Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signification, and semioticians have traditionally mapped the making of meanings (and realities) as a 'semiotic triangle' mediating relations between three relata: signs, world and mind (especially in relation to linguistic signs). Broadly, a sign is 'something that stands for something else' – making semiotics the study of representation, while the third relatum (that of mind) highlights the essential sociocognitive contribution of interpretation. Contemporary semioticians study not only the meaning of signs (semantics), but also their contextual functions, use and interpretation (pragmatics), together with the structural relations between them (syntactics). While the focus of structuralist semiotics has been primarily on systems – as in the preoccupation of 'gay semiotics' with visual codes of gender expression – poststructuralist semiotics has directed greater attention to processes – reflected, for instance, in the focus on semiotic agency in queer semiotics, a field which is still actively under construction.