Systemic Semiotics

Against the background of often esoteric literature in semiotics, this book offers a fresh and rigorous new interpretation of how to approach the study of communication, signs and meaning. Grounded in a deductive theory of interacting systems, Piotr Sadowski's book provides an accessible account of the hierarchy of communication. Divided into two parts, this book argues in the first section that a deductive semiotic theory generates communication situations of increasing complexity, from contiguous communication to indirect, referential forms based on indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs. Within this system, Sadowski explains how key concepts of the semiotic model such as information, parainformation and metainformation can account for degrees of cognitive complexity of communication processes, including the perception and interpretation of signs on literal and figurative levels. After this clear, step-by-step exposition of the theory of interacting systems, Systemic Semiotics then explores various applications of this theory, providing new insights into problems subsumed under communication studies, cultural theory, literary and film studies, and psychology.

Piotr Sadowski

List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Theory 1. Interaction as Communication 2. Types of Communication 3. Information and Levels of Meaning 4. Between Indexicality and Iconicity 5. The (Mostly) Symbolic Signs of Verbal Language Part II: Applications 6. Oscar Wilde and Dynamism of Character 7. The Esthetics of Light in Early Cinema 8. Photography and the Limitations of Indexicality in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966) 9. The Iconicity of the Pictorial Frame 10. The Iconic Magic of Cinema in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) Postscript Notes Bibliography Index