§03§ §16§This book is aimed at investigating the consequences of epistemological positions for the foundation of linguistic semiotics with special reference to the concepts of sign and meaning. In the succeeding five chapters, the reader is provided with a panorama of theory-and-method related views that show how far the specification of the subject matter of semiotics is dependent upon the ontological and gnoseological commitments of scientists. Language as a system of shared means of signification and communication is discussed here with respect to its systemic and ecological properties constituting an investigative object of linguistics proper or an aspect of other objects studied by adjacent disciplines. Separate attention is devoted to the concept of subjective significance uniting the domain of human semiotics within the framework of natural and cultural sciences. §02§The Author: Zdzislaw Wasik, professor ordinarius and head of the Department of Linguistic Semiotics at the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, was educated in the Chair of General Linguistics and Cultural Studies Institute at the Wroclaw University, Poland. His didactic experience has been enriched through the long-lasting cooperation with the universities in Opole and Torun and lately also with the vocational schools of higher education in Walbrzych, Jelenia Góra and Wroclaw. He is the author of four books and over eighty articles on the structural typology of questions, semiotic paradigm of linguistics, ecology of languages, and history of Polish linguistics. He has delivered conference papers and given guest lectures, inter alia, in the USA, Yugoslavia (Kosovo), Brazil, Norway, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia and Belgium.
