Semiotics is the scientific study of signs and meaning production, emphasizing that meaning is constructed by a competent observer rather than being inherent in objects. Key figures in the development of semiotics include Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure, who contributed to its formalization as a distinct research field. Peirce defined semiotics as a logical and scientific doctrine of signs, leading to the creation of a semiotic triad.

1. Three Forms Of Semiotics
There have been several attempts to define semiotics and they all seem to share that semiotics is the
scientific study of signs, sign processes like: indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor,
signification and meaningful communication. Umberto Eco attests that "semiotics is concerned with
everything that can be taken as a sign (Eco 1976, p. 7)".
Semiotics, rather than dealing with the organization of signs, has to do with how meaning is
produced, what makes an utterance meaningful, how it signifies and what precedes it on a deeper
level to result in the manifestation of meaning. It is based mainly on the notion that meaning is not
inherent in the objects, but is constructed by a competent observer called a subject who can give form
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All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, first, the nature of things,
as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, secondly, that which
man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially
happiness: or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of
these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts
(Locke 1999, p. 717)".
Nevertheless, it was only with the emergence of the theories and works of two seminal characters,
viz. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 – 1914) – an American pragmatist philosopher – and Ferdinand de
Saussure (1857 – 1913) – the Swiss linguist – and their attempts in the development of a formal
theory of semiotics that semiotics began to be considered as a separate field of research.
For Charles S. Peirce, semiotics was a scientific field of study where all signs and sign types could
be explained scientifically and hence logically. Like John Locke, Peirce defined semiotics as a
doctrine of signs. He later went on to develop a semiotic triad:
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