The Essence of Semiotics as a Mediator of Communication and Cognition

Abstract

Studies in modern linguistic theory to determine the scope and vision of humancommunication have shifted their attention to semiotics, in which actions speak louder thanwords as some say. The semiotic capacity of an individual reflects the effective and efficientusage of pragmatic competence in which the language user has the awareness of socioculturaland anthropological conventions processed and produced in the course of communication.Such a capacity also enables a systematic usage of cognitive skills, thereby developing thevalue of the communicative context and the perception of the individuals in variousdiscourses. This paper attempts to identify, decode, and proceed utterances in a systematicmixture of psychological, physiological, sociological and anthropological procedures, inwhich non-verbal expressions appear as signs and symbols to communicate information. It isalso argued that not only do individuals attain semiotic information naturally, they also do sowith proper curricular semiotic education (especially in language learning & teachingenvironment) and research. In this respect, studies in biosemiotics explore the micro and themacro cosmos of human nature which are in a continuous cycle of interaction to processlanguage. It is further established that the curiosity to discover the value systems in humancommunication through semiotic decoding means more than the mere study of language andits linguistic properties.