The more human knowledge increases, the more signs grow and, with this expansion, the more the boundaries of the science that studies signs also grows. In Semiotics Unbounded, Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio explain the explosion of the sign network in the era of global communication and discuss the important theoretical responses offered by semiotics. Providing a much-needed introductory guide to the subject, Petrilli and Ponzio explore the ever-growing frontiers of semiotics through the thought of prominent sign scholars such as Charles Peirce, Victoria Welby, Mikhail Bakhtin, Charles Morris, and Thomas Sebeok. 
In an era of global communication, a global approach is necessary, and what may seem to be the whole, is only a part – a view being at once globalizing and open. Each and every sign is never self-sufficient and closed but exists always in a relation of otherness. This is true of the signs forming animals and human beings, individuals and communities, and involves the implication of all living beings in the life of all others. Semiotics Unbounded offers a new and original survey of the science of signs, evaluating it in relation to the problems of our time, not only of a scientific order, but also the problems concerning everyday social life.

Semiotics Unbounded: Interpretive Routes through the Open Network of Signs (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication)

Literature & Fiction

Petrilli, Susan

Ponzio, Augusto

History & Criticism

University of Toronto Press

"The new morality" has excited countless public and private, formal and informal, scientific and non-scientific, sober and frankly provocative discussions. Those aspects related to sexual relationships and sexual behavior and the meaning of our "moral breakdown" have been much discussed. The essays in this volume address themselves to a more subtle and potentially more meaningful question: What is the extent of deviance from traditional patterns of sexual relationships, and what have been the legal and political implications of widespread transgression of legal and, for many, personal codes or morality? This volume confronts the myths and the realities of the sexual revolution in America. As such it helps explain the limits as well as the goals of a new generation in search of new standards of conduct.

The Sexual Scene (Transaction/Society, 5)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Routledge

On the Past, Present, and Future of Semioethics (Routledge Research in Language and Communication)

Levesque, Simon

Expression and Interpretation in Language

This book features the full scope of Susan Petrilli's important work on signs, language, communication, and of meaning, interpretation, and understanding. Although readers are likely familiar with otherness, interpretation, identity, embodiment, ecological crisis, and ethical responsibility for the biosphere�Petrilli forges new paths where other theorists have not tread. This work of remarkable depth takes up intensely debated topics, exhibiting in their treatment of them what Petrilli admires�creativity and imagination.Petrilli presents a careful integration of divergent thinkers and diverse perspectives. While she abandons hope of attaining a final synthesis or an unqualifiedly comprehensive outlook, there remains a drive for coherence and detailed integration. The theory of identity being advocated in this book will provide the reader with an aid to appreciating the identity of the theorizing undertaken by Petrilli in her confrontation with an array of topics. Her theory differentiates itself from other offerings and, at the same time, is envisioned as a process of self-differentiation.Petrilli's contribution is at once historical and theoretical. It is historical in its recovery of major figures of language; it is theoretical in its articulation of a comprehensive framework. She expertly combines analytic precision and moral passion, theoretical imagination and political commitment.

Philosophy

The Self as a Sign, the World, and the Other: Living Semiotics

Ostentation of the Subject is a practice that is asserting itself ever more in today's world. Consequently, criticism by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists has been to little effect, considering that they are not immune to such practices themselves. The question of subjectivity concerns the close and the distant, the self and the other, the other from self and the other of self. It is thus connected to the question of the sign. It calls for a semiotic approach because the self is itself a sign; its very own relation with itself is a relation among signs. This book commits to developing a critique of subjectivity in terms of the "material" that the self is made of, that is, the material of signs.Susan Petrilli highlights the scholarship of Charles Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Mary Boole, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Claude Levi-Strauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Morris, Thomas Sebeok, Thomas Szasz, and Victoria Welby. Included are American and European theories and theorists, evidencing the relationships interconnecting American, Italian, French, and German scholarship.Petrilli covers topics from identity issues that are part of semiotic views, to the corporeal self as well as responsibility, reason, and freedom. Her book should be read by philosophers, semioticians, and other social scientists.

This book features the full scope of Susan Petrilli’s important work on signs, language, communication, and of meaning, interpretation, and understanding. Although readers are likely familiar with otherness, interpretation, identity, embodiment, ecological crisis, and ethical responsibility for the biosphere—Petrilli forges new paths where other theorists have not tread. This work of remarkable depth takes up intensely debated topics, exhibiting in their treatment of them what Petrilli admires—creativity and imagination. Petrilli presents a careful integration of divergent thinkers and diverse perspectives. While she abandons hope of attaining a final synthesis or an unqualifiedly comprehensive outlook, there remains a drive for coherence and detailed integration. The theory of identity being advocated in this book will provide the reader with an aid to appreciating the identity of the theorizing undertaken by Petrilli in her confrontation with an array of topics. Her theory differentiates itself from other offerings and, at the same time, is envisioned as a process of self-differentiation. Petrilli’s contribution is at once historical and theoretical. It is historical in its recovery of major figures of language; it is theoretical in its articulation of a comprehensive framework. She expertly combines analytic precision and moral passion, theoretical imagination and political commitment.

Ostentation of the Subject is a practice that is asserting itself ever more in today’s world. Consequently, criticism by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists has been to little effect, considering that they are not immune to such practices themselves. The question of subjectivity concerns the close and the distant, the self and the other, the other from self and the other of self. It is thus connected to the question of the sign. It calls for a semiotic approach because the self is itself a sign; its very own relation with itself is a relation among signs. This book commits to developing a critique of subjectivity in terms of the "material" that the self is made of, that is, the material of signs. Susan Petrilli highlights the scholarship of Charles Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Mary Boole, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Claude Levi-Strauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Morris, Thomas Sebeok, Thomas Szasz, and Victoria Welby. Included are American and European theories and theorists, evidencing the relationships interconnecting American, Italian, French, and German scholarship. Petrilli covers topics from identity issues that are part of semiotic views, to the corporeal self as well as responsibility, reason, and freedom. Her book should be read by philosophers, semioticians, and other social scientists.

Victoria Welby (1837–1912) dedicated her research to the relationship between signs and values. She exchanged ideas with important exponents of the language and sign sciences, such as Charles S. Peirce and Charles S. Ogden. She examined themes she believed crucially important both in the use of signs and in reflection on signs. But Welby’s research can also be understood in ideal dialogue with authors she could never have met in real life, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Susanne Langer, and Genevieve Vaughan. Welby contends that signifying cannot be constrained to any one system, type of sign, language, field of discourse, or area of experience. On the contrary, it is ever more developed, enhanced, and rigorous, the more it develops across different fields, disciplines, and areas of experience. For example, to understand meaning, Welby evidences the advantage of translating it into another word even from the same language or resorting to metaphor to express what would otherwise be difficult to conceive. Welby aims for full awareness of the expressive potential of signifying resources. Her reflections make an important contribution to problems connected with communication, expression, interpretation, translation, and creativity.

Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs: Significs, Semiotics, Philosophy of Language

The series focuses on the state of contemporary semiotics and its current applications. It is intended to produce a number of concise interventions in semiotics, by which is meant studies of discrete areas of nature and culture that are interrogated using sign theory (in particular, as derived from the example of Peirce, Saussure, Sebeok, Lotman, von Uexküll, Greimas, Eco). Semiotics has undergone exciting sea changes in recent years. It has also been supplemented and reinvigorated by developments in media and theory and new areas of application. The series is designed to present developments in contemporary semiotics by focusing primarily on specific areas of its application. In addition to their specific focus, the books in this series give a rounded picture of current semiotics. Their emphasis is on current theory and the possibilities offered by the implementation of such theory. Each volume in the series places its topic within a general understanding of today's semiotics, a disciplinary field which comprises not just the study of culture but also the study of nature. Given the interdisciplinary character of this field and the spread of the target audience, the books are accessibly written and communicate with an academic readership that is not overspecialized. SCC is a peer-reviewed series of international scope.

Sign Studies and Semioethics: Communication, Translation and Values (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition [SCC], 13)

De Gruyter Mouton

Thomas Sebeok is the scholar who has contributed most to establishing semiotics as an interdisciplinary field. In a pioneering academic manoeuvre, he has broadened the perspectives of sign study to coincide with the study of the evolution of life. Now, at the beginning of the new millennium, semiotics not only addresses human verbal communication but embraces the study of all sign activity. 
Sebeok places himself in the 'major tradition' of semiotics represented by John Locke, C.S. Peirce and the ancient physicians Hippocrates and Galen. Semiotics is for him the 'sign science' that converges with the 'life sciences'. Indeed, it is Sebeok's central thesis that sign activity is the very definition of life in the universe. 
What are the consequences of Sebeok's vision for the arts, humanities and science? What does it say for ethics? And why does the concept of 'global semiotics' entail a fundamental reorientation of humans to the environment in which they live? "Thomas Sebeok and the Signs of Life" offers answers to these questions and presents a vision of the human being as a sign in a universe of signs.

Thomas Sebeok and the Signs of Life

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Books by Petrilli, Susan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Petrilli, Susan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Semiotics Unbounded: Interpretive Routes through the Open Network of Signs (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication)

The Sexual Scene (Transaction/Society, 5)

On the Past, Present, and Future of Semioethics (Routledge Research in Language and Communication)

Expression and Interpretation in Language

The Self as a Sign, the World, and the Other: Living Semiotics

Expression and Interpretation in Language

The Self as a Sign, the World, and the Other: Living Semiotics

Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs: Significs, Semiotics, Philosophy of Language

Sign Studies and Semioethics: Communication, Translation and Values (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition [SCC], 13)

Thomas Sebeok and the Signs of Life