Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
If semiotics is the general theory of communicative signs (Morris, 1938: 80), then phonetics constitutes part of that theory, in the sense that phonetics tries to model the means by which communication is achieved through the use of spoken signs. The technical vocabulary of phonetics is thus a sub-set of the meta-language of semiotics, and one might reasonably expect that other terms and concepts from semiotic theory, such as that of INDEXICAL and ICONIC signs (Feibleman, 1946: 91), might be illuminating when applied to the subject-matter of phonetics.