Semiotics for Beginners

An excellent online book by Daniel Chandler.

From the preface:

. . . Semiotics is a huge field, and no treatment of it can claim to be comprehensive. My attempt to offer a coherent account of some key concepts is in some ways misleading: there are divergent schools of thought in semiotics, and there is remarkably little consensus amongst contemporary theorists regarding the scope of the subject, core concepts or methodological tools. This particular account betrays its European origins, focusing on Saussurean and post-Saussurean semiotics (structuralist semiotics and post-structuralist critiques) rather than, for instance, on Peircean semiotics (although some key Peircean concepts are mentioned). The focus on structuralist semiotics is intended to be of value to readers who wish to use semiotics as an approach to textual analysis. However, semiotics is far more than a method of analysing texts in a variety of media, and I hope I will also inspire the reader's enthusiasm for exploring some of the fascinating philosophical issues which semiotics raises.

01. Introduction
02. Signs
03. Modality and Representation
04. Paradigms and Syntagms
05. Syntagmatic Analysis
06. Paradigmatic Analysis
07. Denotation, Connotation and Myth
08. Rhetorical Tropes
09. Codes
10. Modes of Address
11. Encoding/Decoding
12. Articulation
13. Intertextuality
14. Criticisms of Semiotic Analysis
15. Strengths of Semiotic Analysis
16. D.I.Y. Semiotic Analysis

Glossary; References; Suggested Reading; Index; Semiotics Links.