Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler

Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler
Since a printed book appeared with the same title (Cobley &
Jansz 1997), I feel tempted to retitle this on-line publication as
Semiotics for Absolute Beginners, but have so far retained the
original title. As it happens, the book mentioned has
subsequently (1999) been retitled Introducing Semiotics. I
always intended to write my own text, as far as my ability
allowed, for absolute beginners. If you know of any way in which
I could improve the text in this respect I would be happy to hear
from you. The amount of 'positive feedback' generated by this
on-line publication has amazed and puzzled me (as well as
encouraged me), especially since it was originally produced
primarily for my own students. One reason may be that exposure to a new medium seems to
generate fresh interest in semiotics. Another may be that so much of what is written about semiotics
is written as if to keep out those who are not already 'members of the club'. Many readers have been
kind enough to report that this on-line publication is indeed useful for beginners (which is gratifying). It
is certainly intended to be a 'reader's companion' in approaching more difficult semiotic texts, which
so often assume knowledge of much of the jargon. I apologise to any readers who need no such
introduction for the occasional oversimplification to which I have sometimes succumbed in the
interests of serving my primary audience, but if they feel I have gone too far in some cases I would be
keen to hear how I could rectify this.
This document - which I call S4B for short - has been developed in hypertext rather than simply
transferred to the World Wide Web from a word processor. Whilst it is not radically hypertextual in its
design, I have tried to bear in mind that people may initially arrive at any page within in and try to
work their way through the document from their entry point. Consequently, readers who follow a
simple linear route are likely to be struck by the amount of what may seem to them like repetition. I
hope that this 'modular' approach is not too irritating. The use of the internet reflects my sense of the
provisional nature of the text (and of my current understanding of the field 'at the time of writing'). The
hypertext document is in fact my 'master copy' - my own printed copies are nearly always out-of-date
since I update it whenever a useful change strikes me. In this sense, in using the text online you have
access to my current personal notes on the topic. You can see how recently I revised any particular
page by checking the date and time given at the bottom of the page in question, though note that the
changes made are sometimes simply to the layout rather than to the text itself. You may even be
reading it at a time when I am working on the text. In the light of this information you may be less
surprised when you encounter material which I have not yet fully integrated into the 'flow' of the text.
Some of the 'scaffolding' involved in constructing the online text is still visible. If you print the text out,
remember that it was not originally written to be read in that form!
After I had installed an 'access counter' to monitor usage of the online text I was astonished to
discover the number of 'hits' it generated. Furthermore, such accesses initially seemed to grow
exponentially. Hits since 18th September 1995 reached 100,000 on 13th February 1999, 150,000 on
9th September 1999, 200,000 on 5th April 2000 and 250,000 on 6th December 2000. This is despite
the use of automatic 'caches' which store the text locally for temporary re-use without reaccessing the
orginal site. The text also generated a large number of e-mail messages from all over the world,
including one of Professor Umberto Eco's own students (who shall remain anonymous) who told me
that after reading this text they were able to understand him much better! My awareness that the text
had a large and disparate audience contributed to the way in which it developed. Martin Ryder in the