Sebeok, Language and Communication. Semiosis and Semiotic in Thomas Sebeok's Global Semiotics and Its Developments

Developing and specifying Charles Peirce’s idea that the entire universe is perfused by signs, Charles Morris recognized that semiotics could be extended to the organic in its wholeness: for there to be a sign there must be interpretive activity by the living organism (cf. Petrilli 1999). Following Morris (1971), Thomas Sebeok developed this thesis to claim that the entire life sphere is made of signs. With regard to the limitations overcome by global semiotics, with Sebeok’s critique of anthropocentrism, the first, anthroposemiotics, is no longer understood to coincide with general semiotics, but rather is considered as one of its parts. General semiotics is far broader than a science that studies signs solely in the sphere of socio-cultural life. From a semioethical point of view, this condition of interrelationship, intrigue, entanglement involves responsibility for the Other, human and non-human. So in the term semioethics as we have conceived it, we propose the possibility of connecting Thomas Sebeok’s global semiotics and ethics as understood by Levinas.