Discovering ecosemiotics
Discovering ecosemiotics

Summary/Abstract: Ecosemiotics (or ecological semiotics) is the study of sign processes in the interaction of humans with their natural environment. This semiotic field at the crossroads of nature and culture is closely related to its neighbouring fields of biosemiotics and semiotics of culture, but semiosis in the relation between humans and nature is also of concern to aesthetics, the visual arts, literature, hermeneutics, and theology. Aspects related to ecosemiotics have also been studied in human ecology, cultural geography, ecopsychology, and ecolinguistics. There are two different conceptions of the ecological aspects of semiotics: (1) Ecological refers to all environmental information except for the one communicated by humans or in the case of other organisms by conspecifics. In this sense, there is ecological semiosis in all organisms, and ecosemiotics comprises a large part ofbiosemiotics. (2) In a narrower sense ecological refers to the environment of humans only. Accordingly, human environmental problems, when treated semiotically, belong to the field of ecosemiotics. In this sense, ecosemiotics is a part of anthroposemiotics, and more strictly, of the semiotics of culture. Four major models of the relationship between humans and their environment can be discerned in the history of culture: the pansemiotic, the magical, the mythological, and the one of the natural sciences (see also Noth 1998; 2000: 251— 252). Due to these two different meanings of 'ecological', there have been different definitions of 'ecosemiotics'. For instance, Tembrock (1997) follows the first, whereas Kull (1998) follows the second definition.

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