As the launcher of the whole science of semiotics - the study of the meanings latent in the signs and objects we come across daily in the modern media-saturated world - this book attempts to demystify the roles and values inherent in such diverse commonplace items as wrestling, Citroen DS, steak and chips, Greta Garbo's face and household detergents via a series of essays. The essays themselves became cultural icons, and the book became a cult object. It is now studied on many courses in higher education as an emblematic text of post-war French culture, and as the precursor of the late-20th-century preoccupation with the language of signs and gestures in mass culture.