Rajarata University of Sri Lanka
Department of Languages
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Online Lectures
|
Year
and Semester
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Year-3
Semester-1
|
|
Subject
|
Syntax
and Semantics-2
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|
Subject
Code
|
ENGL
3112
|
|
Course
Unit
|
Semiotics
|
|
Date
|
30.06.2020
|
|
Time
|
Theory
(9.00 am-10.00 am) Practical (2.30
pm-4.30 pm)
|
|
Lecturer
|
D.N.
Aloysius
|
|
Theory
Hours
|
02
Total No of Hours: 02
|
|
Practical
Hours
|
02
Total No of Hours: 04
|
Semiotics
Semiotics is the study of sign process,
which is any form of activity, conduct, or any process that involves signs,
including the production of meaning. A sign is
anything that communicates a meaning, which is not the sign itself, to the
interpreter of the sign. 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 communicate through any of the
senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory,
or gustatory.
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. 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 belonging also to the life
sciences, such as how organisms make
predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in
the world.
Semiotics, is also called semiology, the study of signs and
sign-using behaviour. It was defined by one of its founders, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of “the life of signs within society.”
Although the word was used in this sense in the 17th century by the English
philosopher John Locke, the idea of
semiotics as an interdisciplinary field of study emerged only in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries with the independent work of Saussure and of the
American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
Peirce’s seminal work in the
field was anchored in pragmatism and logic. He defined a sign as “something which stands to somebody
for something,” and one of his major contributions to semiotics was the
categorization of signs into three main types: (1) an icon, which resembles its referent (such as a road sign for
falling rocks); (2) an index, which is
associated with its referent (as smoke is a sign of fire); and (3) a symbol, which is related to its referent only by convention (as
with words or traffic signals). Peirce also demonstrated that a sign can never
have a definite meaning, for the meaning must be continuously qualified.
Practical: Explain the concept of Semiotics
with examples.
References:
1.
Elements of Semiology by Roland
Barthes
2.
Linguistic Semiotics by Mingyu Wang
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