On the Past, Present, and Future of Semioethics

This volume charts the origins, development, and future potential of semioethics through the work of Susan Petrilli, showcasing an extended dialogue with one of the eminent figures in semiotics scholarship.

Featuring a wide-ranging conversation between Petrilli and scholar Simon Levesque, the book makes the case for semioethics as a critical approach that can help us better understand important issues at stake in today’s world, such as precarity, social responsibility, and climate change, through the interplay of signs, meaning-making, and interpretation. The dialogue is organized around key chapters in Petrilli’s career, exploring the influences of such scholars as Peirce and Bakhtin, the collaborations with Sebeok and Eco, and the efforts in revitalizing the work of Victoria Welby. The book explores how these strands culminated in the creation of semioethics with Petrilli’s longtime collaborator, Augusto Ponzio, and looks ahead to new directions for the further study of the relation between signs and values, semiotics and axiology, and communication and ethics.

Highlighting the expansiveness of Petrilli’s body of work and the possibilities of semioethics in addressing key questions in contemporary social life for a better world, this volume will be of interest to scholars in semiotics, language and communication, philosophy of language, and cultural studies.