ABSTRACT
The notion of a ‘science of signs’, conceived independently and (as we have noticed in the case of a number of linguistic concepts) at about the same time by theorists on opposite sides of the Atlantic, has become one of the most fruitful concepts deriving from the general structuralist enterprise of the last two decades, and not easily distinguishable from it. The terms semiology and semiotics are both used to refer to this science, the only difference between them being that semiology is preferred by Europeans, out of deference to Saussure’s coinage of the term, and semiotics tends to be preferred by English speakers, out of deference to the American Peirce.1 The field of semiotics is of course enormous, ranging from the study of the communicative behaviour of animals (zoosemiotics) to the analysis of such signifying systems as human bodily communication (kinesics and proxemics), olfactory signs (the ‘code of scents’), aesthetic theory, and rhetoric.2 By and large, its boundaries (if it has any) are coterminous with those of structuralism: the interests of the two spheres are not fundamentally separate and, in the long run, both ought properly to be included within the province of a third, embracing discipline called, simply, communication. In such a context, structuralism itself would probably emerge as a method of analysis linking the fields of linguistics, anthropology and semiotics.3 I shall therefore attempt only the briefest outline of semiotics here before narrowing the discussion to a consideration of some of its implications for the student of literature.
