Since Oct 11, the excerpt of the semiotics tag reads like:
Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, including both signs using language and non-verbal signs. Non-verbal semiotics is off-topic on this site.
To me the use of "non-verbal" here is confusing, because I interpret it as "not employing or including words or speech". This is the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary. This would suggest that the semiotics of sign language (or even written language) would be off topic, which I'm sure we don't want to suggest.
The excerpt makes an opposition between "signs using language" and "non-verbal signs", while there are non-verbal signs that use language.
I tried to improve the excerpt to:
Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, including both signs using language and extra-linguistic signs. The latter is off topic here.
This got rejected with reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication. But the wiki does not solve the problem with sign language because it explicitly excludes gestures.
So how can we come to a less confusing, more inclusive excerpt? In particular, if nothing is especially wrong with my suggested edit and the only disagreement is that it may not be necessary, why not just accept it if some people think it helpful?
