A sign is not alive — a text is Cover Image

A sign is not alive — a text is
A sign is not alive — a text is

Author(s): Kalevi Kull
Subject(s): Semiotics / Semiology
Published by: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the relationships between the concepts of life process and sign process, arguing against the simplified equation of these concepts. Assuming that organism (and its particular case — cell) is the carrier of what is called ‘life’, we attempt to find a correspondent notion in semiotics that can be equalled to the feature of being alive. A candidate for this is the textual process as a multiple sign action. Considering that biological texts are generally non-linguistic, the concept of biotext should be used instead of ‘text’ in biology.

  • Issue Year: 30/2002
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 327-336
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: English