The phrase "semiotic anthropology" was first used by Milton Singer (1978). Singer's work brought together the

semiotics Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...

and

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where Singer taught. In the late 1970s,

Michael Silverstein Michael Silverstein (12 September 1945 – 17 July 2020) was an American linguist. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology at the University of Chicago. He was a theoretician of se ...

, a young student of Jakobson's at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, joined Singer in Chicago's Department of Anthropology. Since that time, anthropological work inspired by Peirce's semiotic have proliferated, in part as students of Singer and Silverstein have spread out across the country, developing semiotic-anthropological agendas of their own.

Overview

Semiotic

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

has its precursor in

Malinowski Malinowski (Polish pronunciation: ; feminine: Malinowska; plural: Malinowscy) is a surname of Polish-language origin. It is related to the following surnames: People * Agnieszka Malinowska, Polish mathematician * (born 1954), Polish Army gene ...

contextualism Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the ''context'' in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the a ...

(which may be called

anthropological semantics Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the ''context'' in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the a ...

), which was later resumed by

John Rupert Firth John Rupert Firth (June 17, 1890 in Keighley, Yorkshire – December 14, 1960 in Lindfield, West Sussex), commonly known as J. R. Firth, was an English linguist and a leading figure in British linguistics during the 1950s. Education and career F ...

Winfried Nöth Winfried Nöth (born September 12, 1944 in Gerolzhofen) is a German linguist and semiotician. After graduating from high school in 1963 in Brunswick, from 1965 to 1969 Nöth studied English, French and Portuguese in Münster, Geneva, Lisbon and ...

(1995) ''Handbook of semiotics'
p.103
/ref> Anthropological approaches to semantics are alternative to the three major types of semantics approaches:

linguistic semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

logical semantics In logic, the semantics of logic or formal semantics is the study of the semantics, or interpretations, of formal and (idealizations of) natural languages usually trying to capture the pre-theoretic notion of entailment. Overview The truth cond ...

, and

general semantics General semantics is concerned with how events translate to perceptions, how they are further modified by the names and labels we apply to them, and how we might gain a measure of control over our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioral respons ...

. Other independent approaches to semantics are

philosophical semantics In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the ...

and

psychological semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...

Elizabeth Mertz Elizabeth Mertz is a linguistic and legal anthropologist who is also a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she teaches family law courses. She has been on the research faculty of the American Bar Foundation since 1989. ...

has recently reviewed the burgeoning literature in semiotic anthropology (2007). The freshest research in the field refer to the theory of sign setting the aim for the scientific program: "Semiotic anthropology, as a research program, sets itself several goals. The first is the establishment of a “cultural theory of signs” as a hypostatic object functioning in higher-order ontologies. The second is reduction of the paradigms of the research on culture to one, merging the philosophical-philological and anthropological-ethnographic perspectives in order to unify methodology and specialize research techniques. In this sense, semiotic anthropology ought to perform an auxiliary function; in other words, semiotics is always the semiotics of something .. The third goal is the development of an effective analytical tool for cultural messages such as architecture, painting, eating habits, or fashion, which constitute material reflections of the systems of values of a certain community. Cultural messages have recorded the “world of culture” of people who perceived reality in a certain way. The interpretation of this closed “world of culture” is a difficult but also useful task, as it enables one to better understand the people who created this world." (Boroch 2018: 222).

Notes

References

*Singer, M. B. (1978). "For a Semiotic Anthropology," in Sight, Sound and Sense. Edited by T. Sebeok, pp. 202–231. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. *{{cite journal , author = Mertz, Elizabeth , title = Semiotic Anthropology , journal = Annual Review of Anthropology , year=2007 , pages = 337–353 , issue = 1 , doi = 10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094417 , volume = 36 *Robert Boroch (2018) "Rethinking Milton Singer’s Semiotics Anthropology: A Reconnaissance". ''Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies''. Vol. 224, p. 222.

Overview

See also

Notes

References

Further reading