Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School

Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School is a scientific school of thought in the field of semiotics that was formed since 1964 and led by Juri Lotman. Among the other members of this school were Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikhail Gasparov, Alexander Piatigorsky, Isaak I. Revzin, and others. As a result of their collective work, they established a theoretical framework around the semiotics of culture.

Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics developed its original method of multidimensional cultural analysis. The languages of culture are interpreted as secondary modelling systems in relations to verbal language. This method allows to understand the usage of different languages of culture in the most productive way.

This school is widely known for its journal Sign Systems Studies (formerly in Russian as "Труды по знаковым системам"), published by Tartu University Press and currently the oldest semiotics journal in the world (established in 1964).

In its first period (1960s and 1970s), the School followed a structuralist approach and was strongly influenced by Russian formalism. Since 1980s, its approach can be characterized as post-structuralist, which is connected with the introduction of the concept of semiosphere by Juri Lotman and the relatedness to organicism.

Since 1990s, it is followed by Tartu Semiotics School, which is based on the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and led by Kalevi Kull, Peeter Torop, Mihhail Lotman, et al.

Literature

• Levchenko, Jan; Salupere, Silvi (eds.) 1999. Conceptual Dictionary of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. (Tartu Semiotics Library, vol 2.) Tartu: Tartu University Press.