Semiotics or semiology (from the Greek, sēmeion, means 'sign') is an expression which stands for the science of signs. Semiotics is generally defined as the study of the sign. Sign is anything which stands for something else. The history of semiotic science returns back to medieval ages.. However, semiotics gains its technicality after the first half of the twentieth century. Semiotics is explored by its founders Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce. After them, many semioticans develop the study of sign system like Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Marshall McLuhan, Algirdas J. Greimas, Charles Morris, and Roman Jakobson. Due to the recent development in media and in means of communication, there is a new shift from mono-sign system to multimodality. Based on Halliday's SFL, O'Toole's The Language of Displayed Art (1994), Kress and van leeuwen's Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (1996/ 2006). Multimodality occurs as a basic theory of communication and social semiotics; it is the use of several modes of communication other than language. This article aims to review definitions of Semiotics and Social Semiotics, Visual Social Semiotic and Multimodality. |
