Semiotics is the study of signs and is concerned with interrogating semiosis, the actions of signs. Generally, signs are conceived only as inanimate objects that are used for sending messages. However, semiosis occurs in many different ways and in places where signs are not normally apparent to humans, for example in the transmission of information inside biological cells by DNA and other chemical transmitters. The sign in human semiosis, although frequently treated as an inanimate entity, is strictly the sign for someone. Put another way, signs only exist because an organism, or part of an organism, perceives them as significant. As Morris famously declared, semiosis is a “process in which something is a sign to some organ

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Published 10 December 2004

Citation: Cobley, Paul. "Semiotics, Semiology". The Literary Encyclopedia. 10 December 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1001, accessed 20 November 2009.]