Semiotics

Unique graphic introductions to big ideas and thinkers, written by experts in the field.

A textbook in communication and cultural studies. It offers a comprehensive approach to the study of the ways in which meaning is constituted in social life.

In this regard, semiotics is of relevance to a wide spectrum of scholars and professionals, including social scientists, psychologists, artists, graphic designers, and students of literature.".

Media semiotics is a valuable method of focusing on the hidden meanings within media texts. This new edition brings Understanding Media Semiotics fully up to date and is written for students of the media, of linguistics and those interested in studying the ever-changing media in more detail. Offering an in-depth guide to help students investigate and understand the media using semiotic theory, this book assumes little previous knowledge of semiotics or linguistics, avoiding jargon and explaining the issues step by step. With in-depth case studies, practical accounts and directed further reading, Understanding Media Semiotics provides students with all the tools they need to understand semiotic analysis in the context of the media. Semiotic analysis is sometimes seen as complicated and difficult to understand; Marcel Danesi shows that on the contrary it can be readily understood and can greatly enrich students' understanding of media texts, from print media right through to the internet and apps.

Using examples such as the Wonderbra advertisements and the film Waterworld, Bignell presents an investigation of the critical approach to contemporary media studies and discusses the challenges posed by post-structuralist theory and postmodernism.

An Introduction to Applied Semiotics presents nineteen semiotics tools for text and image analysis. Covering a variety of different schools and approaches, together with the author’s own original approach, this is a full and synthetic introduction to semiotics. This book presents general tools that can be used with any semiotic product. Drawing on the work of Fontanille, Genette, Greimas, Hébert, Jakobson, Peirce, Rastier and Zilberberg, the tools deal with the analysis of themes and action, true and false, positive and negative, rhythm narration and other elements. The application of each tool is illustrated with analyses of a wide range of texts and images, from well-known or distinctive literary texts, philosophical or religious texts or images, paintings, advertising and everyday signs and symbols. Each chapter has the same structure – summary, theory and application, making it ideal for course use. Covering both visual and textual objects, this is a key text for all courses in semiotics and textual analysis within linguistics, communication studies, literary theory, design, marketing and related areas.

This book discusses a significant area of mathematics education research in the last two decades and presents the types of semiotic theories that are employed in mathematics education. Following on the summary of significant issues presented in the Topical Survey, Semiotics in Mathematics Education, this book not only introduces readers to semiotics as the science of signs, but it also elaborates on issues that were highlighted in the Topical Survey. In addition to an introduction and a closing chapter, it presents 17 chapters based on presentations from Topic Study Group 54 at the ICME-13 (13th International Congress on Mathematical Education). The chapters are divided into four major sections, each of which has a distinct focus. After a brief introduction, each section starts with a chapter or chapters of a theoretical nature, followed by others that highlight the significance and usefulness of the relevant theory in empirical research.

Ostentation of the Subject is a practice that is asserting itself ever more in today's world. Consequently, criticism by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists has been to little effect, considering that they are not immune to such practices themselves. The question of subjectivity concerns the close and the distant, the self and the other, the other from self and the other of self. It is thus connected to the question of the sign. It calls for a semiotic approach because the self is itself a sign; its very own relation with itself is a relation among signs. This book commits to developing a critique of subjectivity in terms of the material that the self is made of, that is, the material of signs.Susan Petrilli highlights the scholarship of Charles Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Mary Boole, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Claude Levi-Strauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Morris, Thomas Sebeok, Thomas Szasz, and Victoria Welby. Included are American and European theories and theorists, evidencing the relationships interconnecting American, Italian, French, and German scholarship.Petrilli covers topics from identity issues that are part of semiotic views, to the corporeal self as well as responsibility, reason, and freedom. Her book should be read by philosophers, semioticians, and other social scientists.