Customer Reviews

Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication)

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"Semiotics is not about the 'real' world at all, but about complementary or alternative actual models of it... semiotics never reveals what the world is, but circumscribes what we can know about it."

Through SIGNS, Sebeok brings together the ideas of experience and abstract thought using the perspective of semeology: the doctrine of the sign. He traverses the sectors of language, psychology, biology (including entomology- yes, rather bizarre) and others to reveal the complex nature of the sign in a coherent prose that I would say caters to a broad spectrum of readers.

Sebeok is successful towards constructing an introduction to signs and provides a tremendous geneology of its supposed origin (through the Greek physician Hippocratis to the (structuralist?) Ferdinand Saussure), but you wonder: why have I given him only 3 stars? I would have easily given him another star (to make 4), but, alas, I do roll with a bias.

I give Sebeok 3 stars because I came into this book from the French post-structuralist perspective after reading Roland Barthes' S/Z (A 200+ page deconstruction of a 30 page Honore de Balzak short story). Barthes' beautifully lucid prose (though quite thick, haughty, and as usual, referenceless) hides the theoretical (and rather controversal) body of the text, but his fearless (and conceited) approach steals the attention of my adolescent aspirations to become a sophisticated individual.

At times I found Sebeok quite dull and his sporadic sense of humor mild, but as I bracket my emotions from the text I discover that from reading this book my conception of "signs" has become quite solid. If you go for this book- go for the 2nd edition (came out in 2001 i believe) it includes a Basic Notions chapter and glossary for those new in the field. I also recommend the "Fetish Signs" chapter- very interesting.