He has made a significant contribution as editor and translator to the dissemination of the ideas of Pietro Ispano, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Lévinas, Karl Marx, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi [it], Adam Schaff and Thomas Albert Sebeok, in Italy and abroad.

Augusto Ponzio has authored the first monographs ever at a world level on each of Emmanuel Lévinas, Mikhail Bakhtin and Adam Schaff : respectively, La relation interpersonal, 1967, dedicated to Levinas, Michail Bachtin.

He has promoted the Italian translation of most of his books and has authored two monographs dedicated to his thought: Sebeok and the Signs of Life, published in 2001, and I segni e la vita.

Among Italian scholars Ponzio has focused particularly on the work of his master Giuseppe Semerari, on the semiotician Ferruccio Rossi-Landi and philosopher of language Giovanni Vailati.

from these authors I have developed what they share in spite of their differences, that is, the idea that the life of the human individual in his/her concrete singularity, whatever the object of study, and however specialized the analysis, cannot prescind from involvement without alibis in the destiny of others.His principal research areas include philosophy of language, general linguistics, semiotics, and theory of literature.