Meaning exists only within a surrounding system of signs, so no text can be interpreted in isolation from the culture that makes it readable.
Lotman proposed the term in 1984 by analogy with the biosphere: just as life presupposes an environment that supports it, a communication presupposes a semiotic space that renders it interpretable. The boundary of the semiosphere is where translation becomes necessary, and it is at that boundary, Lotman argued, that cultures generate most of their new meaning.
In practice
- A document that reads clearly inside one firm is unintelligible to a new owner who has every word and none of the referents.
- A joke that lands in one country dies in another where every word translates.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience