ABSTRACT
The emergence of educational semiotics occurs as the result of a long tradition, that of a hermeneutical approach in the human and social sciences. This chapter aims to draw a modest genealogy of educational semiotics, in reference to this tradition, to illuminate some of their epistemological dimensions and their objects. The 'category of meaning', as a core concept in the human and social sciences, has been investigated since the very end of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century. The chapter shows how, after a few decades of epistemological and methodological detours, semiotic theories came to be viewed by some scholars as a meaningful way to rethink education. Educational semiotics is a simpler and quicker way of designating what can be called 'semiotic approaches to education', a very vast ensemble, including semiotic and semiologic approaches, pedagogical and didactic approaches, some being strongly rooted in semiotic theories and others not.
