Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Ferdinand de Saussure was born in Geneva into a family of well-known scientists. He studied Sanskrit and comparative linguistics in Geneva, Paris, and Leipzig, where he fell in with the circle of young scholars known as the Neogrammarians. Brugmann, in particular, was his mentor, but he was also close to Karl Verner and others of the circle.
In 1878, at the age of 21, Saussure published a long and precocious paper called "Note on the Primitive System of the Indo-European Vowels". He explained in greater and clearer detail than others who were coming to similar conclusions how the PIE ablaut system worked. This brilliant start was not followed by any tremendous output of published work, but it contained the seeds of his essential insight into the importance of the linguistic system and how central it is for understanding human knowledge and behavior. Also, Saussure's influence on linguists was far-reaching, first through his direct influence on his students at the University of Geneva, who practically worshipped him, and then through his ideas as collected and disseminated after his death by two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechaye These students, who became well-known linguistic researchers in their own right, put together course notes from their and another student's notebooks to produce the to produce the Cours de Linguistique Generale, based on several of Saussure's courses of lectures at Geneva, using the notebooks of various students attending.
Saussure's most influential work, Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale), was published posthumously in 1916 by former students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye on the basis of notes taken from Saussure's lectures in Geneva. The Course became one of the seminal linguistics works of the 20th century, not primarily for the content (many of the ideas had been anticipated in the works of other 20th century linguists), but rather for the innovative approach that Saussure applied in discussing linguistic phenomena.
Its central notion is that language may be analysed as a formal system of differential elements, apart from the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension. Examples of these elements include his notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also have a referent, Saussure took this last question to lie beyond the linguist's purview.
Proposals and Contributions.
The contributions of Saussure to the study of semiotics were mainly his famous didactic concepts, with which his line of thought reaches the XXI Century with value and critics: Language - Speech, Signifier - Signified, Syntagm - Paradigm and the name of semiology, the discipline which he helped to create.
Ferdinand de Saussure was born in Geneva into a family of well-known scientists. He studied Sanskrit and comparative linguistics in Geneva, Paris, and Leipzig, where he fell in with the circle of young scholars known as the Neogrammarians. Brugmann, in particular, was his mentor, but he was also close to Karl Verner and others of the circle.
In 1878, at the age of 21, Saussure published a long and precocious paper called "Note on the Primitive System of the Indo-European Vowels". He explained in greater and clearer detail than others who were coming to similar conclusions how the PIE ablaut system worked. This brilliant start was not followed by any tremendous output of published work, but it contained the seeds of his essential insight into the importance of the linguistic system and how central it is for understanding human knowledge and behavior. Also, Saussure's influence on linguists was far-reaching, first through his direct influence on his students at the University of Geneva, who practically worshipped him, and then through his ideas as collected and disseminated after his death by two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechaye These students, who became well-known linguistic researchers in their own right, put together course notes from their and another student's notebooks to produce the to produce the Cours de Linguistique Generale, based on several of Saussure's courses of lectures at Geneva, using the notebooks of various students attending.
Saussure's most influential work, Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale), was published posthumously in 1916 by former students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye on the basis of notes taken from Saussure's lectures in Geneva. The Course became one of the seminal linguistics works of the 20th century, not primarily for the content (many of the ideas had been anticipated in the works of other 20th century linguists), but rather for the innovative approach that Saussure applied in discussing linguistic phenomena.
Its central notion is that language may be analysed as a formal system of differential elements, apart from the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension. Examples of these elements include his notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also have a referent, Saussure took this last question to lie beyond the linguist's purview.
Proposals and Contributions.
The contributions of Saussure to the study of semiotics were mainly his famous didactic concepts, with which his line of thought reaches the XXI Century with value and critics: Language - Speech, Signifier - Signified, Syntagm - Paradigm and the name of semiology, the discipline which he helped to create.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839- 1914)
Charles Sanders Peirce was born on September 10, 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he died on April 19, 1914 in Milford, Pennsylvania. His writings extend from about 1857 until near his death, a period of approximately 57 years. His published works run to about 12,000 printed pages and his known unpublished manuscripts run to about 80,000 handwritten pages. The topics on which he wrote have an immense range, from mathematics and the physical sciences at one extreme, to economics, psychology, and other social sciences at the other extreme.
Peirce's father Benjamin Peirce was Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and was one of the founders of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey as well as one of the founders of the Smithsonian Institution. The department of mathematics at Harvard was essentially built by Benjamin. From his father, Charles Sanders Peirce received most of the substance of his early education as well as a good deal of intellectual encouragement and stimulation. Benjamin's didactic technique mostly took the form of setting interesting problems for his son and checking Charles's solutions to them. In this challenging instructional atmosphere Charles acquired his lifelong habit of thinking through philosophical and scientific problems entirely on his own. To this habit, perhaps, is to be attributed Charles Peirce's considerable originality. Peirce graduated from Harvard in 1859 and received the bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 1863. For thirty-two years, from 1859 until late 1891, he was employed by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, mainly surveying and carrying out geodetic investigations. The latter task involved making measurements of the intensity of the earth's gravitational field by means of using swinging pendulums, which were often of his own design. For over thirty years, then, Peirce was involved in practical and theoretical problems associated with making scientific measurements. This involvement was crucial in his ultimately coming to reject scientific determinism, as we shall see.
From 1879 until 1884, Peirce maintained a second job teaching logic in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. During that period the Department of Mathematics was headed by the famous mathematician J. J. Sylvester. This job suddenly evaporated for reasons that are apparently connected with the fact that Peirce's second wife was a Gypsy, and was a Gypsy moreover with whom Peirce had allegedly cohabited before marriage. The Johns Hopkins position was Peirce's only academic employment, and after losing it Peirce worked thereafter only for the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. This employment was terminated in late 1891 ultimately because of funding objections generated in Congress. Thereafter, Peirce eked out a living doing intellectual odd-jobs (such as translating) and carrying out consulting work (mainly in chemical engineering and analysis). For the remainder of his life Peirce was often in dire financial straits, and sometimes he managed to survive only because of the charity of friends, for example that of his old friend William James.
Proposals and Contributions.
Charles Sanders Peirce was very interested in semiotics among other things, he considered it a logical exercise above all, evoking the estoic project, Nevertheless, his purpose aims to understand all the compromised processes in the establishment of significations, this is why the concept of sign is general and pracmatic, in the signification 3 instances cooperate, the object (which is due to represent) the Sign (which represents it) and the interpretant (who gives meaning), the interpretant is, at the same time, a social rule or a collective habit that depends of a context.
He proposed more suggestive ideas about the formation of contents, their categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness which define modalities of knowledge around the world.
Charles Sanders Peirce was born on September 10, 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he died on April 19, 1914 in Milford, Pennsylvania. His writings extend from about 1857 until near his death, a period of approximately 57 years. His published works run to about 12,000 printed pages and his known unpublished manuscripts run to about 80,000 handwritten pages. The topics on which he wrote have an immense range, from mathematics and the physical sciences at one extreme, to economics, psychology, and other social sciences at the other extreme.
Peirce's father Benjamin Peirce was Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and was one of the founders of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey as well as one of the founders of the Smithsonian Institution. The department of mathematics at Harvard was essentially built by Benjamin. From his father, Charles Sanders Peirce received most of the substance of his early education as well as a good deal of intellectual encouragement and stimulation. Benjamin's didactic technique mostly took the form of setting interesting problems for his son and checking Charles's solutions to them. In this challenging instructional atmosphere Charles acquired his lifelong habit of thinking through philosophical and scientific problems entirely on his own. To this habit, perhaps, is to be attributed Charles Peirce's considerable originality. Peirce graduated from Harvard in 1859 and received the bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 1863. For thirty-two years, from 1859 until late 1891, he was employed by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, mainly surveying and carrying out geodetic investigations. The latter task involved making measurements of the intensity of the earth's gravitational field by means of using swinging pendulums, which were often of his own design. For over thirty years, then, Peirce was involved in practical and theoretical problems associated with making scientific measurements. This involvement was crucial in his ultimately coming to reject scientific determinism, as we shall see.
From 1879 until 1884, Peirce maintained a second job teaching logic in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. During that period the Department of Mathematics was headed by the famous mathematician J. J. Sylvester. This job suddenly evaporated for reasons that are apparently connected with the fact that Peirce's second wife was a Gypsy, and was a Gypsy moreover with whom Peirce had allegedly cohabited before marriage. The Johns Hopkins position was Peirce's only academic employment, and after losing it Peirce worked thereafter only for the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. This employment was terminated in late 1891 ultimately because of funding objections generated in Congress. Thereafter, Peirce eked out a living doing intellectual odd-jobs (such as translating) and carrying out consulting work (mainly in chemical engineering and analysis). For the remainder of his life Peirce was often in dire financial straits, and sometimes he managed to survive only because of the charity of friends, for example that of his old friend William James.
Proposals and Contributions.
Charles Sanders Peirce was very interested in semiotics among other things, he considered it a logical exercise above all, evoking the estoic project, Nevertheless, his purpose aims to understand all the compromised processes in the establishment of significations, this is why the concept of sign is general and pracmatic, in the signification 3 instances cooperate, the object (which is due to represent) the Sign (which represents it) and the interpretant (who gives meaning), the interpretant is, at the same time, a social rule or a collective habit that depends of a context.
He proposed more suggestive ideas about the formation of contents, their categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness which define modalities of knowledge around the world.
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Born on November 12, 1915, in Cherbourg, France, French literary philosopher Roland Barthes was educated at the Sorbonne, and went on to help establish structuralism as one of the leading intellectual movements of the 20th century. His work made important advances in the areas of semiotics, anthropology and post-structuralism. Barthes died in Paris in 1980.
Barthes showed great promise as a student and spent the period from 1935 to 1939 at the sorbonne, where he earned a lisence in classical letters. He was plagued by ill health throughout this period, suffering from tuberculosis, which often had to be treated in the isolation of sanatoria His repeated physical breakdowns disrupted his academic career, affecting his studies and his ability to take qualifying examinations. It also kept him out of military service during world war ii and, while being kept out of the major French universities meant that he had to travel a great deal for teaching positions, Barthes later professed an intentional avoidance of major degree-awarding universities, and did so throughout his career
Barthes was from a good family - his grand-father was a well-known explorer and colonial administrator - but he had good reason to dislike the class from which he came. The Barthes were genuinely poor. According to Barthes there was often no food at home, and a wealthy grandmother, who lived nearby in Paris, did nothing for them. The sense of marginalisation increased as Barthes grew up to realise he was both homosexual and an invalid. He was even, as he used to observe, left-handed.
Barthes spent the early 1960s exploring the fields of semiology and structuralism chairing various faculty positions around France, and continuing to produce more full-length studies. Many of his works challenged traditional academic views of literary criticism and of renowned figures of literature. His unorthodox thinking led to a conflict with a well-known Sorbonne professor of literature, Rymond Picard , who attacked the French new criticism (a label that he inaccurately applied to Barthes) for its obscurity and lack of respect towards France's literary roots. Barthes' rebuttal in Criticism and Truth (1966) accused the old, bourgeois criticism of a lack of concern with the finer points of language and of selective ignorance towards challenging theories, such as Marxism
Barthes's many monthly contributions that were collected in his Mythologies (1957) frequently interrogated specific cultural materials in order to expose how bourgueois society asserted its values through them. For example, the portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit is a bourgeois ideal that is contradicted by certain realities (i.e., that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He found semiotics, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were "second-order signs," or "connotations." A picture of a full, dark bottle is a signifier that relates to a specific signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage. However, the bourgeoisie relate it to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing experience. Motivations for such manipulations vary, from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes in line with similar Marxist theory.
When tuberculosis first struck, Barthes was only 19. After a year spent recuperating, he began to read Classics at the Sorbonne, where, with lengthy interludes of illness, he finally gained a degree. Then, in the middle of the war, TB struck again. But this time Barthes was dispatched to the limbo of an Alpine sanatorium: loneliness and more boredom, but also, of course, the time to do a great deal of reading. Cheated of the education and the career he desperately wanted - Barthes described the day thathis friend Philippe Rebyrol got into the cole Normale as the most painful of his existence - he was to spend the rest of his life arguing against the methods and values of the training he never received.
After the war, Barthes worked in French institutes in Bucharest and then Alexandria, where he was fortunate enough to meet Guy Greimas, who was in the process of becoming an authority on structural semantics and semiology. He read hard: by 1945 he had over a thousand index cards with notes on Michelet, and throughout the early 1950s he devoted himself to linguistic theory and to a host of different projects, many of which were never completed.
Barthes was devoted to Julia Kristeva, apparently once even declaring: "She's the only person I'm really in love with, the only woman who could make me change my sexuality." But by far the most important woman in his life was his mother. They lived with each other until her death, and his friend Greimas commented: "I have never seen a finer love." When she died in 1977 Barthes was devastated - his last book, Camera Lucida, was about her. A special professorship had been created for Barthes at the College de France in 1976 (despite a lukewarm reference from his old friend Foucault) but now he felt depressed, frustrated, and once again bored. Young men no longer desired him, and he was "too scrupulous to impose my own desire upon them"; he found his work, and the endless demands made upon him, a chore. Run over in Paris in 1980, he died in hos-pital some weeks later, seemingly having lost his will to live.
Proposals and Contributions.
Ronald Barthes contribution was to include to the study of signs, the semiology. This discipline understands that human beings communicate not only through linguistic signs but also in other elements like clothing, the hair, the gestures, images, shapes and colours with the purpose of convincing one another about the emotions, values and images that we wish to express.
Born on November 12, 1915, in Cherbourg, France, French literary philosopher Roland Barthes was educated at the Sorbonne, and went on to help establish structuralism as one of the leading intellectual movements of the 20th century. His work made important advances in the areas of semiotics, anthropology and post-structuralism. Barthes died in Paris in 1980.
Barthes showed great promise as a student and spent the period from 1935 to 1939 at the sorbonne, where he earned a lisence in classical letters. He was plagued by ill health throughout this period, suffering from tuberculosis, which often had to be treated in the isolation of sanatoria His repeated physical breakdowns disrupted his academic career, affecting his studies and his ability to take qualifying examinations. It also kept him out of military service during world war ii and, while being kept out of the major French universities meant that he had to travel a great deal for teaching positions, Barthes later professed an intentional avoidance of major degree-awarding universities, and did so throughout his career
Barthes was from a good family - his grand-father was a well-known explorer and colonial administrator - but he had good reason to dislike the class from which he came. The Barthes were genuinely poor. According to Barthes there was often no food at home, and a wealthy grandmother, who lived nearby in Paris, did nothing for them. The sense of marginalisation increased as Barthes grew up to realise he was both homosexual and an invalid. He was even, as he used to observe, left-handed.
Barthes spent the early 1960s exploring the fields of semiology and structuralism chairing various faculty positions around France, and continuing to produce more full-length studies. Many of his works challenged traditional academic views of literary criticism and of renowned figures of literature. His unorthodox thinking led to a conflict with a well-known Sorbonne professor of literature, Rymond Picard , who attacked the French new criticism (a label that he inaccurately applied to Barthes) for its obscurity and lack of respect towards France's literary roots. Barthes' rebuttal in Criticism and Truth (1966) accused the old, bourgeois criticism of a lack of concern with the finer points of language and of selective ignorance towards challenging theories, such as Marxism
Barthes's many monthly contributions that were collected in his Mythologies (1957) frequently interrogated specific cultural materials in order to expose how bourgueois society asserted its values through them. For example, the portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit is a bourgeois ideal that is contradicted by certain realities (i.e., that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He found semiotics, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were "second-order signs," or "connotations." A picture of a full, dark bottle is a signifier that relates to a specific signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage. However, the bourgeoisie relate it to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing experience. Motivations for such manipulations vary, from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes in line with similar Marxist theory.
When tuberculosis first struck, Barthes was only 19. After a year spent recuperating, he began to read Classics at the Sorbonne, where, with lengthy interludes of illness, he finally gained a degree. Then, in the middle of the war, TB struck again. But this time Barthes was dispatched to the limbo of an Alpine sanatorium: loneliness and more boredom, but also, of course, the time to do a great deal of reading. Cheated of the education and the career he desperately wanted - Barthes described the day thathis friend Philippe Rebyrol got into the cole Normale as the most painful of his existence - he was to spend the rest of his life arguing against the methods and values of the training he never received.
After the war, Barthes worked in French institutes in Bucharest and then Alexandria, where he was fortunate enough to meet Guy Greimas, who was in the process of becoming an authority on structural semantics and semiology. He read hard: by 1945 he had over a thousand index cards with notes on Michelet, and throughout the early 1950s he devoted himself to linguistic theory and to a host of different projects, many of which were never completed.
Barthes was devoted to Julia Kristeva, apparently once even declaring: "She's the only person I'm really in love with, the only woman who could make me change my sexuality." But by far the most important woman in his life was his mother. They lived with each other until her death, and his friend Greimas commented: "I have never seen a finer love." When she died in 1977 Barthes was devastated - his last book, Camera Lucida, was about her. A special professorship had been created for Barthes at the College de France in 1976 (despite a lukewarm reference from his old friend Foucault) but now he felt depressed, frustrated, and once again bored. Young men no longer desired him, and he was "too scrupulous to impose my own desire upon them"; he found his work, and the endless demands made upon him, a chore. Run over in Paris in 1980, he died in hos-pital some weeks later, seemingly having lost his will to live.
Proposals and Contributions.
Ronald Barthes contribution was to include to the study of signs, the semiology. This discipline understands that human beings communicate not only through linguistic signs but also in other elements like clothing, the hair, the gestures, images, shapes and colours with the purpose of convincing one another about the emotions, values and images that we wish to express.
Umberto Eco (1932)
Umberto Eco (Italy, 1932) is an eclectic theorist whose work in semiotics has contributed greatly to the development of a philosophy of meaning. A journalist, professor, academic and novelist, Eco has made a study of textual pragmatics and the aesthetics of reception.
Born in the small town of Alessandria in northern Italy, Umberto was the only son of an accountant named Giulio. Umberto and his mother, Giovanna fled to a village in the Piedmontese mountainside during World War II to escape the bombings while his father was called upon to serve in the army. Eco initially received a Salesian education and later entered the University of Turin to study law upon his father’s insistence who wanted his son to become a lawyer. However, following his interests, Eco soon switched to studying medieval philosophy and literature. He wrote a thesis on St. Thomas Aquinas and in 1954 earned a doctorate degree in philosophy. During his educational period, Umberto had lost faith in God and left the Roman Catholic Church.
After graduation, Eco joined a state television channel as an Editor for Cultural Programs where he was able to gain experience and learn a lot about modern culture and journalism. In 1956, Eco published his first book, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, which was an extension to his doctorate dissertation. Also in 1956, Eco began his lecturing career at the University of Turin. Following a brief period of service in the military, Eco surfaced with his second publication, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. The extensive research based book gained Umberto the reputation of an important medieval scholar. Next, Eco began working as an editor for a well known publication in Milan named Casa Editrice Bompiani. His next book related to modern art, The Open Work came out in 1962.
Eco continued producing academic works throughout 1960s focusing on semiotics while also contributing to a number of scholarly publications on a regular basis. In addition to this, Eco also pursued teaching at various universities in Florence and Milan. He became the first professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna in 1971 and published A Theory of Semiotics in 1976.
Eco's fundamental postulate is that the sign is poly-vocal. Since any work is composed of an infinite set of signs, it becomes an open work (Opera aperta, 1962), offering a multiplicity of possible interpretations. The reader of the text must use his/her encyclopaedia to actualize the message and yet avoid overinterpreting the textual indices that are present (Interpretation and Overinterpretation, 1992). The model reader (Lector in fabula, 1979) is able to grasp the meaning of the text by discerning the modes of sign productionand interpretation (A Theory of Semiotics, 1976 [1975]).
Eco founded and developed one of the most important approaches in contemporary semiotics, usually referred to as interpretative semiotics. The main books in which he elaborates his theory are La struttura assente (1962; literally: The Absent Structure), A Theory of Semiotics (1975), The Role of the Reader (1979), Semiotics and Philosophy of Language(1984), The Limits of Interpretation (1990) and Kant and the Platypus (1997).
Eco co-founded Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici (known as VS among Italian academics), an influential semiotic journal. VS has become an important publication platform for many scholars whose work is related to signs and signification. The journal's foundation and activities have contributed to the growing influence of semiotics as an academic field in its own right, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. Most of the well-known European semioticians, among them Eco, A.J. Greimas, Jean-Marie Floch, and Jacques Fontanille, have published original articles in VS, as well as philosophers and linguists like John Searle and George Lakoff.Eco's work is intended to be a theorization of general semiotics, the contemporary philosophy of various types of language, spoken, written, scientific and artistic. Eco proposes revising semiotic theory at the most basic level: its conceptual foundations.
The year 1978 marked a significant turn in Eco’s career when he decided to write a novel following an invitation from a friend. The detective story, The Name of the Rose became an international best-seller establishing a new identity of Umberto Eco. In 1986, the book was adapted to screen with a star cast of Sean Connery and Christian Slater. For Eco, there was no looking back and he continued writing exceptional novels such as Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and The Prague Cemetery.
Proposals and Contributions.
Eco proposed a hypothesis which claims that “a kind of unconditional request from the semiotics that would demand the whole concept of culture to be studied as a communicative phenomenon”.
Eco expressed that the “Cultural Unity” is defined by a system, by its place on it, by the units that oppose it and surround it. One of the unities remains and finds identity whilst another one coexists and has a different value, this is what Eco calls Semantic Field, one place where a vision of the world is manifested by the culture. and from a Semiological point of view is interesting to recognise that he proposes (1) The chance that contradictory semantic fields can coexist in the same cultural context. (2) That the same cultural unity can be a part of two complementary semantic fields and (3) that in the same cultural context, a semantic field can be erased very easily and restructure itself in a new field.
Umberto Eco (Italy, 1932) is an eclectic theorist whose work in semiotics has contributed greatly to the development of a philosophy of meaning. A journalist, professor, academic and novelist, Eco has made a study of textual pragmatics and the aesthetics of reception.
Born in the small town of Alessandria in northern Italy, Umberto was the only son of an accountant named Giulio. Umberto and his mother, Giovanna fled to a village in the Piedmontese mountainside during World War II to escape the bombings while his father was called upon to serve in the army. Eco initially received a Salesian education and later entered the University of Turin to study law upon his father’s insistence who wanted his son to become a lawyer. However, following his interests, Eco soon switched to studying medieval philosophy and literature. He wrote a thesis on St. Thomas Aquinas and in 1954 earned a doctorate degree in philosophy. During his educational period, Umberto had lost faith in God and left the Roman Catholic Church.
After graduation, Eco joined a state television channel as an Editor for Cultural Programs where he was able to gain experience and learn a lot about modern culture and journalism. In 1956, Eco published his first book, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, which was an extension to his doctorate dissertation. Also in 1956, Eco began his lecturing career at the University of Turin. Following a brief period of service in the military, Eco surfaced with his second publication, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. The extensive research based book gained Umberto the reputation of an important medieval scholar. Next, Eco began working as an editor for a well known publication in Milan named Casa Editrice Bompiani. His next book related to modern art, The Open Work came out in 1962.
Eco continued producing academic works throughout 1960s focusing on semiotics while also contributing to a number of scholarly publications on a regular basis. In addition to this, Eco also pursued teaching at various universities in Florence and Milan. He became the first professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna in 1971 and published A Theory of Semiotics in 1976.
Eco's fundamental postulate is that the sign is poly-vocal. Since any work is composed of an infinite set of signs, it becomes an open work (Opera aperta, 1962), offering a multiplicity of possible interpretations. The reader of the text must use his/her encyclopaedia to actualize the message and yet avoid overinterpreting the textual indices that are present (Interpretation and Overinterpretation, 1992). The model reader (Lector in fabula, 1979) is able to grasp the meaning of the text by discerning the modes of sign productionand interpretation (A Theory of Semiotics, 1976 [1975]).
Eco founded and developed one of the most important approaches in contemporary semiotics, usually referred to as interpretative semiotics. The main books in which he elaborates his theory are La struttura assente (1962; literally: The Absent Structure), A Theory of Semiotics (1975), The Role of the Reader (1979), Semiotics and Philosophy of Language(1984), The Limits of Interpretation (1990) and Kant and the Platypus (1997).
Eco co-founded Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici (known as VS among Italian academics), an influential semiotic journal. VS has become an important publication platform for many scholars whose work is related to signs and signification. The journal's foundation and activities have contributed to the growing influence of semiotics as an academic field in its own right, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. Most of the well-known European semioticians, among them Eco, A.J. Greimas, Jean-Marie Floch, and Jacques Fontanille, have published original articles in VS, as well as philosophers and linguists like John Searle and George Lakoff.Eco's work is intended to be a theorization of general semiotics, the contemporary philosophy of various types of language, spoken, written, scientific and artistic. Eco proposes revising semiotic theory at the most basic level: its conceptual foundations.
The year 1978 marked a significant turn in Eco’s career when he decided to write a novel following an invitation from a friend. The detective story, The Name of the Rose became an international best-seller establishing a new identity of Umberto Eco. In 1986, the book was adapted to screen with a star cast of Sean Connery and Christian Slater. For Eco, there was no looking back and he continued writing exceptional novels such as Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and The Prague Cemetery.
Proposals and Contributions.
Eco proposed a hypothesis which claims that “a kind of unconditional request from the semiotics that would demand the whole concept of culture to be studied as a communicative phenomenon”.
Eco expressed that the “Cultural Unity” is defined by a system, by its place on it, by the units that oppose it and surround it. One of the unities remains and finds identity whilst another one coexists and has a different value, this is what Eco calls Semantic Field, one place where a vision of the world is manifested by the culture. and from a Semiological point of view is interesting to recognise that he proposes (1) The chance that contradictory semantic fields can coexist in the same cultural context. (2) That the same cultural unity can be a part of two complementary semantic fields and (3) that in the same cultural context, a semantic field can be erased very easily and restructure itself in a new field.