Way back in the mists of time, a philosopher called John Locke had this crazy idea that it would be useful to come up with a way of studying signs. It’s not like signs are some new-fangled thing,...

As semiotics’ two head honchos, Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce are the theorists who have had the most impact on the field. Saussure’s model of the signifier and signified rem...

Semiotics is a theoretical school that’s open to a various approaches; however, one key concept that we keep coming back to is the arbitrariness of the sign. Good grief, another sign that’s not...

Semiotics may not have blossomed into an academic discipline outside of its uses in literature or sociology or linguistics departments, but it has continued to play a role in theorizing and analyzi...

What is literature? For a semiotician, literature is a system of signs that’s expressed through writing. It’s not a question of whether a work is “literary”—sure, “Roses are red, violet...