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.
Juri Lotman, a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar, semiotician, and historian of Russian culture, worked at the University of Tartu. He was elected a member of the British Academy (1977), the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1987), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1989) and the Estonian Academy of Sciences (1990). He was a founder of the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School. The number of his printed works exceeds 800 titles. His extensive archive includes his correspondence with a number of Russian and Western intellectuals.
Linnart Mäll was an Estonian historian, orientalist, translator and politician.
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.
Boris Andreevich Uspenskij is a Russian linguist, philologist, semiotician, historian of culture.
Kalevi Kull is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
Monument of Lihula is the colloquial name of a monument commemorating the Estonians who fought for Estonia against the Soviet Union in World War II, located in a privately owned museum in Lagedi, Estonia. The monument has been controversial due to, in part, its dedication to those who served in the German Wehrmacht and particularly in the Waffen-SS.
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).
University of Tartu Press is a university press and publishing house owned by the University of Tartu, Estonia.
The Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School is a scientific school of thought in the field of semiotics that was formed in 1964 and led by Juri Lotman. Among the other members of this school were Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikhail Gasparov, Alexander Piatigorsky, Isaak I. Revzin, and others. As a result of their collective work, they established a theoretical framework around the semiotics of culture.
Jesper Hoffmeyer was a professor at the University of Copenhagen Institute of Biology, and a leading figure in the emerging field of biosemiotics. He was the president of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) from 2005 to 2015, co-editor of the journal Biosemiotics and the Springer Book series in Biosemiotics. He authored the books Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs and Signs of Meaning in the Universe and edited A Legacy for Living Systems: Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics.
Bruno Osimo is an Italian fiction writer, translator, and translation studies scholar.
Semiotics of culture is a research field within semiotics that attempts to define culture from semiotic perspective and as a type of human symbolic activity, creation of signs and a way of giving meaning to everything around. Therefore, here culture is understood as a system of symbols or meaningful signs. Because the main sign system is the linguistic system, the field is usually referred to as semiotics of culture and language. Under this field of study symbols are analyzed and categorized in certain class within the hierarchal system. With postmodernity, metanarratives are no longer as pervasive and thus categorizing these symbols in this postmodern age is more difficult and rather critical.
Jakob Linzbach was an Estonian linguist.
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.
Peeter Järvelaid is an Estonian legal scholar and historian. Järvelaid is a professor in the University of Tallinn. He has developed semiotic and personality-centered research direction, writing hundreds of articles mostly about the European and Estonian legal history and education, published in Estonian, English, German, French, Russian, Latvian, Finnish, Lithuanian and Swedish. Since 2006 his studies have been increasingly concentrated on the international relations in the 20th century, which among others has required intensive archival researches in German and Polish archives. Since 2012 Järvelaid has placed his research emphasis on the German diplomatic missions, with a specific interest in German diplomatic representation in Tallinn.
Timo Maran is an Estonian biosemiotician and poet. He has remarkably contributed to zoosemiotics and ecosemiotics.
Sirkka-Liisa Kivine is an Estonian athletics competitor.
Jaan Unt was an Estonian classical philologist, translator, and literary scholar. He translated from Ancient Greek, Latin, and Russian.
Paul Cobley is an eminent British semiotician and narratologist.
