Paul Perron – författare

Designed for classroom use in a number of disciplines, this comprehensive introduction to cultural semiotics is also an easy-to-use reference for those who would like a better understanding of the topic. No other text provides this kind of practical framework for the classroom study of semiotics. Each of the 12 chapters is clearly written and self-contained.

Excerpt: "e;I don't know how this could happen or how it is that I can be here. Eight hours ago I was handing in my Masters thesis to Professor Rolander, also known as "e;The Rock"e; by students because he was sixty-two and built like The Incredible Hulk. And only an hour ago I was eating dinner with my family. Now I'm face down in the barn out back of my parents' home, burrowed in soil, manure and bits of straw. The ammonia from horse urine is strong in my nose and I can hear the rattles growing louder . . ."e;An evil has surfaced from within the earth after laying dormant for thousands of years. When his family dinner is interrupted by a sound from the basement, what Charlie believes is his worst nighmare soon become far more terrifying.Fleeing to his family's barn, Charlie is soon cornered and must fight for his life.

It has often been claimed that the aim of semiotics is to establish a general theory of systems of signification. However, as Jean-Claude Coquet notes in a recent collection of essays, what distinguishes one school of semiotics from another is the initial definition given of sign. If, for certain semioticians, the sign is first of all an observable phenomenon, for the Paris School it is first of all a construct and this point of departure has crucial theoretical and practical consequences. The essays appearing in these two volumes are representative of recent work carried out by members of this semiotic school. Essays in Volume I study problems more closely related to theoretical issues, while Volume II focuses more specifically on various fields of application.