ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the premisses for the typology of semiosic materiality. Rossi-Landi had himself proposed a typology of sign materiality, offering one of his most recent formulations in his book of 1985. Essentially, Rossi-Landi was interested in anthroposemiotics, and consequently he focused on the signs of human communication. He studied both verbal signs and nonverbal signs, insisting on the irreducibility of semiotics to semiology, and asserting therefore the autonomy of nonverbal signs from verbal signs. There are four types of materiality: Physical materiality; biological materiality; instrumental extrasign materiality; and semiosic materiality. Biological materiality may be subdivided into non living organic materiality, and living organic materiality. Living organic materiality is a necessary condition for semiosis to obtain. In truth, this type of materiality is present in each of the three types of semiosis as described by Thure von Uexkull in his article "Biosemiosis", in Semiotik/Semiotics: semiosis of information, semiosis of symptomatization, and semiosis of communication.
