During the last year, we had in Italy two main congresses. The first one was the twentieth AISV-IASV congress Retorica del visibile. Strategie dell’immagine tra significazione e comunicazione ("Rhetorics of the visible. Strategies of the image between meaning and communication"), kept in Venice by IUAV University (April, 13-16). The main conferences are actually already published, maintaining the speaker language, by Aracne (Roma, 2011), in a book edited by Tiziana Migliore. After a renewed reconsideration of rhetoric in semiotics, this congress tried to make the state of the art in a worldwide research, accepting in general the challenge of an extended meaning of rhetoric, so relevant for analyzing significant dynamics related to visual languages.

A second collective event in Italy was the AISS congress Fotografia. Oggetto teorico e pratica sociale ("Photography. Theoretical Object and Social Practice"), kept in Rome, by Sapienza University (October, 8-10). As the title suggests, main communications tried to thematize the links between existing social practices of photography and their implications for a theoretical frame.

Major recent publications in semiotics showed two recurrent and interconnected topics: space and urban transformations. It is possible to acknowledge a clear trend for applied research, starting from a strong communal reference to a classic structural semiotic theory. Among them: Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni nella ex Jugoslavia (Killing the Town. The sense of places between destructions and reconstructions in former Jugoslavia), Bologna, Francesco Mazzucchelli, Bononia University Press, 2010; Palermo. Ipotesi di semiotica urbana (Palermo. Hypothesis for an urban semiotics), Gianfranco Marrone, a cura di, Roma, Carocci; "Guide turistiche. Spazi, percorsi, sguardi" ("Turistic Guides. Spaces, paths, looks"), Alice Giannitrapani e Ruggero Ragonese, a cura di, E/C, 6; Semiotica dei nuovi musei (Semiotics of new museums), Isabella Pezzini, Bari, Laterza, 2011.

Other relevant publications are the Acts of 2009 AISS Congress about politics, divided into two book: Testi e memoria. Semiotica e costruzione politica dei fatti (Text and memory. Semiotics and political construction of facts), Maria Pia Pozzato, a cura di, Bologna, Il Mulino; Politica 2.0. Nuove tecnologie e nuove forme di comunicazione (Politics 2.0. New technologies and new forms of communication), Federico Montanari, a cura di, Roma, Carocci.

Last quote for the second book about the relationship between semiotics and design: La semiotica e il progetto 2. Spazi, oggetti, interfacce (Semiotics and design 2. Spaces, objects and interfaces), Cinzia Bianchi, Federico Montanari, Salvatore Zingale, a cura di, Milano, Angeli.