Quotes About Semiotics

Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used to tell at all.

The good of a book lies in it being read. A Book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things.

Here, then, is another proposition: The medium is not the message; the message becomes what the receiver makes of it, applying to it his own codes of reception, which are neither those of the sender nor those of the scholar of communications.

Empirical objects become signs (or they are looked at as signs) only from the point of view of a philosophical decision.

By studying the human signifying activity it influences its course.

Dire che un testo virtualmente non ha limiti non significa che ogni atto interpretativo possa avere un esito felice. Per

Her ÅŸeyin, hiçbir ÅŸey anlamayan birinin sözcükleri arac?l???yla anla??lmas?n? saÄŸlamak.

The task of general semiotics is that of tracing a single formal structure which underlies all these phenomena, this structure being that of the inference which generates interpretation. The task of specific semiotics, on the other hand, will be that of establishing—according to the sign system in question—the rules of greater or lesser semiotic necessity for inferences (institutionalization rules).

The understanding of signs is not a mere matter of recognition (of a stable equivalence); it is a matter of interpretation.

There comes a time when one has to make up one's mind and choose which side one is on. The catoptric universe is a reality which can give the impression of virtuality, whereas the semiotic universe is a virtuality which can give the impression of reality.

What is frequently appreciated in many so-called symbols is exactly their vagueness, their openness, their fruitful ineffectiveness to express a 'final' meaning, so that with symbols and by symbols one indicates what is always beyond one's reach.

the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum .

Be alert to these invisible quotation marks, even within a word.

Er is niets buiten de tekst.

The means are a technology of the sign, the "technical mastery" of the sign (65).

as if perception and thought were independent of the sign

Jacques Derrida

Everything is a symbol of something, it seems, until proven otherwise.

Professors also read, and think, symbolically. Everything is a symbol of something, it seems, until proven otherwise.

Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.

We don't live in the real world anymore. We live in a world of symbols.

It's weird how the name outlives the person, the signifier outlasts the signified, the symbol the symbolized.

Texts do not signify the world, they signify the images they tear up. Hence, to decode texts, means to discover the images dignified by them

After all, she may have thought, do words say everything? Can words say anything? Do not words destroy the symbol that lies beyond the reach of words?