Dalla scienza dei segni alla semiotica del testo. Il campo semiotico e le teorie della significazione
From the science of signs to the semiotics of the text. The semiotic field and the theories of signification.
In the human sciences, research that adopts a technical language is not always welcomed. There is often a suspicion that behind terminological precision lies a form of closure or self-reference. Semiotics, in particular, is frequently accused of indulging in jargon or of enclosing itself within a metalanguage that speaks mainly about itself. Yet such mistrust…
Semiotics, as a scientific discipline, has its roots in the nineteenth century. Stefano Gensini recalls that the effort to define its boundaries was undertaken by two scholars destined to shape its future development: Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure. Peirce, an American philosopher of pragmatist orientation, conceived semiotics as a general theory of human…
In the typology outlined by Guido Ferraro, subjectivity is no longer merely collective or intersubjective, but appears fragmented, plural, and unstable. It is the subjectivity of the age of complexity: a composite identity made up of elements that are at times even incoherent with one another. Not a higher synthesis, but a dynamic and often…
Patrizia Violi proposes to consider a specific form of the arts du faire: the art du dire. According to her, semiotics has long neglected this form of meaning production: its textualist tradition has led it to privilege the analysis of already textualized products rather than the practices that generate meaning. The discipline, in other words, has focused…
This article explores how Paolo Fabbri contrasts the semiology of Roland Barthes with the semiotics of Umberto Eco, identifying two paradigms that define much of contemporary semiotic thought: one rooted in ideological critique, the other in inferential processes of meaning-making. In outlining the two main directions of contemporary semiotics, Paolo Fabbri identifies two distinct yet…
After the publication of Il nome della rosa, Umberto Eco replied to a journalist who asked where the author’s subjectivity could be found in the novel by saying that “the subject is in the adverbs.” What might have sounded like a witty remark was later interpreted by Patrizia Violi as an effective synthesis of an entire…
To narrate means to construct a world. Eco affirms this, and adds that such a world must be “so concrete that one can imagine stepping into it.” A world that stands “before our eyes,” where even the smallest details can be perceived, and that becomes populated with words almost spontaneously, as soon as we visualize…
In his 1976 essay, Umberto Eco retraces the long and fragmented history of reflections on signs, highlighting how semiotics—despite its ancient roots—was persistently marginalized by the scientific establishment. The idea of a science dedicated to the production, exchange, and interpretation of signs is far from new: even pre-Socratic poetry and philosophy had shown an interest…
In Semiotics in Ethics and Caring, Susan Petrilli affirms that an ethical dimension is implicit in every form of human semiosis. Yet only recently has it become a consistent object of semiotic inquiry. Drawing on Thomas A. Sebeok’s notion of global semiotics, she argues that reconnecting semiotics with the life sciences allows the discipline to extend beyond…
In their essay Social Innovation as Rehabiting, Kaie Kotov and Rasmus Pedanik examine the conceptual and theoretical grounds of what has become an increasingly popular research topic across the social sciences. Social innovation, they note, has acquired growing importance in both academic and political discourse, yet it still lacks a stable and coherent theoretical definition. The expression…