The Sign and Its Masters

by Thomas Albert Sebeok

This book is a reprinting of the second collection (originally dated 1979) from among Thomas Sebeok's essays on general semiotics and some of its applications. In the first half of the book are essays that confront a postulated separation between nature and culture, which, for the past half-century or so, has had the force almost of dogma. In Part II, Sebeok writes about the Masters, such luminaries in the field of semiotic inquiry as John Lotz and Roman Jakobson.
Sebeok asserts that the semiotic mainstream has so far been unnecessarily and counterproductively split into two traditions, one scientific, philosophical, and "major," the other literary, glottal, and "minor." In The Sign and Its Masters , Volume VIII in the Sources in Semiotics Series, Sebeok's vision is presented with characteristic brilliance.

372 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1979

About the author

Thomas Albert Sebeok or Sebők was a prominent linguist and semiotician, and editor-in-chief of the leading periodical in the field, Semiotica, from its 1969 founding until 2001. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1945. He is counted among the originators of the field of biosemiotics, and was highly influential in the study of non-human signaling and communication systems.

Sebeok was survived by his wife (and frequent co-author), Jean Umiker-Sebeok