「第二人生」是虛擬世界中的角色扮演遊戲，近年來逐漸融入到教學環境中。而目前符號學上的研究大多針對意義的形成以及其中所代表的現實層面涵義進行探討(Chandler, 2002)。在「第二人生」裡，我們目光所及不但包括了現實面，也包括了想像面。虛擬世界中不僅有超真實的影像，同時也包含了符號世界。在虛擬世界中，所有事物都具有特定的意義。因此在教學過程中，老師在向學生解說虛擬世界裡的新影像時，也應該協助學生們將新影像與其他影像加以連結，使學生更能快速地瞭解新影像所代表的意義。將符號學應用於視覺文化教學中，可檢視不同文化裡影像所代表的涵義。透過符號學解讀虛擬世界，亦可協助我們瞭解特定視覺文化的形成方式和原因。

The virtual world of Second Life, the role playing game, has beenadapted as an educational environment. The contemporary study of semiotics is based on how meanings are made and how reality is represented (Chandler, 2002). In Second Life, everything we can see represents reality or the imagination. The virtual world is not just a hyperreality but is also a semiotic world. Everything seen in the virtual world carries certain meanings. When teachers introduce new images to their students in the virtual world, they should help their students generate connections between the new image and other images, in order to help students to produce new layers of meaning around the new image. A semiotic-based approach to visual culture examines images as vehicles of meaning in every culture. Using semiotic theory to decode the virtual world helps us to understand how and why it forms its own particular visual culture.