179 Reading semiotics David Sless This paper presents a general and non-technical over- view of semiotics and its recent history. The impor- tance of Peirce and Saussure as founding fathers of contemporary semiotics is discussed and the debate they precipitated is mapped out including some of the peculiar characteristics of semiotics as a field of study. Some advice is given on how to read semiotic research, emphasising its contribution as an art rather than as a science. Some emphasis is placed on the specific contribution of semiotics to our understanding of the political nature of all communication. David Sless is a Senior Lecturer in Verbal and Visual Com- munication at the Flinders University of South Australia, and Director of the Communication Advisory & Research Enterprise (CARE) at Canberra College of Advanced Education. He is immediate past chairman of the Standards Association of Australia Committee on Signs and Symbols and has con- ducted research into symbol comprehension and design. He is author of a recent book Lear- ning and visual communica- tion, and many articles on visual communication and communication theory. Author's address CARE Canberra C.A.E. P.O. Box 1 Belconnen, A.C.T. 2616 Australia © David Sless 1986 This paper is based on work funded by Finders University Research Committee. It will ap- pear in full in a forthcoming book In search of semiotics to be published by Croom Helm. Preliminaries The newcomer to semiotics is often bewildered: confused by strange terminology, made uneasy by loose reasoning, concerned over an absence of method and alarmed by sweeping generalisations. Many readers, after an initial dip into these deep, muddy, turbulent waters, never venture again, either because they do not possess the stamina for swimming in such conditions, or because they assume that the stream is nothing more than ef- fluent. While both of these reactions are understan- dable and to some extent justifiable, they isolate the reader from some of the most important and im- aginative thought on communication and under- standing in our time. Regular readers of this journal will be familiar with the problems generated by a multiplicity of dif- ferent perspectives. Information design is at best an eclectic area, at worst fragmentary, and the lack of any clear unifying framework is readily apparent as we move from one paper to the next. Readers will also be aware that information design is only a part of a larger community of interest in communication which is also fragmented, so that when authors draw on other disciplines to shed light on information design, including such obvious examples as psychology, linguistics, educational technology, and art history, they are forming a patchwork of ideas. Semiotics is an attempt to bring together these divergent interests in communication within a single conceptual fabric and consequently deserves our serious attention. In an introductory paper such as this, it is im- possible to do justice to the full range of semiotic en- quiry. Rather than ask you to join me in semiotic waters, I will offer a raft and a chart: a way of get- ting to know the ocean without getting wet and with little risk of drowning. What is semiotics? Semiotics occurs whenever we stand back from our ways of understanding and communicating, and ask how these ways of understanding and com- municating arise, what form they take, and why. Semiotics is above all an intellectual curiosity about the ways we represent our world to ourselves and each other. It has always been a feature of human in- tellectual life, but what distinguishes contemporary Information Design Journal 4:3 (1986), 179-189. DOI 10.1075/idj.4.3.01sle ISSN 0142-5471/ Ε-ISSN 1569-979X © John Benjamins Publishing Company