Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 1-29.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 204 Seiten: 361-390.

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 197-248.

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas. The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions. The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval representations, folk extensions and secular (...) representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas (Santa Claus). The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions (imagology). The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval representations (Western (...) and Eastern Christianity), folk extensions and secular representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to investigate the variants of directionality implied in visual hieratic texts as religious markers in the sacrosphere, which are substantially expressed in the form of a wayside shrine/cross. The methodological underpinnings for this project rely on the proposed semiotactics : the investigative perspective modeled after phonotactics – a branch of phonology investigating the restrictions on and the possibilities of phoneme combinations in languages. The study draws on digital documentation of wayside shrines, crosses, and sacrality (...) markers on houses collected by the author in various European countries, focusing in particular on the material collected in the area of present Slovakia, Ukraine, Austria, Slovenia, and the region of the Beskid Mountains in Poland. It shows how bodily hexis is inscribed into the phenomenology of a wayside shrine through particular types of hierophanic dynamics. The study also focuses on the aspect of headedness and markedness in the nano-structure of a sign, surfacing as directionality in the conceptualization of the religious sphere by particular communities. (shrink)

In the volume, to locate the science of language and communication in the most recent philosophical and methodological context that science offers today, we have proposed reconciling two avenues of the scientific process, i.e. the "third-person observation-experiment-algorithm method being the traditional method of doing science; and the inner, first-person insights of contemplative science, in a sense of phenomenological flânerie through unexplored cultural landscapes". The present book targets research addressing the phenomenological aspect of communication and the methodology of linguistic research. The (...) volume may be of interest to linguistic scholars, cultural linguists, semioticians, interdisciplinary scholars, and students of the humanities and cultural/social specialisations. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas (Santa Claus). The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions (imagology). The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval representations (Western (...) and Eastern Christianity), folk extensions and secular representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

The article traces interpretative mechanisms hidden in Chomsky's Transformational Model. The framework is that of epistemological criticism, investigating the intertwining of interpretation, context and intuition. My hypothesis is that the Transformational Model is an example of a quasi-axiomatic, intuition-based grammar. It is not a scientific model of Competence but a scientistic description of Performance (teleological corpora). The scientistic décor is thus an eristic stratagem to hide arbitrary interpretation. The discussion is empirically substantiated by analyzing the notion of grammaticality, the tectonics (...) of the Transformational Model and the phenomenology of countable/uncountable nouns. Key Words: interpretative mechanisms • intuition • epistemology • transformational model • context • Dasein • performance • competence. (shrink)

The paper provides an empirical study of semiotic mechanisms of culture. We apply the methodology developed by the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, building also on the criteria of boundary-work dynamics to examine a collected corpus of adverts appearing in Silesian Catholic periodicals (in Germanand in Polish) from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We discuss the cultural implications of the differences and similarities in German and Polish ads and propose functional explanations of the results in terms (...) of the notion of boundary configurations in a region as a particular structuring of cultural codes. The two analytical axes are the social boundary implicated in the use of German vs. Polish on the parameter of ‘sacred’ (sacrum) reference, and the symbolic border in the use of Fraktur (German script) versus Antiqua (Latin script) (boundary objects). (shrink)

The paper provides an empirical study of semiotic mechanisms of culture. We apply the methodology developed by the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, building also on the criteria of boundary-work dynamics to examine a collected corpus of adverts appearing in Silesian Catholic periodicals (in Germanand in Polish) from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. We discuss the cultural implications of the differences and similarities in German and Polish ads and propose functional explanations of the results in terms (...) of the notion of boundary configurations in a region as a particular structuring of cultural codes. The two analytical axes are the social boundary implicated in the use of German vs. Polish on the parameter of ‘sacred’ (sacrum) reference, and the symbolic border in the use of Fraktur (German script) versus Antiqua (Latin script) (boundary objects). (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study was designed to address the hypothesis that differences and similarities in patterns of attentional processing in recently proposed types of anxiety and depression are connected with the dominant function they play in stimulation processing and their structural components. Participants filled out the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire, which assesses types of anxiety and depression, and completed the Emotional Faces Attentional Test one week later. The obtained results confirmed our prediction and suggested that the proposed typology of anxiety and (...) depression is valid in the adaptive meanings of both phenomena. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of empirical research that explores the links between types of social participation and identity. The author availed herself of the neo-eriksonian approach to identity by Luyckx et al. and the concept of social participation types. The study involved 1,665 students from six types of schools: lower secondary school, general upper secondary school, technical upper secondary school, specialized upper secondary school, university, and post-secondary school. The results of the research, conducted with the use of Dimensions of (...) Identity Development Scale and Social Participation Questionnaire, indicate that transitive orientation increases with age and that, consequently, the frequency of assimilation and integration types of social participation tends to be higher in emerging adulthood in comparison with adolescence. The study showed that general upper secondary school students, contrary to their colleagues from technical and specialized upper secondary schools, did not differ in terms of transitive and moratorium orientation levels from lower secondary school students. The hypothesis about the relationship between transitive orientation and commitment scales was confirmed, whereas the hypotheses concerning the links between exploration scales and both dimensions of social participation were not validated. (shrink)

The article presents the results of research on relationships between types of social participation and emotion regulation. In the study, Gratz’ and Roemer’s perspective on emotion regulation and Reinders’ and Butz’s concept of types of social participation were applied. Participants were 1151 students from three types of vocational schools: basic vocational school, technical upper secondary school, and specialized upper secondary school. The results of studies conducted with the use of Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Social Participation Questionnaire indicate that (...) there are small, however, significant, differences in the levels of social participation dimensions and the frequency of particular types of social participation between students from the three investigated types of vocational schools. The level of transitive orientation turned out to be higher among students from the basic vocational schools than among students from the specialized upper secondary schools and the technical upper secondary schools. In each educational group, the level of transitive orientation was significantly higher than the level of moratorium orientation. The hypothesis about the relationship between dimensions of emotion regulation and types of social participation, particularly with respect to the dimension of “lack of emotional awareness”, was confirmed. The most effective style in terms of emotion regulation turned out to be the assimilation type. The highest level of emotion dysregulation proved to be connected with the segregation type. (shrink)

This article argues that sustainability is essentially a contested concept that not only cannot be sufficiently defined in a one-forall blueprint, but requires a new mode of self-actualization of human potential in dialogical, cooperative learning processes. Inherent aporias and their ethical implications are illustrated by an analysis of the mainstream interpretation of the sustainability concept in the context of the relationship between the logic of accumulation and improvement and insatiable human desires as off-springs of a deeper ontological transformation of modernity. (...) A philosophical account of technology and modern sciencewill be introduced in order to investigate overconsumption driven by mimetic desires and the transformative and dialectic dynamics of desire. A contemplative learning model is suggested as a useful basis for a reasonable interpretation of the sustainability concept. (shrink)

Drawing from an ethics of care, relational approaches to autonomy have recently emerged in bioethics. Unlike individual autonomy with its emphasis on patients’ rights, choice, and self-determination which has been the hallmark of bioethics consistent with the ideology of individualism in neoliberal democracies in Western countries, relational autonomy highlights the relatedness, interdependency, and social embeddedness of patients. By examining the mediating role that male Hospital Liaison Committee members in Germany play in facilitating care that supports Jehovah's Witnesses’ refusal of blood (...) transfusions, this article moves beyond ‘dyadic relations’ and contexts of caregiving. It also contributes to a deeper understanding of care and relational conceptualizations of Witness patients’ autonomy globally. (shrink)

Powrót do filozofii starożytnej Grecji pozwala przypomnieć etyczny wymiar politycznej aktywności, w którym umiejętność łączenia dobra własnego z dobrem ogółu postrzegano jako świadectwo rozumnej natury człowieka wolnego i odpowiedzialnego zarazem. Republikański ideał życia zostaje przez Arendt skonfrontowany z dominującymi tendencjami politycznymi oraz ekonomicznymi, które rozwinęły się w nowożytnej kulturze europejskiej. Etyczne zdeprecjonowanie sfery publicznej prowadziło do postrzegania jej w kategoriach przymusu i przemocy, stanowiących zagrożenie indywidualnej wolności. Na znaczeniu zyskała natomiast sfera indywidualnej aktywności, związanej zwłaszcza z pracą wytwórczą, zarobkowaniem oraz (...) konsumowaniem. Zwyciężyła idea prywatności, bogactwa, rywalizacji. Narodziło się społeczeństwo masowe, składające się ze zatomizowanych jednostek niezdolnych do wzięcia na siebie odpowiedzialności za wspólnotę polityczną. (shrink)

On the grounds of the libertarian ethics presented by Murray N. Rothbard, the state is an institution which acts against individuals and whole societies. The state steals money from its citizens (taxes), stands in the way of free market development and controls the economy, thus hindering entrepreneurship. Besides that, the state – through its rules and regulations – limits every man's right to make moral choices. The state is an immoral institution, therefore its citizens have the right to refuse to (...) pay taxes, follow orders, and even – in some circumstances – corrupt civil servants. In this paper we analyse Rothbard’s ethics and look into the arguments of critics of libertarian thought. Practical social and economic solutions that emerge from Rothbard’s point of view are also considered. (shrink)

Recent literature reported that judgments of semantic coherence are influenced by a positive affective response due to increased fluency of processing. The presented paper investigates whether fluency of processing can be modified by affective responses to the coherent stimuli as well as an automaticity of processes involved in semantic coherence judgments. The studies employed the dyads of triads task in which participants are shown two word triads and asked to solve a semantically coherent one or indicate which of the two (...) is semantically coherent. Across two studies in a dualtask paradigm we show that a) attentional resources moderate insight into semantically coherent word triads, whereas b) judgments of semantic coherence judgments are independent of attentional resources. We discuss implications of our findings for how people might form intuitive judgments of semantic coherence. (shrink)

Presented studies investigated the specificity of visual and auditory modalities in attentional processing of emotion, and its association with temperamental dimensions and trait-like attentional control. During preliminary study 30 participants were presented with the paper-pencil visual search task and emotional prosody detection tasks. Results revealed visual happiness superiority and auditory sadness superiority. During the main study, in addition to attentional performance, 51 subjects were administrated two questionnaires: EPQ-R and Attentional Control Scale. Introducing individual differences into analysis limited the general pattern (...) of modality distinctiveness in attentional processing of emotional stimuli obtained in the preliminary study. Findings for all personality traits studied separately showed that Extraversion and low Neuroticism were associated with the visual sadness superiority. Whereas interactional analysis indicated effective visual threat processing in extraverts with good AC and effective friendly prosody detection when Neuroticism and AC remain in inverse relationship. Hence, we have found that processing emotional targets in both modalities is associated with temperament dimensions and their interactions with attentional control. Additionally, findings from both studies suggest that general psychological laws might be challenged by individual differences. (shrink)

Paper attempts to empiricaly verify a non-linear (parabolic) dependence of employment in Poland on minimum wage to average wage ratio (Kaitz coefficient). The aim of the analysis is to find the optimal value of the Kaitz coefficient. The obtained result confirms the hypothesis on a non-linear nature of the investigated dependence. However, during the minimum wage evaluation process it is worth noting that the Kaitz coefficient's influence on the employment is bi-directional. Increase in the Kaitz coefficient value will only have (...) a negative effect on employment after a certain threshold is crossed. Results pre-sented in the paper allow to identify such a critical value and to establish the coefficient value intervals with negative and positive influence on employment. (shrink)