About the Book:When the German-language edition of this book was published in 1984, Thomas Sebeok, reviewing it in the Times Literary Supplement, called it “a bravura solo performance by a young German academic who has reduced into the compass of a one-volume manual a vast mass of information about contemporary semiotics. He is obviously abreast of most developments and well organized, has no evident partisan axes to grind, and writes with economy, percision, and lucidity.”