Warning signs : the semiotics of danger

Semiotics, broadly, is the study of signs and symbols and how our interpretations of them develop. Using semiotics as a jumping off point, Hungarian semiotician Thomas Sebeok’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt in the 1980s to devise warning signs for nuclear waste disposal sites that will maintain their meaning for at least the 10,000 years the waste is predicted to stay dangerous, Marcel Danesi discusses the problems of universality in symbols and the decay of meaning over time.