ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the principles of semiotic theory, considering its relevance to visual signification and how it might be used in exploring examples of art practice. It is developed from studies of language and logic undertaken independently by Ferdinand de Saussure in Switzerland and Charles Sanders Peirce in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although some art historians have engaged directly with these theories, their importance has primarily been to lay the foundations for subsequent theories of structuralism and poststructuralism. Central to both the structural analysis of a text and the sign systems underlying the discourse, or metanarrative, is the concept of paradigmatic oppositions. By exploring the self-referentiality of sign systems, structuralism and poststructuralism emphasise the nuances and complexities of representation. Modality is concerned with the arbitrariness or stability of the signifier/signified relationship, and therefore how close signs are to reality.
