A question of semblance: Icon versus index

Is it Real? is a collection of twenty-eight papers on the most challenging, provocative – and profound – topics related to the quest for real and virtual realities of vision and other senses, and realities that are either constructed or imagined. There was no school, no theory, no methodology, nor any empirical approach in semiotics which was not forced to take a position, whether implicitly or explicitly, in attempting to discuss this issue. Semiotics is a discipline dealing with signs, and, thus, it is commonly thought that if we say of something that it is a “sign”, then it is something “less” real than the thing itself to which it refers. As such, the field of problems which opens from the theme “Is it Real?” is almost endless – but also relevant. This volume presents interactive dialogue related to this question structured under six different headings: five papers on the topic of “Visual Realities”; six on “What is Real?”; five on “Textual Realities”, concentrating on realities revealed from literature or the written language through texts; five on “Constructed Realities”; three on “Virtual Realities”; and, finally, four papers on “Imagined Realities”.