This book presents writings in semiotics, linguistics, and the philosophy of languagesignificantly revised, retranslated, and rearranged for this edited volumeby Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Adam Schaff, Augusto Ponzio, Massimo A. Bonfantini, Jeff Bernard, and Susan Petrilli. Collectively, the book provides a powerful sign theory useful to investigate how things work, their sense, and meaning. The expanding global world is our social reality, supported and generated in, with and by signs, verbal and nonverbal. Interconnectivity in the sign network is a destiny for life, human and beyond. This book explains an expression that circulates in everyday language: materialism. Misunderstandings and disagreements abound regarding its use and meaning, even in special languageslike those of politics or other human sciences concerned with sociohistorical reality under its different aspects. In response, this collection outlines a materialistic approach to problems relevant to signs and society, both contemporary and historical, building towards a scientifically-based materialistic semiotics. It is therefore of great interest to a transversal audience, including those engaged in anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies, ethics, identity studies, ideology, peace studies, political economics, sociology, and translation theory, among numerous other fields.
1 Introduction: A European School in Materialistic Semiotics. Its Rise,
Development and Worldview (Susan Petrilli).- Part 1: Ferruccio Rossi-Landi.-
2 On the Semiotic Homology between Linguistics and Economics. Introducing
Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (Susan Petrilli).- 3 Ideas for a Manifesto of
Materialistic Semiotics (Ferruccio Rossi-Landi).- 4 Sign Systems and Social
Reproduction (Ferruccio Rossi-Landi).- 5 Ideas for the Study of Linguistic
Alienation (Ferruccio Rossi-Landi).- 6 Toward a Theory of Sign Residues
(Ferruccio Rossi-Landi).- 7 Wittgenstein, Old and New (Ferruccio
Rossi-Landi).- Part II: Adam Schaff.- 8 Semantics, Semiotics and Critique of
Political Economy. Introducing Adam Schaff (Susan Petrilli, Augusto Ponzio).-
9 Marxist Dialectics and Social Revolution (Adam Schaff).- 10 Introduction to
Semantics (Adam Schaff).- 11 A Critique of Generative Grammar and the Concept
of Innate Ideas (Adam Schaff).- 12 The Pragmatic Function of Stereotypes
(Adam Schaff).- Part III: Augusto Ponzio.- 13 The Dia-logic Materiality of
Signs, Non-functionality, and Semioethics. Introducing Augusto Ponzio (Susan
Petrilli).- 14 On Marxian Semiotics. A Critical Excursus through the Sign
Sciences (Augusto Ponzio).- 15 Reflecting on Signs with Charles S. Peirce and
Mikhail M. Bakhtin (Augusto Ponzio).- 16 The Power of Ideology and
Communication in a Globalised World (Augusto Ponzio).- 17 Communication,
Community and the Right to Non-functionality (Augusto Ponzio).- Part IV:
Massimo A. Bonfantini.- 18 A Neo-Peircean Materialistic Orientation in
Semiotics. Introducing Massimo A. Bonfantini (Susan Petrilli).- 19 On the
Writings of Charles S. Peirce. An Ideal Dialogue (Massimo A. Bonfanini).- 20
Abduction, Innovation and History. Reading Peirce (Massimo A. Bonfanini).- 21
Innovation and Abduction (Massimo A. Bonfanini).- Part V: Jeff Bernard.- 22
Materialistic Semiotics for an Open Community. Introducing Jeff Bernard
(Susan Petrilli).- 23 The Social Philosophy and Socio-Semiotics of Ferruccio
Rossi-Landi (Jeff Bernard).- 24 Culture(s) a Conceptual Analysis (Jeff
Bernard).- 25 Ideology, Culture and Perception as Sign Work. Rossi-Landian
Insights (Jeff Bernard).- Part VI: Susan Petrilli.- 26 For an Approach to
Language and Social Relations in their Material Objectivity. Introducing
Susan Petrilli (Augusto Ponzio).- 27 Meaning and Matter in Human Semiosis
(Susan Petrilli).- 28 Modelling, Communication, and Critique of Ideology
(Susan Petrilli).- 29 Social Reproduction and Language as Work and Modelling
(Susan Petrilli).- 30 The Self in Language, Dialogism and Otherness (Susan
Petrilli).- Index.
Susan Petrilli is Full Professor in Philosophy and Theory of Languages at the University of Bari Aldo Moro in Bari, Italy. She has published widely in her field in both the English and Italian language and has engaged continuously in collaborative editorial projects promoting cooperation and dialogue among scholars nationally and internationally. She has also translated many works by a series of different authors. With Augusto Ponzio she introduced Semiotics of translation as a subject into the Italian university system at the turn of the century. She has now introduced Semioethics as a new subject. Conceived in the 1980s semioethics has developed as an orientation in sign studies with a focus on the relation between signs and values, on sense, meaning and significance, on the relation between semiotics and axiology, thus on the inevitability of the originating I-other entanglement.
Her book titles over the past decade include: Sign Studies and Semioethics (2014), Nella vita dei segni (2015), Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs (2015), Lineamenti di semiotica e di filosofia del linguaggio (with A. Ponzio) (2016), The Global World and Its Manifold Faces 2016), Signs, Language and Listening (2019), Significare, interpretare e intendere (2019), Identità e alterità (with A. Ponzio), Senza ripari. Segni, differenze, estraneità (2021), Oltre il significato. La significs di Victoria Welby (2023), Semioetica. La scienza dei segni in ascolto (with A. Ponzio) and On the Past, Present and Future of Semioethics: A Dialogue with Susan Petrilli by Simon Levesque (2025). Her edited volumes: Challenges to Living Together. Transculturalism, Migration, Exploitation (2017), Digressioni nella storia. Dal tempo del sogno al tempo della globalizzazione (2017), Limmagine nella parola, nella musica e nella pittura (2018), Diritti umani e diritti altrui (2020), Maestri di segni e costruttori di pace (2021), Translation Translation (2021), A. Ponzio, La comunicazione come scambio, produzione e consumo (2022). Co-edited titles include: Translation and translatability in intersemiotic space (2020), Brian Medlin, The Level-Headed Revolutionary (2021), Exploring the Translatability of Emotions (2022), Intersemiotic Perspectives on Emotions (2023), Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences (2023), Semioethics as Existential Dialogue: Reflections on Religion and Life (2023), La speranza come segno / Hope as a Sign (2024), Semioethics as Existential Dialogue. The Gift and Burden of Responsibility (2025), Il diritto allinfunzionalità quale fondamento dei diritti umani (2025); and forthcoming: Victoria Welby and Her Significs: Signs, a Womans View (2026), Semioethics, Translatability, Life (2026), Semioethics as Social Dialogic. Precarity, Insecurity & Crisis in the Twenty-first Century (2026), and The Palgrave Peirce Handbook (2027).
