A Theory of Semiotics

Introduction

“A Theory of Semiotics” was published in Italian in 1975 and in English in 1976; it reworked material from “The Absent Structure” (1968) and later essays into a system. The book has two parts. A theory of codes describes how expressions and contents are correlated by cultural conventions and treats meaning as a network of cultural units, each explained by further interpretants in Peirce’s sense. A theory of sign production classifies the work needed to produce signs, from recognition and ostension to replica and invention. Along the way Eco criticises the idea that iconic signs resemble their objects by nature, and he describes semiotics as the discipline that studies everything that can be used to lie. The book helped to establish semiotics as a general discipline in Italy and beyond; Eco later qualified its conventionalism in “Kant and the Platypus” (1997).

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