nags of a similar ilk

semiotics

"The thread that runs through my interests is very Barthes-ian. The one book that I keep referring back to his Mythologies. Even though it was the first book to look at every day life through the lens of semiotics, it is still relevant today; especially with the impact of digital media, and the endless aesthetic possibilities that it offers, on the production of every day life. Think PhotoShoped [sic] porno vis-a-vis the the "normality" of cosmetic surgery. "

From Merriam Webster's online dictionary:

a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics