A Brief Introduction to and Semiotic Analysis of Lotman's Cultural Semiotics

This paper introduces briefly the cultural semiotics of Moscow-Tartu School represented by Yuri Lotman; its birth, theoretical basis and a brief general survey of cultural semiotics, etc. An analysis of it reveals that it has inherited and concurrently questioned Saussurean semiology. It has absorbed the relevant theories of Bakhtin and Kristeva of its own tradition while taking in those of Peircean semiotics of the other tradition. Therefore we can regard it as a convergence of the two traditions and as an evidence of the tendency of linguistic turn and convergence of scientism and humanism, the two opposite trends of thought of contemporary Western philosophy. Saussurean semiology mainly studies signs used in social communication while Peircean semiotics mainly studies signs used in the cognition of man as a biologic body. Cultural semiotics combines the study of communication with that of cognition, and the study of the sociality of communication with that of the psychological activities of individuals in cognition, thus viewing cultural intercourse as a social communication and social cognition.