- "Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning-making."
The study of meaning in language and the ways in which it is conveyed through context, including the use of figurative language, ambiguity, and presupposition.
Semantics: The study of meaning in language, including the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
Pragmatics: The study of how language is used in context, including issues of social interaction, politeness, and implicature.
Evolutionary linguistics: The study of the evolution of language, including the development of language in humans and the relationship between language and other cognitive functions.
Language acquisition: The study of how individuals acquire language, including issues of innate knowledge, learning mechanisms, and the critical period hypothesis.
Syntax: The study of the structure of sentences, including issues of word order, phrase structure, and grammatical relations.
Lexical semantics: The study of the meaning of words, including issues of polysemy, homonymy, and conceptual structure.
Pragmatic competence: The ability to use language appropriately in context, including issues of speech acts, implicature, and presupposition.
Discourse analysis: The study of how language is used in larger units of text or speech, including issues of coherence, cohesion, and discourse markers.
Cognitive linguistics: The study of the relationship between language and thought, including issues of metaphor, conceptual structure, and embodiment.
Speech production and perception: The study of how speech is produced and understood, including issues of phonetics, phonology, and the processing of speech sounds.
Conceptual semantics: This is the study of how the meaning of words and phrases relates to our conceptual understanding of the world.
Formal semantics: This is the study of meaning in language using formal logic and mathematical models.
Lexical semantics: This is the study of how words acquire meaning, and how they can be combined to create new meanings.
Pragmatics: This is the study of how context can affect the meaning of language.
Discourse analysis: This is the study of how language is used in larger social contexts, such as conversations, speeches or written texts.
Cognitive semantics: This is the study of how humans process and comprehend language, and how mental structures and processes influence meaning.
Evolutionary semantics: This is the study of how language has evolved over time, and how the evolution of language relates to the evolution of human cognition and communication.
Cross-linguistic semantics: This is the study of how meaning is expressed in different languages and how it is related to culture and linguistics.
Contrastive semantics: This is the study of language meaning based on comparison between two or more languages.
- "Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter."
- "Signs can also communicate feelings (which are usually not considered meanings) and may communicate internally (through thought itself) or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste)."
- "Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge."
- "Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems."
- "Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication."
- "Some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science, while others explore the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications."
- "The Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco proposed that every cultural phenomenon may be studied as communication."
- "They examine areas also belonging to the life sciences—such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world."
- "Fundamental semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study."
- "Applied semiotics analyzes cultures and cultural artifacts according to the ways they construct meaning through their being signs."
- "The communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics)."
- "Semiotics is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology, which is a subset of semiotics."