Semiotic research increasingly reveals the basic importance of structure at all levels of genetic, linguistic, and social process. The paradox that structure not only liberates but also imprisons has been familiar to members of many different cultures, and the search for personal release in transcendent states of feeling contrapuntally illuminates…

Discusses several philosophies of linguistics and semiotics that debate the importance of words and their relationship to signs, language as the primary modeling system, and the historical primacy of verbal versus visual communication. Describes human communication as both language-based and nonverbal, both aspects inviting arbitrary and abstract…