ABSTRACT
Semiotics is the science of signs - a sign being anything that can be used to stand for something else. Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf mutes, military signals. This chapter includes some writings by the founding fathers of semiotics, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. It also includes some of the more outstanding users of semiotics such as the French critic Roland Barthes and the Italian semiotician, literary theorist and novelist Umberto Eco. Peirce wrote that the universe is 'perfused' with signs, by which he meant everything is a sign, which means that semiotics becomes a master discipline. Semiotics is of interest to people in advertising and marketing as well as psychologists, sociologists and other kinds of social scientists.
