Semiotics

Semiotics is a broad field closely related to Logic, Linguistics, and the Philosophy of Language which is the study of activity and processes involving Signs as Communications with Meanings. The term “Semiosis” was introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce in a Theory of Sign Relations which described a logical process of interpreting Signs as referring to Objects. Around the same time, the term “Semiology” was introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Cours de Linguistique Générale, which described a linguistic concept of Bilateral Signs with a Signifier, such as a Word, and a Signified, or that to which the Word refers. “Semiotics” is the more widely used term today, including both Semiosis and Semiology.

Theory

While Peirce was interested primarily in Logic and Saussure Linguistics, they and others have recognized there is more to our forms of Representation than Speech and Writing of Language. Semiotics relates Language to other Sign Systems, whether Human or not. The question remains as to the Causal mechanism in Sign Operation, and some argue Language is a semiotic prototype of principles which can be applied to any Sign System, while others argue there is a Meta-Sign System under which our Language is simply one of many Codes for Communication and Meaning. Both may be true and accurate, capturing a better picture of how we establish Relationships between Signs which are then Interpreted by an Audience.

So, there is a “performance element” with our relationship to Signs, and while we can communicate many things unintentionally, we usually speak or write intentionally to elicit a response in others, or ourselves. We all know what “Signs” are, coded Images, or Words, or Events, but a Sign cannot function unless the Audience distinguishes it from background noise. Distinguishing triggers Mental activity to interpret the Data given and convert to meaningful information. Such transmission may be chemical, auditory, visual, or tactile, whether singly or in combination, which includes Signs and Signals interpreted by all lifeforms in an “Autopoietic” process. This links the decidedly “Post-Modern” Semiotics to today's Neurological Science, Neuroscience, or Neurosemiotics, integrating Biology with Semiotics to study Signs being processed right at the level of neural tissue, and across levels of Complexity in the Nervous System.