Acknowledgments

Versions of some chapters in this book either have already been published in Semiotics or are about to be. Chapter 1 will appear as “The Semiotic of Modern Culture”; chapter 3 was published as “The Past and Future of Symbolic Interactionism” (1976); chapter 4 appeared under its current name, “Ethnosemiotics” (1979); and chapter 2 is in press also under its current title, “Phallacious Theories of the Subject.” Most of this material has been extensively revised for incorporation in this book and is republished here in its current form with permission. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the editor-in-chief of Semiotica, Professor Thomas A. Sebeok, for his many helpful suggestions over the years. This book would not be were it not for him.

Chapter 1 was originally written for the Fifth Annual Conference on Sociology and the Arts, 1976, at the invitation of Professor Bruce Jennings. Chapter 4 was originally written at the request of Professor D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok for presentation at a special session on the semiotics of culture at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Houston, 1977. Chapter 5, “The Second Ethnomethodology,” was first drafted in 1971 and has been continuously read and revised over the years, first at the 1975 meetings of the Southern Section of the American Sociological Association, later at various universities. While it is published here for the first time, it was given in its current form as a Horizons of Knowledge Lecture at Indiana University, sponsored by the Departments of Sociology, Anthropology, and Linguistics and the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies. Chapter 6, “On the Nature of the Literary Sign,” was prepared (together with chapter 7) as a seminar paper for the 1980 meetings of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature, University of Maine, Orono. We wish to thank Professor Robert C. Carroll of that institution for commissioning the paper and the other seminar participants for helpful commentary.

We have received support in writing this book from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of California, Davis; the Program in American Studies, University of California, Davis; and the Macrosocial Accounting Project of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Davis. Additional support came via a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities which sponsored the IC⁴: Interdisciplinary Consortium for a Comparative Cultures Curriculum under the directorship of Professor Jay Mechling, University of California, Davis. We have benefited in numerous ways from lively discussions in the IC⁴ group, and support is gratefully acknowledged. We also wish to thank our fellow members in the Northern California branch of the “Chicago Seminar in Symbolic Anthropology.” Our gratitude also extends to our students in several official and unofficial seminars on semiotics offered by us in Davis.