Per una tipologia semio–nissologica

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on the notion of island and on its cultural productivity grounded in its morphological, logistical and symbolical features. First of all, we present a brief overview of the semiotic properties of water, underlining how it affects anthropic spaces such as cities and the way we interpret them. The second paragraph is dedicated to rethinking the relationship between semiotics and logistics, avoiding any reductionist or hypodermic approach, but taking into account the importance that viability has on semiosphere dynamics. In the third paragraph, we have constructed a typology of islands — real and fictional — based on the perviousness of the channel that connects them to land and on their connotations as examples of the ideological nature/culture dichotomy. Finally, in the conclusions, we have expanded these considerations to the metaphorical uses of the concepts of island and isolation, arguing that they constitute fundamental semiotic cultural unities.