ABSTRACT

ZOOSEMIOTICS ‘Zoosemiotics’ is the name for the study of animal semiosis, communication and representation. The term was proposed in 1963 by the Hungarian-American semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok (Sebeok 1972a: 178). He also established the framework for the new paradigm by finding and tightening connections to predecessors, developing terminology and methodology. Zoosemiotics stems from the semiotic tradition that does not limit sign processes to human species. Such an approach is developed most clearly in the pragmatic semiotics of Charles S. Peirce and Charles Morris. Other main sources of the zoosemiotic paradigm established by Sebeok include Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory that describes meanings in animals’ subjective worlds, the communication semiotics of Roman Jakobson and Karl Bühler, as well as ethological studies by Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch and others.