Semiotics

Elements of Semiotics

Name: Elements of Semiotics
Author: David Lidov
ISBN: 9780312214135

by David Lidov

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Overview

Conventionally, one says that semiotics is the study of signs, and that a sign is something that stands for something else. These definitions are scant clues to the origins and motivations of semiotics as a characteristic intellectual movement of the 20th century. Elements of Semiotics offers a unified foundation for semiotics understood as a comparative perspective of the artifacts of mental life. It is arranged to be useful to the novice, presenting a new theory in the context of classical sources and identifying signs with consciousness. David Lidov establishes a sub-study of comparative articulation which builds on the work of Hjelmslev, Martinet, Goodman, and Troubetskoy. His concept of the "elaborated sign" allows a reconciliation of structural and pragmatistic insights, in which the observation that structure and reference may develop antithetically is a key principle.

About the Author, David Lidov

David Lidov is Associate Professor of Music at York University in Toronto.

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Editorials

Booknews

Lidov (music, York University, Toronto) introduces the novice to the field of semiotics. He provides an overview of semiotic literature but makes no attempt to give a comprehensive history of the field's development; rather, his aim is to draw together its foundations and discuss its tools and applications. Chapters are arranged in sections on the provenance of semiotics, sign systems, analysis of the sign, elaborations of the sign, comparative semiotics, and consequences (for discussion of free will and the aims of education). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)