Semiotics: The Basics

I finished "Semiotics: The Basics" by Chandler today. I found this to be fascinating. Some of it is a little rough to wade through but I found the explanations good and examples helpful. Now to see if I can make it through another book on semiotics in the not too distant future. There are a number of books on film and semiotics and I am particularly interested in those. Hm, must find some on music also. ( )

A very accessible if somewhat dry introduction to semiotics suitable for a first or second year undergraduate class. Chandler's book starts with the notion of a linguistic sign as characterized by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce and then shows how various thinkers have extended this notion into diverse areas such as literary analysis, film, and anthropology. The book becomes less interesting as it goes along, because the further the sign metaphor gets away from its linguistic origins the more strained it feels until—in the words of Paddy Whannel, who the book helpfully quotes—it seems that "semiotics tell us things we already know in a language we will never understand." If this is the case, however, the blame lies with the field as a whole and not with Chandler, who does a good job of putting things into a language we can understand.

For a readable introduction to the overlapping field of literary theory, see Literary Theory: An Introduction. ( )