A few words, then, about the title of this blog: I would like to claim that the title comes from some inner place, some deep, core sense of words, meaning and signs. Though a lover of words, and the study of them-- and their meanings-- I have little or no background in linguistics. I do, however, know a little about semiotics ("the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior"). My discovery of post-structuralist theory in an undergraduate literary criticism class was, to say the least, life changing.
I've been deconstructing the universe (and putting it back together) ever since.
Here's a picture of a pipe.
And so... When it came time to carve out a blog space, I immediately thought, "Aha! I'll use the Greek root of 'semiotics,' semeiotikos, which means 'observant of signs'!"
Well... not exactly.
I'm sure many of my friends and colleagues will agree that I (we) take these kinds of choices (Do you remember your first email address? The one that wasn't a derivation of your name?) much more seriously than the internet majority. The problem I had, though, was that I really couldn't think of anything. Should it be the name of a Greek muse? What about a character from Ben Jonson's Volpone? A Tom Waits song? I tried a few variations of these things with little success-- some were taken, some were just lame. I kept circling two words, though: semantics and semiotics. Both of which I've kicked around in various writings since that fateful semester when Derrida and Barthes systematically dismantled my world.
Both semantics and semiotics, of course, were already taken.
And so, sifting through the definitions of the words, I stumbled upon what seems to be a good mid-point marker-- something that has the ring of old (Greek Gods and intellectual snobbery), but actually fits my purpose (I have one?).
Semeiotikos: observant of signs.
Let this blog, then, be a place where I (we) can observe the signs.
Well, okay then.
