"This is the best introduction to semiotics I have read. Comprehensive, accessible and interesting, it is an invaluable resource for both beginners and more advanced students." -Guy Cook, University of Reading

Following the successful Basics format, this is the book for anyone coming to semiotics for the first time. Using jargon- free language and lively, up-to-date examples, Semiotics: The Basics demystifies this highly interdisciplinary subject. Along the way, the reader will find out what a sign and a text are, what codes we take for granted, how semiotics can be used in textual analysis and who Saussure, Pierce, Barthes and Jakobson are and why they are important. Features include a glossary of key terms and realistic suggestions for further reading. This book also has a highly-developed and long-established online version of the book at: www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B. Part of the Basics series.

February 2002: 288 pp: 28 illus HB: 0415265932: $65.00 £30.00 PB: 0415265940: $15.95 £9.99

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Definitions Traditions Methodologies Relation to Linguistics Language and Parole Why Study Semiotics? 1. Models of the Sign Two Sides of a Page * The Relational System * Arbitrariness The Peircean Model * Relativity * Symbolic Mode * Iconic Mode Indexical Mode * Modes Not Types * Changing Relations * Digital and Analogue * Types and Tokens Rematerializing the Sign * Hjelmslev's Framework 2. Signs and Things Naming Things * Referentiality * Modality The Word Is Not the Thing * Empty Signifiers 3. Analyzing Structures Horizontal and Vertical Axes *The Syntagmatic Dimension Conceptual Relations * Spatial Relations * Sequential Relations Structural Relations * The Paradigmatic Dimension The Commutation Test * Oppositions * The Language of Opposition * Us and Them * Alignment Markedness * Valorizing Term B * The Semiotic Square 4. Challenging the Literal Rhetorical Tropes * Metaphor * Metonymy * Synecdoche * Irony Master Tropes * Denotation and Connotation * Myth 5. Codes Types of Codes * Perceptual Codes * Social Codes Textual Codes * Codes of Realism * Invisible Editing Broadcast and Narrowcast Codes * Interaction of Textual Codes Codification 6. Textual Interactions Modes of Communication * The Positioning of the Subject Adopting a Perspective * Modes of Address * Reading Positions Intertextuality * Problematizing Authorship Reading as Rewriting * No Text Is an Island * Intratextuality Bricolage * Types and Degress of Intertextuality 7. Limitations and Strengths Imperialism * Form and Function * Inescapable Frames Post-structuralist Semiotics * Strengths of Semiotic Analysis Mediation * The Construction of Meanings and Subjects Semiotic Modes Glossary References Index