The professions gaining meaning: Semiotics and social challenges

Abstract

This essay proposes a reflection on how to identify professions and professional missions that are meaningful for young graduates, and especially for those whose meaning is the object of study, i.e., those who are engaged in a training or research program in semiotics. We proceed here in two stages. First, a path ordered around three major societal challenges of the 21st century: (1) health and well-being, (2) energy, resources, and the environment, and (3)innovative, inclusive, and adaptive societies. Examining each of these challenges allows us to describe both the semiotic aspects of the problems to be addressed, and the assignments and skills that enable or will enable them to be addressed, and that are and will be available to semiotics graduates. Then, we will ask the question of the evolution of change management in public policies, especially in democratic and liberal countries. The observed failure of strategies based on mass communication by public authorities, failure to change harmful or damaging behaviors, and to install expected and desirable behaviors, leads us to imagine other strategies, based on direct interventions, behaviors, practical actions, and habits. These are the "nudges" that allow the concrete implementation of these new strategies. Nudges all have crucial semiotic aspects, and consequently, most of the professional missions related to these public strategies are open to semiotics graduates.