Ebook: New Semiotics Between Tradition and Innovation/ Nueva Semiótica entre tradición e innovación/ la Nouvelle Sémiotique entre tradition et innovation. Proceedings of the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (Sofia. 2014 1

The 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies “New Semiotics. Between Tradition and Innovation” took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, between 16 and 20 September 2014. It was the result of one year of intensive preparatory work, 5 days of semiotic
performances by more than 500 semioticians from 61 countries, plus 1.5 years of “postproduction”. Semio2014 was a big congress: if we compare the programs and the abstract books with
the 10th IASS Congress in A Coruna, Spain, there is still the same number of papers. It is a good
tendency, considering the aggressive EU policies of cutting university budgets, privatization and
labour market efficacy, where the humanities in particular have suffered. Indeed, this tendency
had its negative impact on the 12th Congress in respect of a reduced presence of scholars from
EU countries. Yet, fortunately, it was balanced by a positive tendency, as we witnessed more and
more semioticians, coming from the “non-Western” world, with a particular boom of Brazilian
scholars – more than 50 of them participating in Sofia. Certainly there were more participants
also from China and the other countries from the Far East, compared to the previous congresses
in Europe.