PurposeThis paper presents an ethnographic study of gamete donation in Latvia. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the practice of applying responsibility in gamete donation cases from the perspective of anthropology and ethics.MethodsWe performed thirty semi-structured interviews with laypeople and five focus group discussions among adolescents. The third source of data was media analysis: 57 articles discussing assisted reproduction in Latvian electronic popular media as well as internet discussions among ART participants. The data were processed using (...) Atlas.ti.ResultsThe data showed that the situation of ART responsibility is formulated through defining one’s relationship to the gametes, to the nation and the relationship between parent and child.ConclusionsThe practice of gamete donation does not create new responsibilities but uses already existing relations in a situation marked by new knowledge. Relationships among ART users, donors and physicians often result in an imbalance of responsibility sharing. The framework of relational ethics is one possible way to change the practice of balancing and sharing responsibility in ART applications. (shrink)

Associations between language and executive functions are well-established but previous work has often focused more on EFs than on language. To further clarify the language–EF relationship, we assessed several aspects of language and EFs in 431 Swedish children aged 4–6, including selective auditory attention which was measured in an event-related potential paradigm. We also investigated potential associations to age, socioeconomic status, bi-/multilingualism, sex and aspects of preschool attendance and quality. Language and EFs correlated weakly to moderately, indicating that relying on (...) measures of vocabulary alone may overestimate the strength of the language–EF relationship. Contrary to predictions, we found no correlations between selective attention and EFs. There were however correlations between morphosyntactic accuracy and selective auditory attention which is in line with previous work and suggests a specific link between morphosyntax and the ability to suppress irrelevant stimuli. In Sweden, socioeconomic differences are rather small and preschool is universally available, but nevertheless, aspects of parental SES predicted children’s performance on all measures. Bi-/multilingual children performed lower on language also when controlling for SES, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes already in preschool. A female advantage was found for both language and EFs, whereas preschool attendance and quality were not significantly related to outcome measures. Future work should include longitudinal studies of language and EF development, include children from diverse SES backgrounds and contribute toward a theoretical framework that further clarifies the language–EF relationship. (shrink)

While the political aspects of the interwar dystopias have received much attention, less focus has been given to the specific correlation to the economic thinking and developments of the period, in particular the prominence of economic planning. This article suggests that such a connection is significant by examining a key Swedish novel from the period, Kallocain, in relation to the early economic theory of the Scandinavian welfare state. The article then relates these findings to links between Brave New World and (...) the thinking of John Maynard Keynes. Finally, the kinds of critique articulated in these fictional works are centered around the citizens’ emotional and interior lives in new planned societies, and around their views on bad, disloyal, or painful feelings. (shrink)

Purpose This paper presents an ethnographic study of gamete donation in Latvia. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the practice of applying responsibility in gamete donation cases from the perspective of anthropology and ethics. Methods We performed thirty semi-structured interviews with laypeople and five focus group discussions among adolescents. The third source of data was media analysis: 57 articles discussing assisted reproduction in Latvian electronic popular media as well as internet discussions among ART participants. The data (...) were processed using Atlas.ti. Results The data showed that the situation of ART responsibility is formulated through defining one’s relationship to the gametes, to the nation and the relationship between parent and child. Conclusions The practice of gamete donation does not create new responsibilities but uses already existing relations in a situation marked by new knowledge. Relationships among ART users, donors and physicians often result in an imbalance of responsibility sharing. The framework of relational ethics is one possible way to change the practice of balancing and sharing responsibility in ART applications. (shrink)

Abstract:This article builds on Bellucci’s and Murphey’s accounts of Peirce’s early logic of signs by making a pair of contributions to the literature on Peirce’s reduction of illation to the sign relation. First, I reinvesti-gate the connection between the structure of inference and the representative relation, relying here on Peirce’s early accounts of sign inference from 1865 and 1866. Second, with the development of Peirce’s theory of inquiry in mind, I elucidate the implications of Peirce’s early view of (...) sign inference. These contributions deepen our understanding of Fisch’s claim that the Illustrations series “is thought out within the framework of the doctrine of signs.”. (shrink)

Mental health problems start early in life. However, the majority of adolescents fulfilling the criteria for mental health disorders do not receive treatment, and half of those who do get treatment drop out. This begs the question of what differentiates helpful from unhelpful treatment processes from the perspective of young clients. In this study, we interviewed 12 young people who entered mental health care reluctantly at the initiative of others before the age of 18. Their journeys through mental health care (...) varied significantly despite sharing the same starting point. Our analyses resulted in a model of three trajectories. We describe relational and structural facilitators and obstacles within each trajectory and have formulated narratives highlighting core experiences differentiating them. Trajectory 1 was characterized by a rapid loss of hope, leading the adolescents to conclude that mental health care was not worth the investment. Trajectory 2 was characterized by a lingering hope that never materialized into a constructive therapeutic process despite prevailing efforts by both therapists and adolescents. Trajectory 3 was characterized by genuine meetings, allowing the therapist to transform from an unsafe stranger into a safe, competent, and benevolent adult. We discuss how our results have implications for understanding agency displayed by adolescent clients in therapy, therapist flexibility and authenticity, service organization, and attributional processes influencing clinical judgment and therapeutic processes when adolescent psychotherapy has a difficult starting point. (shrink)

EVER SINCE Plato declared imagining to be mere pseudo- or shadow-knowing—a form of eikasia, the lowest species of mental activity—Western philosophers have striven to put imagination in its place: a strictly subordinate place. With the exception of isolated figures such as Vico, Collingwood, and Bachelard, philosophers have denounced imagining for its digressiveness and excoriated it for its evasiveness, though sometimes surreptitiously admiring it for these very qualities. At the same time, and as part of the same deprecatory tactic, invidious comparisons (...) have been instituted between imagining and supposedly superior psychical activities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, the paradigm was pure thinking, over against which imagining appeared as deceitful and mendacious—as "the mistress of falsehood and error" in Pascal’s classic complaint. Even Kant, for all of his attention to imagination as a source of synthesis, considered the image to be "a mere set of particular qualities, determined by no assignable rule"—in contrast with the determinacy and rule-bound character of pure concepts. Kant, as much as Descartes or Pascal, Malebranche or Mersenne, Spinoza or Leibniz, would agree with Heidegger’s stern verdict that philosophical thinking is "charmless and image-poor.". (shrink)

Hotel websites display textual and non-textual strategies with the aim of turning online visitors into customers. This article focuses on two related textual aspects: how consumers are discursively construed and how conditional constructions are used in order to persuade and convince consumers of the adequacy of the hotel. The framework adopted for the analysis combines Stern’s notion of ‘implied consumer’ with a corpus-driven approach. The corpus data comprises 114 British hotel websites and totals half a million words. This is a (...) subcorpus of COMETVAL, a database compiled at the University of València. The results reveal the importance of a number of words that address consumers directly or indirectly. These words intertwine with others to form patterns that help establish a bond between hoteliers and their clients. Further exploration of the corpus confirmed that some conditional sequences such as if you and should you are used by advertisers to speculate about the needs and wishes of consumers that the hotel can fulfil for them. The analysis suggests that conditional structures are a distinctive discursive characteristic strongly associated with the dialogic nature of the discourse hotel websites. (shrink)

Previous studies found similarities in adults’ disgust responses to benign (e.g. obesity) and actual disease signs (e.g. influenza). However, limited research has compared visual (i.e. benign and actual) to cognitive (i.e. disease label) disease cues in different age groups. The current study investigated disgust responses across middle childhood (7–9 years), late childhood (10–12 years), adolescence (13–17 years), and adulthood (18+ years). Participants viewed individuals representing a benign visual disease (obese), sick-looking (staphylococcus), sick-label (cold/flu), and healthy condition. Disgust-related outcomes were: (1) (...) avoidance, or contact level with apparel the individual was said to have worn, (2) disgust facial reactions, and (3) a combination of (1) and (2). Avoidance was greater for the sick-looking and sick-label than the healthy and obese conditions. For facial reaction and combination outcomes, middle childhood participants responded with greater disgust to the sick-looking than the healthy condition, while late childhood participants expressed stronger disgust towards the sick-looking and obese conditions than the healthy condition. Adolescents and adults exhibited stronger disgust towards sick-label and sick-looking than obese and healthy conditions. Results suggest visual cues are central to children’s disgust responses whereas adolescents and adult responses considered cognitive cues. (shrink)

Two decades have passed since the first attempts were made to establish systematic ethical review of human research in the Baltic States. Legally and institutionally much has changed. In this paper we provide an historical and structural overview of ethical review of human research and identify some problems related to the role of ethical review in establishing quality research environment in these countries. Problems connected to (a) public availability of information, (b) management of conflicts of interest, (c) REC composition and (...) motivation of REC members, and (d) differing levels of stringency of ethical review for different types of studies, are identified. Recommendations are made to strengthen cooperation among the Baltic RECs. (shrink)

To study whether the distinction between introspective and non-introspective states of mind is an empirical reality or merely a conceptual distinction, we measured event-related potentials elicited in introspective and non-introspective instruction conditions while the observers were trying to detect the presence of a masked stimulus. The ERPs indicated measurable differences related to introspection in both preconscious and conscious processes. Our data support the hypothesis that introspective states empirically differ from non-introspective states.

Two decades have passed since the first attempts were made to establish systematic ethical review of human research in the Baltic States. Legally and institutionally much has changed. In this paper we provide an historical and structural overview of ethical review of human research and identify some problems related to the role of ethical review in establishing quality research environment in these countries. Problems connected to (a) public availability of information, (b) management of conflicts of interest, (c) REC composition and (...) motivation of REC members, and (d) differing levels of stringency of ethical review for different types of studies, are identified. Recommendations are made to strengthen cooperation among the Baltic RECs. (shrink)

What is the strength of anthropological fieldwork when we want to understand human technologies? In this article we argue that anthropological fieldwork can be understood as a process of gaining insight into different contextualisations in practiced places that will open up new understandings of technologies in use, e.g., technologies as multistable ontologies. The argument builds on an empirical study of robots at a Danish rehabilitation centre. Ethnographic methods combined with anthropological learning processes open up new way for exploring how robots (...) enter into professional practices and change values, social relations and materialities. Though substantial funding has been invested in developing health service robots, few studies have been undertaken that explore human-robot interactions as they play out in everyday practice. We argue that the complex learning processes involve not only so-called end-users but also staff, management, doings and discourse in a complex amalgamation of materials and values. (shrink)

This paper examines key aspects in the innovative behavior of the construction firms that determine their environmental orientation while innovating. Structural equation modeling was used and data of 222 firms retrieved from the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel for 2010 to analyse the drivers of environmental orientation of the construction firms during the innovation process. The results show that the environmental orientation is positively affected by the product and process orientation of construction firms during the innovation process. Furthermore, the positive relation (...) between the importance of market information sources and environmental orientation, mediated by process and product orientation, is discussed. Finally, a model that explains these relations is proposed and validated. Results have important managerial implications for those companies worried about their eco-innovative focus as the types of actions and relations within firms most suitable for improving their eco-innovative orientation are highlighted. (shrink)

Biobanks act as the custodians for the access to and responsible use of human biological samples and related data that have been generously donated by individuals to serve the public interest and scientific advances in the health research realm. Risk assessment has become a daily practice for biobanks and has been discussed from different perspectives. This paper aims to provide a literature review on risk assessment in order to put together a comprehensive typology of diverse risks biobanks could potentially face. (...) Methodologically set as a typology, the conceptual approach used in this paper is based on the interdisciplinary analysis of scientific literature, the relevant ethical and legal instruments and practices in biobanking to identify how risks are assessed, considered and mitigated. Through an interdisciplinary mapping exercise, we have produced a typology of potential risks in biobanking, taking into consideration the perspectives of different stakeholders, such as institutional actors and publics, including participants and representative organizations. With this approach, we have identified the following risk types: economic, infrastructural, institutional, research community risks and participant’s risks. The paper concludes by highlighting the necessity of an adaptive risk governance as an integral part of good governance in biobanking. In this regard, it contributes to sustainability in biobanking by assisting in the design of relevant risk management practices, where they are not already in place or require an update. The typology is intended to be useful from the early stages of establishing such a complex and multileveled biomedical infrastructure as well as to provide a catalogue of risks for improving the risk management practices already in place. (shrink)

BackgroundCommonly applied measures of symptoms of anxiety are not sensitive to disease-specific anxiety in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. There is a need for validated instruments measuring COPD-specific anxiety. Therefore, we translated the COPD-Anxiety Questionnaire into Danish and performed an initial validation of the psychometric properties in a sample of patients with COPD.Materials and MethodsTranslation procedures followed the World Health Organization guidelines. Participants with COPD completed questionnaires measuring COPD-specific anxiety, general psychological distress as well as variables related to COPD, (...) quality of life, and socio-demography.ResultsA total of 260 patients with COPD completed questionnaires. The Danish version of CAF-R-DK demonstrated acceptable Cronbach’s α values that were comparable with those of the original CAF. As expected, the CAF-R-DK showed positive correlations with convergent constructs and negative correlations with discriminant constructs. However, the results for specific subdomains of the CAF-R-DK indicated inconsistency in the underlying concept of disease-specific anxiety, which was also suggested based on the subsequent confirmatory and exploratory factor analyzes.ConclusionThe CAF could serve as an important supplement to generic psychological distress screening of patients with COPD in somatic health care settings, and the questionnaire is now available in Danish. Translation into other languages is needed with the purpose of obtaining data for further testing the psychometric properties of the questionnaire. (shrink)

Bodily movement has a deeper meaning than modern sport science might recognize. It can have religious undertones, and in modern societies, it is sometimes related to the building of national identity. In the study, two cases of bodily practice are compared. Norwegian ski has a relation to friluftsliv (outdoor activities) and is highly significant for modern Norwegian identity. Indian yoga is related to the traditional ayurveda medicine and to Hindu spirituality, and obtained an important place in the process of anti-colonial (...) nationalism. The aim is to demonstrate how Norwegian skiing and Indian yoga as national body and movement cultures in different ways, show a complex connection between ‘ancient roots’ and modern transformations of cultural identity. Gliding on skis, sitting, and breathing in yoga make up the basis on which people have built identities of their collective ‘we’. (shrink)

The goal of the article is to offer a framework against which relations between gesture and sign can be systematically explored beyond the current literature. It does so by a) reconstructing the history of the discussion in the field of gesture studies, focusing on three leading positions (Kendon, McNeill, Goldin-Meadow); and b) by formulating a position to illustrate how this can be achieved. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for systematic cross-linguistic research on multimodal use of language (...) in its signed and spoken forms. (shrink)

The relationship of language to cognition, especially in development, is an issue that has occupied philosophers, psychologists, and linguists for centuries. In recent years, the scientific study of sign languages and deaf individuals has greatly enhanced our understanding of deafness, language, and cognition. This Counterpoints volume considers the extent to which the use of sign language might affect the course and character of cognitive development, and presents a variety of viewpoints in this debate. This volume brings the language-thought (...) discussion into a clearer focus, both theoretically and practically, by placing it in the context of children growing up deaf and the influences of having sign language as their primary form of communication. The discussion is also sharpened by having internationally recognized contributors, such as Patricia Siple, Diane Lillo-Martin, and Ruth Campbell, with specialties in varied areas, all converging on a common interest in which each has conducted empirical research. These contributors clarify and challenge the theoretical assumptions that have driven arguments in the language-thought debate for centuries. An introduction by the editors provides a historical overview of the issues as well as a review of empirical findings that have been offered in response to questions about language-thought relations in deaf children. The final chapters are structured in the form of "live" debate, in which each contributor is given the opportunity to respond to the other perspectives presented in this volume. (shrink)

The book is devoted to the study of the sign-object relation in the semiotics of Charles Peirce. It puts this issue in the context of Peirce's philosophy of knowledge and of reality and individuates the final causality as the foundation of the semiotic relation, which gains its gnoseological reliableness from its underlying teleological tendencies.

The theory of mental models is a current cognitive approach trying to describe the way people make inferences. According to this theory, people reason from possibilities or models linked to sentences. Sometimes, such possibilities or models are transformed by the action of a semantic modulation. The point this paper is intended to make is that Stoic logic also has the machinery to explain semantic processes such as that of modulation. This is shown by means of the criterion Chrysippus of Soli (...) provided for conditional sentences and the theory of sign related to that criterion. (shrink)

Basic, key concepts of semiotic are surveyed en route to establishing signs, units of signification, as always dealing in relations. These relations are triangular and mediate. Signs span and mediate between the internality and externality of things, thing being defined as a composite of subjectivity and objectivity. Because signs are relational and mediate, identicality is postulated as the limit of the sign. Identicality is aligned with things-in-themselves, which are assigned to meta-reality, to associate semiotic and metaphysic. Mind, (...) thought, world, and reality are conceptualized in such a way as to link signs with experience. Experience is explained as being founded in relations and practices between things. These relations and practices are formulated in significations. From these signification relations experience is founded, and through experience identities are situated and selves emerge. Holding experience as being formative of and fundamental to reality, it is concluded that reality is best described as being constituted in signs and ultimately bound by significations and relations between things. (shrink)

This article inspects Peirce’s resonances on Deleuze’s semiotic. Whereas most of the literature agrees that Deleuze adapts Peirce’s semiotic to serve his Bergsonian-based theory of sign, this article claims that the relationship of Deleuze with Peirce’s writings is more foliated than it may appear at first. The development of this hypothesis invites to trace back Deleuze’s works before his very acquaintance with Peirce in the 1980s. Therefore, one of Peirce’s classical issues – the role that relations and habits (...) play for the triadic conception of sign – is considered with Deleuze’s early studies, in which he developed this same issue as to approach Hume and Proust. This background echoes years later in Deleuze’s incursion to Peirce’s semiotic in the 1980s ninety-two classes and two books on cinema. In fact, Deleuze’s own triadic conception of sign and his acknowledged pragmatist inclination prove to be closer to Peirce’s pragmatism than the scholarly literature tends to think or argue. The aim of this article is not, however, to build an overwhelming philosophical identity between Deleuze and Peirce, it sets up instead a steadier basis from where to understand their differences. Deleuze’s ignored five-year long lectures on cinema shows to be exegetically revealing with respect to his debts towards Peirce. (shrink)

AN entity is a natural sign if by its very nature it represents some other entity or would-be entity. Many different kinds of things are said to represent other things, and in many cases it is recognized that the connection is purely conventional, in others that it is partly conventional being based in some sense on natural relations, and perhaps in yet others purely natural. My thesis is that a thought and a thought alone is, or contains as (...) a constituent, an entity that is a natural sign. This could be denied by rejecting either the existential claim or the uniqueness claim: most who deny it, which appears to be the overwhelming majority of contemporary philosophers who worry about such matters, say that there are no natural signs. As for the uniqueness claim, I shall for the moment merely register my conviction that an entity that is or contains a natural sign is necessarily a state of consciousness, and indeed the common feature of states of consciousness. (shrink)

For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with twoproblems: the development of a general theory of signs, and thedevelopment of a general theory of value. He approached both problemsin terms of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This bookbrings together these two lines of development. For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with two problems: the development of a general theory of signs, and the development of a general theory of value. He approached both problems in terms (...) of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This book brings together these two lines of development. In many languages there is a term like the English "meaning" which has two poles: that which something signifies and the value or significance of what is signified. The nature of signification and significance, as well as their relations within human behavior, is the subject matter of this book. This book is addressed to philosophers and to students of the behavioral sciences, but it will also appeal to anyone seriously interested in the study of human communication. (shrink)

Robert Rosen’s relational biology and biosemiotics share the claim that life cannot be explained by the laws that apply to the inanimate world alone. In this paper, an integrated account of Rosen’s relational biology and Peirce’s semiosis is proposed. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the construction of a unified framework for the definition and study of life. The relational concepts of component and mapping, and the semiotic concepts of sign and triadic relation are discussed and compared, and (...) a representation of semiotic relations with mappings is proposed. The role of the final cause in two theories that account for what differentiates living beings, natural selection and relational biology, is analyzed. Then the presence of the final cause in Peirce’s semiosis is discussed and, with it, the similarities and differences between the theories of Rosen and Peirce are deepened. Then, a definition of a semiotic relation in an organism is proposed, and Short’s definition of interpretation is applied. Finally, a method to identify and analyze semiotic actions in an organism is proposed. (shrink)

A new process philosophy of signs, where process becomes primary, and fixed relation secondary'Behind Red Doors - Signs, Process and the Political' - a post by James Williams on the Edinburgh University Press blogWhat is a sign? We usually think that it is a fixed relation: a red light signifies 'Stop'. In his bold new book, James Williams now argues that signs are varying processes: seeing the red light triggers a creative response to the question, Should I stop?Williams develops (...) this new process philosophy of signs through a formal model, in contrast to earlier structuralist definitions. He draws on the philosophies of Deleuze and Whitehead, criticises earlier work on the sign in biology by Jakob von Uexküll, and connects to contemporary work on process in the philosophy of biology by John Dupré.The process model has wide applications in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and informs their critical debates with science. In defining the sign as essentially political, this radical definition of the sign opens up new possibilities for social and political critique.". (shrink)

Warning signs, as a type of safety signs, are widely applied in our daily lives to informing people about potential hazards and prompting safe behavior. Although previous studies have paid attention to the color of warning signs, they are mostly based on surveys and behavioral experiments. The neural substrates underlying the perception of warning signs with different background colors remain not clearly characterized. Therefore, this research is intended to address this gap with event-related potentials technique. Warning signs with three different (...) background colors were used in the experiment. The results showed that the perceptual differences between different warning signs were present in the form of differential ERPs components though subjects were not required to explicitly attend to the warning signs. (shrink)

David Sedley recently complained that despite the enormous amount of work on Parmenides in the past generation, the details of Parmenides' arguments have received insufficient attention. It is universally recognized that Parmenides' introduction of argument into philosophy was a move of paramount importance. It is also recognized that the arguments of fragment B8 are closely related. At the beginning of B8, Parmenides asserts that what-is has several attributes; he offers a series of proofs that what-is indeed has those attributes. This (...) article undertakes a close analysis of fragment B8, teasing out the structure of the arguments, and showing what parts of the traditional and new interpretations of Parmenides those arguments do support. It presents some surprising conclusions and opens up spaces for new interpretations. (shrink)

For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with two problems: the development of a general theory of signs, and the development of a general theory of value. He approached both problems in terms of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This book brings together these two lines of development.In many languages there is a term like the English "meaning" which has two poles: that which something signifies and the value or significance of what is signified. The nature of (...) signification and significance, as well as their relations within human behavior, is the subject matter of this book.This book is addressed to philosophers and to students of the behavioral sciences, but it will also appeal to anyone seriously interested in the study of human communication. (shrink)

It seems obvious that signs in visual art and musical notation are static carriers of visual and acoustic information. Both types of sign, however, represent dynamic processes. In real space-time, there exists no static visible thing or static audible sound. The sources of visible or audible information are dynamic – i.e. complementary substantialenergetic-informational – entities extending in space-time. The same is true of an artificial or organic receiver and processor of visual or audible information. Reality and semiosis – to (...) be, to be perceived, and to be understood or to communicate – are dynamic processes. From a semiotic point of view, thus, pictures, photographic or artistic sign structures can’t be icons – in any case, if icons in a Peirceian manner are understood as signs representing objects for an interpretant by similarity . Similarity between icon and object is not a static precondition but a dynamic result of visual semiosis, i.e. of categorizing. Seeing something or hearing something is, as a consequence, not an “intuitive” or instantaneous Gestalt shift between representamen and object ongoing in an interpretant. And so, according to Fernande SaintMartin 1990: “visual semiotics … has to adopt an epistemology which is more in agreement with the dynamics of observed phenomena. It will recognize that matter is not inertness, but energy.” If the material carrier of semiosis, the representamen, already is to be understood as energy or dynamic process, all the more the whole complementary triadic sign-relation – object-representamen-interpretant – has to be understood as energetic information flow. This is being recognized in the transition from naturalistic, i.e. reproducing or mapping art, to modern, i.e. processing or interpreting/transducing art. Paul Klee 1990 for example says about the semiotic function of visual art: “Art doesn’t reproduce the visible but makes visible” . And he correlates the artistic activity of visualizing with the primordial, cosmogonic process of formation: “Reduced to the primordial process of formation, to creation, the process of cell division emerges” . Visual artistic semiosis is, thus, obviously to be understood as the process of emerging dynamic sign structures. It is the skill of the painter that makes the static results of dynamic semiosis “readable” for the viewer as signs – lines and surfaces - of the dynamic visual meaning of the picture. (shrink)

Natural languages come in two different modalities. The impact of modality on the grammatical structure and linguistic theory has been discussed at great length in the last 20 years. By contrast, the impact of modality on linguistic data elicitation and collection, corpus studies and experimental (psycholinguistic) studies is still underinvestigated (van Herreweghe/Vermeerbergen 2012; Orfanidou et al. 2015). In this paper, we address specific challenges that arise in judgement data elicitation and experimental studies of sign languages. These challenges are related (...) to the socio-linguistic status of the Deaf community and the larger variability across signers within the same community, to the social status of sign languages, to properties of ;he visual-gestural modality and its interface with gesture, to methodological aspects of handling sign language data, and to specific linguistic features of sign languages. While some of these challenges also pertain to (some varieties of) spoken languages, other challenges are more modality-specific. In addition, the special combination of the challenges discussed in this paper seems to be a specific facet empirical research on sign languages is faced with. In addition, we discuss the complementarity of theoretical approaches and experimental studies and show how the interaction of both approaches contributes to a better understanding of sign languages in particular and linguistic structures in general. (shrink)

The traditional sporting games correspond to a set of signs full of meanings, which come to life through the motor behaviors of the players as they participate in its semiotic semantics. As a result of this exchange, interpersonal conflicts may emerge because of each person’s semiotic interpretation of the sociomotor dynamics of the game. This research aimed to analyze the comments of intense negative emotions that arise in conflicts of a praxical nature in a TSG, in its different parts, and (...) in the motor interventions of its protagonists. A total of 160 university students participated in a competitive sociomotor traditional sporting game of cooperation-opposition: the Marro. At the end of the practice, all answered the validated GES-II questionnaire. Subsequently, a content analysis of 480 comments was performed using ATLAS.ti 8.4 software. The conclusion of this work verifies the existence of different levels of meaning in the semiotic experience that originate interpersonal conflicts in traditional sporting games. Considering the multidimensional network of signs and meanings that emerge in any game will help to understand the meaning of the protagonists’ conflictive motor conducts. (shrink)

Ecosemiotics represents a theoretical approach to human ecology that can be applied across several disciplines. lts primary justification lies inthe ambition to transcend "Cartesian", conceptual dichotomies such as culture/nature. society/nature, mental/material. etc. It argues that ecosystems areconstituted no less by flows of signs than by flows of matter and energy. This paper discusses the roles of different kinds of hmnan sign systems in the ecologyof Amazonia, ranging from the phenomenology of unconscious sensations. through linguistic signs such as metaphors and (...) ethnobiological taxonomies, to money and the political economy of environmental destruction. Human-environmental relations mediated by direct, sensory and (oral) linguistic communication have tended to enhance biological diversity, suggesting modes of calibrating the long-term co-evolution of human and non-human populations. Economic sign systems, on the other hand, have rapidly and drastically transfonned human-environmental relations in Amazonia to the point where the entire rainforest ecosystem is illlder threat. In detaching themselves from the direct, "face-to-face" communication between humans and their natural environments, flows of money and commodities - and the decontextualized knowledge systems that they engender - have no means of staying geared to the long-term negotiation of local, ecological co-existence. It is argued that the ongoing deterioration of the biosphere can be viewed as a problem of communication, deserving semiotic analysis. (shrink)

This article considers natural signs and their role in the origin of language. Natural signs, sometimes called primary signs, are connected with their signified by causal relationships, concomitance, or likeliness. And their acquisition is directed by both objective reality and past experience (memory). The discovery and use of natural signs is a required prerequisite of existence for any living systems because they are indispensable to movement, the search for food, regulation, communication, and many other information-related activities. It is argued that (...) the birth of conventional signs, sometimes called secondary signs, was determined by a connotative use of natural signs and that, regulated and maintained by them, human language developed. At the same time, the origin and development of human language presupposes a ‘rational turn’ from the given and external reality of natural signs to the rationally constructed reality of artificial signs and rules that are internally maintained by the subjects’ deliberate activities, and actual and inherited social tradition (social memory). In view of this, language is defined as a dynamic system that must both be natural and artificial, empirical and a priori, inductive and deductive. This bilateral origin and regulation of language is the dual-inference of language. (shrink)