What makes a semiotician tick? SEMIOVOX’s Josh Glenn has invited his fellow practitioners in the field of commercial semiotics, from around the world, to answer a few revealing questions.

Turin…

SEMIOVOX

When you were a child/teen, how did your future fascination with symbols, cultural patterns, interpreting “texts,” and getting beneath the surface of daily life manifest itself?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

As a child, I used to play a solitary game that involved focusing on small aesthetic details of people I frequently encountered: “Today they’re wearing a ring,” “They tie their shoes in that particular way,” “At 3 PM, they always get ice cream from that place.” Lacan states that the subject who sees signs everywhere is afflicted by semiotic delirium; in Seminar III, he describes paranoia as a semiotic illness.

In a way, this game of mine was a manifestation of that kind of attentiveness — an acute sensitivity to patterns that is now central to my analytical work on animal species. Biosemiotics uncovers the hidden meanings in bodily expressions, the signs that communicate even when no words are spoken. What could be more intriguing than trying to translate the life forms most different from our own?

SEMIOVOX

Describe your first encounter(s) with the theory and practice of semiotics.

NICOLA ZENGIARO

During my studies in philosophy, up until my master’s degree, I had never even heard of semiotics. It was only during my second master’s program, which focused on psychology and psychoanalysis, that I encountered semiotics. It was at that point in my life that I realized I had always been conducting semiotic research rather than purely philosophical inquiry.

This realization led me to write a thesis on biosemiotics from a psychoanalytic perspective. I then proposed this line of research at the University of Bologna, and under the supervision of scholars from the tradition of Umberto Eco, I won a PhD position in semiotics. This allowed me to introduce biosemiotics here… a topic that, at least among young researchers, had not been seriously explored before in Italy.

At first, semiotics seemed tied to textual analysis, which, to me, had shown its limitations in studying life forms. A living being cannot be confined within a text; it must be analyzed in its full complexity. My training in biosemiotics gives me an advantage over the more traditional semiotics of culture, which, although highly refined and well-established in Italy, remains somewhat detached from the study of life processes.

Integrating my approach into the Italian semiotic debate has not been easy. I’ve encountered significant resistance to semiotic methodologies outside the traditional domains. This initially left me perplexed. After all, semiotics in Italy was born as a critique of ideology and as a bridge connecting multiple fields — art and science, biology and linguistics, mathematics and semantics. Yet, my first impression was that scholars often entrenched themselves within their own methodologies, using them as shields rather than as tools for interdisciplinary dialogue.

Over time, however, I came to understand that this apparent fragmentation was actually a way of tackling highly complex issues — issues worth fighting for. Semiotics is not just about analyzing texts; it is about shaping how we perceive the world, how we experience it, how we talk about scientific facts, and how we interpret ancient texts. What initially seemed like a divisive approach ultimately revealed itself as a powerful instrument for engaging with our place in the world.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

My work integrates cultural semiotics — deeply embedded in the tradition of Eco — with biosemiotics. This intersection of disciplines has allowed me to broaden the scope of biosemiotics, bringing it into dialogue with cultural and ecological studies while opening it up to methodologies from anthropology, physics, sociology, and environmental science.

I’ve found myself drawn to the study of how semiotics can address contemporary crises. This led me to explore ecosemiotics. By focusing on the discursive and interpretative dimensions of ecological issues, I’ve sought to bridge the gap between the humanities and environmental sciences, making semiotics relevant to real-world challenges.

My work follows two main trajectories. I study the intersections between artificial intelligence and animal communication, examining how different forms of intelligence — natural and artificial — process and interpret signs. And I analyze the climate crisis from an ecosemiotic perspective, investigating how narratives, signs, and meaning-making processes shape our understanding of ecological change and our responses to it.

I have had the opportunity to work in various parts of the world, including Turkey, Mexico, and Colombia. In these countries, I have conducted training courses, workshops, and conferences on diverse topics at the intersection of semiotics and ecological issues. This international experience has allowed me to engage with different academic and cultural contexts, adapting semiotic methodologies to local environmental and social challenges while fostering interdisciplinary dialogue.

I have collaborated with research institutions, but I have also engaged with writers’ collectives, artists, and science communicators to bring semiotic perspectives into public discourse. I believe that the study of signs and meaning is not just an abstract intellectual pursuit but a crucial tool for understanding and transforming the world around us.

At this stage in my career, I can confidently call myself a biosemiotician — not only because I study sign interpretation systems across biological and ecological contexts, but because I apply a transversal, interdisciplinary approach that connects different domains of knowledge. More than anything, my work seeks to highlight the importance of discourse in shaping both human and ecological realities, demonstrating how semiotics can provide critical insights into the way we experience, interpret, and respond to the challenges of our time.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

Being attuned to signs — by which I mean not only being able to discern and interpret signs but also possessing the ability to unpack objects of inquiry, revealing their fundamental structures, dynamics, and complexities. As semioticians, we understand that every object of analysis is always, in Umberto Eco’s terms, an opera aperta — a construct that takes shape through interpretation. And a skilled semiotician must navigate the complexity of sign systems, tracing the infinite chains of meaning that connect seemingly disparate elements. When semiotics emerged as a discipline in the 1960s, Thomas Sebeok envisioned a Semiotic Web, not just as a conceptual model to illustrate how signs interconnect but also as a means of capturing the deep-seated semiotic structures embedded in social dynamics.

Also fundamental is the ability to detect deep, hidden signs — those that appear “natural” but are, in fact, arbitrary constructions shaped by historical processes of negotiation that have long since faded from view. In other words, semiotics must remain, as Roland Barthes envisioned, a critical tool against ideology. For me, this should still be the ultimate aim of semiotic analysis: to deconstruct power relations, social structures, political and economic dynamics, as well as ecological, biological, and material processes. A skilled semiotician must develop the ability to identify and analyze the signs that have become naturalized within social interactions, scientific discourse, and modern knowledge systems.

SEMIOVOX

What three books about semiotics have you found the most useful and enlightening in your own work?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

• [Italian semiotician] Giorgio Prodi’s Le basi materiali della significazione (The Material Bases of Meaning) is a deep, revolutionary, yet often overlooked work that has profoundly shaped my approach to semiotics. It is complex but also poetic in its exploration of natural semiosis, which extends throughout the fabric of reality, connecting vastly different elements and demonstrating how every object in the world is engaged in a process of reading and interpreting the other objects it encounters. I am particularly intrigued by Prodi’s exploration of semiosic “correspondence” — thanks to which some things in nature, as well as in the social world, fit together (creating a third entity between them), while others do not.

• Jesper Hoffmeyer’s Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs. Hoffmeyer has an extraordinary writing style — something akin to poetry applied to biology. His phenomenal narrative traces the history of biosemiotics while revolutionizing the field, offering insights that continue to shape contemporary discussions. One of Hoffmeyer’s most influential ideas is the concept of semiotic “scaffolding,” which describes the layered structure of semiotic processes in living systems. He compares this to the way physical scaffolding supports construction, but in the biological realm, it is meaning itself that serves as a structural support for life’s development and evolution.

• Umberto Eco’s Kant and the Platypus goes beyond earlier paradigms, challenging and expanding semiotic theory in ways that remain relevant today. In this book, Eco revisits the classic semiotic debate about perception, categorization, and reference. He uses the case of the platypus — an animal that defied conventional taxonomic classifications when first encountered by Western naturalists — as a metaphor for the epistemological challenges of signification. Drawing from Kantian epistemology, Peircean semiotics, and cognitive science, Eco explores how humans categorize and make sense of novel experiences, demonstrating that perception is always mediated by interpretative structures. At the same time, this book serves as a precursor to cognitive semiotics.

These works reinforce the idea that semiotics is not merely an abstract theoretical pursuit but a vital tool for understanding life itself, from the molecular level to the complexity of human thought and culture.

SEMIOVOX

When someone asks you to describe what you do, what is your “elevator pitch”? How do you persuade a skeptical client to take a chance on using this tool?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

Every living being, in order to survive in its environment—whether that environment is a forest, an animal body, or even capitalism—must be able to read and interpret relevant signs. So semiotics doesn’t need to convince anyone of its epistemological legitimacy; humans are inherently semiotic animals, whether they acknowledge it or not.

When it comes to describing my own work, I usually say that I study animal and plant communication — first, because it’s a trendy topic that people immediately grasp, and second, because if I were to say that “I analyze how matter itself has discursive processes and how the inorganic world communicates,” I might be dismissed as a mystic or a hippie. Instead, I frame my work as an exploration of how meaning emerges between an organism and its environment.

Our common evolutionary history allows us to experience objects in a relatively similar way. But how would a fly, a tick, or a vine perceive that same object? This question reminds us that our way of perceiving the world is neither the only way nor the best one. Biosemiotic methodology, which I believe represents the future of our discipline, reveals something fascinating — not just about how we create meaning, but about how the world is far larger and more complex than it appears to us. Understanding this does not merely connect us with other life forms; it also makes us accountable — ethically, politically, and ecologically.

SEMIOVOX

What specific sorts of semiotics-driven projects do you find to be the most enjoyable and rewarding?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

Instead of treating nature and culture as separate realms, ecosemiotics demonstrates how they are intrinsically connected — two overlapping semiospheres that constantly influence each other. For this reason, the projects that inspire me the most are those dealing with climate change, biodiversity loss, drought, ocean acidification, and, at the same time, issues related to technological development, social behavior, and cultural ideologies. These two dimensions — ecological and socio-cultural — are deeply intertwined, and understanding this connection requires us to rethink our way of inhabiting the world. Ultimately, this shift in perspective impacts our future as a species and the future of other life forms.

I believe the field will increasingly focus on addressing ecosystemic challenges and the sustainability of our societies. A semiotics that engages with the world in this way — bridging the natural and the cultural, the human and the non-human — is not only academically compelling but also crucial for our survival and that of the planet.

SEMIOVOX

What frustrates you about how semiotics is practiced and/or perceived, right now?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

Today, a semiotician must be responsible for their work. Semiotics cannot be a neutral tool available to any corporation willing to pay for it. A semiotician should not simply serve multinational companies by optimizing communication strategies or consumer engagement when those very strategies contribute to environmental degradation, social inequality, or cultural manipulation. This would be fundamentally at odds with the critical and ethical dimension of semiotics, which should strive to improve society and enrich culture toward a better future.

In short, every semiotician must engage in ideological critique, not just theoretically but also in their professional and personal life. Otherwise, what is the point of recognizing the signs of disaster if one is complicit in perpetuating them? That said, I recognize that reality is never black and white. There is no absolute good or absolute evil — every decision involves negotiating meaning and considering real human lives. However, when semioticians work in service of agencies and institutions that actively harm society, that is something that needs to change.

Semiotics should not be a passive exercise in interpretation; it should be an active force for change. So, to all those who practice semiotics: use this ability to make the world something extraordinary.

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

Since I’m a biosemiotician, my answer is obviously Peirce. That said, I find the rigid methodological divisions between Peircean and Saussurean approaches somewhat outdated in today’s complex and layered intellectual landscape. Those who lock themselves into rigid methodological camps risk seeing only a fragment of reality, forgetting that meaning extends beyond theoretical frameworks and methodological preferences.

Peirce, however, remains particularly compelling to me because of his vision of semiotics as logic and his concept of the infinite process of semiosis — ideas that deeply resonate with my understanding of how meaning emerges in living systems. 

SEMIOVOX

What advice would you give to a young person interested in this sort of work?

NICOLA ZENGIARO

Semiotics is a strange beast — you don’t master it by trying to dominate it, but by realizing that we have never been anything other than animals ourselves. So approach semiotics with curiosity but to nourish yourself with other disciplines. Breathe semiotics, but feed on anthropology, philosophy, biology, chemistry, and physics — not to see the world through different lenses, but to see it with your own eyes. Your perspective will be unique, just as your approach to semiotics should be.

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