semiotics

Word family

Related topics: Linguistics

sem·i·ot·ics /ˌsemiˈɒtɪks $ -ˈɑːt-/ (also semiology /ˌsemiˈɒlədʒi $ -ˈɑːl-/) noun [uncountableU] technical

SLthe way in which people communicate through signs and images, or the study of this 符号语言；符号学

n GRAMMAR: Singular or plural verb?

Semiotics is followed by a singular verb:

Semiotics is the study of signs.

—semiotic adjectiveadj

—semiotician /ˌsemiəˈtɪʃən/ (also semiologist) noun [countableC]

Examples from the Corpus

semiotics• Here the influence of psychoanalysis has to he taken into account alongside semiotics, together with the concerns of social history.• This thus stands as a starting point for exploring the potential of complex semiotics as a mode of analysis of the photographic.• Literary theory, drawing on other disciplines, including semiotics and linguistics, seeks for underlying structures and meanings in literature.• I have no pretensions to the type of expert knowledge of semiotics that students of linguistics will have.• Social semiotics, taking account of questions of interpretation and context, inflects the emphasis specifically towards cultural artefacts and social behaviour.• Cohen was an artist who studies semiotics, or the cultural meaning of signs and symbols.• I attempted to explain the semiotics of George of the Jungle, feckless would-be Tarzan, for ever crashing into the nearest tree.• Karl Barth's theology can thus be accurately described as a semiology, a theological semiotics.

Origin semiotics

(1600-1700) Greek semeiotikos “looking at and understanding signs”, from semeion “sign”

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