I've been plodding through some of Umberto Eco's writings, but am not sure of the implications of the above term. Others more learned than myself,(And that's just about all of you!) HELP!

plodding through some of Umberto Eco's writings

Well, semiotics is the study of signs and symbols particularly as they relate to language so it's just a sort of pun and an easily translatable one at that.

I feel your pain on the plodding thang. I've never been able to plod very far through his stuff.

Eco is most well-known as a novelist; The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, etc. but in real life he is a Professor of Semiotics. for those what's interested in his ideas, here can be found an essay:
http://h2hobel.phl.univie.ac.at/~yellow/eco/eco.html

I'm still adrift. How does the concept of semiotics differ from Blumer's Symbolic Interactionism, or Jung's idea of universal symbols? Semiotics appears to be an overarching concept for these more specific concepts, but I'm not sure. Feed me more, Faldage and Tsuwm! Others?

As I understand it, almost anything can have a meaning attached to it by people, and semiotics is the study of these meanings and the network they make up. Language (except in the mouths of some semioticians) obviously has meaning, but so does for example clothing (halter top and body piercing v. suit and tie), the spatial relationships between participants in a ceremony, and so on and on.


Bingley

But on a day-to-day level, one of the sub-sets of semiotics is the appropriateness of pictorial signs within the society that they are used.
A "Gents toilet" sign that shows a human wearing trousers would give the wrong semiotic signal to a society where women wore trousers, for instance.

The English road sign for "Men at Work" is someone sticking a shovel into a pile of rubble - it has been translated by strangers to our culture as, "Man opening an umbrella!"

How does the concept of semiotics differ from Blumer's Symbolic Interactionism, or Jung's idea of universal symbols? Semiotics appears to be an overarching concept...

okay, here's what I think:
1) semiotics is a method of analyzing language. one of its central tenets is that representation is a practice.
2) Blumer says that symbols are the basis of social life.
3) I don't pay any attention to Jung -- it's possibly a Freudian thing.

(how's that for reductio ad absurdum?)

atomica defines semiotics as "The theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication, and comprising semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics. [E.A.]

i had no idea that 'pragmatic' had any meaning besides the usual one... how does 'pragmatics' (defined as The study of language as it is used in a social context, including its effect on the interlocutors.) relate to pragmatic? which meaning came first?

And BTW, what is meant by a word's effect "on the interlocutors"? does that refer to the people being directly spoken to, or those overhearing? i usually tend to think of an interlocutor as a 'man-in-the-middle'.

2) Blumer says that symbols are the basis of social life.
3) I don't pay any attention to Jung -- it's possibly a Freudian thing.

I quote Eco: "...I try to temper an eminently 'cultural' view of semiosic processes with the fact that, whatever the weight of our cultural systems, there is something in the continuum of experience that sets a limit on our interpretation, and so - if I weren't afraid of sounding pretentious - I would say that the dispute between internal realism and external realism would tend to compose itself in a notion of contractural realism.

I take from this that there is a set of basic symbols (Jung) that are universal, but that other symbols are malleable, and socially defined (Blumer). I also see the possibility of a dualism between cognitive communication and biological communication, as Desmond Morris has shown in people's breeding habits, as though what is thought may fly in the face of the biological requirements, often at odds, of breeding with the most healthy candidate and being supported by the most wealthy one. How often does the unconscious substrate of biological imperitive color what we project as communication to others?

Eco says: if I weren't afraid of sounding pretentious - I would say that ...
and then immediatiely saying it. So impressive how quickly he masters his supposed fears.

the dispute between internal realism and external realism would tend to compose itself in a notion of contractural realism.
a dualism between cognitive communication and biological communication,
the unconscious substrate of biological imperitive

It's clear as mud, but it covers the ground.
I'm afraid I'm not quite equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.

To put it simply, pragmatics is the study of what one actually does with language rather than language as an abstract system. Comes from the Greek pragmotikos, which Liddell and Scott gives "fit for action or business, businesslike, statesmanlike" as the primary meanings.

Bingley