Sight, Sound, and Sense / edited by Thomas A. Sebeok.

• TeilnehmendeR: Sebeok, Thomas A. 1920-2001.
• Place / Publishing House: Bloomington : : Indiana University Press,, 1978.; ©1978.
• Year of Publication: 1978
• Language: English
• Series: Advances in semiotics
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (1 online resource ix, 289 pages.)

"Semiotics: A Discipline or an Interdisciplinary Method?" —the query with which the internationally celebrated scholar Umberto Eco has titled his contribution to this volume—articulates a question raised in many quarters and will evoke interest among specialists not only in semiotics but also in communication, linguistics, literary criticism, and anthropology. The thirteen essays in this collection are the outcome of a pilot program in Semiotics in the Humanities held at Indiana University during the 1975-76 academic year. The lectures, a highlight of the program, are here produced in revised form. They fall under four major headings: historiography, with two articles, one on the origins of semiotics and the other on Peirce's theory of signs; methodology, which includes three articles that consider Eco's query and discuss the relation between social communication and semiosis; nonverbal communication, explored among animals and in man, with a focus on sign language in general; culture theory, religion, text analysis, and translation. Sight, Sound, and Sense, together with its companion volume, A Perfusion of Signs (Indiana University Press, 1977), examines the main trends in semiotic theory and praxis and supplies suitable reading in semiotics courses, on both introductory and advanced levels.

Table of Contents

1. Historiography: Toward the origin of semiotic / John N. Deely -- Peirce's general theory of signs / Max H. Fisch -- 2. Methodology: Semiotics: a discipline or an interdisciplinary method? / Umberto Eco -- The contiguity illusion / Decio Pignatari -- Communication vs. semiosis: two conceptions of semiotics / Alain Rey -- 3. Nonverbal communication: Affective and symbolic meaning: some zoosemiotic speculations / Peter Marler -- Facial signs: facts, fantasies, and possibilities / Paul Ekman -- Sign languages and the verbal/nonverbal distinction / William C. Stokoe -- 4. Applications: Verbal patterns and medical disease: prophylactic implications of learning / Harley C. Shands -- For a semiotic anthropology / Milton Singer -- A semiotic approach to religion / Boris Ogibenin -- A semiotic approach to nonsense: clowns and limericks / Paul Bouissac; with appendix by Ivan Karp -- On semiotic aspects of translation / Bogusław P. Lawendowski.