Signs, Signs, Everywhere There's Signs

Brown semioticians are practically a stock character in the academic comedy portfolio, but Paul Greenberg wants to get serious about them. Well, mostly serious:

[S]emiotics is about how we derive meaning from context. In the context of this article, those who like "This American Life" may have been drawn in because "Ira Glass" signifies a certain quirky intelligence. Meanwhile, those of you who never heard of Ira Glass but who recognized the words "public radio" have probably already abandoned this article, because you associate public radio with being all alone on a Sunday afternoon and have concluded semiotics might be similarly isolating.

Sadly, the article doesn't mention my favorite fun fact: Dan Brown's effort to dumb down the stock character for a more mainstream audience by making his DaVinci Code protagonist a "Harvard symbologist," presumably on the principle that asking readers to know about both Brown and semiotics is just too much.