plural noun

• The study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.

  ‘I have always been concerned with semiotics - the study of signs and symbols as communication - and how so many persons fail to see how misleading certain subtle methods can be in deceiving them.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Not all of which moves towards discursive literacy, nor is it meant to be captured solely by semiotics of language and linguistic systems.’
  • ‘In common with socio-linguistics, social semiotics assumes that language varies with social context, and also assumes that the reader of any narrative system plays an active part in its interpretation.’
  • ‘Issues of race, gender, freedom, desire, language, mythology, sexuality, semiotics, signs, slavery, psychology, and power persisted in his fictions.’
  • ‘The act of signifying is signification, a term that is often used synonymously with ‘meaning’ and ‘sense’, and occurs in the discussions of students of semantics and semiotics.’
  • ‘It is hardly surprising then that so many of them should be fascinated by semiotics - the signs and symbols by which we order our lives.’
  • ‘Art historical practices driven by developments in literary criticism, semiotics, studies of gender, and ethnicity, to name but a few areas of concern, are moves in this direction.’
  • ‘Studies in film semiotics will have us know that film itself functions as a cultural language, one that provides a distinct visual vocabulary upon which viewers will call to make sense of the fragmented culture in which they live.’
  • ‘Those finding the answer in rhetoric (sound as oratorical figures) or semiotics (sound as signs) will alike pick on the more graphic elements in his music.’
  • ‘This notion is in keeping with research in semiotics which demonstrates how signs, such as words, pictures, gestures, and so forth, make meaning.’
  • ‘Anyway, in semiotics a sign is an abstract unit of social meaning.’
  • ‘Tartu University is known for work in linguistics and semiotics.’
  • ‘Endless books on the cinema - whether they propounded auteur theory or semiotics or cultural studies - forsook the intelligent general reader for arcane interpretation.’
  • ‘Language-based approaches, such as semiotics, structuralism, and post-structuralism, are not vision-based.’
  • ‘She combines the methods of history, semantics, and semiotics to show how and why the formulae were first adopted in organic chemistry.’
  • ‘Structuralism and semiotics thought more about the technicalities of linguistic and literary forms.’
  • ‘Post-structuralism is just classical sceptical thought re-cast in the language of semiotics, Ursula.’
  • ‘The distinctions between these two domains are frequently contested and debated in the realms of semiotics, structuralism, poetics, and aesthetics.’
  • ‘Structuralism, semiotics, and later, psychoanalysis were all ransacked for help in understanding how a film achieved its effects.’
  • ‘The successors to Frazerism and ritualism have been principally two: structuralism and semiotics.’