Introduction

Semiotics helps students to take apart what is taken for granted, making their interpretive systems more explicit. In defining realities, sign systems serve ideological functions. Structuralise semiotics has subsequently drawn heavily on linguistic concepts, partly because of Saussure's influence, and also because linguistics is a more established discipline than the study of other sign systems. The impact of semiotics within existing disciplines could be argued to be its greatest contribution to the advancement of knowledge. The American linguist Leonard Bloomfield asserts that 'linguistics is the chief contributor to semiotics', and Jakobson defines semiotics as 'the general science of signs which has as its basic discipline linguistics, the science of verbal signs'. While Saussure may be hailed as the founder of the form of semiotics known as semiology, semiotics has become increasingly less Saussurean since the late 1960s. The technical concept of 'mediation' is central in semiotics and deserves a brief explanation at the outset.