based on codes, media, and contexts to explain the biology, psychology, and mechanics involved. Both disciplines recognize that the technical process cannot be separated from the fact that the receiver must decode the data, i.e., be able to distinguish the data as salient, and make meaning out of it. This implies that there is a necessary overlap between semiotics and communication. Indeed, many of the concepts are shared, although in each field the emphasis is different. In ''Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics'', Marcel Danesi (1994) suggested that semioticians' priorities were to study signification first, and communication second. A more extreme view is offered by Jean-Jacques Nattiez who, as a musicologist, considered the theoretical study of communication irrelevant to his application of semiotics.

Syntactics

Semiotics differs from linguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense. The branch of semiotics that deals with such formal relations between signs or expressions in abstraction from their signification and their interpreters, or—more generally—with formal properties of symbol systems (specifically, with reference to linguistic signs, syntax) is referred to as syntactics.

Peirce's definition of the term "semiotic" as the study of necessary features of signs also has the effect of distinguishing the discipline from linguistics as the study of contingent features that the world's languages happen to have acquired in the course of their evolutions. From a subjective standpoint, perhaps more difficult is the distinction between semiotics and the philosophy of language. In a sense, the difference lies between separate traditions rather than subjects. Different authors have called themselves "philosopher of language" or "semiotician." This difference does ''not'' match the separation between analytic and continental philosophy. On a closer look, there may be found some differences regarding subjects. Philosophy of language pays more attention to natural languages or to languages in general, while semiotics is deeply concerned with non-linguistic signification. Philosophy of language also bears connections to linguistics, while semiotics might appear closer to some of the humanities (including literary theory) and to cultural anthropology.

Cognitive semiotics

Semiosis or ''semeiosis'' is the process that forms meaning from any organism's apprehension of the world through signs. Scholars who have talked about semiosis in their subtheories of semiotics include C. S. Peirce, John Deely, and Umberto Eco. Cognitive semiotics is combining methods and theories developed in the disciplines of semiotics and the humanities, with providing new information into human signification and its manifestation in cultural practices. The research on cognitive semiotics brings together semiotics from linguistics, cognitive science, and related disciplines on a common meta-theoretical platform of concepts, methods, and shared data.

Cognitive semiotics may also be seen as the study of meaning-making by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences. This involves conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental investigations. Cognitive semiotics initially was developed at the Center for Semiotics at Aarhus University (Denmark), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst the prominent cognitive semioticians are Per Aage Brandt, Svend Østergaard, Peer Bundgård, Frederik Stjernfelt, Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Jordan Zlatev. Zlatev later in co-operation with Göran Sonesson established CCS (Center for Cognitive Semiotics) at Lund University, Sweden.

Finite semiotics

Finite semiotics, developed by Cameron Shackell (2018, 2019), aims to unify existing theories of semiotics for application to the post- Baudrillardian world of ubiquitous technology. Its central move is to place the finiteness of thought at the root of semiotics and the sign as a secondary but fundamental analytical construct. The theory contends that the levels of reproduction that technology is bringing to human environments demands this reprioritisation if semiotics is to remain relevant in the face of effectively infinite signs. The shift in emphasis allows practical definitions of many core constructs in semiotics which Shackell has applied to areas such as human computer interaction, creativity theory, and a computational semiotics method for generating semiotic squares from digital texts.

Pictorial semiotics

Pictorial semiotics is intimately connected to art history and theory. It goes beyond them both in at least one fundamental way, however. While art history has limited its visual analysis to a small number of pictures that qualify as "works of art", pictorial semiotics focuses on the properties of pictures in a general sense, and on how the artistic conventions of images can be interpreted through pictorial codes. Pictorial codes are the way in which viewers of pictorial representations seem automatically to decipher the artistic conventions of images by being unconsciously familiar with them.

According to Göran Sonesson, a Swedish semiotician, pictures can be analyzed by three models: (a) the narrative model, which concentrates on the relationship between pictures and time in a chronological manner as in a comic strip; (b) the rhetoric model, which compares pictures with different devices as in a metaphor; and (c) the Laokoon model, which considers the limits and constraints of pictorial expressions by comparing textual mediums that utilize time with visual mediums that utilize space.

The break from traditional art history and theory—as well as from other major streams of semiotic analysis—leaves open a wide variety of possibilities for pictorial semiotics. Some influences have been drawn from phenomenological analysis, cognitive psychology, structuralist, and cognitivist linguistics, and visual anthropology and sociology.

Globalization

Studies have shown that semiotics may be used to make or break a brand. Culture codes strongly influence whether a population likes or dislikes a brand's marketing, especially internationally. If the company is unaware of a culture's codes, it runs the risk of failing in its marketing. Globalization has caused the development of a global consumer culture where products have similar associations, whether positive or negative, across numerous markets.

Mistranslations may lead to instances of "Engrish" or "Chinglish", terms for unintentionally humorous cross-cultural slogans intended to be understood in English. This may be caused by a sign that, in Peirce's terms, mistakenly indexes or symbolizes something in one culture, that it does not in another. In other words, it creates a connotation that is culturally-bound, and that violates some culture code. Theorists who have studied humor (such as Schopenhauer) suggest that contradiction or incongruity creates absurdity and therefore, humor. Violating a culture code creates this construct of ridiculousness for the culture that owns the code. Intentional humor also may fail cross-culturally because jokes are not on code for the receiving culture.

A good example of branding according to cultural code is Disney's international theme park business. Disney fits well with Japan's cultural code because the Japanese value "cuteness", politeness, and gift giving as part of their culture code; Tokyo Disneyland sells the most souvenirs of any Disney theme park. In contrast, Disneyland Paris failed when it launched as Euro Disney because the company did not research the codes underlying European culture. Its storybook retelling of European folktales was taken as elitist and insulting, and the strict appearance standards that it had for employees resulted in discrimination lawsuits in France. Disney souvenirs were perceived as cheap trinkets. The park was a financial failure because its code violated the expectations of European culture in ways that were offensive.

On the other hand, some researchers have suggested that it is possible to successfully pass a sign perceived as a cultural icon, such as the Coca-Cola or McDonald's logos, from one culture to another. This may be accomplished if the sign is migrated from a more economically-developed to a less developed culture. The intentional association of a product with another culture has been called Foreign Consumer Culture Positioning (FCCP). Products also may be marketed using global trends or culture codes, for example, saving time in a busy world; but even these may be fine-tuned for specific cultures.

Research also found that, as airline industry brandings grow and become more international, their logos become more symbolic and less iconic. The iconicity and symbolism of a sign depends on the cultural convention and, are on that ground in relation with each other. If the cultural convention has greater influence on the sign, the signs get more symbolic value.

Semiotics of dreaming

The flexibility of human semiotics is well demonstrated in dreams. Sigmund Freud spelled out how meaning in dreams rests on a blend of images, effects, sounds, words, and kinesthetic sensations. In his chapter on "The Means of Representation," he showed how the most abstract sorts of meaning and logical relations can be represented by spatial relations. Two images in sequence may indicate "if this, then that" or "despite this, that." Freud thought the dream started with "dream thoughts" which were like logical, verbal sentences. He believed that the dream thought was in the nature of a taboo wish that would awaken the dreamer. In order to safeguard sleep, the midbrain converts and disguises the verbal dream thought into an imagistic form, through processes he called the "dream-work."

List of subfields

Subfields that have sprouted out of semiotics include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Biosemiotics: the study of semiotic processes at all levels of biology, or a semiotic study of living systems (e.g., Copenhagen–Tartu School). Annual meetings ("Gatherings in Biosemiotics") have been held since 2001.
*Semiotic anthropology and anthropological semantics.
* Cognitive semiotics: the study of meaning-making by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences. This involves conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental investigations. Cognitive semiotics initially was developed at the Center for Semiotics at Aarhus University (Denmark), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst the prominent cognitive semioticians are Per Aage Brandt, Svend Østergaard, Peer Bundgård, Frederik Stjernfelt, Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Jordan Zlatev. Zlatev later in co-operation with Göran Sonesson established the Center for Cognitive Semiotics (CCS) at Lund University, Sweden.
* Comics semiotics: the study of the various codes and signs of comics and how they are understood.
* Computational semiotics: attempts to engineer the process of semiosis, in the study of and design for human–computer interaction or to mimic aspects of human cognition through artificial intelligence and knowledge representation. See also ''cybercognition''.
* Cultural and literary semiotics: examines the literary world, the visual media, the mass media, and advertising in the work of writers such as Roland Barthes, Marcel Danesi, and Juri Lotman (e.g., Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School).
*: built on two already-generated interdisciplinary approaches: cybernetics and systems theory, including information theory and science; and Peircean semiotics, including phenomenology and pragmatic aspects of linguistics, attempts to make the two interdisciplinary paradigms—both going beyond mechanistic and pure constructivist ideas—complement each other in a common framework.
*Design semiotics or product semiotics: the study of the use of signs in the design of physical products; introduced by Martin Krampen and in a practitioner-oriented version by Rune Monö while teaching industrial design at the Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden.
* Ethnosemiotics: a disciplinary perspective which links semiotics concepts to ethnographic methods.
* Film semiotics: the study of the various codes and signs of film and how they are understood. Key figures include Christian Metz.
* Finite semiotics: an approach to the semiotics of technology developed by Cameron Shackell. It is used to both trace the effects of technology on human thought and to develop computational methods for performing semiotic analysis.
* Gregorian chant semiology: a current avenue of palaeographical research in Gregorian chant which is revising the Solesmes school of interpretation.
*Law and semiotics: one of the more accomplished publications in this field is the ''International Journal for the Semiotics of Law'', published by International Association for the Semiotics of Law.
*Marketing semiotics (or commercial semiotics): an application of semiotic methods and semiotic thinking to the analysis and development of advertising and brand communications in cultural context. Key figures include Virginia Valentine, Malcolm Evans, Greg Rowland, Georgios Rossolatos. International annual conferences ( Semiofest) have been held since 2012.
* Music semiology: the study of signs as they pertain to music on a variety of levels.
* Organisational semiotics: the study of semiotic processes in organizations (with strong ties to computational semiotics and human–computer interaction).
* Pictorial semiotics: an application of semiotic methods and semiotic thinking to art history.
*Semiotics of music videos: semiotics in popular music.
* Social semiotics: expands the interpretable semiotic landscape to include all cultural codes, such as in slang, fashion, tattoos, and advertising. Key figures include Roland Barthes, Michael Halliday, Bob Hodge, Chris William Martin and Christian Metz.
* Structuralism and post-structuralism in the work of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Louis Hjelmslev, Roman Jakobson