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Johansen and Larsen's Signs in Use is one of the best and most original introductions to semiotics to date. It is one of the best introductions because its language is clear and comprehensible to non-specialist readers, and it is original because of its topics and the way they are dealt with.Nonetheless, readers who hope and believe to find in this volume the description of the main semiotic trends will be disappointed and will have to content themselves with the useful glossary and biographies at the end of the work. Even though the book chiefly refers to both Peirce's and Hjelmslev's semiotic frameworks, no semiotic theory is fully explained or illustrated, and paradoxically this is where the real value of this study lies; after all, an introduction is not a handbook!The title -as the authors themselves openly specify -'is a slight adaptation of a Peirce quotation', namely 'signs are only signs in actu ' (p. 114). Indeed, all the numerous examples that illustrate and support this introduction are actual and belong to everyday communicative situations, from advertisements to urban parks.Johansen and Larsen's definition of semiotics starts by stating that semiotics does not have to adhere 'to the idea of structure as an arbitrary order we impose upon the world from the outside', neither can semiotics support 'the idea that the identity of an object's structure repeats, and is a direct reflection of, the identity of the object itself'; last but not least, semiotics does not analyse 'its object of study entirely from an intensional viewpoint' (pp. 22-3). On the contrary, semiotics has to adopt a predominantly realistic
Johansen and Larsen's Signs in Use is one of the best and most original introductions to semiotics to date. It is one of the best introductions because its language is clear and comprehensible to non-specialist readers, and it is original because of its topics and the way they are dealt with.Nonetheless, readers who hope and believe to find in this volume the description of the main semiotic trends will be disappointed and will have to content themselves with the useful glossary and biographies at the end of the work. Even though the book chiefly refers to both Peirce's and Hjelmslev's semiotic frameworks, no semiotic theory is fully explained or illustrated, and paradoxically this is where the real value of this study lies; after all, an introduction is not a handbook!The title -as the authors themselves openly specify -'is a slight adaptation of a Peirce quotation', namely 'signs are only signs in actu ' (p. 114). Indeed, all the numerous examples that illustrate and support this introduction are actual and belong to everyday communicative situations, from advertisements to urban parks.Johansen and Larsen's definition of semiotics starts by stating that semiotics does not have to adhere 'to the idea of structure as an arbitrary order we impose upon the world from the outside', neither can semiotics support 'the idea that the identity of an object's structure repeats, and is a direct reflection of, the identity of the object itself'; last but not least, semiotics does not analyse 'its object of study entirely from an intensional viewpoint' (pp. 22-3). On the contrary, semiotics has to adopt a predominantly realistic
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