An Ecological Approach to Semiotics

W. Luke Windsor, An Ecological Approach to Semiotics, pp. 179-198 This paper proposes an ecological approach to the perception and interpretation of signs. The theory draws upon the ecological approach of James Gibson (1966; 1979). It is proposed that cultural and natural perception can both be explained in terms of the direct pick-up of structured information and the Gibsonian concept of affordances (Gibson, 1979) without having to invoke a sharp distinction between direct and indirect perception. The application of the theory is exemplified through attention to language and to the visual and audio arts.