Word: semioticians
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Building on the linguistic science developed by the pioneering semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure, Lévi-Strauss became a pivotal figure in the development of structuralism, which holds that universal mental structures underlie the behaviors, social relations and beliefs of virtually all societies in all eras. It was an idea with many critics, but in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, structuralism became a hugely influential school of thought, with offshoots--some of them just barely related to Lévi-Strauss's original thinking--in many other disciplines, including sociology and literature...
Parsing the iconography of The Rock/Dwayne Johnson--a guy who's as comfortable at Make-a-Wish Foundation fund raisers as he is on the Howard Stern Show--is a task worthy of a French semiotician. He represents the postmillennial celebrity--a simulated character overlaying other simulated characters. This is The Rock's secret and perhaps ultimate persona: the Onion. Let others peel away the skin to find another skin beneath. Just ensure that every layer is as tasty as the one before and America will cry for more...
...museum folk peering into the demitasse of his talent and declaring it an oracular well whose contents address issues, as the phrase goes, of class, race, money, sex, obscenity, beauty, power and desire. Art is short, bibliography long. Clearly, we are in Madonnaland, where every publicity hound -- oops, semiotician of mass culture -- must have his day in the museum...
That bizarre scenario might seem impossible for even a semiotician to duplicate. But guess again. Eco has produced another novel, Foucault's Pendulum, which has sold more than half a million copies in Italy since it was published last October and at one point outsold the next highest best seller by 15 to 1. Translation rights have been assigned in 24 countries, and an English version by William Weaver will be published in the U.S. next October. Once again the Italian press has orchestrated what it calls Ecomania with cries of delight and outrage. One newspaper praised Foucault's Pendulum...
...Semiotician and Novelist (The Name of the Rose) Umberto...