Definition of "semiotics" [se•mi•ot•ics]

• The theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication, and comprising semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Clearly, naming things is one of the major themes of the book, and the nature of signs (as in semiotics as well as the paranoid mediaeval style), is what Eco is really interested in, hence the title and the latin riddle that finishes the novel: Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus."
• "Recommended if … you majored in semiotics at Brown or Finnegans Wake is your favorite book."
• "How to represent a concept like a Service with a symbol that provides meaning and is useful to its users falls under the topic of semiotics, which is the study of how symbols come to have meaning (semantics), how those symbols relate to one another (syntax), and how people do useful things with their symbols (pragmatics)."