Suggested Reading:
General Reading [*key reading for module asterisked]
- Barthes, Roland ([1957] 1987)
Mythologies. New York: Hill &
Wang [a classic text]
- Barthes, Roland (1967)
Elements of Semiology (trans. Annette
Lavers & Colin Smith). London: Jonathan Cape [not really for the beginner]
- Barthes, Roland (1977)
Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana
- *Berger, John (1972)
Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Penguin (not explicitly semiotic but very useful)
- Bignell, Jonathan (1997)
Media Semiotics: An Introduction.
Manchester: Manchester University Press [caution - he labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
- Chandler, Daniel (1994) Semiotics for Beginners. [WWW document]
URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/S4B/ (the origin of the first edition of the book; includes massive glossary not available in the
printed book versions)
- Chandler, Daniel (2001)
Semiotics: The Basics (1st Edition). London: Routledge [includes material - such as on the code of pictorial perspective -
that is not included in the second edition because of space limitations]
- Chandler, Daniel (2005) Entries on
Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, markedness, paradigm and syntagm, Ferdinand de Saussure,
semiotics, sign, signifier and signified. In John Protevi (Ed.) (2005)
Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy. Edinburgh:
University of Edinburgh Press
- *Chandler, Daniel (2007)
Semiotics: The Basics (2nd Edition). London: Routledge [contains new material, particularly on Roman Jakobson]
- Chandler, Daniel (2009) 'Semiotics'. In Kirsten Malmkjær (Ed.) (2009)
The Linguistics Encyclopedia. London: Routledge
- Chandler, Daniel and Rod Munday (2011)
Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Crow, David (2003)
Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Crans-près-Céligny, Switzerland: AVA
- Danesi, Marcel (1994)
Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to
Semiotics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press [caution - labels photographic media as primarily iconic rather than primarily indexical]
- Danesi, Marcel (1999)
Of Cigarettes, High Heels and Other Interesting Things:
An Introduction to Semiotics. London: Macmillan [a wide-ranging elementary introduction]
- Danesi, Marcel (2002)
Understanding Media Semiotics. London: Arnold
- Eco, Umberto (1976)
A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press/London: Macmillan [not for beginners]
- Gombrich, Ernst H. (1972)
'The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication', Scientific American 272: 82-96; also in
Ernst Gombrich (1982)
The Image and the Eye. Oxford: Phaidon, pp. 137-61 &
Ernst Gombrich (1996)
The Essential Gombrich. Oxford: Phaidon, pp. 41-64
- Gombrich, Ernst H. (1978)
Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art. London: Phaidon
- Gombrich, Ernst H. (1996)
The Essential Gombrich. (Ed. Richard Woodfield). London: Phaidon
- Guiraud, Pierre (1975)
Semiology (trans. George Gross).
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul [an accessible introduction]
- Hall, Sean (2007)
This Means This, That Means That. London: Laurence King
- Hawkes, Terence (1977)
Structuralism and Semiotics. London:
Routledge
- Hodge, Robert & Gunther Kress (1988)
Social Semiotics.
Cambridge: Polity
- Jappy, Tony (2013)
Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics. London: Bloombsury
- Jensen, Klaus Bruhn (1995)
The Social Semiotics of Mass Communication.
London: Sage
- *Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen (2006)
Reading Images: The
Grammar of Visual Design (2nd edn). London: Routledge
- Leach, Edmund (1976)
Culture and Communication: The Logic by which Symbols are Connected. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Nöth, Winfried (1990)
Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press [very useful reference book]
- Sebeok, Thomas A (1994)
Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. London:
Pinter [an introduction to Thomas Sebeok]
- Solomon, Jack (1988)
The Signs of Our Time: The Secret Meanings of
Everyday Life. New York: Harper & Row [primarily for US audience; very readable]
- Sonesson, Göran (1988)
Pictorial Concepts: Inquiries into the Semiotic Heritage and its Relevance for the Analysis of the Visual World.
Lund: Lund University Press
- Thwaites, Tony, Lloyd Davis & Warwick Mules (2002)
Introducing Cultural and Media Studies: A Semiotic
Approach (formerly Tools for Cultural Studies: An Introduction). London: Palgrave (very
readable Australian application of semiotic principles)
- van Leeuwen, Theo (2004)
Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge
