While speculations on form–meaning resemblances in language go back millennia, the
experimental study of iconicity is only about a century old. Here we take stock of …

This thesis concerns the nature of the gestures performed by five Swedish children. The
children are followed from 18 to 30 months of age: an age range which is characterized by a …

Phone up your neighbourhood linguist (let's call him Professor Strawperson) and ask about
the debate over whether language is natural or conventional. If he doesn't hang up at once …

The X figure is ubiquitous in contemporary culture, but attempts to explain our fixation with X
are rare. This book argues that the origins and meanings of X go far beyond alphabets and …

The philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, and in particular his theory of signs (semiotic), has
seen increasing interest within archaeological theory over the past 20 years. This article …

The study of photography has been a fundamental testing case for pictorial semiotics, in part
because, being in a sense machine made, photographs would seem to resist the critique of …

The nature and emergence of “symbolic” material culture has long been at the forefront of
the debate on modern human origins. For most evolutionary archaeologists, material signs …

While the conceptual history of the sign, as recounted by John Deely in Four ages of
understanding, is immensely enlightening, history is never enough. If, before Augustine, it …

Instead of rejecting the notion of iconicity, as has often been the case in semiotics, we
should inquire deeper into its specific nature, and also into the peculiar way in which it is …

Many studies of children and apes realized in psychology address issues that are highly
relevant to semiotics, but they often do so indirectly, or they use a terminology that is …