Phytosemiotics: A Fork in the Road

Preface to the special issue of Semiotic Review on “Phytosemiotics”

Abstract

This preface introduces the thematic issue “Phytosemiotics." In elaborating a semiotics of plants, rather than apply the insights of semiotics to the world of plants, bringing them into the fold of signifying, not merely signified, entities, we take a more arduous route, comtemplating the specificities of vegetal signification with the view to informing and, if need be, modifying the semiotic doctrine itself through its iteration in the world of plants. The idea here is not to treat plants, or any other signifying beings for that matter, as limited examples of the universal processes or phenomena of signification. Rather, the theory of the sign should be derived from a meticulous observation and description of singular signifying agents and their practices of sense-making, the practices of bestowing meaning onto the world around them from their own perspective. In this issue, we ask: What can we say about signification from a standpoint that inches, as close as possible, toward that of plants?