ABSTRACT
Contemporary semiotics and various genres of structuralism all emerged out of the linguistic philosophy of Ferdinand de Saussure in Europe and Charles Sanders Peirce in the United States. In practice, semiotics is best conceptualized as a formal mode of analysis used to identify the central rules that determine how signs convey meanings in any social system. Many branches of semiotics and structuralism extend the linguistic model to social reality, arguing that similar rule structures or grammars dictate the expression of meaning in any communicative system, be it art, mathematics, social conventions, or even highway signs. Saussure's entire philosophic project was motivated by his curiosity about the intimate relationship between language and human sense making. Saussure made an important distinction between langue and parole. Both denotative and connotative meanings have to be taken into account in any semiotic analysis. The semiotic and structuralist traditions provide a rigorous and precise program for decoding various texts whether they are literary, aesthetic, or social.
