Semiotics of Popular Culture

Abstract

Cultural studies constitutes one of the most multi-perspectival research fields. Amidst a polyvocal theoretical landscape that spans different disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, literary studies, film studies, media studies, ethnography, philosophy, marketing, to name a few, and different perspectives within each discipline, semiotics is of foundational value. In an attempt to effectively address the sheer polyvocity and conceptual richness of the semiotic discipline, a wide roster of perspectives is evoked against the background of a diverse set of cultural phenomena. This roster includes and is informed by structuralist semiotics, post-structuralist semiotics, semiotically informed psychoanalysis, cultural semiotics, film semiotics, sociosemiotics, eclectically refined frameworks that have been offered by prominent semioticians, such as Umberto Eco, but also, to a lesser extent, by music semiotics and by more niche, but certainly promising perspectives, such as postmodern semiotics, ethnosemiotics, phenomenological semiotics and rhetorical semiotics. The recruitment of semiotic frameworks and concepts is enacted against the background of advances in cultural studies (thus reinstating the dialogue with a discipline that took form by drawing on semiotics in the first place) and the various research streams that have become consolidated within the wider cultural studies territory, such as memory studies, celebrity studies, death studies, cultural geography, visual studies, to name a few. At the same time, the offered readings engage dialogically with culturally informed research in the marketing discipline or what has become entrenched in the academic vernacular under the umbrella of CCT (Consumer Culture Theory).

Keywords: semiotics, popular culture, cultural studies, CCT