Current Perspectives in Semiotics

This timely volume, inspired by the work of Umberto Eco, features applications of semiotic theories and methodological frameworks to a vast array of texts, genres and practices within contemporary semiosphere. Exploring the interplay of language, image and sound, contributors discuss the structural and functional properties of signs, along with motivations behind them and implications they have for the meaning-making process, identity, ideology, and the politics of representation.

The volume is an outcome of the SIVO «Signum-Idea-Verbum-Opus» project initiated by Umberto Eco’s keynote address during his visit at the University of Łódź in 2015. It is also a continuation of theoretical explorations which can be found in «Current Perspectives in Semiotics: Signs, Signification, and Communication», published simultaneously by Peter Lang.

Monika Kopytowska is Assistant Professor in the Department of Pragmatics at the University of Łódź, Poland. Her research interests revolve around the interface of language and cognition, identity, and the pragma- rhetorical aspects of the mass-mediated representation of religion, ethnicity, and conflict. She has published internationally in linguistic journals and volumes.

Artur Gałkowski is Associate Professor of Italian and French linguistics at the University of Łódź, Poland, where he is the Head of the Department of Italian Studies at the Institute of Romance Philology. His research interests cover various issues in onomastics, semiotics, foreign language teaching, and translation, on which he has published numerous articles, edited volumes, monographs and book chapters.