Theory & Criticism
Semiotics
Semiotics is the science of signs and sign systems, studying the ways meanings are created, transmitted, and interpreted in language, literature, art, and culture at large. Two traditions laid its foundation: the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure (the sign as a unity of signifier and signified) and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce with his triad of signs — icon, index, symbol. Within semiotics one distinguishes syntactics (relations among signs), semantics (the relation of sign to meaning), and pragmatics (the relation of sign to interpreter). Literary semiotics regards a work as a complex multi-level sign structure. Outstanding contributions were made by Yuri Lotman and the Tartu school (the notion of 'secondary modeling systems,' the semiosphere), Umberto Eco ('The Role of the Reader'), and Roland Barthes. Semiotics is closely linked to structuralism and narratology.
Video
Compare “Semiotics” with another term
Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two disciplines of different scope. Semiotics is the GENERAL science of signs and sign systems in language, literature and culture; it studies how meaning is created and transmitted at all (Saussure, Peirce, Lotman, Eco). Narratology is a NARROWER, special theory of narrative: narrative structure, narrator, focalisation, narrative time (Genette). Semiotics is about the sign in general; narratology, about one type of sign-construction, the story. Narratology rests on semiotics like a part on the whole.
