Semiotics

Semiotics also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.  Linguisitics studies the structure, meaning and methodology of language. r Semiotics presents methods for analyzing text.

Cognitive Semiotics is the study of meaning-making of conceptual and textual analysis.  by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences as well as in the human sciences: most importantly Linguistics, Psychology, Anthropology, Philosophy and Literary Studies.  Cognitive semiotics was initially developed as a field of study at the Center for Semiotics at Aarhus University (Denmark), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. There is now also a Center for Cognitive Semiotics in Lund, Sweden.

John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).  Here he explains how science can be divided into three parts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_semiotics

All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, first, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness: or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts.

—Locke, 1823/1963, p. 174

Locke then elaborates on the third category, explaining it as "the doctrine of signs" in the following terms:

Nor is there any thing to be relied upon in Physick  but an exact knowledge of medicinal physiology (founded on observation, not principles), semiotics, method of curing, and tried (not excogitated,  not commanding) medicines.

—Locke, 1823/1963, 4.21.4, p. 175

•  Amongst the prominent cognitive semioticians are Per Aage Brandt, Svend Østergaard, Peer Bundgård, Frederik Stjernfelt, Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli and Jordan Zlatev.  
• Computational semiotics attempts to engineer the process of semiosis, say in the study of and design for Human-Computer Interaction or to mimic aspects of human cognition through artificial intelligence and knowledge representation.Social semiotics expands the interpretable semiotic landscape to include all cultural codes, such as in slang, fashion, and advertising. See the work of Roland Barthes, Michael Halliday, Bob Hodge, and Christian Metz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_semiotics

Social semiotics can include the study of how people design and interpret meanings, the study of texts, and the study of how semiotic systems are shaped by social interests and ideologies, and how they are adapted as society changes (Hodge and Kress, 1988). 

 Vygotskys genetic law of social development

A semantic network, or frame network, is a network which represents semantic relations between concepts. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, which represent concepts, and edges.[

WordNet properties have been studied from a network theory perspective and compared to other semantic networks created from Roget's Thesaurus and word association tasks. From this perspective the three of them are a small world structure

"An ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can formally exist for an agent or a community of agents. This definition is consistent with the usage of ontology as set of concept definitions, but more general. And it is a different sense of the word than its use in philosophy."^{(Gruber 2001)}

According to Gruber (1993):

"Ontologies are often equated with taxonomic hierarchies of classes, class definitions, and the subsumption relation, but ontologies need not be limited to these forms. Ontologies are also not limited to conservative definitions — that is, definitions in the traditional logic sense that only introduce terminology and do not add any knowledge about the world.  To specify a conceptualization, one needs to state axioms that do constrain the possible interpretations for the defined terms." (Gruber, 1995)

References

• Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. Arnold: London.
• Randviir, A. (2004). Mapping the World: Towards a Sociosemiotic Approach to Culture. (Dissertationes Semioticae Universitatis Tartuensis 6.) Tartu: Tartu University Press.
• Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. Maryland. University Park Press.
• Hodge, R. and G. Kress. (1988). Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity
•  An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (John Locke, 1690)
• de Souza, C.S., The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005.
• Rieger, Burghard B.: Computing Granular Word Meanings. A fuzzy linguistic approach to Computational Semiotics, in: Wang, Paul P. (ed.): Computing with Words. [Wiley Series on Intelligent Systems 3], New York (John Wiley & Sons) 2001, pp. 147–208.
• Heimlich & Pittelman, 1986.
• John F. Sowa (1987). "Semantic Networks". In Stuart C Shapiro. Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved 2008-04-29.
• Steyvers, M.; Tenenbaum, J.B. (2005). "The Large-Scale Structure of Semantic Networks: Statistical Analyses and a Model of Semantic Growth". Cognitive Science 29 (1): 41–78. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog2901_3. 
• Gruber, T. (1995). "Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing". International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 43 (5-6): 907–928.
• Gruber, T. (2001). "What is an Ontology?". Stanford University. Retrieved 2009-11-09. 
• Enderton, H. B. (1972-05-12). A Mathematical Introduction to Logic (1 ed.). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. pp. 295. ISBN 978-0-12-238450-9 2nd edition; January 5, 2001, ISBN 978-0-12-238452-3