Definitions of Semiotic Terms. Semiotics: the study of signs. Signs. Daniel Chandler Signs We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings : above all, we are surely - meaning-makers. Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler. Semiotics. Semiotics frequently is seen as having important anthropological dimensions; for example, Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon may be studied as communication.[2] Some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science, however.
They examine areas belonging also to the life sciences – such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics). Syntactics is the branch of semiotics that deals with the formal properties of signs and symbols.[3] More precisely, syntactics deals with the "rules that govern how words are combined to form phrases and sentences".[4]