ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits the myths, misconceptions, and misplaced confidence of the old semiotics, but from the point of view of a new semiotics which offers new challenges and possibilities. In the Babel story, each person has an identical dictionary in their head and therefore the power to get their messages across to each other without error, enabling them to do anything and everything. The Old Testament God sees their hubris, their arrogant self-confidence, and provides the fall that results from such hubris. There are many ways in which all of the readers participate in the invention of a language, with each other and with the next generation. To reinforce the knowledge of it within communities, people create common rituals, tell stories, make pictures, dance, and sing. Within communication there are at the very least two kinds of semiosis, one within the authortext relation and the other within the readertext relation.
