The Encyclopedia of Semiotics is the first comprehensive guide to the topics, theories, and thinkers of this rapidly expanding field of knowledge. Drawing on classic and current work in linguistics, philosophy, literary theory, cognitive science, anthropology, and other disciplines, the Encyclopedia of Semiotics provides an unprecedented point of entry for students, teachers, and to a diverse, influential and rapidly growing body of knowledge. Semiotics informs an extraordinary number of areas in the humanities and social sciences, from literary and film criticism to design studies, computers, psychology, and linguistics. The Encyclopedia of Semiotics is an ideal tood for understanding across disciplines - mapping the history of the field, presenting its key terms and theorists, and illustrating the scope of semiotic analysis in many cultural domains. The Encyclopedia of Semiotics is valuable as a single-stop reference source of essential knowledge, including: The life and work of important authors and theorists: Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Mikhail Bakhtin, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Christian Metz, Julia Kristeva, Alan Turing among many others. The impact of various centres and schools of thought: the Vienna Circle and the Copenhagen, Prague, Moscow-Tartu, and Paris Schools. The meaning of key concepts and terms: deconstruction, denotation, metonymy, markedness, meme, umwelt. The scope of semiotic analysis in social and cultural domains: advertising, gossip, electronic mail, postage stamps, cinema, photography, and more. The comtemporary debates and critiques in a remarkable arrange of related fields: cultural theory, narratology, nonverbal communication, biosemiotics, computer modeling of representation and interaction. This alphabetically arranged encyclopedia is packed with helpful features to speed students and scholars to the information they need. The articles are supported by up-to-date bibliographies and are readily accessible via the detailed index and system of cross-references.