Welcome to Semioticweb.org
This website will provide overview articles as well as selected in-depth studies of semiotics and its applications. The website will be under construction during 2022. The author and maintainer of the website will at first write all articles and impose its objective and style, but it is the plan to open the website for the semiotic community in 2023 in order for us to have a collaborative platform for news, debates and articles.
Semiotics is the study of signs, their interrelationships, and the process of signification (creation of meaning) - not just in language as given signs (intentionally given), but also as potential signs in nature. Semiotics has a long history interrelated with rhetoric, logic, philosophy and linguistics, and some parts of this entangled history will be discussed here.
The term "semiotics" is derived from the greek word "semeion" (σημεῖον) meaning "sign" (as used by Aristotle in his "On Interpretation"), but semiotics as a term for a domain of science was first introduced by John Locke in his "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1689).
There are a number of different traditions within modern semiotics, and it will be attempted to clarify the different conceptions of signs and signification within these traditions and communities. The traditions or "schools" of semiotics are sometimes described in a biased and simplistic way, and it is one objective of this website to give a fair and balanced (although brief) account of traditions, communities and the researchers involved. Although referred to here as "semioticians", researchers contributing to the field of semiotics will often have their primary field of research within more established fields such as philosophy, logic, linguistics, history and anthropology.
The website can be navigated through the Recent Content menu (a news list of recently added or revised articles) or in a more systematic way through the Categories menu where selections are made from Communities, Concepts, Domains, Journals, Semioticians, Themes or Traditions.