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Illusion and reality in Semiotics in the United States

In discussing Sebeok's Semiotics in the United States (1991), which presents the development of ideas in American semiotics and contains the essence of the basic problems and perspectives of contemporary semiotics as a whole, I shall attempt to give an answer to Sebeok's opening question at the 1992 Urbino seminar: that is, whether we have grounds to speak of an 'American' semiotics. The question arises because, among other things, a large percentage of the semioticians represented and analyzed in the book are not native to or resident in the United States. The book itself contains the answer to this question: it contains a special kind of reality — the reality of the names. The fact that the names of 701 philosophers and the titles of 567 books and articles (45 of them by Sebeok himself) are referred to in the book signifies the comprehensiveness of the broad theoretical background on which the book is based. Accepting that the image of the book is built — more or less — on these names, I shall try to set them in order, and to determine which are the most quoted in the book. The names of 232 authors are mentioned once; 303 others are mentioned twice. I would say that these authors are only peripherally relevant to the development of semiotics in the United States. If we arrange the names of the semioticians cited according to the frequency of their mention, we arrive at the arrangement in Table 1. The first 3 names are the fathers of American semiotics; these scientists have formulated the basic problems in semiotics, and provided the directions for its development in modern times. The subsequent names belong not only to American authors, but also to non-Americans who have (or had) very close connections with the history of American semiotics and with its status today. So, in my opinion, it is not an illusion, but a reality that this book by Sebeok is really about American semiotics — not only because it is written by a man living and working in the United States, but because it shows research tendencies which are quite different from