Wow! eBook
Semiotics: From Sign to Symbolic System: A Theory of Meaning, Code, Narrative, and Mind
Author(s): Paul Verba (Author)
- Publication Date: 9 Jun. 2026
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 636 pages
- ISBN-10: B0H2QP54YS
Book Description
This book reconstructs semiotics as the Theory of Meaning in Operation (TMO). Classical semiotics has given powerful accounts of signs, codes, symbols, texts, culture, interpretation, and semiosis, but it has often left underdeveloped the full operational life of meaning: how meaning forms, stabilizes, activates, spreads, integrates, gathers charge, enters narrative, organizes mind and culture, and directs action. This volume begins from the claim that semiotics must not begin with the sign alone, but with meaning itself.
The book defines semiotics as the general theory of meaning in operation. The sign is treated as the first readable threshold of meaning; the symbol as condensed meaning; the symbolic system as organized meaning; narrative as meaning continued through time; mind as meaning integrated into SELF, TEXT, and Cognitive Index; culture as distributed symbolic memory; and action as meaning made consequential. The central ascent of the book moves from distinguishable difference to mark, sign, symbol, Symbolic System Formation, Symbolic System Activation, interpretation, narrative, mind, culture, text, art, literature, biosemiotics, artificial intelligence, and operational method.
The theory is formalized through axioms, principles, postulates, and theorems. It introduces key concepts such as meaning-potency, symbolic charge, action-force, override power, interpretive constraint, and semiotic object. These concepts allow semiotics to distinguish valid interpretation from projection and powerful meaning from good or true meaning. The book also develops Operational Semiotics as a practical method for analyzing concrete meaning-problems in art, literature, ritual, politics, religion, psychology, biology, AI, and everyday life.
TMO does not reject classical semiotics. It receives Saussure, Peirce, Morris, Barthes, Greimas, Eco, Lotman, biosemiotics, cognitive semiotics, and machine semiotics, but reorganizes them within a unified architecture of meaning in operation. Its final aim is to make semiotics not merely a theory of signs, but a disciplined account of how meaning becomes readable, active, durable, mental, cultural, technological, and historical.
The book defines semiotics as the general theory of meaning in operation. The sign is treated as the first readable threshold of meaning; the symbol as condensed meaning; the symbolic system as organized meaning; narrative as meaning continued through time; mind as meaning integrated into SELF, TEXT, and Cognitive Index; culture as distributed symbolic memory; and action as meaning made consequential. The central ascent of the book moves from distinguishable difference to mark, sign, symbol, Symbolic System Formation, Symbolic System Activation, interpretation, narrative, mind, culture, text, art, literature, biosemiotics, artificial intelligence, and operational method.
The theory is formalized through axioms, principles, postulates, and theorems. It introduces key concepts such as meaning-potency, symbolic charge, action-force, override power, interpretive constraint, and semiotic object. These concepts allow semiotics to distinguish valid interpretation from projection and powerful meaning from good or true meaning. The book also develops Operational Semiotics as a practical method for analyzing concrete meaning-problems in art, literature, ritual, politics, religion, psychology, biology, AI, and everyday life.
TMO does not reject classical semiotics. It receives Saussure, Peirce, Morris, Barthes, Greimas, Eco, Lotman, biosemiotics, cognitive semiotics, and machine semiotics, but reorganizes them within a unified architecture of meaning in operation. Its final aim is to make semiotics not merely a theory of signs, but a disciplined account of how meaning becomes readable, active, durable, mental, cultural, technological, and historical.
