THESIS

PLEASE NOTE: To write a Bachelor’s thesis in Semiotics, students are required to have completed—or to be planning to complete—12 CFU/ECTS credits in Semiotics (including in a 6+6 credit combination), so as to acquire the theoretical and methodological background necessary for undertaking thesis work.

> General Guidelines

A thesis in Semiotics requires knowledge of the discipline’s epistemological, theoretical, and methodological foundations, a willingness to engage in analytical work, and sensitivity to the complexity of cultural relations.

Attendance at the course and successful completion of the exam are strongly encouraged, as is the ability to identify original objects of analysis.

Preferred fields include contemporary communication, processes of cultural translation, the analysis of forms of everyday life, and Sardinian culture, past and present. For further information on my main research areas, please see the publications listed under “Research Outputs” and “Research Projects.”

Thesis proposals focusing on other fields and objects of study will, of course, also be considered and assessed. For guidance on possible objects of analysis, see the section “Thematic Areas and Readings” below.

Please note that purely compilative theses will not be accepted. Theses must instead be applied and analytical, that is, centred on the analysis of a specific cultural object or phenomenon. This is partly due to the limited time and length available for a Bachelor’s thesis, but also reflects the aim of making the most of the student’s educational path by giving it a genuinely research-oriented and/or professionally relevant outcome.

Analyses based on the candidate’s own professional or work experience are therefore welcome, provided that students are prepared to establish the necessary analytical and critical distance from their object of study. Likewise, theoretically oriented research theses are welcome, provided that they are applied: in other words, concepts and theoretical issues should always be explored through engagement with concrete cultural objects or phenomena.

> Thesis Proposal / Acceptance Form

In order to submit a thesis proposal, students are required to complete the Thesis Proposal Form, which can be downloaded from the “Proposed Topics” section, and to develop each section as indicated.

The form may also be completed after discussing the project directly with the lecturer. In all cases, however, the thesis will be considered formally accepted only after the written project has received a positive assessment.

The form contains further useful guidance not only on how to define the Research Hypothesis, Corpus of Analysis, Methodology, etc., but also on how to begin structuring the thesis project.

> Resources

Once the thesis has been accepted, students must download the Thesis Writing Guidelines from the “Proposed Topics” section. All explicit and implicit instructions contained in the document—the document itself is formatted in the way the thesis should be formatted—must be followed carefully.

Accurate compliance with the Guidelines forms part of the assessment of the overall quality of the thesis.

Following the Guidelines demonstrates not only an ability to understand texts and their conventions, but also makes it possible to submit a clean and readable document from the outset. This saves valuable time and allows the dialogue between supervisor and student to focus primarily on the content and intellectual development of the thesis.

For students wishing to undertake a thesis in Semiotics, the thematic areas, books, and websites listed below are intended, first, to suggest preliminary readings that may help them define their thesis idea more precisely and, second, to provide a starting point for approaching their chosen topic and identifying further bibliographical references.

As a starting point, I recommend reading Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis. Although the book was written with much longer theses in mind and at a time when bibliographical research was more complex than it is today, it remains unsurpassed as a guide to organising both one’s work and one’s thinking in preparation for a thesis.

Students are also advised, when navigating the vast amount of material available online—not all of which meets appropriate scholarly standards—to consult the following websites for Italian-language materials, where they can find articles and volumes that have been reviewed or recognised by the semiotic scholarly community:

E/C – Online Journal of the Italian Association for Semiotic Studies
http://ec-aiss.it

Ocula – Semiotic Eye on Media
www.ocula.it

The main journals in the field, officially recognised in Italy as Class A journals, although their contents are not always freely accessible, include:

Semiotica. Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/semi

Versus – Quaderni di Studi Semiotici
http://versus.dfc.unibo.it

Lexia
http://lexia.to.it

Another important journal is:

Carte Semiotiche
http://www.media.unisi.it/css/