2018
Overview
Biosemiotics and the evolution of language examines how sign processes and meaning-making systems in living organisms relate to the emergence and development of human linguistic communication. This interdisciplinary field investigates whether the biological capacity for interpreting signs—observable across species from simple organisms to complex animals—provides foundational mechanisms that eventually gave rise to symbolic language in humans. Research published in Biosemiotic Research on this topic explores the cross-disciplinary space where biological sciences, semiotics, and social sciences converge to understand life and communication. The journal has addressed how biosemiotic frameworks can bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries, examining sign processes as fundamental features of living systems that extend from cellular communication through ecological interactions to human language and culture. This research area matters because it challenges purely mechanistic explanations of language origins by proposing that meaning-making is intrinsic to life itself, not merely a late evolutionary addition. Understanding language evolution through a biosemiotic lens offers insights into the continuity between non-human and human communication systems, potentially revealing how symbolic thought emerged from more basic biological sign processes that govern organism-environment interactions across all domains of life.
Research published in this journal
1 peer-reviewed article, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.