"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature... this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." —Times Literary Supplement.

This paper analyses the cultural and biosemiotic bases of human attitudes towards other species. A critical stance is taken towards species neutrality and it is shown that human attitudes towards different animal species differ depending on the psychological dispositions of the people, biosemiotic conditions (e.g. umwelt stuctures), cultural connotations and symbolic meanings. In real-life environments, such as zoological gardens, both biosemiotic and cultural aspects influence which animals are chosen for display, as well as the various ways in which they are (...) displayed and interpreted. These semiotic dispositions are further used as motifs in staging, personifying or de-personifying animals in order to modify visitors’ perceptions and attitudes. As a case study, the contrasting interpretations of culling a giraffe at the Copenhagen zoo are discussed. The communicative encounters and shifting per ceptions are mapped on the scales of welfaristic, conservational, dominionistic, and utilitarian approaches. The methodological approach described in this article integrates static and dynamical views by proposing to analyse the semiotic potential of animals and the dynamics of communicative interactions in combination. (shrink)

Semiotic objections to markets urge us not to place a good on the market because of the message that doing so would send. Brennan and Jaworski reject them on the grounds that either the contingent semiotics of a market can be changed or the weakness of semiotic reasons allows them to be ignored. The scope of their argument neglects the impure semiotic objections that claim that the message a market sends causes, constitutes, or involves a nonsemiotic wrong. These are (...) the most compelling class of semiotic objections and are the kind actually advanced in the literature. Rather than focusing on the necessity or contingency of a market's semiotics, we should instead attend to a semiotic objection's most important feature: its purity or impurity. (shrink)

In this article we explore the relationship between semiotic analysis of images and quantitative analysis of vast image corpora, in particular the work produced by Lev Manovich and the Cultural Analytics Lab, called “Media Visualization.” Media Visualization has been chosen as corpus because of its metavisual operation (images are visualized and analyzed by images) and its innovating way of conceiving analysis: by visual instruments. In this paper semiotics is used as an approach to Media Visualization and taken as an (...) object of study as well, especially visual semiotics. In this sense, a comparison between visual semiotics (close reading of small corpora) and quantitative analyses of images (distant reading of vast collections) are conducted from a semiotic point of view. Post-Greimassian semiotics guides this study with respect to the issue of the image-within-an-image and metavisual visualization; Peircean semiotics is employed to explain and develop the notion of diagram. (shrink)

In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and computers are (...) semiotic systems. Finally, I suggest that minds can be considered as virtual machines implemented in certain semiotic systems, primarily the brain, but also AI computers. In doing so, I take issue with Fetzer’s arguments to the contrary. (shrink)

Later reprinted by Deborah Charles Publications (and not available from Amazon), this book expounds and comments on the application of Greimasian semiotics to a legal text, as found in the article by Greimas and Landowski in Greimas, Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales (1976), compares this with the semiotic presuppositions of Hart, Dworkin, MacCormick and Kelsen, and offers my own analysis of the implications of such semiotic analysis for legal theory, including some more recent radical non-positivist accounts.

The central focus of this paper is the disjunction between the findings of climate science in revealing the threat of global warming and the failure to act appropriately to these warnings. The development of climate science can be illuminated through the perspective provided by Peircian semiotics, but efforts to account for its success as a science and its failure to convince people to act accordingly indicate the need to supplement Peirce’s ideas. The more significant gaps, it is argued, call (...) for the integration of major new ideas. It will be argued that Peirce should be viewed as a Schellingian philosopher, and it will then be shown how this facilitates integration into his philosophy of concepts developed by other philosophers and theorists within this tradition. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of the ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ will be integrated with Peirce’s semiotics and used to analyse the achievements and failures of climate science. It will be suggested that the resulting synthesis can augment Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology and so provide a better basis for comprehending and responding to the situation within which we find ourselves. (shrink)

Most bodies in this world do not have brains and the minority of animal species that do have brained bodies are descendents from species with more distributed or decentralized nervous systems. Thus, bodies were here first, and only relatively late in evolution did the bodies of a few species grow supplementary organs, brains, sophisticated enough to support a psychological life. Psychological life therefore from the beginning was embedded in and served as a tool for corporeal life. This paper discusses the (...) semiotically controlled dynamics of bodily existence that has allowed the evolution of these seemingly ‘unnatural’ mental and even linguistic kinds of species. It is shown how the skin, on the one hand, makes us belong in the world, and on the other hand, is part of the huge landscape of membranes across which the semiotic self incessantly must be reconstituted. The discussion moves on to the intracellular world of signal transduction through which the activity of single cells are put to service for bodily needs. The paper further considers the mechanisms behind homeostasis and the semiotics of the psycho-neuro-endocrine integration in the body. The concept of semiotic emergence is introduced and a holistic marker hypothesis for why some animals may have an experiential life is suggested. (shrink)

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The threshold from unicellularity to multicellularity has been crossed only in three major living domains in evolution with any lasting success. The hard problem was to create a multicellular self. Such a self is vulnerable to breakdown due to the unavoidable appearance of mutant anarchistic cells, and stringent semiotic scaffoldings had to emerge to prevent this. While a unicellular self may go on to live practically forever, the multicellular self most often must run through an individuation process ending in the (...) death of the individual. Due to basic differences in cells of plants, fungi and animals this individuation process poses very different challenges in the three kingdoms of plants, fungi and animals, and the solutions found to these differences are discussed. In the same time as multicellularity ushered life into the epoch of mortality it logically also led to the appearance of fertilization and thereby the need for a whole new set of elaborate semiotic scaffoldings. Multicellularity also opened the door to the formation symbiotic relations where cells with different genomes might collaborate or at least coexist inside the same body. All in all multicellularity led to an enormous diversification both of morphology space and the space of sensomotoric elaborations. New means for scaffolding of this expansion and diversification of possible life forms into functional patterns called for a corresponding growth in the space of semiotic tools and initiated a growth in semiotic freedom, that has continued to our days. (shrink)

Tracing different kinds of semiotic practices in boxing, in our text we provide a detailed reconstruction of the way athletes and other participants interpret each other’s actions and integrate these interpretations in their own course of motor action. Drawing on an ethnomethodological approach we argue that these interpretations should not be seen as being isolated from their contextual background. This context and the semiotic actions taking place within them mutually elaborate one another. Analyzing several video recordings and their transcripts, we (...) show how the social interaction of boxing fights consists of a “multi-layeredness of semiotic practice.” These layers of semiotic practice are complemented by what we introduce as asemiotic practices. Asemiotic practices exploit semiotic routines that are a part of boxing and attempt at weakening and overcoming the opponent during the fight thus eventually destroying his or her semiotic capacities. (shrink)

Terms loaded with informational connotations are often employed to refer to genes and their dynamics. Indeed, genes are usually perceived by biologists as basically ‘the carriers of hereditary information.’ Nevertheless, a number of researchers consider such talk as inadequate and ‘just metaphorical,’ thus expressing a skepticism about the use of the term ‘information’ and its derivatives in biology as a natural science. First, because the meaning of that term in biology is not as precise as it is, for instance, in (...) the mathematical theory of communication. Second, because it seems to refer to a purported semantic property of genes without theoretically clarifying if any genuinely intrinsic semantics is involved. Biosemiotics, a field that attempts to analyze biological systems as semiotic systems, makes it possible to advance in the understanding of the concept of information in biology. From the perspective of Peircean biosemiotics, we develop here an account of genes as signs, including a detailed analysis of two fundamental processes in the genetic information system (transcription and protein synthesis) that have not been made so far in this field of research. Furthermore, we propose here an account of information based on Peircean semiotics and apply it to our analysis of transcription and protein synthesis. (shrink)

This study will mainly investigate a semiotic theory of the production and functions of visualisation and image in scientific literature, especially concerningobservational astrophysics, as well as theoretical physics, and will also mention the physiology of movement dealing with chronophotography.

In this book, Norbert Wiley offers a new interpretation of the nature of the self in society.

Argumentation is a cognitive category. Texts cannot be said to be argumentation, nor can argumentation be said to lie in texts. This is an almost trivial semiotic point of departure, but it is quite relevant nevertheless. In this contribution, three reasons are developed to emphasize and to articulate the semiotic component of argumentation to show that it is a crucial element that cannot be disregarded. Two of these reasons are mentioned only in passing as other contributions in this volume deal (...) with them more substantially. The third reason, being that argumentation requires an exchange of discourse worlds and that consequently the mimetic construction of these discourse worlds is part of the argumentation, is discussed in some detail in this paper. It will be argued that a lack of attention for the mimetics of argumentation is regrettable, both theoretically and practically. Focusing on the mimetics raises questions concerning the dominant ‘propositional’ format of argumentation assumed to be essential for argumentative assessment. (shrink)

_Edusemiotics_ addresses an emerging field of inquiry, educational semiotics, as a philosophy of and for education. Using "sign" as a unit of analysis, educational semiotics amalgamates philosophy, educational theory and semiotics. Edusemiotics draws on the intellectual legacy of such philosophers as John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, Gilles Deleuze and others across Anglo-American and continental traditions. This volume investigates the specifics of semiotic knowledge structures and processes, exploring current dilemmas and debates regarding self-identity, learning, transformative and lifelong education, (...) leadership and policy-making, and interrogating an important premise that still haunts contemporary educational philosophy: Cartesian dualism. In defiance of substance dualism and the fragmentation of knowledge that still inform education, the book offers a unifying paradigm for education as edusemiotics and emphasises ethical education in compliance with the semiotic unity between knowledge and action. Chapters contain accessible discussions in the context of educational philosophy and theory, crossing the borders between logic, art, and science together with a provocative theoretical critique. Recently awarded a PESA book award for its contribution to the philosophy of education, _Edusemiotics_ will appeal to an academic readership in education, philosophy and cultural studies, while also being an inspiring resource for students. (shrink)

This work presents a semiotic perspective of aspects of a soundscape evaluation of the city, Supino located in the Province of Frosinone in the Italian region of Lazio. The data and sound sample collection was accomplished through the soundwalk technique undertaken by students of Çankaya University, School of Architecture during the ‘Third International Summer School in Supino’ 17–24 August 2014. For the soundscape evaluation, three zones were identified in Supino as urban, suburban, and intersection. A total of nine samples across (...) three zones were collected during three different times in a day by soundwalks from the areas located in the identified zones. A theoretical model of semiotic interpretations of soundscapes has been proposed and applied for the analysis of Supino’s soundscape. The results showed that the soundscape of Supino differs according to its cultural, habitual, and anthropological tendencies. In addition, the semantic analysis shows that the soundscape composition of the sound sources in the three zones varies by the change of time, sound composition and sources, topography, and settlement of the city. (shrink)

Sports Semiotics' applies semiotics (and other disciplines, secondarily) to analyse the social, cultural, economic and psychological significance of sports. It includes a primer on semiotic theory, sections on the analysis of wrestling by Roland Barthes in his book 'Mythologies', as well as sections on football and the sacred, the Super Bowl, and the semiotics of televised baseball.

This study explores the semiotics of humor and political disaffection in the online feedback discourse evaluating party performance in a post-election era in Nigeria’s democratic practice. It examines the incongruities in multimodal digital humor as semiotic resources of subversive play to criticize a political party for its perceived weak program-to-policy linkage. Data for the study comprise some purposively sampled political internet memes which were deployed to express political disaffection at the party All Progressives Congress in the first half of (...) its four-year tenure. The study applies Algirdas J. Greimas’ semiotic theory by drawing upon the notions of narrativity and modalities to read the selected political internet memes, which run profound social commentaries on the anxieties and frustrations of the ordinary citizens in a failing economy, thereby underpinning the thrust of the theory, which lies not only in the signification of texts but also in the signification of the living experience. The study reveals the power of signs evidenced in the deployment of objects, behaviors, practices, images, and symbols within the socio-economic sub/culture of the production of the internet memes to configure backlashes of democratic deficits relating largely to worsening poverty, hunger, struggle for survival, and political cynicism in an emerging democracy. (shrink)

This paper investigates the notion of semiotic scaffolding in relation to mathematics by considering its influence on mathematical activities, and on the evolution of mathematics as a research field. We will do this by analyzing the role different representational forms play in mathematical cognition, and more broadly on mathematical activities. In the main part of the paper, we will present and analyze three different cases. For the first case, we investigate the semiotic scaffolding involved in pencil and paper multiplication. For (...) the second case, we investigate how the development of new representational forms influenced the development of the theory of exponentiation. For the third case, we analyze the connection between the development of commutative diagrams and the development of both algebraic topology and category theory. Our main conclusions are that semiotic scaffolding indeed plays a role in both mathematical cognition and in the development of mathematics itself, but mathematical cognition cannot itself be reduced to the use of semiotic scaffolding. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to describe how certain theoretical constructions of semiotics could be applied in educational theoretical work. First I introduce meaning as a basic concept of semiotics, thus also touching on concepts such as action, competence and causality. I am then able to define learning as a change of competences, and also refer to the pedagogical concept of learning i.e. Bildung, which can be roughly defined as valuable human learning. I then take up the problem (...) of education as pedagogical direction and communication. Finally, I conclude with some considerations on the famous Greimassian semiotic square. (shrink)

Genre has been a critical issue in discourse analysis as well as in other disciplines. Based on a literature review of the concept of genre and taking judgments as one type of genre in legal settings, the present study provides a corpus-based insight into the nature of genre. The literature review per se reveals that genre has one typical feature of a sign, that is, being subject to multiple and alternative interpretations; in other words, genre as a sign may have (...) various interpretants. The present study unravels the actual generic structures, distinguishes different types of generic structures within the given genre, and then defines the dominant generic structure of judgments in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. This study also examines and contrasts the generic structure potential of judgments in each jurisdiction. In addition, the variation of Mainland China's judgments over time is briefly discussed. Comparing the generic structures of judgments among the three jurisdictions, as well as the structures of judgments in Mainland China over time, the paper argues that genre also has the essential features of a sign, that is, the characteristics of temporality and spatiality. (shrink)

In Semiotic Investigations, Alec McHoul develops a theory of meaning that he calls "effective semiotics" - a theory that investigates "the ways in which signs have meaning by virtue of their actual uses." McHoul expounds his theory of effective semiotics - of "meaning-as-use" - in a series of provocative chapters on diverse topics. He begins by examining the relations between semiotics and history and between semiotics and specific communities. He elaborates on the nature of these relations (...) by demonstrating the "effective semiotics" of a particular photograph from the 1880s, episodes from the film Singin' in the Rain and the Batman comics, literary works, children's primers, popular accounts of science, and many other objects, artifacts, and experiences. Semiotic Investigations advances its own comprehensive theory of signs while ably examining works by such distinguished philosophers and theorists as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Lyotard, Kuhn, and others. Yet the book is also down-to-earth and clearly written, with an eye towards a startling range of "ordinary" and "uncommon" experiences. It will be required reading for linguists, philosophers, semioticians, anthropologists, literary theorists, and students of cultural studies. (shrink)

Based on interviews with guide dog users from Sweden, Estonia and Germany and participatory observation of the teams’ work, the article discusses three kinds of semiotic challenges encountered by the guide dog teams: perceptual, sociocultural and communicative challenges. Perceptual challenges stem from a mismatch between affordances of the urban environment and perceptual and motoric abilities of the team. Sociocultural challenges pertain to the conflicting meanings that are attributed to dogs in different social contexts and to incompatible social norms. Challenges related (...) to intrateam communication and interpretation of the other counterpart’s behavior are mostly tied to the difficulties of placing the other’s activities in the right context. Germany, Estonia and Sweden differ in their history of guide dog institutions and the organisation of guide dog work, but the challenges of the guide dog users appear to be fairly similar. However, differences appear in the stress laid on one or another type of challenge as well as in the explanations provided by the informants for the background of the challenges. The challenges, as analysed in the article, reflect not only the existing problems of guide dog users, but also their expectations for a social and physical environment, in which the teams would feel welcome. (shrink)

Using new semiotic methods and analyses as the fulcrum of its approaches, the volume aims to clarify why great classical composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Brahms and Wagner fascinate music listeners and lovers from all cultures of the ...

Originally written in 1990, this reviews largely late 20th century debates on the study of law as Logic, Discourse, or Experience; the Unity of the Legal System and the Problem of Reference; Semiotic Presuppositions of Traditional Jurisprudence (Austin, Hart, Kelsen, Dworkin, Legal Realisms); then turns to legal philosophies explicitly Employing Forms of Semiotics (Kalinowski, the Italian Analytical School, Rhetorical and Pragmatic Approaches, Sociological and Socio-Linguistic Approaches, Peircian Legal Semiotics, Greimasian Legal Semiotics and Aesthetic/Symbolic Approaches). A major section (...) then offers (from a largely Greimasian point of view) some hypotheses for legal semiotics on the Problem of Reference, Semantic and Pragmatic Levels, Semiotic Groups and “The Legal Culture”, Normativity and Justification, and finally considers the implications for particular legal phenomena: the “Legal System”, Legal Institutions, Legal Codes, Legal Rules, Rights, Courtroom Behaviour: Witness and Counsel, The Judge: Justification of Decisions on Law, and the Criminal Justice Process. A conclusion addresses the status of legal semiotics. (shrink)

In this text I concentrate on semiotic aspects of the theory of political identity in the work of Ernesto Laclau, and especially on the connection between metaphors, metonymies, catachreses and synecdoches. Those tropes are of ontological status, and therefore they are of key importance in understanding the discursive “production” of identity in political and educational practices. I use the conceptions of both Laclau and Eco to elucidate the operation of this structure, and illustrate it with an example of the emergence (...) of the “Solidarność” movement in Poland, expanding its analysis provided by Laclau. I focus on the moment when one of particular demands assumes the representation of totality, which, in Laclau, is left to “circumstantial” determination. This moment inspires several questions and needs to be given special attention if Laclau’s theory is to be used in theory of education. It is so because theory of education cannot remain on the level of the ontological, but has to theorize “non-ontological” dimensions as well, that is the ontic, the deontic, as well as what I call the deontological—the very relation between “what there is” and “what there is not” as the locus of education. (shrink)

The concern of this work is with developing an alternative to standard categories in theology and philosophy, especially in terms of how they deal with nature. Avoiding the polemics of much contemporary reflection on nature, it shows how we are connected to nature through the unconscious and its unique way of reading and processing signs. Spinoza's key distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata serves as the governing framework for the treatise. Suggestions are made for a post-Christian way of understanding (...) religion. Robert S. Corrington's work represents the first sustained attempt to bring together the fields of semiotics, depth-psychology, pragmaticism, and a post-Monotheistic theology of nature. Its focus is on how signification functions in human and non-human orders of infinite nature. Our connection with the infinite is described in detail, especially as it relates to the use of sign systems. (shrink)

​This contributed volume gives access to semiotic researches adopting a quantitative stance. European semiotics is traditionally based on immanent methodologies: meaning is seen as an autonomous dimension of human existence, whose laws can be investigated via purely qualitative analytical and reflexive analysis. Today, researches crossing disciplinary boundaries reveal the limitations of such an homogeneous practice. In particular, two families of quantitative research strategies can be identified. On the one hand, researchers wish to naturalize meaning, by making semiotic results interact (...) with those coming from Neurophysiological and psychological sciences. On the other hand, statistical and computational tools are adopted to work on linguistic and multimedia corpora. The book acts to put the two approaches into dialogue. (shrink)

Semiotics embraces linguistics, philosophy, and literary studies, as well as linking to anthropology, art, psychology, and biology. This new Routledge collection helps to make sense of the subject’s huge interdisciplinary corpus of scholarly literature and brings together the best and most influential materials from ‘the first phase’, neo-classics from the institutionalization of semiotics in the 1960s, and contemporary works illustrating the ongoing development of semiotics and its widening applications. Volume I collects pre-modern material showing the genesis of (...) semiotics from Locke to Peirce, along with a range of work from the last thirty years. Volume II includes key work from recent developments in cognitive linguistics and cognitive semantics, while Volume III focuses on ‘Text and Image’. Finally, Volume IV gathers the best offerings from other disciplines, and from emerging fields such as ‘biosemiotics’. Fully indexed, and with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, that places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, this is an essential work destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital one-stop reference resource. (shrink)

Many caricaturists get the idea for their caricature from current issues of society. The philosophy of the caricature lies in the opinion it presents, which discusses society’s goals, culture, and crises, and it is represented in an ironic way to deliver its visual message. The fight for women’s rights, inequality, and discrimination are examples of issues concerning Saudi women that have been represented by several caricaturists. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate female and male caricaturists’ linguistic and (...) semiotic representation of Saudi women’s challenging issues. Following (Kress and Van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn. London: Routledge), a social semiotic multimodal approach to the analysis is adopted in this study, which is drawn from Halliday’s social semiotic theory. Twenty caricatures were carefully selected based on the content and the issues that are being discussed in the caricatures with a consideration of their relation to the aim of the study. The present study contributes to enriching Saudi women’s rights in relation to Saudi Vision 2030. The research is significant in that, in examining women/male caricaturists’ representations of the challenges and opportunities of Saudi women empowerment prior/after Saudi Vision 2030 in the workplace, social life, it contributes to understanding the supportive caricature discourse, basic social values for Saudi women, the pressures they undergo, and the success they have achieved so far in attaining their rights. The study findings show that both the semiotic and verbal elements of the caricatures were significant in delivering the messages for women’s rights in the new Saudi. (shrink)

This article investigates the significance of Bateson’s concept of metapattern and the intrinsic correlation of his distinctions between the conscious, the aesthetic, and the sacred as they apply to theatre and the visual arts. It entails a series of phenomenologicalreflections on ornament and visual patterns as they relate to explorations of character (as habit) and environment (as habitat). As well, I explore the implications of the traces we leave as individuals (i.e., as expressive embodiments of culture), traces that mark the (...) patterns of our individuality and our communion with others. I conclude that these eloquent visible marks we inscribe in space and time do not simply seek a type of immortality, but rather also embrace our humanity and the small but poetic role we play in the cycle of the semiotic cosmos. (shrink)

The article’s aim is to present plastic semiotics, one of the most recent branches of the Greimassian School. In his Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (1966) Algirdas Julius Greimas stated that sensorial perception was the dimension in which the grasping of meaning takes place, but explicit principles of the analysis of this nonlinguistic dimension were published only years later, in his article “Figurative semiotics and plastic semiotics” (1984). Since then, plastic semiotics has been leading (...) independent existence, focused on the eff ects of sense generated by the form and the substance of expression. Plastic analysis has turned out to be a fruitful approach not only in the field of visual studies, but also in the research into other sensorial expressions.Статья знакомит с одной из наиболее молодых ветвей греймасовской семиотики – пластической. В книге Греймаса ≪Структурная семантика: поиск метода≫ (1966) чувственное восприятие было определено как измерение, в котором осуществляется схватывание смысла/значения. Основы анализа этого неязыкового измерения были изложены им позднее в статье ≪Фигуративная семиотика и пластическая семиотика≫ (1984). С тех пор пластическая семиотика превратилась в самостоятельную дисциплину, которая фокусируется на сенсорных эффектах смысла, произведенных формой и сущностью выражения. Пластический анализ оказался плодотворным подходом не только в области визуальных исследований, но и в исследованиях других сенсорных выражений.Artikli eesmargiks on tutvustada plastilist semiootikat, uht Greimase koolkonna uuemat haru. Greimase teoses “Strukturaalne semantika: meetodi otsingul” (1966) nimetati meeletaju selleks mootmeks, milles leiab aset tahenduse tabamine. Selle mittekeelelise mootme analuusi sonaselged pohimotted ilmusid aga aastaid hiljem Greimase artiklis “Figuratiivne semiootika ja plastiline semiootika”. Sestsaadik on plastiline semiootika muutunud iseseisvaks distsipliiniks, keskendudes meelelistele tagajargedele, mida tekitavad valjenduse vorm ja sisu. Plastiline analuus on osutunud viljakandvaks lahenemiseks mitte uksnes visuaaluuringute vallas, vaid ka teiste meeleliste valjenduste uurimisel. (shrink)

The subject of this book is the thought of the American pragmatist and founder of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce. The book collects the papers presented to the International Conference Semiotics and Philosophy in C.S. Peirce (Milan, April 2005), together with some additional new contributions by well-known Peirce scholars, bearing witness to the vigour of Peircean scholarship in Italy and also hosting some of the most significant international voices on this topic. The book is introduced by the two editors (...) and is divided into three sections, corresponding to the three main areas of the most interesting contemporary reflection on Peirce. Namely, Semiotics and the Logic of Inquiry (part I); Abduction and Philosophy of Mathematics (part II); Peirce and the Western Tradition. (part III). The analysis is carried out from a semiotic perspective, in which semiotics should not be understood as a specific doctrine but rather as the philosophical core of Peirce’s system. As we read in the introduction: “it is semiotics and philosophy or, rather, semiotics as philosophy and philosophy as semiotics, which emerge from a reading of these papers”. (shrink)

This review-article deals with Duvall's book 'Faulkner's Marginal Couples' and evaluates his claim that his approach is 'primarily structuralist, with a special debt to the narrative semiotics of Greimas.' There is also a discussion of general issues in narrative semiotics not tied to any one researcher's approach.

Introduction: Semiotic ScaffoldingA central idea in biosemiotic writings has been the idea of growth in semiotic freedom as a persistent trend in evolution . By semiotic freedom we mean the capacity of species or organisms to derive useful information by help of semiosis or, in other words, by processes of interpretation in the widest sense of this term. While even bacteria have a certain very limited ability to interpret cues in the medium this ability obviously becomes more developed in more (...) complex organisms, and is typically most developed in big-brained animals that are late arrivals at the evolutionary scene. The evolution of a richer semiotic capacity is of course only one among many strategies available in the evolutionary game. Yet, this particular strategy potentially ignites a self-perpetuating evolutionary dynamics, since each step taken by a species along this route potentially opens new agendas for further change:the more capable some species ar .. (shrink)

This paper uses a social semiotic perspective to analyze Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage of the US presidential campaign from 16 June 2015, when he announced his candidacy for nomination as the Republican candidate until 8 November 2016, when he was elected as President of the United States. The paper argues that one of the keys to Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage was that, in presenting himself and his agenda, he foregrounded interpersonal meaning by making himself the focus (...) of attention of the campaign through strategies that invaded various semiotic spaces to form a “sub-semiosphere” of Trump dogma. The effects of this were that what he did and what he said captured the majority of media attention at the expense of his opponents, enabling him to win the election, despite his complete lack of background experience as a politician. (shrink)

Developed from a one-day symposium at the University of Tilburg, this collection of papers explores the semiotic foundations of legislation as viewed from jurisprudential, institutional and sociological perspectives. They pose such questions as: the audience of legislation; the relations between legislative and judicial discourse; the contributions of speech act theory; the effectiveness of legislation and its meaning in non-legal discourse; and the creation of a supra-national form of constitutional discourse, that of Europe.

Semiotic Theory of Learning asks what learning is and what brings it about, challenging the hegemony of psychological and sociological constructions of learning in order to develop a burgeoning literature in semiotics as an educational foundation. Drawing on theoretical research and its application in empirical studies, the book attempts to avoid the problematization of the distinction between theory and practice in semiotics. It covers topics such as signs, significance and semiosis; the ontology of learning; the limits of learning; (...) ecosemiotics; ecology and sexuality. -/- The book is written by five of the key figures in the semiotics field, each committed to the belief that living is a process of interaction through acts of signification with a signifying environment. While the authors are agreed on the value of semiotic frameworks, the book aims not to present an entirely coherent line in every respect, but rather to reflect ongoing scholarship and debates in the area. In light of this, the book offers a range of possible interpretations of major semiotic theorists, unsettling assumptions while offering a fresh, and still developing, series of perspectives on learning from academics grounded in semiotics. -/- Semiotic Theory of Learning is a timely and valuable text that will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates working in the fields of educational studies, semiotics, psychology, philosophy, applied linguistics and media studies. (shrink)

Today’s pornography constitutes a semiotic laboratory capable of meticulously describing some characteristics of the cultures from which it comes and for which it is intended. In it, the role of the face is preeminent and assumes relevance both from a diegetic and a formal point of view. A face which makes itself a sign and is articulated in a dialectic between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic axis, finding expression as an aspectual device, establishing a peculiar semiotic procedure of absentia in (...) praesentia, and highlighting an eminently enunciative dimension of the textual genre. Thus a facial semiotics of pornography becomes to all effects a cultural semiotics, which through the exploration of a transversal genre – both in its mainstream and more niche actualizations – produces significant results in defining how cultures of the face, including extrapornographic ones, delineate themselves. The aim of this article is to verify this peculiar facial semiotics through a case history that stretches from traditional to contemporary pornography, also analysing the “facial pornography” website beautifulagony.com and the visual works of some contemporary artists. (shrink)

This volume serves as a reference on the field of cognitive semantics. It offers a systematic and original discussion of the issues at the core of the debate in semiotics and the cognitive sciences. It takes into account the problems of representation, the nature of mind, the structure of perception, beliefs associated with habits, social cognition, autism, intersubjectivity and subjectivity. The chapters in this volume present the foundation of semiotics as a theory of cognition, offer a semiotic model (...) of cognitive integration that combines Enactivism and the Extended Mind Theory, and investigate the role of imagination as the origin of perception. The author develops an account of beliefs that are associated with habits and meaning, grounded in Pragmatism, testing his Narrative Practice Semiotic Hypothesis on persons with autism spectrum disorders. He also integrates his ideas about the formation of the theory of mind with a theory of subjectivity, understood as self-consciousness which derives from semiotic cognitive abilities. This text appeals to students, professors and researchers in the field. (shrink)

One of the leading concerns animating current philosophy of mind is that, no matter how good a scientific account is, it will leave out what its like to be conscious. The challenge has thus been to study or at least explain away that qualitative dimension. Pursuant with that aim, I investigate how philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition can positively reshape ongoing debates. Specifically, I think the account of iconic or similarity-based reference we find in semiotic theory offers a (...) more promising variant of the phenomenal concept strategy. Philosophers who endorse this strategy think that the difficulties we have fitting conscious qualia into a scientific picture may owe to the peculiar nature of indexical concepts. They point to the fact that, when we try to convey the feel of our experiences, we employ context-dependent gestures and/or utterances that are indexed to perspectives unique to each person. However, according to the theory I defend, there are three ways signs can refer, namely by convention, causal contact, and similarity. Since similarity is not reducible to proximity, I argue that a theory of reference that turns on shared quality can bypass some of the implausible consequences that plague indexical accounts. In the first chapter, I describe the apparatus needed to make sense of this claim. In the second chapter, I present my account of iconic reference. In the third chapter, I justify my reliance on a distinction that is less than real yet more than nominal. In the fourth chapter, I sketch a trinitarian metaphysics well-suited to house the foregoing account of qualia. (shrink)

The workpractices associaied with the use of an information system can be described using semiotic theories in terms of patterns of human communication. A model of workpractices has been created called the systemic semiotic workpractice framework that employs two compatible but distinct semiotic theories in order to explain the complexity of information systems use in organisational contexts. One of these theories called social semiotics can be used to describe atypical workpractice realisations, where a user renegotiates one or more canonical (...) sequences of activities typically associated with a specific system feature. In doing so the user may alter the staging of the workpractice, redefine the goal of the workpractice, or renegotiate the usual role they adopt within the workpractice. Central concepts in social semiotics are explained and applied to an actual atypical renegotiated workpractice associated with the loan of materials to students in a smalloperational level information system called ALABS. (shrink)

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue in recent work that “semiotic” or “symbolic” objections to markets are unsuccessful. I counter-argue that there are indeed some semiotic limits on markets and that anti-commodification theorists are not merely expressing disgust when they disapprove of markets in certain goods on those grounds. One central argument is that, contrary to what Brennan and Jaworski claim, semiotic arguments against markets do not depend fundamentally on meanings that prevail about markets. Rather, they depend on the meanings (...) that attach to various goods, meanings that give us moral bases on which to make judgments about their prospective commodification. (shrink)

Semiotics is the study of signs addressing their action, usage, communication and signification. Edusemiotics—educational semiotics—is a recently developed direction in educational theory that takes semiotics as its foundational philosophy and explores the philosophical specifics of semiotics in educational contexts. As a novel theoretical field of inquiry, it is complemented by research known under the banner ‘semiotics in education’, which is largely an applied enterprise. In this respect edusemiotics is a new conceptual framework for both theoretical (...) and empirical studies. Edusemiotics has also been given the status of being a new branch of theoretical semiotics and it was launched as such at the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in September 2014 at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. The article presents ‘semiosis’ as the action of signs across culture AND nature and posits ‘learning’ in terms of developing semiotic consciousness and semiotic competence. Semiosis is a process and as such it defies the Cartesian philosophy of substance-dualism that still informs the culture of education. The paper focuses specifically on university education permeated by disciplinary boundaries and the fragmentation of knowledge grounded in objective science inherited from modernity. Where is semiotics as the science of signs in the context of academic culture? The authors conclude by affirming the transdisciplinary character of semiotics and edusemiotics and specify the distinctive focal points of transdisciplinary knowledge afforded by edusemiotics. (shrink)

This paper offers a renewed construction grammar analysis of linguistic constructions in a diachronic perspective. The present theory, termedAgentive Cognitive Construction Grammar(AgCCxG), is informed byactive inference(AIF), a process theory for the comprehension of intelligent agency. AgCCxG defends the idea that language bear traces of non-linguistic, bodily-acquired information that reflects sémiotico-biological processes of energy exchange and conservation. One of the major claims of the paper is that embodied cognition has evolved to facilitate ontogenic mental alignment among humans. This is demonstrated by (...) the results of a corpus study in which the patterns of association between verbs, the particle UP and argument structure in Old and Middle English have been studied. The conclusion is that, similar to biological systems, the linguistic sign system displays patterns of equilibrium and non-equilibrium. In other words, while in Old English usage near equilibrium was reached through the use of a conservative set of constructional semiotic templates (attachment patterns), associated with motor modalities, Middle English displays high rates of randomness resulting in a less stable, yet distinct, system of constructional attachment. (shrink)

In the last few years, researchers have begun to investigate the emergence of novel forms of human communication in the laboratory. I survey this growing line of research, which may be called experimental semiotics, from three distinct angles. First, I situate the new approach in its theoretical and historical context. Second, I review a sample of studies that exemplify experimental semiotics. Third, I present an empirical study that illustrates how the new approach can help us understand the socio‐cognitive (...) underpinnings of human communication. The main conclusion of the paper will be that, by reproducing micro samples of historical processes in the laboratory, experimental semiotics offers new powerful tools for investigating human communication as a form of joint action. (shrink)