What Can Semiotics Do for Political Communication?

The article attempts to summarize the way in which certain concepts from general semiotics and some of its applications (mainly visual semiotics and semantic analysis) can be of use to contemporary thinking around political communication. It focuses on two general tendencies within western political communication, that have been cutting across parties, leaders and nations over the last decades: a tendency to construct binary oppositions and the storytelling fashion. Indeed, semiotics can offer political communication studies something original, something which otherwise, without its contribution, would remain neglected, unconceptualized or unexpressed.