Semiotic Insights: The Data Do the Talking

by Irmengard Rauch

This collection of articles by Irmengard Rauch, a widely known and respected scholar of semiotics and linguistics, provides a lucid narrative on the nature of both subjects, revealing their symbiotic relationship through concrete, data-based application. Rauch shows, with many practical examples, how to conduct semiotic analyses of language, narrative, texts, and discourse. In Part One, Semiotic Insights, she introduces the reader to the fundamental tenets and metatheory of the fields of linguistics and semiotics. She explores the multifaceted cooperation and tension between them, their shared threads and subthemes, the role of language in both, the tools of each discipline, and their relationship to other disciplines, especially biology and medicine. In Part Two, The Data Do the Talking, hard linguistic data are exposed and analysed within the semiotic paradigm. Using well-proven linguistic tools, Rauch's semiotic method lends insight into the dynamics of how language changes and grows.

Genres: Linguistics

328 pages, Hardcover

First published October 16, 1999

Reviews

[Rob]

I came back to my Goodreads to see what I'd done over the years, and I noticed that I rated this book 3 stars. This being a textbook, and me being completely ignorant about Semiotics, means I shouldn't be rating this book at all. I am therefore going to withdraw my rating, pore over this book for another decade, and I shall return. This is some of the most complex subject matter I've ever tried to wrap my head around, whatever that says about me. Perhaps if I was taking some kind of class where someone could explain the concepts to me more clearly I would get it. Ordered this from paperbackswap.com and have opened it at least once a month for the past four years to see if it makes sense or if my brain's changed. Today: nope!