The main focus of this volume is on urbanity as a discursive way of human life in the city.
Discourse is specified here in terms of semiotic codes and processes that link city dwellers as
communicating selves into interpersonal and intersubjective collectivities when they create and
interpret similar meanings embodied in material bearers. Accordingly the unfolding of the
semiotic web is understood firstly as detecting and evaluating the growth and manifestation
of the sphere of meaning-bearers or a sequence of meaning-bearing events and secondly as
identifying and explaining the constituents and aspects of discourse in the light of signs and
or sign-processes that aggregate individual participants of communication into discursive
linkages on a lower level and discursive communities - on a higher level of social grouping.
Some contributions deal with the discursive properties of human individuals in urban
environments and some others are devoted either to the meta-discourseson the city or
discourses in the city.
