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Ecosemiotics is a branch of semiotics in its intersection with human ecology, ecological anthropology and ecocriticism. It studies sign processes in culture, which relate to other living beings, communities, and landscapes.Farina, Almo; Santolini, Riccardo; Pagliaro, Giacomo; Scozzafava, Silvia; Schipani, Ileana 2005. Ecosemiotics: A new field of competence for ecology to overcome the frontier between environmental complexity and human culture in the Mediterranean. Israel Journal of Plant Sciences 53(3/4): 167–175. Ecosemiotics also deals with sign-mediated aspects of ecosystems. Nielsen, Søren Nors 2007. Towards an ecosystem semiotics: Some basic aspects for a new research programme. Ecological Complexity 4(3): 93–101.
As stressed in ecosemiotic studies, environment has semiotic quality in different ways and levels. Material environment has affordances and potentials to participate in sign relations. Animal species attribute meanings to the environment based on their needs and . In human culture, environment can become meaningful in literary and artistic representations or through symbolization of animals or landscapes. Cultural representations of the environment in turn influence the natural environment through human actions.
Ecosemiotics analyzes processes, transmissions and problems that occur in and between the different semiotic layers of the environment. The central focus of ecosemiotics concerns the role of concepts (sign-based models people have) in designing and changing the environment. Concepts of ecosemiotic analysis are, for instance, semiocide, affordance, ecofield, consortium, dissent.
The field was initiated by Winfried Nöth and Kalevi Kull, and later elaborated by Almo Farina and Timo Maran.*Maran, Timo 2007. Towards an integrated methodology of ecosemiotics: The concept of nature-text. Sign Systems Studies 35(1/2): 269–294. Ecosemiotics includes (or largely overlaps) with semiotics of landscape. Lindström, Kati; Kull, Kalevi; Palang, Hannes 2014. Landscape semiotics: Contribution to culture theory. In: Lang, Valter; Kull, Kalevi (eds.), Estonian Approaches to Culture Theory. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 110–132.
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