Semiotics of Space, Semiotics of the City

Abstract

The paper will provide an overview of the semiotics of space as it has been investigated in Italy in the last twenty years. After identifying the semiotic relevance in the study of space, the distinction between objectivating and subjectivating conceptions is recalled, stressing how these two kinds of spatiality are such only by virtue of effects of meaning constructed by and in texts. We then examine two macro lines of research on which semiotics has focused: those on spatiality described and constructed in various types of narrative (space in the text) and those on experienced spatiality (space as text). The second part of the contribution is dedicated to a spatial text that, due to its centrality and extension, has been the object of numerous investigations: the city, a complex entity, which has been read from a political, gastronomic, tourist, commercial and cultural point of view.