ABSTRACT
Semiotics has much to offer psychology; it deals with basic questions of mind, such as “What is meaning?”, “What are the processes and components of thought?”, “How do we understand each other?” and “How are different media – e.g. gestures, pictures and spoken words – related and dissimilar?” With the exception of a few early innovators (see above) and the legacy they left, psychology has tended to shy away from semiotics. On the whole, it has preferred to de-animize the mind. This was done by focusing only on physiology and observable behavior, and later by considering the mind a machine. This volume is largely an effort to reanimize the mind, to bring meaning, interpretation, understanding, agency and feeling to the fore. It does this by re-engaging with the basic questions of semiotics. In support of this aim, I placed “semiotic foundations” at the beginning of the book. Though it is probably the most demanding Part of the book, the general framework that it sets up situates chapters appearing later in the volume: we see in the contributions of Part I how meaning is generated in gesture, speech, image, affect and action.
