Warning Signs: The Semiotics of Danger

Description

Warning signs are all around us. In ancient Egypt, tombs were lavishly adorned with signs and symbols warning of the dire consequences that would befall any robbers and thieves. And yet these signs were often read as provocations and challenges. Why was this? And how could we more effectively communicate dangers from our world, such as toxic waste, to future civilizations? This book examines and evaluates the kinds of signs, symbols, narratives and other semiotic strategies humans have used across time to communicate the sense of danger. From paleolithic cave art and ancient monuments to the dangers of nuclear waste, carbon emissions and other pollution, Marcel Danesi explores how danger has been encoded in language, discourse, and symbolism. At the same time, the book puts forward a plan for a more effective 'semiotising' of risk and peril, calling on linguists, semioticians and agencies to face up our collective responsibilities, and work together to more clearly communicate vitally important warnings about the dangers we've left behind to civilizations beyond the semiotic gap.

Marcel Danesi is Professor Emeritus of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada.

In an elegant style and erudite manner, Danesi explores how the sense of danger has been built into human language, artistic works, and narratives, from the prehistory to the present. This book provides great insights on the cultural perception of current global crises, such as climate change and the rise of infectious diseases. * Marek Tamm, Professor of Cultural History, Tallinn University, Estonia * We live in dangerous times. People need to be warned. But how do you warn effectively? That is the essence of this book. From cave paintings to nuclear waste, from climate change to vaccines, from isolated pictorial signs that grab our attention to recurrent and abiding metaphorical frames that we use unnoticed. Enlightening, scholarly, entertaining. This is more than practical semiotics - this is semiotics for survival - the iconicity of warning signs, the representation of danger, the narratives, the myths, the interpretations and misinterpretations. Never has a book been more timely or more relevant to our everyday, interconnected world, with hidden dangers lurking around every corner. * Geoffrey Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University, UK * Prof. Danesi is a master of clarity in presenting a semiotic analysis of danger, as entangled with various cultural, historical, and psychological threads. This book is a model of what a semiotic analysis should look like, for both students and scholars. * Yair Neuman, Professor of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel *