He is the editor-in-chief of Semiotica, the official journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, and is a past-president of the Semiotic Society of America. Danesi regularly contributes to global discussions on semiotics and human behaviors with appearances including a discussion on kissing on The Deep Cover Show with Damien Dynan[2] and the origins of puzzles in Best Health magazine.[3]
Publications
Danesi is the author of several books and his work has been featured in a range of mainstream publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian[4] and The Globe and Mail.[5]
His 2016 book, The Semiotics of Emoji, traces the use of emoji back to its anthropological and sociological roots. Reviewing the book in the journal Semiotica (of which Danesi himself has been editor-in-chief since 2004), Omonpee W. Petcoff wrote, "The author purposefully and masterfully presents semiotics principles and pedagogy in non-technical terms. The outcome is a text that, while rich in semiotics fundamentals and terminology, is also inviting, engaging, and, accordingly, accessible to diverse readers."[6] In 2017, The Semiotics of Emoji was one of four books shortlisted for the annual British Association for Applied Linguistics Book Prize.[7]
However, the book was found to be "riddled with elementary errors" and "shoddy citation practices" according to Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch's review in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics.[8] The details of her analysis are publicly available in the Twitter thread review she posted on her account in August 2018, on which the journal review was based.[9]
Bibliography
Selected publications:
1993 Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language, Indiana University Press
2004 Messages, Signs, and Meanings: A Basic Textbook in Semiotics and Communication, 3rd ed. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press
2007 The Quest for Meaning: A Guide to Semiotic Theory and Practice, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
2008 Why It Sells: Decoding the Meanings of Brand Names, Logos, Ads, and Other Marketing and Advertising Ploys, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
2013 Signs of Crime: Introduction to Forensic Semiotics, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
2013 The History of the Kiss: The Birth of Popular Culture, New York: Palgrave-Macmillan
2013 Discovery in Mathematics: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Munich: Lincom Europa
2013 (with Antonio Nicaso) Made Men: Mafia Culture and the Power of Symbols and Ritual, Rowman & Littlefield
2013 Encyclopedia of Media and Communication, University of Toronto Press
2015 Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives, 3rd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Pp. xi, 330
2016 The Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the Age of the Internet, Bloomsbury Academic
2020 "Pi (π)" in Nature, Art, and Culture, Brill
References
^"Marcel Danesi". University of Toronto. Retrieved 21 March 2022.