The theory of signifying (significs) formulated and introduced by Victoria Welby for the first
time in 1890s is at the basis of much of twentieth-century linguistics as well as in other
language and communication sciences such as sociolinguistics psycholinguistics translation
theory and semiotics. Indirectly the origins of approaches methods and categories elaborated
by analytical philosophy Wittgenstein himself Anglo-American speech act theory and
pragmatics are largely found with Victoria Lady Welby. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say in
addition that Welby is the founding mother of semiotics. Some of Peirce's most innovative
writings - for example those on existential graphs - are effectively letters to Lady Welby.
She was an esteemed correspondent of scholars such as Bertrand Russell Charles K. Ogden
Herbert G. Wells Ferdinand S. C. Schiller Michel Bréal André Lalande the brothers Henry and
William James and Peirce as well as Frederik van Eeden Mary Everst Boole Ferdinand Tönnies
and Giovanni Vailati. Her writings directly inspired the Signific Movement in the Netherlands
important for psycholinguistics linguistics and semantics and inaugurated by van Eeden and
developed by such authors as Gerrit Mannoury. This volume containing introductions and
commentaries presents a selection from Welby's published and unpublished writings delineating
the whole course of her research through to developments with the Significs Movement in the
Netherlands and still other ramifications contemporary and subsequent to her. A selection of
essays by first-generation significians contributing to the Signific Movement in the
Netherlands completes the collection testifying to the progress of significs after Welby and
even independently from her. This volume contributes to the reconstruction on both the
historical and theoretical levels of an important period in the history of ideas. The aim of
the volume is to convey a sense of the theoretical topicality of significs and its developments
especially in semiotics and in particular its thematization of the question of values and the
connection with signs meaning and understanding therefore with human verbal and nonverbal
behavior language and communication.
