Semiotics in Mainstream American Communication Studies: A Review of Principal U.S.A. Journals in the Context of Communicology

Abstract

This article reviews semiotics research in mainstream journals of communication. First, we offer a quantitative analysis of the extent to which the journals recognize semiotics as a legitimate area of concern. Second, we conduct a qualitative assessment of the few substantive contributions to semiotics in the communication literature in order to comprehend how the research conceives semiotics. We discuss both strengths and weaknesses of this very limited attention afforded semiotics and its relevance to promoting insightful semiotic scholarship more broadly in the communication discipline. Third, we contextualize our findings by suggesting that both implicit and explicit theoretical commitments incrementally imposed in the field's history and culture formed a barrier to advancing semiotic scholarship. Given a resurgence of interest in pragmatism (fueled by theoreticians such as C.S. Peirce, Dewey, Mead, and James), we end with a discussion of the relevance of semiotics to a fuller understanding of pragmatism. Our overall objectives are to stimulate interest in a neglected area of communication research and draw attention to the systematic research in communication and semiotics that has been pursued inside and “outside” the mainstream disciplinary matrix.

Keywords:

• Semiotics
• Phenomenology
• Pragmatism
• C.S. Peirce
• Communicology

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isaac E. Catt

Isaac E. Catt (Ph.D., Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) is President of the Semiotics Society of America, Visiting Scholar, Simon E. Silverman Phenomenology Center at Duquesne University, and Fellow and Founding Member of the International Communicology Institute

Deborah Eicher-Catt

Deborah Eicher-Catt (Ph.D., Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) is Associate Professor, Communication Arts & Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University-York, Chair of the Philosophy of Communication Interest Group for the National Communication Association, and Fellow and Founding Member of the International Communicology Institute