"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