Semiotics is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter.
Semiosis, or sign process, is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. A sign is anything that communicates a meaning, that 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 taste.
Biosemiotics is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm.
Zoosemiotics is the semiotic study of the use of signs among animals, more precisely the study of semiosis among animals, i.e. the study of how something comes to function as a sign to some animal. It is the study of animal forms of knowing.
Terrence William Deacon is an American neuroanthropologist. He taught at Harvard for eight years, relocated to Boston University in 1992, and is currently Professor of Anthropology and member of the Cognitive Science Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.
Jakob Johann Freiherr von Uexküll was a Baltic German biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology and animal behaviour studies and was an influence on the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of Umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok and philosopher Martin Heidegger. His works established biosemiotics as a field of research.
In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas Sebeok, umwelt is the "biological foundations that lie at the very center of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal". The term is usually translated as "self-centered world". Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment. The term umwelt, together with companion terms Umgebung and Innenwelt, have special relevance for cognitive philosophers, roboticists and cyberneticians because they offer a potential solution to the conundrum of the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater.
Thomas Albert Sebeok was a Hungarian-born American polymath, semiotician, and linguist. As one of the founders of the biosemiotics field, he studied non-human and cross-species signaling and communication. He is also known for his work in the development of long-time nuclear waste warning messages, in which he worked with the Human Interference Task Force to create methods for keeping the inhabitants of Earth away from buried nuclear waste that will still be hazardous 10,000 or more years in the future.
Sign Systems Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. It is the oldest periodical in the field. It was initially published in Russian and since 1998 in English with Russian and Estonian language abstracts. The journal was established by Juri Lotman as Trudy po Znakovym Sistemam in 1964. Since 1998 it has been edited by Kalevi Kull, Mihhail Lotman, and Peeter Torop. Since 2022, Ott Puumeister leads the editorial team. The journal is available online from the Philosophy Documentation Center, indexed by WoS and Scopus, and starting 2012 also on an open access platform.
The semiosphere is an idea in biosemiotic theory proposing that, contrary to ideas of nature determining sense and experience, the phenomenal world is a creative and logical structure of processes of semiosis where signs operate together to produce sense and experience.
Kalevi Kull is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
John Deely was an American philosopher and semiotician. He was a professor of philosophy at Saint Vincent College and Seminary in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Prior to this, he held the Rudman Chair of Graduate Philosophy at the Center for Thomistic Studies, located at the University of St. Thomas (Houston).
Claus Emmeche is a Danish theoretical biologist and philosopher, one of founders of contemporary biosemiotics. He is associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, and is head of the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies at the Faculty of Science.
Karl Kuno Thure Freiherr von Uexküll was a German scholar of psychosomatic medicine and biosemiotics. He developed the approach of his father, Jakob von Uexküll, in the study of living systems and applied it in medicine.
Giorgio Prodi was an Italian medical scientist, oncologist and semiotician.
The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) is an academic society for the researchers in semiotic biology. The Society was established in 2005. Its official journal is Biosemiotics, published by Springer and launched in 2008.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to semiotics:
Copenhagen–Tartu school of biosemiotics is a loose network of scholars working within the discipline of biosemiotics at the University of Tartu and the University of Copenhagen.
Susan Petrilli is an Italian semiotician, professor of philosophy and theory of languages at the University of Bari, Aldo Moro, Italy, and the seventh Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America. She is also International Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
Paul Cobley is an English eminent semiotician and narratologist.
