Reading images, objects and texts as systems of signs: what they denote, what they connote, and by which codes.
- +Fits Constructivist Epistemology, Post-structuralist Epistemology
- –Tension with Positivist Epistemology
Key thinkers: Roland Barthes, Charles Sanders Peirce, Umberto Eco
The longer story
Semiotics analyses how signs produce meaning. Saussure gave us signifier and signified; Peirce added the interpretant. Barthes showed how myths operate through signs—the naturalisation of what's actually historical. For visual, verbal, or musical material, semiotics asks: how does this mean? What codes does it draw on? What must you know to understand it? The method is reading signs within systems, showing how meaning is constructed rather than given. Everything signifies; semiotics is the study of how.