In 1951 psychiatrist Jürgen Ruesch and polymath Gregory Bateson published "Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry" within which was the first designation of the discipline of human communication. Their communication model took into account the complexity of curvilinear human interaction (three dimensional, multi-directional transactions, interpreting signs and symbols in language, or semiotics) and created four divisions of communication amenable to scientific study. These are intrapersonal communication (e.g., one's own thinking); interpersonal communication (e.g., conversation); group communication (e.g., a work team); and cultural communication (e.g., a global conference). Many scholars thus consider Jürgen Ruesch as a virtual founder of the modern human science discipline of communication. This volume collects his most influential articles in that discipline.

Bloomsbury Semiotics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the entire field of semiotics by revealing its influence on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. With four volumes spanning theory, method and practice across the disciplines, this definitive reference work emphasizes and strengthens common bonds shared across intellectual cultures, and facilitates the discovery and recovery of meaning across fields. It comprises: Volume 1: History and Semiosis Volume 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences Volume 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences Volume 4: Semiotic Movements Written by leading international experts, the chapters provide comprehensive overviews of the history and status of semiotic inquiry across a diverse range of traditions and disciplines. Together, they highlight key contemporary developments and debates along with ongoing research priorities. Providing the most comprehensive and united overview of the field, Bloomsbury Semiotics enables anyone, from students to seasoned practitioners, to better understand and benefit from semiotic insight and how it relates to their own area of study or research. Volume 4: Semiotic Movements explores relationships between semiotics and closely related contemporary movements, strengthening the dialogue and collaboration between them. The movements examined include communication theory, systems theory, digital humanities, phenomenology, translation studies, multimodality studies, cognitive linguistics, and cognitive science.

"As a glimpse onto U.S. American semiotics through the mind's eye of a witness, participant-observer, architect, and midwife, this slim but rich book fulfills its title." --Journal of Linguistic Anthropology "This book is an invaluable historical, conceptual, and anecdotal account of the rise of semiotics in the United States." --Review of Metaphysics Sebeok, who has done more to establish the field of semiotics in the United States than any other single scholar, here draws upon his personal experiences of half a century to present the achievement and current status of semiotics in this country. He focuses on salient individuals and intellectual issues, including theatre, television, folklore, sociology, tourism, and graphic design. He also examines semiotic applications to architecture, marketing and advertising, jurisprudence, and medicine.

Communicology is widely accepted on the international scene as a new name for the study of human communication. It replaces several equivocal disciplinary conceptions such as "communication," which may fail to distinguish the science of communication from its object of investigation or the message-centered "communication studies," which often obfuscates information exchange with the experience of shared meaning in human encounters. Communicology differs from the American mainstream social science of communication not only because it is grounded in communication theory rather than information theory, but also because it advances a philosophically informed ecological perspective on human discourse. This book is intended as a contribution to the philosophy of communication and the human science of communicology. Semiotic phenomenology is thoroughly described as the synthetic logic that combines a philosophy of consciousness with a science of culture and conduct to explicate the lifeworld habitus. Consciousness is viewed as cultural-semiotic and experience as personal-phenomenological. This is a reciprocal, reflexive relationship in which culture is conceived as consciousness of communication and communication the manifest experience of culture. The book describes embodiment so conceived, including the history of the matrix idea in American pragmatism and European philosophy as they commingled in the United States to produce a unique discipline of communication, the science of embodied discourse. Important roots of this new discipline are described for the first time here in a unique synthesis of C. S. Peirce, John Dewey, Gregory Bateson, and Pierre Bourdieu. In addition, the semiotic relativity hypothesis is argued to be an important implication of this new discipline. Transcending the stale debate on language and thought, the limited conception of linguistic relativity is considerably broadened and deepened. The distinctive lifeworld of humans is argued to occur at the threshold of sign consciousness in the semiotic matrix of culture-society-person. Semiotic phenomenology is not only a synthesis of two great European philosophical movements, structuralism and phenomenology; it is also the essence of American pragmatism. This view culminates in the contemporary human science of communicology.

Although semiotics has, in one guise or another, ftourished uninterruptedly since pre Socratic times in the West, and important semiotic themes have emerged and devel oped independently in both the Brahmanie and Buddhistic traditions, semiotics as an organized undertaking began to 100m only in the 1960s. Workshops materialized, with a perhaps surprising spontaneity, over much ofEurope-Eastern and Western and in North America. Thereafter, others quickly surfaced almost everywhere over the litera te globe. Different places strategically allied themselves with different lega eies, but all had a common thrust: to aim at a general theory of signs, by way of a description of different sign systems, their comparative analysis, and their classifi cation. More or less permanent confederations were forged with the most diverse academic disciplines, and amazingly varied frameworks were devised-suited to the needs of the times and the sites-to carry the work of consolidation forward. Bit by bit, mutually supportive international networks were put together. Today, it can truly be asserted that semiotics has become a global enterprise. This, of course, is far from saying that the map is uniform or even that world-wide homogeneity is in the least desirable. While our conjoint ultimate goal remains steadily in focus, the multiplicity of avenues available for its realization is inherent in the advent ure of the search itself.