Chapter 12: The Full Vista of the Action of Signs
Chapter 12: The Full Vista of the Action of Signs

Summary/Abstract: In my book, Basics of Semiotics ( 1990; 2005), I examined the many parts and aspects of semiotics in its development as the “doctrine of signs”, in order to sort out the basic notions. There are subdivisions of semiotics, to be sure; but there is no “higher order” of knowledge that is independent of the action of signs, not in the sphere of finite beings. Having seen the parts in relation to the whole, here I would like to present an attempt to see the whole of semiotics in relation to its parts, in three senses: first, in the sense of how we got to where we are today as students of the action of signs, the 20th century transition from semiology to semiotics proper; second, in the sense of considering the reach of the action of signs quite independently of human study or awareness of it, but perforce doing so from within anthroposemiosis and with the help of linguistic communication in particular; and third, in the sense of the ethical implications for human conduct that grow out of the awareness of sign-action, what Petrilli and Ponzio (2003; Petrilli 2003) have termed so felicitously “semioethics”.

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