Semiotics in the United States
pp. 519-554
in: Thomas Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok (eds), The semiotic sphere, Berlin, Springer, 1986Abstract
A history of semiotics in the United States or elsewhere is not the same kind of history as that of other academic disciplines. For example, in the social sciences, e.g., anthropology, political science, economics, social psychology, jurisprudence, linguistics, each of these disciplined areas of inquiry can be mapped as a field with certain acknowledged provinces or conceptual universes of discourse. Such basic concepts for economics are supply and demand, exchange, distribution, the market, the dollar, capital, etc. Anthropology recognizes culture, kinship patterns, nonhuman as well as all human organizations for acculturation, and in general investigates all the areas common to the larger domain of social science. Jurisprudence maps out the relationship between theory and practice of law, and speculates on the reciprocity between legal systems and other value systems in society, including customary interpersonal behavior, which is not legally encoded.