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)

The research fieldwork dedicated to trend analysis and foresight/forecast scenarios building, represents an unusual raid in an area where economic and social sciences have invested many efforts. Nevertheless, the semiotic dimension of this subject is not sufficiently thorough; many issues are at stake:We are going to investigate this area of analysis, for its relevance in post-Greimassian studies, for its interface with social sciences, as well as for its relevance for the legitimacy of semiotics in contemporary discussions of innovation and (...) evolution. (shrink)

Drawing on Vilm Flusser's view of the relationship between humans and the computer (machines), I explore a new ontological framework for our beingin-the-world. I begin by raising critical questions regarding our endeavours and efforts to create endlessly expanding semiotic knowledge spaces based on technological innovation (e.g. Wikipedia or the Universal Electronic Library) in order to reflect on this development from a Flusserian perspective, i.e. as an anthropological challenge to designing interhuman relations. By searching for new ontological conditions for humans, (...) technology and knowledge, I want to probe into responses and new perspectives/models of knowledge sharing. How would we have to rethink the relation between semiotic telematic knowledge spaces and their structure/architecture, and the concrete given (our relationships, intersubjectivity, etc.)? What are the consequences of these findings for the macrosocial structures of encounter where knowledge exchange is a key element? Which are the epistemic models most suited to articulating a productive interdisciplinary knowledge exchange? My approach intends to weave knowledge and space, memory, technology and lived experience into an ontological fabric, and, in so doing, place humans and their communicative needs at the centre of my considerations. (shrink)

This research examines the implementation and judicial response to Uzbekistan's new domestic violence laws enacted in 2023. Through an exploration of the semiotics of these laws, we uncover the nuanced portrayal of victim as "wife" instead of "human," reflecting a societal prioritization of family dynamics over individual rights. Through this analytical lens, we examine how domestic violence laws, as legal transplants, are interpreted by the judicial system. We highlight their translation into people’s behavior, judicial traditions, and the struggling with socio-cultural (...) norms. The findings from both quantitative and qualitative research contribute to understanding effectiveness and improving practices to achieve justice for victims. We investigated how new domestic violence laws are applied in the judicial system and the challenges victims face in seeking justice. The research highlights the necessity and effectiveness of laws while revealing socio-cultural resistance within the judicial system, such as holding victims accountable in domestic violence cases. The judicial response to domestic violence cases often favors restorative justice mechanisms, emphasizing reconciliation and lenient penalties. Notably, 61% of criminal cases conclude with reconciliation. Despite the impossibility of reconciliation in administrative cases, courts resort to the concept of "insignificance" of the violation, terminating cases on this basis in 28% of instances. However, the absence of reconciliation significantly diminishes the effectiveness of laws, depriving victims of restitution and the ability to influence the perpetrator's behavior. In the era of restorative justice application, rising questions emerge regarding its effectiveness, particularly due to socio-cultural pressure on victims and their unequal negotiation opportunities. (shrink)

In this study, I describe a potential challenge to semiotics, which exists in the fact that no interpretation of an instruction can get us closer to doing what the instructional text describes. I provide a praxeological description of a situation in a software development firm where the instructions for a particular type of meeting are inscribed on the whiteboard in front of which the meetings were held. I discuss the gap between instructions and the behavior they describe and the moral (...) order of praxis that is not inscribed in instructions. (shrink)

This essay explores the intricate challenges surrounding the concept of religious signs in the context of secular French schools through a social-semiotic lens, drawing inspiration from Michael Halliday's Systemic-Functional Linguistics. It delves into the interplay of language and society, shedding light on three crucial metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The ideational function investigates how religious signs serve as semiotic tools for representing the world and interpreting human experiences. The interpersonal function helps to examine how these signs foster (...) reaction among diverse groups within the school community. Furthermore, the essay scrutinizes the textual function's role in weaving these two functions into coherent discourse, enabling (or not) effective communication. Through an examination of these linguistic components, this essay unravels the complexities of navigating religious signs in French schools, providing insights into the broader socio-cultural dynamics and challenges faced in reconciling diverse religious perspectives with a secular educational system. (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)

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)

This paper focus on the problem posed by the rigidity of categories to the translation/transaction operation of the intercultural approach to law. This rigidity holds subjects back from leaving the more structured paradigms (moral, social, cultural, legal) of their culture. The first methodological issue this paper seeks to clarify is to place the problem of categories within a narrowly delimited research horizon in which this issue can be treated with an appropriate degree of scientific rigor. This need seems to find (...) a solution in a shift from the strictly legal plane to the linguistic plane. In linguistic terms, one could observe categories as the articulation of certain linguistic signs (signifier/signified) to a high degree of abstraction and fixity of meaning. The question, then, is whether and how it is possible to overcome the resistance of this elementary unit of language. This opens to the legal-theoretical problem a strictly linguistic (semiological and semiotic) line of inquiry. The research idea of this contribution is that the linguistic sign has spaces of resilience that remain unknown to the semiological view but visible to a semiotic view. A ‘bridge’ between the abstraction of the semiotic level and the concreteness of the legal level can be find in the most recent developments of cultural anthropology, which will be used here. Following this approach and these tools the aim of this paper is to show the potential of the sign observed from a semiotic perspective in drawing intersubjective and even interspecific semiotic lines useful to intercultural law. The method adopted here consists of an epistemological pluralism that holds together semiotics, anthropology and law, thus showing the fruitfulness of an openly interdisciplinary approach. (shrink)

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)

Because humans cannot know one another’s minds directly, every form of communication is a solution to the same basic problem: how can privately held information be made publicly accessible through manipulations of the physical environment? Language is by far the best studied response to this challenge. But there are a diversity of non-linguistic strategies for representation with external signs as well, from facial expressions and fog horns to chronological graphs and architectural renderings. The general thesis of this dissertation is that (...) there is an impressively wide spectrum of conventional systems of representation, corresponding to the many ways that the problem of communication can be solved, and that these systems can be described and explained using the tools of contemporary mathematical semantics. As a partial corrective to the countervailing norm, this work concentrates on the class of systems arguably most different from language— those governing the interpretation of pictorial images. Such representations dominate practical communication: witness the proliferation of maps, road signs, newspaper photographs, scientific illustrations, television shows, engineering drawings, and even the fleeting imagery of manual gesture. I argue that systems of depiction and languages embody a parallel technologies of communication. Both are based on semantics: systematic and conventional mappings from signs to representational content. But I also provide evidence that these semantics are profoundly divergent. Whereas the semantics of languages are based on arbitrary associations of signs and denotations, the semantics of systems of depiction are based on rules of geometrical transformation. Drawing on recent research in computer graphics and computational vision, I go on to develop a precise theory of pictorial semantics. This in turn facilitates a detailed comparison of iconic, image-based representation, and symbolic, language-based representation. A consequence of these conclusions is that the traditional, language-centric conception of semantics must be overhauled to allow for a more general semantic theory, one which countenances the wide variety of interpretive mechanisms actually at work in human communication. (shrink)

(by a semiotician) EERO TARASTI A semiotic interpretation of the two last centuries in the history of Western art music is in many respects a challenging ...

This paper analyses the immunological response of breast cancer patients through the lens of medical semiotics. From this perspective both psychological and physiological symptoms are treated as a set of transitive signs. The symptomatic journey of breast cancer patients was documented through an ethnographic engagement with a breast cancer charity. This journey consists of diagnosis, treatment and remission, where both the physical and psychological trauma maybe irreversible. Equally the genetic disposition of each patient and the variability of the treatment give (...) rise to a plethora of possible immunological responses. The case study organization provided both therapeutic treatment but also sold oncology products to its patients, matching the products’ composition to the specific immunological responses caused by breast cancer treatment, e.g., brittle skins or hair loss, etc. This paper explores how the varied and transient nature of immunological semiosis is identified and commoditized into an economic process. This challenging social context is of interest from a semiotic stand point because it offers a singular paradigm to explain the evolution of signs and symptoms into sales. (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)

Cultural studies constitutes one of the most multi-perspectival research fields. Amidst a polyvocal theoretical landscape that spans different disciplines semiotics is of foundational value. In an attempt to effectively address the conceptual richness of the semiotic discipline, a wide roster of perspectives is evoked in this book against the background of a diverse set of cultural phenomena, including structuralist and post-structuralist semiotics, semiotically informed psychoanalysis, cultural semiotics, film semiotics, sociosemiotics, but also, to a lesser extent, music semiotics and more (...) niche, but certainly promising perspectives, such as postmodern semiotics, ethnosemiotics, phenomenological semiotics and rhetorical semiotics. The recruitment of semiotic frameworks and concepts is enacted against the background of advances in cultural studies (thus reinstating the dialogue with a discipline that took form by drawing on semiotics in the first place) and the various research streams that have become consolidated within the wider cultural studies territory, such as memory studies, celebrity studies, death studies, cultural geography, visual studies. At the same time, the offered readings engage dialogically with Consumer Culture Theory. As regards the diversity of cultural phenomena that constitute the empirical substratum of the offered analyses, music, cinema, new media, live-shows, branding, advertising and literature constitute the focal areas of concern. Under the aegis of a permeating textuality paradigm, the ubiquitously applicable tools of multimodal analysis, and time-hallowed qualitative research methods facilitated by advances in videography and archival research, the featured semiotic readings aim at scrutinizing the wider social implications and communicative functions of popular cultural artefacts, spectacles, processes and places, such as Lady Gaga’s monstrosity, Dio’s memorial, experiential consumption events, the ice-bucket challenge video meme. (shrink)

Copyright law is often premised on the identification of an author of a literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work, and then giving this author exclusive rights for a limited period to control the commercial exploitation of his or her intellectual creation. However, the hegemonic modernist position of the romantic authorial text has been challenged by numerous scholars who have argued that the meaning of a text lies not in its origin but in its destination. Roland Barthes’ work, controversial at the (...) time of publication with its assault on modernity and the primacy of authorial control, has nonetheless laid the groundwork for an important body of scholarship on interpretive communities. Whether one adopts the position of neoconservative postmodernism or poststructural postmodernism, this article argues that a semiotic analysis of works of copyright as “signs”, “myths” and “polysemous texts” will nonetheless offer an important framework to understand the full reach of the transformative use doctrine in the United States today. (shrink)

The paper explores the semiotic and legal semiotic perspectives related to posthumous digital face. In doing so, the contribution also seeks to explore the complex relationship between AI-generated faces, including deep fakes, mourning, and posthumous rights. The article has five parts. In the introduction, we discuss the challenges of posthumous existence and the issues related to respecting the deceased. We also examine some examples of ‘digital personhood’. In part two, we present three case studies and use semiotics (...) to help us distinguish between posthumous existence and digital resurrection. In part three, we provide a semiotic classification of representation in the context of digital faces and our case studies. We suggest that there is a difference between the phenomenological presence of a hologram and the cognitive value of recreating someone’s identity, including their biography, face, and voice. In part four, we explore the topic of digital spectra and mourning, including the concept of imputability. In part five, we analyse how the law offers new insights into the ontology of the face of the deceased and posthumous existence in hologram form. In the conclusion, we summarise the article’s key findings and highlight open issues and potential future developments. (shrink)

This volume outlines a theory of translation, set within the framework of Peircean semiotics, which challenges the linguistic bias in translation studies by proposing a semiotic theory that accounts for all instances of translation, not only interlinguistic translation. In particular, the volume explores cases of translation which does not include language at all. The book begins by examining different conceptualizations of translation to highlight how linguistic bias in translation studies and semiotics has informed these fields and their development. (...) The volume then outlines a complexity theory of translation based on semiotics which incorporates process philosophy, semiotics, and translation theory. It posits that translation is the complex systemic process underlying semiosis, the result of which produces semiotic forms. The book concludes by looking at the implications of this conceptualization of translation on social-cultural emergence theory through an interdisciplinary lens, integrating perspectives from semiotics, social semiotics, and development studies. Paving the way for scholars to analyze translational aspects of all semiotic phenomena, this volume is essential reading for graduate students and researchers in translation studies, semiotics, multimodal studies, cultural studies, and development studies. (shrink)

Semiotics has been making progressively inroads into marketing research over the past thirty years. Despite the amply demonstrated conceptual appeal and empirical pertinence of semiotic perspectives in various marketing research streams, spanning consumer research, brand communications, branding and consumer cultural studies, there has been a marked deficit in terms of consolidating semiotic brand-related research under a coherent disciplinary umbrella with identifiable boundaries and research agenda. -/- The Handbook of Brand Semiotics furnishes a compass for the perplexed, a set (...) of anchors for the inquisitive and a solid corpus for scholars, while highlighting the conceptual richness and methodological diversity of semiotic perspectives. -/- Written by a team of expert scholars in various semiotics and branding related fields, such as John A. Bateman, David Machin, Xavier Ruiz Collantes, Kay L. O’Halloran, Dario Mangano, George Rossolatos, Merce Oliva, Per Ledin, Gianfranco Marrone, Francesco Mangiapane, Jennie Mazur, Carlos Scolari, Ilaria Ventura, and edited by George Rossolatos, Chief Editor of the International Journal of Marketing Semiotics, the Handbook is intended as a point of reference for researchers who wish to enter the ‘House of Brand Semiotics’ and explore its marvels. -/- The Handbook of Brand Semiotics, actively geared towards an inter-disciplinary dialogue between perspectives from marketing and semiotics, features the state-of-the-art, but also offers directions for future research in key streams, such as: -/- · Analyzing and designing brand language across media · Brand image, brand symbols, brand icons vs. iconicity · The contribution of semiotics to transmedia storytelling · Narrativity and rhetorical approaches to branding · Semiotic roadmap for designing brand identity · Semiotic roadmap for designing logos and packaging · Sociosemiotic accounts of building brand identity online · Multimodality and Multimodal critical discourse analysis · Challenging the omnipotence of cognitivism in brand- related research · Semiotics and (inter)cultural branding · Brand equity semiotics Comparative readings of structuralist, Peircean and sociosemiotic approaches to brandcomms . (shrink)

Poetry is an important challenge for semiotics, and a special area of study for the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school, since the first volume of Sign Systems Studies was Juri Lotman’s monograph Lectures on Structural Poetics (1964). From then on the concept of poetry as one of the secondary modelling systems has evolved, since in relation to poetry, the primary modelling system is natural language. In this paper, the concept of semiotic system has been re-examined and the treatment of primary (...) and secondary semiotic systems has been significantly revised. A semiotic system can be characterized not only by its internal structure and other systems to which it is related, but also by the field upon what it is realized. The latter aspect has gained almost no attention in any treatment of semiotics; the execution of a sign is understood in the spirit of Saussure and Hjelmslev as a material realization of an abstract element (for instance, a chess piece knight can be realized with wood or plastic, but it can also remain purely virtual). At first, distinction is made between language and sign system. Every sign system consists of language and field. There are three different kinds of fields: 1) just a background – footprints on sand are a sign on the background of sand; 2) a material structured field (a football ground or a chess board in the game called Chapayev) and 3) an abstract structured field, which in its turn consists of other fields (for instance, the chess board which consists of 64 fields). Differently from a football ground, a chess board can be a purely virtual one on which virtual pieces are moved (for instance, in case of blindfold or correspondence chess). The field in its turn can be language and one language can use another language as its field. In this case we speak of primary and secondary sign systems. For instance, the prosodic system of language is a field for a verse metre, while the semantic system of language is a field for a narrative. (shrink)

The discipline of translation studies has been recently challenged with powerful incentives from other sciences. This tendency has become visible especially in the context of more and more interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary methodologies, which have changed the profile of translation research to a considerable degree. It has also shifted the perspective with which scholars perceive key concepts of the discipline, many of which have become rather unpopular if not completely outdated. However, it seems true that instead of rejecting old terms translation (...) scholars should try to reconcile the old and new by adopting more general frameworks that would allow them to re-interpret or re-write the existing knowledge. Moving intellectual investigations beyond the level of natural languages, semiotics may offer this framework. The article is an attempt to show the potential of a semiotics-based model of interlingual translation and to support the hypothesis that every act of translation is semiotic by nature. To this end it outlines the most significant ideas of semiotic approaches to translation studies and semiotics, with special attention to translation semiotics and semiotics of culture. This in turn helps to draft a working model of interlingual translation and its constraints. (shrink)

Patients with persistent pain who lack adetectable underlying disease challenge thetheories supporting much of biomedicalbody-mind discourse. In this context,diagnostic labeling is as inherently vulnerableto the same pitfalls of uncertainty that besetany other interpretative endeavour. The endpoint is often no more than a name ratherthan the discovered essence of a pre-existentmedical condition. In 1990 a Committee of theAmerican College of Rheumatology (ACR)formulated the construct of Fibromyalgia in anattempt to rectify a situation of diagnosticconfusion faced by patients presenting withwidespread pain. It was (...) proposed thatFibromyalgia existed as a ``specific entity'',separable from but curiously able to co-existwith any other painful condition. Epistemological and semiotic analyses ofFibromyalgia have failed to find any sign,clinical or linguistic, which coulddifferentiate it from other diffusemusculoskeletal pain states. The construct ofFibromyalgia sought to define a discernablereality outside the play of language and topass it off as a natural phenomenon. However,because it has failed both clinically andsemiotically, the construct also fails the testof medical utility for the subject inpersistent pain. (shrink)

The aim of the 2008 Roundtable was to focus on the progress to date in the many facets—methodological, epistemological and conceptual—of the field of legal semiotics, specifically the contribution of different schools and forms of semiotics as well as emerging and emergent semiotics approaches which can be used in researching and interpreting law and legal phenomena. The participants sought primarily to engage with the epistemological and methodological challenges which the field currently faces and to discuss the implications of these.

: This paper articulates a view of the relation between cognition and being in Peirce's thought, especially derived from his early papers of 1868–69. Based on the rejection of intuitions, I argue that Peirce realized an isomorphic relation between cognition and being that functions as a semiotic foundation. I consider several challenges to these notions in the literature, including doubts about pansemioticism, foundationalism, and realism. In the end, I suggest that the semiotic foundation be thought of as (...) a kind of transcendental, in several senses of that term. (shrink)

This a contribution to the cultural semiotics of African cultural encounters seen through the eyes of Swedish naturalists at the end of the eighteenth century. European travellers faced severe problems in understanding the alien African cultures they encountered; they even had difficulty understanding the other culture as a culture. They were not just other cultures that they could relate to, but often something completely different, belonging to the natural history of the human species. The Khoikhoi and other groups were believed (...) by Europeans to be, from their perspective, the most distant culture. The Linnaean disciple Anders Sparrman and others, however, tried to transcend this cultural gap, and used their cognitive resources, such as empathy and intersubjectivity, in order to understand the alien culture they encountered.The aim of this paper is to unearth the cultural semiosis of African encounters and the intersubjective challenges that human interactions provoke. These encounters not only changed the view the travellers had of the Other, but also changed themselves and their self-perception. The encounter between the Ego and the Other is, however, not static, something predestined by the differences in their cultures, but dynamic, changing according to individual encounters and the actual intersubjective interplay that transform and change the perception of the Other. There are in particular four meaning-making processes and challenges within cultural encounters that are in focus: recognizing cultural complexity; invoking intersubjectivity; determining similarities and dissimilarities; and identifying the Other as a mirror of oneself.The triad of cultures – Ego, Alter, and Alius – can be understood as gradual and changing aspects depending on the actual situation of the encounter and the personal perspectives, interpretations, and behaviour of the thinking subjects involved. Using concrete examples from Southern and Western Africa in the 1770s and 1780s, this study aims to explore this dynamic semiosis. One of the conclusions is that the relation between the Ego and the Alter/Alius is not something only predetermined by the cultures involved and their ideologies, but also depends on the individual thinking subjects and how they use their specific cognitive and semiotic resources, not least their intersubjective abilities, within specific temporal and spatial contexts. (shrink)

The concept of “cultural identity” has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as “race”, “ethnicity”, even “nationality” in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination.The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become anideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the (...) kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida’s and Lotman’s concepts of “mirror structure”, “binarism”, “numerousness”, “textuality” and “semiosphere”.An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman’s “translation of the untranslatable” (or “dialogue”) and Derrida’s differance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. (shrink)

The concept of “cultural identity” has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as “race”, “ethnicity”, even “nationality” in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination.The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become anideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the (...) kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida’s and Lotman’s concepts of “mirror structure”, “binarism”, “numerousness”, “textuality” and “semiosphere”.An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman’s “translation of the untranslatable” (or “dialogue”) and Derrida’s differance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. (shrink)

The concept of “cultural identity” has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as “race”, “ethnicity”, even “nationality” in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination.The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become anideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the (...) kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida’s and Lotman’s concepts of “mirror structure”, “binarism”, “numerousness”, “textuality” and “semiosphere”.An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman’s “translation of the untranslatable” (or “dialogue”) and Derrida’s differance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. (shrink)

As the accompanying articles in the Special Issue on Semiotic Scaffolding will attest, my colleagues in biosemiotics have done an exemplary job in showing us how to think about the critically generative role that semiotic scaffolding plays “vertically” – i.e., in evolutionary and developmental terms – by “allowing access to the upper floors” of biological complexity, cognition and evolution.In addition to such diachronic considerations of semiotic scaffolding, I wish to offer here a consideration of semiotic scaffolding’s (...) synchronic power, as well – and in particular the ability that it can afford its users to access new and other sign relations “horizontally” as a function of the way that multiple semiotically scaffolded relations intertwine to result in a “definite semantic topology that determines the ways that symbols modify each other’s referential functions in different combinations”.Taking up, in turn, Terrence Deacon’s later challenge that what the sciences of cognition – and biology more generally – needs to “come to grips with [is] the process of semiosis; the dynamic of interpretive activity by which semiotic relationships emerge from other semiotic relationships [as] intrinsically dynamic phases in a generative process”, I attempt here to show how Deacon’s own Peirce-inspired matrix of referential sign relations as presented in The Symbolic Species, when viewed as a semiotic scaffold of interactional constraints and possibility biases, provides the key to understanding the essentially thirdness-manifesting nature of symbol reference, formation and growth. (shrink)

Lawyers write, blog and are otherwise producers of words; they structure public life through legal discourse and integrate all issues that reinforce legal reasoning. Even if one is inclined not to justify the power of their words in the context of a democratic theory, one is hardly able to challenge its public acceptance. But semiotic analyses harden the question whether these emperors wear nothing but robes. That attitude intensifies where medicine becomes increasingly relevant for legal discourse, as becomes clear (...) where for instance US political viewpoints bring bioethical issues to the Courts. One major theme in today’s medicine pertains to identity in its psychological, philosophical and social dimensions. Identity thus becomes a groundbreaking semiotic issue in law and medicine; both discourses are particular important to the otherness of the other. A US criminal law case interests here (Harrington v. State of Iowa, 2003; cited as: 659N.W.2d 509). The case is decided with “information about what the person has stored in his brain”. A chain of signs is involved: from “brain-function” to “brain-storage” via “brain-scan” to “brain-fingerprint”, for which the case became famous. A long series of signs and meanings belong here to intertwined discourses. Central is a particular sign in each discourse: “brain” means brain scan, and “fingerprint” means law! The two display trading mechanisms, which determine the otherness of the other and the self! The chain of signs in the Harrington case shows inter-disciplinarity in law and inter-discursivity among law and medicine. The trading itself underlines the semiotic dimensions in cyberspace, in particular the semiotics of the virtual (Hayles, Kurzweil) and their effects on legal discourse. (shrink)

This text explores four books produced by one of the most prominent semioticians of the previous century, Umberto Eco, in order to create a semiotic meta-theory which enhances a multifarious way of â oereadabilityâ and scientifically justifies the dichotomy between the creation of a work of art and its being read, visualized and experienced by the audience. It begins by treating the â oenarrationâ component as one of the main theoretical challenges of Ecoâ s theory, specifically focusing on (...) the concept of time, seen from the linguistic and semiotic viewpoints. The book also explores Ecoâ s text theory, as well as â oesemiotics properâ, representing an analysis of the â oeencodingâ and â oedecodingâ theories. In addition, it exemplifies the â oeopennessâ and â oecollaborationâ between the writer and the reader, as well as relationships between the creator and audience in all forms of art. The book will appeal to scholars, students, and intellectuals who want to have a detailed knowledge of Ecoâ s overall contribution to semiotics, and seek a â oeformulaâ which would inter-connect informational and code theories with the narration method, so as to create what we call â oeinterpretative semioticsâ today. (shrink)

Semioticians traditionally honor Russian linguistics of the early 20th century, and study Jakobson, Vinogradov, Vinokur or the early Trubetzkoy. They do, however, seldom consider Russian philosophers of the same period. Gustav Shpet is an important representative of Russian philosophers in discussion with Hegel, Neo-Kantian thinkers and contemporaries in Russia and abroad, among them Edmund Husserl, originator of transcendental phenomenology. Shpet introduced Husserl’s phenomenology in Russia and expanded those ideas in his 1914 Appearance and Sense. A triangle “Hegel—Husserl—semiotics” emerged where Shpet (...) emphasized the concept of discourse in phenomenology: a philosophical challenge to modern semiotics. (shrink)

This second of a two-part series of articles on applied semiotics and intercultural training provides a qualitative evaluation of the research initiative Tools for Cultural Development. Th e discussion will firstly centre on several theoretical and methodological challenges inherent to the qualitative research paradigmand then relate these shifting concerns to convergent findings in poststructuralist (and postcolonial) semiotics, especially with respect to pheno menology and pragmatics. Analysis of four focus group interviews in France and Australia will examine and evaluate the (...) 2007 training experience in light of the culture-specific contexts and stakeholder groups involved. Of particular concern will be the capacity of qualitative evaluative processes to account for the “local meanings”and “voices” within the trainee narratives so as to highlight their perceptions as to the use of semiotics for designing culturally significant practices in educationand praxis. (shrink)

Discourse ethics is one of the most contemporary and controversial theories of ethics. It is contemporaneous because it attempts to formulate a theory of ethics that takes into account all of the major advances in philosophical thinking and their challenges to the foundations of any future ethical theory It is controversial because of its elaboration of the ethical as the injunction to see everything from the standpoint of the generalized Other which simultaneously factors in the social conditions that enable (...) moral subjects to orient themselves toward moral maxims . Discourse ethics may be understood as a synthesis of Hegel and Kant, vis-a-vis the mediation of pragmatism, more precisely via Peirce , and Mead . This dissertation is a reconstruction of the philosophical origins of discourse ethics, which in turn are investigated through a reconstruction of the path of development of its original formulator: Karl-Otto Apel. His Denkweq is characterized as a shift from Hermeneutics to Semiotics, indicating a transition in philosophical traditions from German hermeneutics and ontology to North American pragmatism. The work shows the extent to which Peirce, Royce, and Mead influenced Apel's understanding of ethics, leading him to formulate as early as 1967, the fundamental insights which have characterized discourse ethics. The dissertation begins with a discussion of Apel's doctoral dissertation, Dasein und Erkennen. This chapters shows how in this work Apel elaborated a philosophical-anthropological reading of Heidegger's existential hermeneutics with the intent of developing a theory of knowledge. Chapter two deals with Apel's Habilitation: Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bis Vico. It shows how this work marked Apel's turn to the study of language as the point of departure for all future philosophizing. Here Apel's four major traditions that determined today's philosophy of language are reconstructed and analyzed. The third chapter deals with Apel's magnus opus, Transformation der Philosophie. This work is analyzed from the standpoint of how it contributes to a linguistic turn of German philosophy, and how it inaugurates both "transcendental semiotics" and "discourse ethics." The fourth chapter is a comparative analysis between Apel's transcendental semiotics and Jurgen Habermas's "universal pragmatics." The last chapter deals with discourse ethics and its contemporary contenders: postmodern ethics and liberation ethics . This chapter answers the question whether discourse ethics is the appropriate answer to a postcolonial and postmodern world; that is, one that has superseded its eurocentrism and false universalism. (shrink)

For a sign to be a sign it must bond an object, a signifier, and the idea to which it gives rise. The paper focuses on the iconicity of silence as a hypoiconic signifier, exploring the semiotics of silence in light of the notions and studies of iconicity. Fascinating parallelisms hold between iconicity and silence. These raise many challenges to the study of each separately, let alone dealing with them jointly. Some icons and some silences are qualities in the (...) real world, others are semiotic forms standing for or denoting objects. Simple, intuitive qualities of iconicity and of silence are naturally grasped and shared from antiquity to the present by cultures and peoples. The paper employs Peirce’s initial basic trichotomy of iconic classes as well as his later hierarchies for studying the iconic stance of silence as a hypoiconic signifier. Analyzing and illustrating the possible complexities between forms, contents, their relations and their interpretations, group hypoiconic silences into silence as an image, silence as a diagram, and silence as a metaphor. (shrink)

The trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu is by far the most well known and widely discussed case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a distinction that can be attributed to the fact that it was groundbreaking for several reasons. However, with regard to the importance of this trial both as a precedent for subsequent ICTR cases and within the broader context of international jurisprudence, its most significant contribution has undoubtedly been the recognition and prosecution of rape as a means of (...) perpetrating genocide. The task of collecting admissible evidence to that end was heavily impacted by the necessity of interpreting and translating witness testimonies from their original language of expression, Kinyarwanda, into the working languages of the Tribunal, French and English. The multiple challenges associated with this translation process concerned not only questions of semantic equivalence of specific lexical terms. They also highlighted the considerable ‘cultural collision’ that occurred in the courtroom between the Rwandan witnesses and the international judiciary. This article elucidates the complex task faced by the courtroom interpreters in navigating these linguistic and sociocultural considerations underpinning the evocations of rape within the evidentiary framework of the Akayesu trial. (shrink)

This article aims to unveil how male identities are constructed in a corpus of male toiletry TV ads through a pragmatic and multimodal analysis of a set of implicit assumptions conveyed about the male participants in the ads. The validity of these assumptions is first empirically tested with a group of 10 male informants and then those implied meanings are bundled into thematic cores for their qualitative and quantitative description. Findings reveal that these ads still rely on stereotypical constructs and (...) traditional discourses of what it takes to be a man. For example, men are invited to consume grooming products but reminded to do it the men’s way. Men are also reminded of their sexual power to seduce and attract women with the aid of the product. Likewise, by portraying male ad personae in traditional manly activities while emphasizing their toughness and body strength, or their resourcefulness when faced with challenging situations, the ads portray a rather skewed view of contemporary men, which fails to take into account the myriad roles a modern man can play in contemporary societies. (shrink)

Now that the usage and meaning of urban spaces have been dramatically challenged by the global pandemic, several debates and reflections are going on around the manner in which cities – both as concerns the public and the private spaces – have been designed. The article observes how “urban-human face” representations have served different models of urbanity across times and cultures. Using a framework deriving from semiotics of culture, according to which the city represents a model of the world, the (...) article attempts to interpret how portraits of faces have been modelling the city through different urban faciality mechanisms. The focus is on a sample of what we call ‘urban-human faces’, ranging from Soviet propaganda posters to the digital #selfiecity project. The expression refers to series of representations that bring together the city and the face. It can be argued that both the city and the face, produced at a specific historical and cultural moment, with their figurative and plastic elements, deploy the struggle for the city ownership and authorship. Nonetheless, the commensurability of the city and the face can be just based on the fact that both semiotic configurations represent an excess with the help of cartographic reproduction (the city) and the portrait (the face), respectively. A city can be represented by a face to the extent to which it is also multifaceted as a polylogue. On the basis of such instable commensurability, the article will ultimately attempt to bring together the semiotics of the face and the semiotics of the city. (shrink)

This paper introduces a novel perspective on Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar (AgCCxG) by examining the intricate interplay between mind and language through the lens of both Active Inference and Peircean semiotics. AgCCxG emphasizes the impact of intention and purpose on linguistic choices as a cognitive imperative to balance the symbolic Self (Intelligent Agent) with the dynamics of the environment. Among other things, the paper posits that linguistic constructions, particularly Constructional Attachment Patterns (CAPs), like argument structure constructions, embody experienced interactions with (...) the world through reenactment routines via the integration of multisensory channels. Unlike traditional usage-based approaches (e.g., construction grammars), AgCCxG embraces a robust theory of signs that reveals human representation as a continuous process of semiotic hybridization for the creative prediction of uncertain scenarios. Importantly, the paper challenges the notion of the mind as a unified, rational, uncertainty-reducing machine by asserting that physical processes governing open biological systems profoundly influence the linguistic sign system. Intelligent agents’ adaptability in expressing incongruous realities thus highlights the role of semiotic hybridization in preserving an agent’s autonomy and semiotic boundary. (shrink)

Transdisciplinary and intermedial analysis of the experience of music. Nowadays musical semiotics no longer ignores the fundamental challenges raised by cognitive sciences, ethology, or linguistics. Creation, action and experience play an increasing role in how we understand music, a sounding structure impinging upon our body, our mind, and the world we live in. Not discarding music as a closed system, an integral experience of music demands a transdisciplinary dialogue with other domains as well. Music, Analysis, Experience brings together contributions (...) by semioticians, performers, and scholars from cognitive sciences, philosophy, and cultural studies, and deals with these fundamental questionings. Transdisciplinary and intermedial approaches to music meet musicologically oriented contributions to classical music, pop music, South American song, opera, narratology, and philosophy. (shrink)

Faces challenge the sender-receiver model as the major scheme of thought for appropriately understanding interaction between human individuals. The openness and indeterminacy of faces lead to establish a semiotically relevant distinction between interaction and interactivity. The latter is our proposed articulation of the dynamic energy that thrives through the existence of signs and the uses of a semiotics. Facial expressions sustain and express the vital dynamism of making meaning in life. This often occurs at a bewildering distance to legal life (...) and discourses established by legal terminologies. (shrink)

This contribution is devoted to frontier theory, the analysis of its conceptual apparatus as well as its topical issues and practical application. We propose a revision of this theory, and confront the usefulness of the term “frontier” with other the similar concepts such as border, boundary and limit. The paper also proposes a typology of frontiers characterized by various aspects; civilization, intercultural, religious, and anthropological, among other. From the standpoint of this discussion, the authors consider the Southern Russian bordering region (...) of the Caspian Sea, today a much conflicted territory. (shrink)

Criminal labeling is an important process in the typical modern hegemony, serving not only to name and marginalize selected criminals but also to underscore and rationalize the hegemony’s norms. In the contemporary United States, such labeling is especially harsh and reductive. It predictably involves the established criminal justice institutions—police departments, criminal courts, and prisons—and also a wide range of community spokesmen, political figures, and the mass media. Yet despite the hegemony’s apparent determination to criminally label individual men and women and (...) also entire social groups and classes, many popular songs identify and sympathize with the people who have been labeled. Indeed, the criminals themselves are often the most winning voices in those songs’ lyrics. A consideration of three singer/songwriters and three popular songs from different genres reveals how these voices humanize the criminal, thereby problematizing the hegemony’s tendency to label criminals and to reify and then condemn crime. Overall, the selected voices from American popular music illustrate the role the popular arts might play in challenging the hegemony. (shrink)

_How to Make Our Signs Clear_ focuses on selected aspects of Peirce´s philosophy and semiotic, possible historical connections of his work and contemporary challenges to Peirce’s semiotic theories.

The European Stability Mechanism is the rescue fund that may grant loans to struggling euro zone governments by issuing bonds, collectively by the euro zone members. The implementation of the ESM spawned a lot of legal challenges brought to higher judicial authority in Ireland, Austria, Estonia, Germany and Poland. In the fall of 2012 the ESM was subject to legal analysis in the Estonian National Court, the German Constitutional Court, and in the European Court of Justice. Delivering much anticipated (...) rulings in legal challenges to the legal provisions establishing the ESM, courts avoided upsetting the complex arrangements in question by producing legal decision of direct political import and letting EU bailout measures go forward. In looking over different critical responses, we have seen an argument raised by media and legal scholars, according to which courts’ capitulation before the power of financial markets in the EMS rulings represents “a sign of judicial crisis” that marks the weakness of modern European jurisprudence. In light of their importance, we undertake a preliminary semiotic analysis of the ESM rulings of the Estonian National Court, the German Constitutional Court, and in the European Court of Justice. Our analysis aims at discerning the crucial aspects of those rulings is performed on the basis of different semiotic methodologies combined with the refined ideas of the Scandinavian analytical school of the doctrinal study of law. In traditional legal studies there seems to be a taken for granted assumption that there is one analytical way to dissect judicial reasoning of the supreme courts. This paper argues that the manner of analyzing the constitutional reasoning needs to be congruent with the particular research methodology. (shrink)

This article attempts to evaluate emotive meanings across languages and cultures expressed and elicited semiotically from viewers. It investigates the challenges of subtitling emotive feelings in the American filmHomeless to Harvard(2003) into Arabic. It adopts Paul Thibault’s (2000. The multimodal transcription of a television advertisement: Theory and practice. In Anthony Baldry (ed.),Multimodality and multimediality in the distance learning age, 311–385. Campobasso: Palladino Editore) method of multimodal transcription and Feng and O’Halloran’s (2013. The multimodal representation of emotion in film: Integrating (...) cognitive and semiotic approaches.Semiotica197(1/4). 79–100) framework of the multimodal representation of emotion to formulate strategies for subtitling emotion from English into Arabic. Additionally, Feng and O’Halloran’s (2013) framework is adapted to show how stylistic choices (e.g., cinematography, music, soundtracks, etc.) and semiotic expressions can elicit emotion from viewers. The social semiotic model is employed to investigate how emotive representation is realized through verbal and non-verbal items. The findings showed that the filmmakers had properly used stylistic choices and various semiotic techniques to elicit emotion from the viewer derived from the emotion of the film’s heroine. (shrink)

A central challenge for research on how we should prepare students to manage crossing boundaries between different knowledge settings in life long learning processes is to identify those forms of knowledge that are particularly relevant here. In this paper, we develop by philosophical means the concept of a dialectical system as a general framework to describe the de-velopment of knowledge networks that mark the starting point for learning processes, and we use semiotics to discuss the epistemological thesis that any cognitive (...) access to our world of objects is mediated by signs and diagrammatic reasoning and abduction as those forms of practical knowledge that are crucial for the development of knowledge networks. The rich-ness of this theoretical approach becomes evident by applying it to an example of learning in a biological research context. At the same time, we take a new look at the role of mathematical knowledge in this process. (shrink)

The article analyzes the impact of modern digital technologies used in the information society on democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in general. Both positive and negative aspects of such impact are considered. The importance of this topic is due to the need for further deepening of scientific knowledge related to the development of the rule of law in the information society and insufficient research from the legal point of view of current theoretical problems of the rule of (...) law in the digital era. The purpose of this article is to study the rule of law as a principle of the modern state of the 21st century and to study the problems in matters of human rights that have arisen with the development of modern digital technologies. The study of this issue is quite relevant, considering the conclusions, made as a result of our work, can be taken into account in further theoretical developments of international and national human rights protection aimed at improving the effectiveness of human rights judicial protection and improving current legislation. (shrink)