Semiotics is an ancient discipline with a long history, which has gained a firm theoretical foundation during the 19th century and an ever growing significance over the last 50 years. This discipline is now in a period of very intensive, concentrated research and self-identification on the map of contemporary science.
The ELTE interdisciplinary semiotics MA program educates students to become well-trained specialists in semiotics of culture with a global overview of the various fields of humanities: literary studies, linguistics, philosophy, visual arts and general art studies – including approaches to fine arts, films, theatre and music – and also the most contemporary methods of research synthetized from a semiotic methodological point of view. At the same time, choosing the specific field for diploma work students can gain a specialized knowledge in one subfield of the semiotics of humanities (e.g. literary, visual, musical, theoretical semiotics, ethnosemiotics, etc.). The program is designed to be flexible to motivate students to find the best Hungarian specialists in the given field and assist them to become involved in international research and dialogues with foreign scholars and lecturers. The curriculum consists of courses on the history and theory of semiotics; language, communication, texts and translation; theory of meaning, logic, argumentation; field studies of cultural, national and special semiotic systems; various forms of applied semiotics and semiotic pragmatics in general. The program also lays emphasis on the preparation of students for PhDstudies to plan their research career.