Semiotics-the beginning

Semiotics can best be decribed,as a study of of signs..as unorthodox as it may sound, they relate in a similar way to linquistics, only difference being semiotics are based on visual actions rather than words.
People usually relate to signs in everyday life, things such as road signs,pub signs and star signs.
Most people will probably relate semiotics to "visual signs", you could prove this hunch by saying they are also drawings, paintings and photographs, and by now you'd probably be directed towards arts & photography sections.
But if you were to be thick-skinned and told am it also includes words, sounds and "body language" they may be sceptical and wonder wonder what these aspects have in common and how anyone could possibly study such a desperate phenomena.Studying semiotics may have you reading "the signs" feeling slightly insane and eccentric when communication has not been ceased.

Semiotics began to become a major approach to cultural studies in the late 1960s, partly as a result of the work of Roland Barthes. The translation into English of his popular essays in a collection entitled Mythologies (Barthes 1957), followed in the 1970s and 1980s by many of his other writings, greatly increased scholarly awareness of this approach. Writing in 1964, Barthes declared that 'semiology aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification' (Barthes 1967, 9). The adoption of semiotics in Britain was influenced by its prominence in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham whilst the centre was under the direction of the neo-Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall (director 1969-79). Although semiotics may be less central now within cultural and media studies (at least in its earlier, more structuralist form), it remains essential for anyone in the field to understand it. What individual scholars have to assess, of course, is whether and how semiotics may be useful in shedding light on any aspect of their concerns. Note that Saussure's term, 'semiology' is sometimes used to refer to the Saussurean tradition, whilst 'semiotics' sometimes refers to the Peircean tradition, but that nowadays the term 'semiotics' is more likely to be used as an umbrella term to embrace the whole field