Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives

by Elizabeth Mertz (Editor), Richard J. Parmentier

Semiotic Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives provides the theoretical and empirical direction toward the synthesis of the subjective, developmental, or cognitive aspects of semiotic processes in a psychological context, and the historical, institutional, and ideological grounding of sign systems in sociocultural contexts. The book is divided into three sections that show the theoretical rationale and empirical consequences of cross-disciplinary research into semiotic processes. Part I provides a comprehensive theoretical foundation, with analysis and exegesis of work on semiotic mediation by theorists such as Peirce, Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Whorf, Saussure, and Frege. Part II presents empirical case studies that range across the fields of developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, and history of religion. Linking together these diverse data bases and research methodologies are crosscutting concerns with four dimensions of semiotic mediation. The third part is a section comprised of commentaries on the organization and themes of metasemiotic representation. The concluding chapter sketches the philosophical history of the notion of semiotic mediation and then synthesizes the volume's empirical studies in terms of directions for future research. Anthropologists, psycholinguists, psychosociologists, and linguistics experts will find the book invaluable.

394 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1985