Semioethics as a vocation of semiotics. In the wake of Welby, Morris, Sebeok, Rossi-Landi
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Augusto Ponzio & Susan Petrilli
From semiotics to semioethics describes a line of research that develops the inevitable conjunction between signs and values in a global semiotic framework. Though such a focus has been a constant characteristic of twentieth century sign studies as represented specifically by such scholars as Welby, Morris, Rossi-Landi, and evidently in the background Bakhtin, Peirce, it has not been a mainstream interest. But today, in a globalized world, the focus on signs and values is ever more urgent. Semioethics is not intended as a discipline in its own right, but as an orientation in the study of signs. By 'semioethics' is understood the propensity in semiotics to recover its ancient vocation as 'semeiotics' (or symptomatology) with its interest in symptoms. A major issue for semioethics is 'care for life' in global perspective according to which semiosis and life converge as postulated by Thomas A. Sebeok. A global perspective is ever more necessary in the present day and age in the face of growing interference in planetary communication between the historical-social sphere and biological sphere, the cultural sphere and natural sphere, between the semiosphere and the biosphere.