Thomas Albert Sebeok (
Hungarian: Sebők Tamás, pronounced[ˈʃɛbøːkˈtɒmaːʃ]; November 9, 1920 – December 21, 2001) was a Hungarian-born American
polymath,[1]semiotician, and
linguist.[2][3][4][5][6] As one of the founders of the
biosemiotics field, he studied non-human and cross-species signaling and communication.[7] He is also known for his work in the development of
long-time nuclear waste warning messages, in which he worked with the
Human Interference Task Force (established 1981) to create methods for keeping the inhabitants of Earth away from buried nuclear waste that will still be hazardous 10,000 or more years in the future.[8]
In 1943, Sebeok started work at
Indiana University in
Bloomington, assisting the
AmerindianistCarl Voegelin in managing the country's largest Army Specialized Training Program in foreign languages. He then created the university's department of
Uralic and
Altaic Studies, covering the languages of Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia. He was also the chair of the university's Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies.
As a professor at Indiana University, Sebeok studied both human and non-human systems of signaling and communication, as well as the
philosophy of mind.[11] He was among the founders of
biosemiotics, and coined the term "
zoosemiotics" in 1963 to describe the development of signals and signs by non-human animal species.[12] He also continued his work as a linguist, publishing several articles and books analyzing aspects of the
Mari language (referring to it by the name "Cheremis"). His transdisciplinary work and professional collaborations spanned the fields of anthropology, biology, folklore studies, linguistics, psychology, and semiotics.[11]
Sebeok was the editor-in-chief of the journal Semiotica, the leading periodical in the field, from its establishing in 1969 until 2001.[13] He was also the editor of several book series and encyclopedias, including Approaches to Semiotics (over 100 volumes), Current Trends in Linguistics, and the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics.[11]
In the early 1980s, Sebeok composed a report for the US Office of Nuclear Waste Management titled Communication Measures To Bridge Ten Millennia,[14] discussing solutions to the problem of
nuclear semiotics, a system of signs aimed at warning future civilizations from entering geographic areas contaminated by nuclear waste.[15] The report proposed a "folkloric relay system" and the establishment of an "atomic priesthood" of physicists, anthropologists, and semioticians to create and preserve a common cultural narrative of the hazardous nature of nuclear waste sites.[16]
Sebeok's personal library on semiotics, comprising more than 4,000 volumes of books and 700 journals, is preserved at the Department of Semiotics at the
University of Tartu in Estonia.[17] His correspondence and research files are held by the Indiana University Archives.[10]
Personal life
Sebeok married Mary Eleanor Lawton (1912–2005) in 1947. They had one child, Veronica C. Wald, and later divorced. Sebeok married Donna Jean Umiker (born 1946, now D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok), a fellow semiotic scholar and his frequent collaborator and co-author, in 1973, and they had two children, Jessica A. Sebeok and Erica L. Sebeok. Sebeok retired from Indiana University in 1991, but he contributed to the field of semiotics until his death in 2001.[10]
Sebeok, Thomas A., ed. Style in Language. New York and London: The Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, 1960.
ISBN9780262190077
Sebeok, Thomas A, Donna J. Umiker-Sebeok, and Adam Kendon. Nonverbal Communication, Interaction, and Gesture: Selections from Semiotica. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1981.