Prof Paul Cobley

Professor Cobley joined Middlesex University in 2013. Previously, he was Professor of Semiotics and Communications at London Metropolitan University.

He studied at the University of Sussex and, later, at City Polytechnic. He taught part-time at numerous institutions of Higher Education in London and was an Educator at the Freud Museum for five years before becoming a full-time academic in 1992.

Publications

Single-author books

• Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (Springer, 2016; ISBN 9789402408577)
• Narrative 2^nd (Routledge, 2013; ISBN 978-0-415-21263-2).
• Narrative (New Critical Idiom series, Routledge, 2001, 267 pp.; ISBN 0415212634)
• The American Thriller: Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s (Palgrave, 2000; ISBN 033377690)

Co-authored books

• Introducing Semiotics (formerly Semiotics for Beginners in Britain) (Icon Books, 1997; ISBN 1840460733 illustrations by Litza Jansz)

Edited collections of original articles

• The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics (Routledge, 2001; ISBN 0415243149)
• The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (Routledge, 2009; ISBN 0415440734)
• (with Adam Briggs) The Media: An Introduction (Longman, 1997; ISBN 0582277981)
• (with Adam Briggs) The Media: An Introduction 2nd edn (Longman, 2002; ISBN 0582423465)
• (with Daniele Albertazzi) The Media: An Introduction 3rd edn (Longman, 2009; ISBN 1405840366)
• (with John Deely, Kalevi Kull and Susan Petrilli) "Semiotics Continues to Astonish": Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs, (de Gruyter Mouton, 2011: ISBN 978-3-11-025319-1)
• (with Torkild Thellefsen and Bent Sorensen) From First to Third via Cybersemiotics: A Festschrift Honouring Professor Soren Brier on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Scandinavian Book, 2011; ISBN 978-87-7071-028-3)
• (with Donald Favareau and Kalevi Kull) A More Developed Sign: Interpreting the Work of Jesper Hoffmeyer (Tartu University Press, 2012; ISBN 9789949199457)
• (with Peter Schulz) Theories and Models of Communication (Handbooks of Communication Science, Volume 1) (de Gruyter Mouton, 2012. ISBN 978-3-11-024045-0)
• (with Kristian Bankov) Semiotics and Its Masters Volume 1 (de Gruyter Mouton, 2017; ISBN 9781501511752), vii, 388pp. DOI: 10.1515/9781501503825-203
• (with Kalevi Kull) Biosemiotics in the Community: Essays in Honour of Donald Favareau (Tartu University Press, 2017: 9789949774906)

Journal Guest Editorship

• Semiotics and Popular Culture Special issue of International Journal of Applied Semiotics 6 (1) (2008; ISSN 1488-0733)
• (with Anti Randviir) Sociosemiotica Special double issue of Semiotica 173 (1-2):1-367 (2009; ISSN 0037-1998)
• (with Peter Schulz) Subjectivity Special issue of Semiotica 173 (3-4): 369-455 (2009; ISSN 0037-1998)
• (with Yiheng Zhao) Narrative and Semiosis special section of Signs and Media 12 (Spring): 1-55 (2016; ISBN 9787561493250)
• Deely in Review Special issue of Chinese Semiotic Studies 12 (3): 269-479, includes sole-authored ‘John Deely: a life in books’, 273-78 and, with Frederik Stjernfelt, ‘Sign, object, thing: an eternal golden braid’, 329-35 (2016; ISSN 2198-9605).
• with Johan Siebers and Adrian Pablé) Integrationism, biosemiotics, philosophy of communication special issue of Sign Systems Studies 48 (1) (2020: ISSN 1406-4243).
• (with Sarah Bro Trasmundi) A dialogue between distributed language and reading disciplines special issue of Language Sciences 84 (2021: ISSN 0388-0001) includes co-authored Introduction (with Trasmundi) and co-authored article ‘Close reading and distance: between invariance and a rhetoric of embodiment (with Johan Siebers).

Edited collections of previously published articles

• The Communication Theory Reader (Routledge, 1996; ISBN 0415147174)
• Communication Theories 4 volumes (Critical Concepts series, Routledge, 2006; ISBN 0415331978)
• Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader (University of Scranton Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-58966-148-6)

Refereed journal articles

• 'Throwing out the baby: populism and active audience theory' Media, Culture and Society 16: 677-687 (1994; ISSN 0163-4437)
• 'Self-analysis: some problems in psychoanalytic approaches to popular culture' Free Associations 38: 297-309 (September 1996; ISSN 0267 0887)
• Analysing narrative genres' Sign Systems Studies 29 (2): 479-502 (2001; ISSN 1406-4243)
• 'The semiotics of paranoia: the thriller, abduction and the self' Semiotica 148 (1/4): 317-336 (2004; ISSN 0037-1998)
• "To be means to communicate"' Subject Matters 1 (1): 29-46 (2004; ISSN 1742-3775)
• 'Marketing the "glocal" in narratives of national identity' Semiotica 150 (1/4): 197-225 (2004; ISSN 0037-1998).
• 'How to be evil' Subject Matters 1 (2): 47-66 (2004; ISSN 1742-3775)
• 'Semioethics, voluntarism and antihumanism' New Formations 62: 44-60 (Autumn, 2007; ISSN 1905007574)
• 'It's a fine line between safety and terror": crime and anxiety re-drawn in Spooks' Film International 7 (2): 36-45 (2009; ISSN 1651-6826)
• 'The cultural implications of biosemiotics' Biosemiotics 3 (2): 225-244 (2010; ISSN 1875-1342)
• 'Cybersemiotics and human modelling' Entropy 12: 2045-2066 (2010: ISSN 1099-4300; available athttp://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/12/9/2045/pdf)
• 'Mythbusting' Language Sciences 33: 511-6 (2011: ISBN 0388-0001) DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2011.04.006
• 'Motivation and interest' The American Journal of Semiotics, 26 (1-4): 3-15 (2011: ISSN 9770277712005)
• 'The reactionary art of murder' Language and Literature 21 (3): 260-272 (2012; ISSN 0963-9470)
• ‘Codes and coding: Sebeok’s zoosemiotics and the dismantling of the fixed-code fallacy’ Semiotica 198: 32-45 (2014; ISSN 0037-1998) DOI: 10.1515/sem-2013-0100
• ‘The deaths of semiology and mythoclasm: Barthes and Media Studies’ Signs and Media 10: 1-25 (2015; ISBN 9787561484272)
• ‘Introduction: semiotics is interdisciplinary. But how can you ensure that interdisciplinarity is practiced?’ Chinese Semiotic Studies, (12) 2: 121–123 (2016; ISSN 2198-9605) DOI: 10.1515/css-2016-0009
• ‘John Deely: a life in books’ in Cobley ed. Deely in Review Special issue of Chinese Semiotic Studies 12 (3): 273-78 (2016; ISSN 2198-9605) DOI: 10.1515/CSS-2016-0025
• ‘Observership, “knowing” and semiosis’ Cybernetics and Human Knowing 25 (1): 23-47 (2018; ISSN 0907-0877)
• ‘Human understanding: the key triad’, The American Journal of Semiotics, 34 (1-2): 17-38 (2018; ISSN 0277-7126) DOI: 10.5840/ajs201862038
• ‘Afterword’ in ‘Languaging – the Extended Ecology of Semiosis’ special issue of Chinese Semiotic Studies 15 (4): 697– 709. DOI: 10.1515/css-2019-0035
• ‘Growth as constraint’ Recherches Sémiotiques / Semiotic Inquiry 38 (3)/39 (1-2): 19-38 (2018/19 - actual publication date 2021 – ISSN 0229-8651)
• (with Adam Briggs) '"I like my shit sagged": youth, black musics and fashion' Youth Studies 2 (3): 337-352 (October 1999; ISSN 1367-6261)
• (with Nick Haeffner) 'Digital cameras and domestic photography: communication, agency and structure' Visual Communication 8 (2) 123-146 (2009; ISSN 1470-3572)
• (with Anti Randviir) 'What is sociosemiotics?' Sociosemiotica Special double issue of Semiotica 173 (1-2): 1-39 (2009; ISSN 0037-1998)
• (with Frederik Stjernfelt) ‘Scaffolding and the human condition’ Biosemiotics 8 (2): 291-304 (2015; ISSN 1875-1342) DOI 10.1007/s12304-015-9238-z
• (with Kristian Bankov) ‘Vistas for organized global semiotics’ Semiotica (2016: translated and augmented version of 组织总体符号学之展望) available in Open Access at: http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewarticle.fullcontentlink:pdfeventlink/$002fj$002fsemi.ahead-of-print$002fsem-2016-0093$002fsem-2016-0093.pdf/sem-2016-0093.pdf?format=INT&t:ac=j$002fsemi.ahead-of-print$002fsem-2016-0093$002fsem-2016-0093.xml DOI: 10.1515/sem-2016-0093

• (with Frederik Stjernfelt) ‘Sign, object, thing: an eternal golden braid’ Cobley ed. Deely in Review Special issue of Chinese Semiotic Studies 12 (3): 329-35 (2016; ISSN 2198-9605) DOI: 10.1515/css-2006-0031
• (with Myrdene Anderson, Donald Favareau, Kalevi Kull, Timo Maran, Gerald Ostdiek, Frederik Stjernfelt, Morten Tønnessen, Louise Westling, Wendy Wheeler) ‘How can the study of the humanities inform the study of biosemiotics?’ Biosemiotics (2015; ISSN 1875-1342) DOI 10.1007/s12304-017-9287-6
• (with Donald Favareau and Kalevi Kull) ‘John Deely, from the point of view of biosemiotics’ Biosemiotics 10 (1): 1-4 (2017; ISSN 1875-1342) DOI 10.1007/s12304-017-9291-x
• (with Per Durst-Andersen) ‘The communicative wheel: symptom, symbol and multimodality’, Semiotica 225: 77-102 (2018; ISSN 0037-1998) DOI 10.1515/sem-2016-0228 (Winner of the Mouton d’Or Prize, 2018)
• (with David Machin) ‘Ethical food packaging and designed encounters with distant and exotic others’ Semiotica 232: 251-71 (2020; ISSN 0037-1998) DOI: 10.1515/sem-2019-0035

• (with Adrian Pablé and Johan Siebers) ‘Editorial: signs and communicators’, Sign Systems Studies 48 (1): 7-11 (2020; 1406-4243)DOI: 10.12697/SSS.2020.48.1.01

• (with Yunhee Lee) ‘Peirce’s diagrammatic reasoning and the cinema: image, diagram, and narrative in The Shape of Water’ Semiotica 236-7: 29-46 (2020; ISSN 0037-1998) DOI: 10.1515/sem-2019-0025

• (with Sarah Bro Trasmundi) ‘A dialogue between distributed language and reading disciplines’ in Trasmundi and Cobley (eds.) special issue of Language Sciences 84 (2021: ISSN 0388-0001) DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2021.101355

• (with Johan Siebers) ‘Close reading and distance: between invariance and a rhetoric of embodiment’ in Trasmundi and Cobley (eds.) special issue of Language Sciences 84 (2021: ISSN 0388-0001)DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2021.101359

Articles in books

• 'The specific regime of verisimilitude in the thriller' in I. Rauch and G. Carr eds. Synthesis in Diversity: Proceedings of the 5th Congress of the IASS (Mouton de Gruyter, 1997; ISBN 3110122235)
• 'Leave the Capitol' in R. Sabin ed., Punk Rock: So What? (Routledge, 1999; ISBN 0415170303)
• '"Who loves ya, baby?" Kojak and the Great Society' in A. Gough-Yates and W. Osgerby eds., Action TV: Tough Guys, Smooth Operators and Foxy Chicks (Routledge, 2001, pp. 53-68; ISBN 041522621X)
• '"Justifiable paranoia": reading the politics of conspiracy in 1970s America' in X. Mendik ed., Shocking Cinema of the '70s (Noir, 2002; ISBN 0953656446)
• 'Semiotics, closure and technologies of narrative communication' in T. J. Prewitt and J. Deely eds., Semiotics 2002 pp. 259-287 (Legas, 2003; ISBN 1894508475)
• 'Abduction revisited: the thriller and the self' in S. Petrilli and P. Calefato eds., Logica, Dialogica, Ideologica: I Segni tra Funzionalita ed Eccedenza (Mimesis, 2003; ISBN 888483 1628)
• 'Objectivity and immanence in genre theory' in G. Dowd, L. Stevenson and J. Strong eds., Genre Matters: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Intellect, 2005, pp. 41-54; ISBN 1841501077)
• 'Barthes' sign theory in Anglophone media and cultural studies' in A. Ponzio, P. Calefato and S. Petrilli eds., Con Roland Barthes alle sorgenti del senso (Meltemi, 2006; ISBN 8883534581)
• 'Semioethics and anti-humanism' in S. Petrilli ed., Comunicazione, Interpretazione, Traduzione (Mimesis, 2007; ISBN 9788884834546)
• 'A brief note on dialogue' in S. Petrilli ed., Philosophy of Language as the Art of Listening: On Augusto Ponzio's Scientific Research (Edizioni dal Sud, 2007; ISBN 88575530653)
• 'Communication and verisimilitude in the 18th century' in K. Agawu and D. Mirka eds., Communication in 18th Century Music (Cambridge University Press, 2008; ISBN-10: 0521888298)
• 'Signifiers and subjects' S. Petrilli ed., Approaches to Communication: Trends in Global Communication Studies (Atwood Publishing, 2008; ISBN-13: 978-1-891859-75-5)
• 'Time, feeling and abduction: towards a new theory of narrative' in Deely, J. and Sbrocchi, L. eds. Semiotics 2008 pp. 858-68 (Legas, 2009; ISBN 978897493144)
• 'Semiotics' in B. Clarke and M. Rossini eds., The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science (Routledge 2010; ISBN 978-0-415-49525-7), pp. 396-406.
• 'The paranoid style in narrative: the anxiety of storytelling after 9/11' in M.-L. Ryan and M. Grishakova eds., Intermediality and Storytelling (de Gruyter, 2010; ISBN 978-3-11-023773-3) pp. 99-121
• 'Untitled' in Meetings with Solomon Marcus Vol. 1, pp. 504-6 (Spandugino, 2010; ISBN 9786069289563)
• 'Sebeok's panopticon' in Cobley, P., Deely, J., Kull, K. and Petrilli, S. (eds.) "Semiotics Continues to Astonish": Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs, (de Gruyter Mouton, 2011; ISBN 978-3-11-025319-1), pp. 85-114
• 'Verisimilitude and the literary: crime fiction, criticism and the attempt to escape marginality' in Raya Kuncheva (ed.) Marginality in/of the Literature, (Boyan Penev, 2011, ISBN 978-954-8712-76-7).
• 'Observerhip: the view from semiotics' in Thellefsen, T., S¯rensen, B. and Cobley, P. (eds.) From First to Third via Cybersemiotics: A Festschrift Honouring Professor S¯ren Brier on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Scandinavian Book, 2011; 978-87-7071-028-3)
• '"Scientifying" literature, "literarizing" science' in Marie Vrinat-Nikolov, Ivan Mladenov, Andrey Tashev (eds.) Out of Literariness (Boyan Penev, 2012; ISBN 9789548712767).
• 'Subjectivity' in D. Favareau, P. Cobley and K. Kull (eds.) A More Developed Sign: Interpreting the Work of Jesper Hoffmeyer (Tartu University Press, 2012; ISBN 9789949199457)
• 'Freedom and repression' in T. Maran, K. Lindstrom, R. Magnus and M. Tonnessen (eds.) Semiotics in the Wild: Essays in Honour of Kalevi Kull on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Tartu University Press, 2012; ISBN 9789949320417).
• 'Semiotic models of communication' in Cobley and Schulz (eds.) Theories and Models of Communication (Handbooks of Communication Science, Volume 1) (de Gruyter Mouton, 2012; ISBN 978-3-11-024045-0)
• ‘Re-viewing Vantage Point’ in W. Buckland (ed.) Hollywood Puzzle Films (Routledge/American Film Institute, 2014; ISBN 9780415622462), pp. 217-232
• ‘Metaphysics of wickedness’ in T. Thellefsen and B. Sørensen (eds.) Charles S. Peirce in His Own Words: 100 Years of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition (de Gruyter, 2014; ISBN 9781614516415), pp. 393-99 DOI: doi.org/10.1515/9781614516415.393
• ‘Geopolitical reality: the thriller, global power, and the logic of revelation’ in A. Pepper and D. Schmid (eds.) Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction: A World of Crime (Palgrave, 2016; ISBN 1137425725), pp. 197-216. DOI: org/10.1057/978-1-137-42573-7_11
• ‘Discussion: integrationism, anti-humanism and the suprasubjective’ in A. Pablé (ed.) Critical Humanist Perspectives: The Integrational Turn in Philosophy of Language and Communication (Routledge, 2017; ISBN 9781138656710), pp. 267-84
• ‘Don Favareau – congenor’ in K. Kull and P. Cobley (eds.) Biosemiotics in the Community: Essays in Honour of Donald Favareau (Tartu University Press, 2017: ISBN 9789949774906)
• ‘Peirce in contemporary semiotics’ (17,000 words) in T. Jappy (ed.) The Bloomsbury Companion to Peircean Semiotics (Bloomsbury, 2020; ISBN 9781350076112).
• ‘Realism’ in Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction, pp. 202-10, (Routledge, 2020; ISBN 978-1-138-32035-2).
• ‘Reimagining semiotics in communication’ in Michael Filimowicz and Veronika Tzankova (eds.) Reimagining Communication: Meaning, 1-26, (Routledge, 2020; ISBN 978-1-138-54288-4, Volume 1 of 4-volume set).
• ‘Practice as research: a cybersemiotic overview of knowing’ in C. Vidales (ed.) Introduction to Cybersemiotics 105-126, (Springer, 2021; ISBN 9783030527457).
• (with Peter Schulz) 'Introduction' in Cobley and Schulz (eds.) Theories and Models of Communication (Handbooks of Communication Science, Volume 1) (de Gruyter Mouton, 2012. ISBN 978-3-11-024045-0)
• (with Adam Briggs) 'Designing successful HIV awareness strategies: an ethnographic approach' in J. Palmer and M. Dodson eds., Design and Aesthetics: A Reader (Routledge, 1996; ISBN 0415072336)
• (with Anti Randviir) 'Sociosemiotics' in Cobley (ed) The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (Routledge, 2009; ISBN 0415440734)
• (with Nick Haeffner) 'Narrative supplements' in R. Page and B. Thomas eds., New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age (University of Nebraska Press, 2011; ISBN 978-0-8032-1786-7)
• (with Deely, Kull and Petrilli) 'Introduction' in Cobley, P., Deely, J., Kull, K. and Petrilli, S. (eds.) "Semiotics Continues to Astonish": Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs, (de Gruyter Mouton, 2011; ISBN 978-3-11-025319-1)
• (with Sara Cannizzaro) ‘Biosemiotics, politics and Thomas A. Sebeok’s move from linguistics to semiotics’ in S. Cowley, K. Kull and E. Velmezova (eds.) Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics (Springer 2015; ISBN 978-3-319-20662-2), pp. 207-22. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-20663-9_11
• (with David Machin) ‘Semiotics’ in S. Bull (ed.) A Companion to Photography, pp. 133-54, (Wiley, 2020; ISBN 978-1-405-19584-3).

Online bibliographical article (refereed)

‘Narrative’, Oxford Bibliographies in ‘Communication’ edited by Patricia Moy (Oxford University Press, 2016)

available at

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841-0088.xml?rskey=kfIz1A&result=81

DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199756841-0088

Anthologised articles

• 'Leave the Capitol' in R. Sabin ed., Punk Rock: So What? (Routledge, 1999; ISBN 0415170303 - Abridged version anthologized in A. Tomasino ed., Music and Culture Pearson, 2004; ISBN 0-321-19483-7)
• Review of Thomas A. Sebeok, Global Semiotics, Journal of Sociolinguistics 6 (4): 598-602 (2002; ISSN 1360-6441) - Anthologized in J. Deely and M. Danesi (eds.) Semiotic Prologues (Legas, 2012; ISBN 9781897493342)
• 'Semioethics, voluntarism and antihumanism' New Formations 62: 44-60 (Autumn, 2007; ISSN 1905007574) - Anthologized in W. Wheeler (ed.) Biosemiotics, Open Humanities Press/JISC, 2010http://livingbooksaboutlife.org/pdfs/bookarchive/Biosemiotics.pdf