Visual history and semiotics

Abstract

This paper investigates the reflection of “visual turn” in semiotic research, the relationship between visual
history and semiotics. The aim of the research is to investigate the relationship between visual history and
semiotics and to reflect this relationship in scholarly research. The English-language works of such famous
researchers and cultural theorists as Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault, Algirdas Julius Greimas, Jean
Francois Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michael Halliday, Charles Peirce, Noam Chomsky, and others were analyzed in this paper. History does not
speak for itself, so the work of а historian is always interpretive. The appeal to the visual here is not a turn
away from other ways, other meanings of making history. The visual is seen here as a special form of
knowledge, requiring its own ways of apprehending it. This engagement with the visual will undoubtedly
have a significant impact on our understanding of archives and historiography in general but does not claim to privilege the visual domain as offering a special kind of access to the past.