Even if you aren’t sure what “semiotics” is, you encounter it on a daily basis. Put plainly, semiotics is the study of signs or symbols and how we interpret them. Take, for example, how you use emojis in your texts to convey a certain meaning. That is a use of semiotics because you are relying on that emoji to give context to whoever you’re talking to.
If studying that sounds interesting to you, you should consider taking Professor Pete Vandenberg’s WRD 513: Semiotics this spring. Not only will you learn about using semiotics in a disciplinary sense, but you’ll also walk away understanding more about how media conveys messages to us. In addition to being a professor in the WRD department, Vandenberg is also Executive Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences here at DePaul. We spoke with him about this class, which has become his favorite to teach, about why semiotics matters to him and why it should matter to us.
Given your position as an Associate Dean, you must have to choose what you want to teach very carefully. Why is Semiotics a priority for you as a professor?
In WRD, our teaching choices are driven primarily by student and programmatic need[s,] so I teach a number of things in the graduate program and the major as they are requested of me. I definitely like teaching Semiotics, though; it has become my favorite course, in addition to the one I find most interesting. Semiotics is the study of the sign, and a sign is anything that can “stand for” something else. In the same way that a statue can “stand for” whomever it represents, a letter is a sign that “stands for” a sound, a word is a sign that “stands for” an idea, and so on. In other words, semiotics is the study of the process of representation that is at the root of language and meaning-making. The study of semiotics is the study of what makes writing, rhetoric, and discourse possible.
Can you briefly explain what students will learn in Semiotics?
The answer to the first question is the primary lesson, but that leaves a lot of questions about how signification (or semiosis) works. We will study kinds or types of signs and the social grouping of signs into sign systems or codes, which tend to limit and enable interpretation and thereby create cultural differentiation. We will zero in quite a bit on tropes that are introduced really early on in our education lives—like metaphor and simile—but we’ll try to recognize these basic processes of comparison and contrast to be fundamental to understanding. They are absolutely foundational to how language operates, and thus create the conditions in which we both create and attempt to resolve problems through language.
Do you believe understanding Semiotics is more and more important in our society?
The smart-aleck response to that question is to say that sign-making makes society possible, and in that sense, yes. All of the important problems we face are, in the end, problems bound up in how we communicate with each other. We might say that curing cancer is not a language problem, but determining how we will go about finding a cure, funding that exploration, creating conditions in which human minds are formed for and dedicated to that process—all of those matters are language problems that must be negotiated to make curing cancer possible. We think of science as self-animating, but the fact that it must constantly be defended and promoted makes clear that it is only an idea, made up of signs and their interpretation. An understanding of sign-making at both theoretical and practical levels constitutes the foundations of rhetorical study, and just, empathic, rhetorical action is the fuel on which a healthy democracy operates.
What fascinates you most about the topic?
The idea that signifying practices operate at the cellular level—one can make a pretty persuasive argument that the capacity to make and interpret messages is, in simple terms, the line between the living and the inert.
Are there career opportunities for students who may take interest in Semiotics through your class?
Yes, every single one of them!
Seriously, though, no one will be looking for a certificate in semiotics on anyone’s resume, but there really is no professional opportunity that cannot be better met with a strong, self-awareness about making meaning. The class is going to allow students to bend what they are learning to contexts they consider important, and for many, I’m sure, that will mean career ambitions.