Chapter 7: Retrospect: History and Theory in Semiotics
Chapter 7: Retrospect: History and Theory in Semiotics

Summary/Abstract: The object or subject matter of semiotic inquiry is not just signs but the action of signs or semiosis. This action, we now see, occurs at a number of levels that can be distinguished or identified as specific spheres or zones of sign activity. Semiotics, therefore, contrasts with semiosis as knowledge contrasts with that which is known. Semiotics is knowledge about semiosis; it is the theoretical accounting for signs and what they do. This is actually an important distinction, because, if we are right in what we have said about the extent of semiosis, the history of semiosis and the history of the universe, at least insofar as the universe inclines toward a species of our linguistic type as part of itself, are the same thing. But the history of semiotics, by contrast, is quite another matter and, while complicated, is considerably more manageable. It will be the story of the attempts, more or less fitful, to take account of that which underlies semiosis and makes it possible, namely, the sign. What is a sign such that it makes possible semiosis?

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