Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use in communication. It encompasses all forms of communication, including spoken language, visual images, body language, and musical notation, among others. The goal of semiotics is to understand how meaning is created and conveyed through the use of signs and symbols.

                                          Charles Peirce

American logician, philosopher, and mathematician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) coined the term „semiotic“, and is a pioneer of semiotics. Peirce views the whole universe as pansemeiosic, that is “perfused with  signs.” He also viewed even the human mind and consciousness as sign activity.  He believed that “there can be no isolated sign” because a sign is only part of a semeiotic process. Peirce conception of the sign was triadic, in that every sign has three distinct correlates. In the triadic sign, the first correlate is the sign (representamen),  the second correlate is the object, and the third correlate is the interpretant. The semeiotic Sign (written with an uppercase) contains an irreducible triadic correlation in which a  sign (written with a lowercase) stands for an object to an interpretant. The sign functions as the conveyer of meaning that mediates between the object and the interpretant; the interpretant mediates between the object and the sign to interpret the meaning; and the object mediates between the sign and the interpretant in order to ground the meaning. Removal of any one of the three correlates reduces the Sign from an actual Sign to a mere potential Sign.  

                                  Ferdinand de Saussure   

Swiss linguist, semiotician, and philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure is considered, alongside Peirce, the founder of semiotics. Sussure’s approach, presented in the book Course in General Linguistics (1916, in French) is known as “structural linguistics”. For Saussure language is a system of interrelated terms, what he called ‘langue’ (language), and is contrasted by ‘parole’ (speech), which relates to individual speech acts or speaking in general. A specific Langue is compromised of supra-individual and underlying code that is embedded in the minds of speakers of a certain language, and which enables common understanding between them. The analysis of this shared system of rules is the central object of linguistics.

The language system has two types of relationships:  ‘syntagmatic’ (items are arranged in consecutive order) and ‘associative,’ (deep and not directly observable grammatical and semantic relations). Saussure also makes a crucial distinction between a “sign”, “signified”, and a “signifier”. Both a signified and a signifier together make a sign, while the relation between them is always arbitrary. The signifier is a sound or an image that represents something that is being signified (a concept, idea, object, etc.). The signifier is a physical manifestation of a mental concept, a signified. In Saussure’s linguistics, the whole language is "a system of  (arbitrary) signs". The ideas of Saussure were crucial for the formation of the interdisciplinary field of semiotics.   

                                       Roland Barthes

French literary critic and semiologist Roland Barthes focused on the study of semiology and Saussure's structuralism. He studied signs, symbols, and ideologies, acting as a bridge between Saussure's classical structuralism and the postmodern and poststructuralist upheavals represented by Foucault, Derrida, and Baudrillard. He added to Saussure's analysis of the relationship between the signified and the signifier. This new conception sees signs of the first order of the sign system (both the signifier and the signified) serving as the signifier of the second order of the sign system operating at the level of myth. Second-order signs work by establishing an ideologically clear connection of first-order signs with an idea that seems completely natural and thus creates a myth. In the example of a photograph of a non-white soldier saluting in a French military uniform, Barthes reveals the true meaning of the sign, the myth of France as a great nation, full of patriotism, but without racial discrimination. Barthes is also known for his thesis on the "death of the author", according to which the author of a work of art or literature ceases to be significant, but the work speaks for itself.

                                      Mikhail Bakhtin

Russian philosopher, literally critic, and semiologist Mikhail Bakhtin explored topics of ethics and aesthetics. In his work Questions of Literature and Aesthetics (Вопросы литературы и эстетики, 1975), he expressed the view that the novel, as a literary form, is, above all, a dialogical form of art. He believed that the novel since it is constantly in a state of change and renewal, absorbs less flexible forms of expression. He viewed traditional fairs in the context of escaping from the everyday closed world and social and church laws, into a world of equality and freedom. Fairs are in an ambivalent relationship with official culture and society. Bakhtin, also, studied language and communication, and above all the systemic frameworks that determine the development of any form of communication.  

Books: 

Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology (1968, in French 1965);

Deeley, John. Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine (1982);

Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress. Social Semiotics (1988);

Peirce, Charles S. Collected Papers, vols. 1–6 (1934);

Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics (1916, in French).