Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary

Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary (AD) is the most ambitious attempt to date to provide a comprehensive lexicon as well as a coherent theoretical framework for the study of semiotics. Generally speaking, it embraces historical and interdisciplinary aspects of semiotics along with American, Continental, and Russian traditions. However, on the latter point it should be stated from the outset that the French tradition, with its special emphasis on Saussurean and Hjelmslevian linguistics, prevails. This means, of course, that the AD tends to privilege structuralist theories and methods, hence it focuses not only on semiotics per se but also on allied disciplines that have been subsumed within Continental semiotics (e. g., comparative mythology, narratology, poetics, textology, et al. ). Not altogether eschewed, but relegated nevertheless to a problematic status for semiotics, are American Pragmatics, British Speech Act Theory, and Transformational-Generative Grammar.