ABSTRACT

The basic assertion which links semiotics to linguistics is only this: that all sign processes can be analysed in the same sense in which linguistics can, that is as a dialectic between codes and messages, langue and parole, competence and performance. The task of semiotics is to isolate different systems of signification, each of them ruled by specific norms, and to demonstrate that there is signification and that there are norms. A new branch of semiotics, proxemics, assumes that this is not a matter of suggestion or mere stimulation, but that it is a process of signification, any spatial form being a precise conventional message conveying social meanings on the basis of existing codes. Culture can be studied completely under a semiotic profile. Semiotics is a discipline which must be concerned with the whole of social life.