Semiotics: History, Basic concepts and Computer Applications

Lectures:

36 h.

Recommended for

Graduate students.

The course was last given:

Fall 1996.

Goals

The purpose of the course is to present the concepts of the general theory of signs and their historical development within different traditions of investigation. With a firm grasp of the theoretical concepts in hand, various concrete computer applications will be presented and discussed.

Prerequisites

None.

Organization

Twelve seminars about once every two week covering the history and basic concepts of semiotics followed by supervised individual study towards the end of the course in preparation for the presentation of term papers.

Contents

The course consists of two parts. The first part consists of a historical survey of the development of the key concepts of semiotic theory and a comparison of different traditions of research within semiotics. The concepts of sign, icon, index and symbol constitute the focus for the historical, theoretical, and comparative part of the course. the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions of semiotic systems are also defined, explained, and exemplified. The second part of the course consists of independent supervised investigations by the participants into different aspects of the theoretical concepts and their relevance for applications in computer science.

Literature

Andersen, P.Bl (1991) A Theory of Computer Semiotics: Semiotic approaches to construction and assessment of computer systems. Cambride: Cambridge University Press

Eco, Umberto (1984) Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Robert E. Innis (ed.)(1985) Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Thomas A. Seboek (1994) An Introduction to Semiotics. London: Pinter Publ.

Teachers

Richard Hirsch

Examiner

Richard Hirsch

Schedule

Fall 2001.

Examination

A written paper on a chosen theoretical topic or a report on an investigation of computer applications of semiotic theory.

Credit

Up to 5 credits.