‘Oh, semiotics? Umberto Eco and stuff like that?’ Telling and constructing a discourse of marginality

Abstract The current status of semiotics in society and the academic environment is rather marginal, and this is one of its many paradoxes (Gaines 2015). It is paradoxical because semiotics deals with all aspects of meaning; it is relevant to every field of inquiry (Posner et al. 2003) and is applicable to everyday experiences producing meaning. Yet, it is not an established field in most academic systems, and it lacks full recognition in the disciplinary ‘market’ (Rastier 2001). This paper discusses a particular aspect coming from a larger study carried out with 40 semiotics scholars in 12 countries in 3 languages (English, French and Spanish). I will focus on the construction and development of a prevailing discourse that intends to convey the practitioners’ own subjective experiences of living and working in a marginalised field.