1st Edition
A New Semiotics An Introductory Guide for Students
A New Semiotics is an introductory guide to the field of semiotics. Assuming no prior knowledge of semiotics, this accessible text takes a fresh look at semiotics and suggests that many of the forebears and many contemporary contributors to semiotics have misconstrued the nature of their work.
The authors start off by asking ‘What is semiotics?’ and go on to outline a journey towards a new semiotics. It offers a clearer way forward out of the prison of complexity invented by the fathers of contemporary semiotics—Peirce and Saussure. Each chapter ends with a summary, exercises and discussion points for students, and further reading.
This is the ideal text for introductory courses in semiotics within linguistics, communication studies, visual arts and related areas.
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1. Introduction: What is Semiotics?
Chapter 2. Semantics, Syntactics, Pragmatics, and Rules
Chapter 3. Perception and Perceiving
Chapter 4. Affordances
Chapter 5. Projecting and Meaning
Chapter 6. The Stand for Relation-Letness
Chapter 7. Letness and Metaphors
Interlude 1: The Journey so far Chapters 1-7
Chapter 8. The Boundary of Communication: The Reader's Position
Chapter 9. Controlling Meaning
Chapter 10. Controlling Meaning?
Chapter 11. Authortext, Readertext
Interlude 2: The Journey continues Chapters 8-11
Chapter 12. Communication Landscapes
Chapter 13. The Author's Position
Chapter 14. The Significance of Position
Chapter 15. Letness, Chaos, and Communicating
Chapter 16 Beyond Babel
Biography
David Sless is the Founder and Director of the Communication Research Institute (CRI). Before leaving academia, he was Senior Lecturer in Verbal and Visual Communication at Flinders University South Australia, Visiting Professor Coventry University UK, and Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University Canberra and the University of Technology Sydney.
Ruth Shrensky is a researcher and editor at the Communication Research Institute. Until her retirement from academia, she was Lecturer in English and Communication at the University of Canberra, then Academic Skills Adviser at La Trobe University Melbourne. She was awarded a PhD with distinction for her thesis The Ontology of Communication.
A New Semiotics continues the journey started by David Sless with Learning and Visual Communication, 1981 and In Search of Semiotics, 1986.
From reviews of In Search of Semiotics:
"In Search of Semiotics is an important book. It is a controversial book. It may even interrupt some of the more impenetrable forms of semiotics that terrify students and academics alike."
-- Keyan G Tomaselli, The University of Johannesburg and the University of KwaZulu-Natal
"David [Sless] was one of the first to write clearly and accessibly about cultural semiotics: he argues fluently and provocatively, taking us on a lively intellectual journey that is far easier for readers to follow than most other books on the subject at the time."
-- Susan Petrilli, University of Bari and Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America
A New Semiotics is a clear-eyed, readable reassessment of interpretive semiotics. Written in a conversational style suitable for students, the book also delivers much for media researchers and practitioners to consider.
Rodney G. Miller, The Communication Institute, USA
