Susan Petrilli

Susan Petrilli
Susan Petrilli in 2018
Born (1954-11-03) 3 November 1954 (age 70)
NationalityItalian
Era20th / 21st-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolSemiotics, significs
Main interests
Philosophy of language

Susan Petrilli (born 3 November 1954) is an Italian semiotician, professor of philosophy and theory of languages at the University of Bari, Aldo Moro, Italy, and the seventh Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America. She is also International Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, the University of Adelaide, South Australia.

Petrilli is a leading scholar in semiotics.[1] She has been a central figure in the recent[when?] recognition by semioticians that Victoria Lady Welby acted as the foremother of modern semiotics, alongside Charles Peirce, its forefather.[2] Petrilli's book, Signifying and Understanding: Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement (2009),[3] underscored the invaluable contribution made by Welby to semiotics, her development of the ‘significs’ theory, and the influence her theory and published works bore on contemporary semioticians such as Peirce, Ogden and Vailati.[4]

Petrilli devised, along with Augusto Ponzio, the theory of ‘semioethics’, located at the intersection of semiotics and ethics.[5] This theory has been applied and reinterpreted in various scholarly fields, including law, medicine, language, communication, and architecture.

She published over one hundred books and peer-reviewed articles in the field of semiotics and philosophy of language, in both English and Italian. Her works have been translated into several languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, Serbian and Spanish.

She was recognized as a leading modern semiotician under “Susan Petrilli,” entry by Paul Cobley (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Semiotics, London, Routledge, 2010.[1]

  1. ^ a b "The Routledge Companion to Semiotics, 2010". Archived from the original on 4 August 2018.
  2. ^ Petrilli, Susan (2014). Sign Studies and Semioethics : Communication, Translation and Values. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. p. 4. ISBN 9781614519126. OCLC 898769466.
  3. ^ Petrilli, Susan (2009). Cobley, Paul (ed.). Signifying and Understanding: Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110218510. OCLC 642685790.
  4. ^ Tarasti, Eero (2013). Danesi, Marcel (ed.). "Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli". Semiotica. 196 Semiotica Special Issue : On and Beyond Significs: Centennial Issue for Victoria Lady Welby (1837-1912): 21–34.
  5. ^ Petrilli, Susan; Ponzio, Augusto (2010). "Semioethics". In Cobley, Paul (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London: Routledge. pp. 150–163. ISBN 9780415440721. OCLC 166361601.