Who is Thomas Sebeok?
What are his Contributions to
21st Century Semiotics?
How did he develop “Semotics”
to its current position in
academia?
Who?
Thomas Albert Sebeok (1920-2001)
Hungarian American linguist and Semioticien
Thomas Sebeok, The founder of
Zoosemiotics, Biosemiotics and
Global Semiotics, was born on
November 9th, 1920 in Budapest.
He travelled to America in
1937; and got his higher education
successively at Cambridge,
Chicago and Princeton
Universities.
He studied at the hands of
prominent linguists of the time
such as:
I. A. Richards;
Leonard Bloomfield;
Charles Morris and ;
Roman Jakobson.
Sebeok was an illustrious
Professor of Linguistics and
Semiotics at Indiana University at
Bloomington.
He was also a founding member of
a number associations related to
semiotic studies, such as:
the Semiotic Society of America;
the International Association for
Semiotic Studies.
Sebeok was an editor of several
scientific journals like:
The journal Semiotica;
The Mouton book series Approaches
to Semiotics;
The Indiana University Press book
series Advances in Semiotics.
What?
Nonverbal communication,
Animal communication,
psychology,
Psycholinguistics,
Neurosciences,
Paralinguistics and Kinesics,
Cybernetics... Etc.
What?
Sebeok rejected semiology for its
central interest for human culture and
verbal language only. mistaking these
signs for being the only concern of
semiotics.
The triadic and holistic semiotic model of
Peirce on the other hand makes
“semiosis” involve a larger definition of
“sign” therefore:
“where there is significance there is
semiosis”
The term Semiotics as a full
fledged academic discipline was
coined by Sebeok and his
colleagues in 1962 during a
Conference on Paralinguistics and
Kinesics, it has been decided that
"semiotics" should be called and
spelled just that way.
(Sebeok et al. 1964).
3. Achievements of Thomas Sebeok
What is Zoosemiotics ?
zoosemiotics designates the study of
animal communication. It is study of
semiosis within and across animal
species.(the way animals make sense out
of each other and their environment.)
Anthropological zoosemiotics (or
anthropo-zoosemiotics), studies the
semiosic relationships between humans
and other animals.
Central issues in Zoosemiotics?
whether animals are capable of communicating
between themselves;
Do animals have languages like human?
The distinction between “language” and
«communication »
The focus of zoosemiotics is not simply
communication, but rather the broader notion of
semiosis, i.e., following Charles Morris,
“the process by which something becomes a
sign to some organism.”
Bio
Semiotics
Nature is full of sounds, colours, animal
behaviours, chemical reactions.
Things are happening everywhere and anytime in
the world even when we (humans) are not looking !
Other creatures, live in the world and make sense
of it, using different signs and modes of
signification ;
Birds Chirping, bees dancing, lions hunting, plants
growing flowers of numerous colours, water
falling, icing & melting… living creatures grow, live,
and die. Physical matters act on each others …
etc.
And each one of these, is an act of semiosis.
What is Biosemiotics?
Biosemiotics is an interdisciplinary
science that studies communication
and signification in living systems.
Plants and animals use colour and sound to
give meaning, And animals survival depends on
their ability to read signs.
Examples: Prey/predator, mal/ female; signals,
signals of danger, mating... etc
Roots of biosemiotics:
Sebeok extended semiosis from human culture
to all animals and founded the new research field
of zoosemiotics (Sebeok 1963).
More than 20 years later, he made a second
extension from animals to all living creatures and
called it biosemiotics (Anderson et al. 1984,
Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok 1992, Sebeok 2001).
Nowadays, Biosemiotics encloses :
anthroposemiotics , zoosemiotics, phytosemiotics,
mycosemiotics, microsemiotics, machine semiotics,
environmental semiotics and endosemiotics ... Ect.
Cental Concepts in Biosemiotics:
Umwelt: « the objective world » the
environment which gives sense to signs, and
makes its interpretation by some organisms
possible.
Modelling systems:
 Primary Modelling system (non-human
communication)
 Secondary Modelling system (human language)
 Tertiary Modelling system (culture)
Personal attributes of Sebeok both
human and academic gained him the
admiration and respect of his
contemporaries and lead him to get
involved in many domains of research
and academic activities: teaching,
editing, seminars, conferences...etc.
with the direct encouragement and sponsorship
of Thomas Sebeok a series of conferences and
journal issues had been launched through out the
decade of the 1990s; this is what gained Biosemiotics
visibility and value on the academic scene.
Sebeok’s other main achievements is his
gigantic historical work on “cryptocimioticiens,
or researchers that were doing “semiotics”
before it becomes a recognised discipline and
before they knew themselves that they were
dealing with semiotics.
Sebeok says he has donne so to “assess
the contributions of a host of ‘neglected’
giants”, among whom we find
Charles Senders Peirce
Jakob von Uexküll
Juri Lotman
Sebeok, teaching!
Sebeok and collegues
Reffrences:
Barbieri M (2003) The Organic Codes. An Introduction
to Semantic Biology. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK.
Favareau D (2007) The Evolutionary History of
Biosemiotics. In: Barbieri M (ed) Introduction to
Biosemiotics. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 1-67.
Dr. Dario Martinelli. (2002). Zoosemiotics. Available:
http://www.semioticon.com/seo/Z/zoosemiotics.html#.
Last accessed 25-03-014.
Master Studies at the
MMTO University
2013/2014