Signs in Use is an accessible introduction to the study of semiotics.
All organisms, from bees to computer networks, create signs, communicate, and exchange information. The field of semiotics explores the ways in which we use these signs to make inferences about the nature of the world.
Signs in Use cuts across different semiotic schools to introduce six basic concepts which present semiotics as a theory and a set of analytical tools: code, sign, discourse, action, text, and culture. Moving from the most simple to the most complex concept, the book gradually widens the semiotic perspective to show how and why semiotics works as it does.
Each chapter covers a problem encountered in semiotics and explores the key concepts and relevant notions found in the various theories of semiotics. Chapters build gradually on knowledge gained, and can also be used as self-contained units for study when supported by the extensive glossary. The book is illustrated with numerous examples, from traffic systems to urban parks, and offers useful biographies of key twentieth-century semioticians.

A study of C. S. Peirce's conception of the sign, with a critique of Saussure and Hjelmslev, Dialogic Semiosis presents a semiotics of the production, transmission, and interpretation of signs in human communication. Jorgen Dines Johansen studies the process of sign creation, how signs fulfill their office of transmitting information between human agents, chiefly through a study of human speech.

In the first part of the book, Johansen focuses on Hjelmslev's concept of the sign and the study of semiotic systems. In Part II, he undertakes a detailed explication of Peirce's concepts of the process of signification with the intention of inducing readers to think semiotics with Peirce. In the conclusion, Johansen analyzes a specific micro system from both Hjelmslevian and Peircean perspectives and summarizes the basic features of an intentionally produced semiotic."

Signs in Use is an accessible introduction to the study of semiotics.
All organisms, from bees to computer networks, create signs, communicate, and exchange information. The field of semiotics explores the ways in which we use these signs to make inferences about the nature of the world.
Signs in Use cuts across different semiotic schools to introduce six basic concepts which present semiotics as a theory and a set of analytical tools: code, sign, discourse, action, text, and culture. Moving from the most simple to the most complex concept, the book gradually widens the semiotic perspective to show how and why semiotics works as it does.
Each chapter covers a problem encountered in semiotics and explores the key concepts and relevant notions found in the various theories of semiotics. Chapters build gradually on knowledge gained, and can also be used as self-contained units for study when supported by the extensive glossary. The book is illustrated with numerous examples, from traffic systems to urban parks, and offers useful biographies of key twentieth-century semioticians.
Signs in Use is an essential text for students of semiotics.