For a semiotician, like myself, the task of reviewing Per Durst-Andersen's book Linguistic Supertypes: A Cognitive-semiotic Theory of Human Communication, has been as rewarding as it has been challenging. The book is a result of many years of research, work and thought leading into the depths of semiotics, communication and language. This review will focus on the semiotic and cognitive parts of the vast theory that stretches from perception to the grammemes of languages such as Russian, English and Danish, to mention a few. Durst-Andersen begins at the level of human perception, of the outside world and thereafter continues to explore the question of how we interpret and communicate our experiences, to ourselves and foremost perhaps to others. In short, as human beings we seem to be endlessly occupied with understanding and interpreting others and the world outside on the one hand, and on the other hand with understanding our inner mental world of experiences, and thirdly with communicating and sharing what we perceive with the aid of language (and of course other semiotic resources such as pictures, gestures, dance and so forth, although those are not in focus here).
展开▼
