This article discusses some concepts and uses of semiotics in the field of Public Health focusing mainly on texts by the Russian writer Mikhail Bakhtin. These reflections encompass specific topics prepared after I had taken part in an ethnographic research project about the practice of epidemiological investigation. This study emphasizes the contribution of semiotics to the analytical construction of the different meanings of health. It presents a synthesis of narrative fragments as examples of the shift in health texts. It highlights Bakhtin's current influence allowing us to think about how different agents participate as mediators in the construction of meanings of health. Thus, human agents - social subjects - with their different cultural backgrounds are engaged in the production of health-disease-care models, because they share, dispute and negotiate points of view in a continual process of creating meaning in daily life.
Communication; Semiotics; Public Health; meanings of health; concept formation
