Semiotics with a Conscience: Decoding Dangerous Discourses

Demonstrating how semiotic theory and method can be applied to decoding false representations and dangerous discourses, this book explores how semiotics can be used as a potentially powerful science of conscience.

Confronting the sometimes negative perception of semiotics as academically inward-looking and lacking in morality, Marcel Danesi turns this view on its head. Instead, Danesi highlights how the same techniques that have allowed the use of semiotics for self-serving commercial purposes, such as advertising or marketing, could also be applied to deciphering current world problems. Through describing the semiotic notions and methods that can be used to analyze misrepresentations, propaganda, or meaning collapses, the book enables readers to become conscientiously aware of their hidden meanings and the harmful effects that they have on society. Identifying key issues of concern, such as climate change and anti-science discourses, it shows how they can be interpreted in terms of basic semiotic theory. This analysis of crucial issues demonstrates how semiotics can be used to raise awareness of critically important matters in modern society, and to encourage the development of more robust and ethical attitudes towards them.

Marcel Danesi is Professor Emeritus of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada.