“Accessible yet challenging, this book will be the indispensable introductory text for semiotics―indeed for any theoretical course in the humanities and social sciences that deals with the theory of these disciplines.”―Choice “The book offers . . . a clutch of examples of semiotics usefully and intelligently applied, which Schole’s patient, cheerful tone and his resolutely concrete vocabulary manage to combine into a breezily informative American confection.”―Terence Hawkes, Times Literary Supplement “This critique demonstrates once more that Scholes . . . is one of the most authoritative scholars in the field of semiotics.”―The Antioch Review “[Scholes] applies the range of semiotic theory to a series of other texts―poems, stories, films, a scene from a play, bumper stickers, even a part of the human anatomy. . . . When we finish this text (which includes a useful glossary and descriptive bibliography), we feel that we have learned the basic principles of semiotics and can apply them in our teaching and criticism; as a bonus, we gain many new insights into familiar texts.”―Richard Pearce, Novel “[Scholes] is among our best interpreters of literary theory. . . . He provides not only an argument for semiotics but an informed criticism of it as well.”―Martin Green, The Literary Review