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

The birth of social semiotics is usually associated with the publication of Michael Halliday’s book Language as Social Semiotic (1978). We try to draw attention to possible new developments in social semiotics, which still remain a potential transdisciplinary project for social sciences. In order to do this, we address the interrelation between sociolinguistics, social semiotics and the semiotics of culture. All of these describe mechanisms of meaning production and translation beyond linguistic (...) structures. The differentiation between these workings is based on a distinction between various aspects of meaning production and communication and functional characteristics of goal setting. The complexity of these processes legitimates the complexity of methodology used to describe them. Interconnection between different domains and aspects may create synthetic methods based on the dynamic approach to meaning production and transmission. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to provide insight into culinary systems. Each culture expresses its own identity through the way in which it transforms food into an elaborated cuisine. The phases of a cooking process start with the choice of ingredients, their preparation, their processing, how they are served, and how they are eaten. Each of these phases makes it possible to understand the semiotic and social behavior of a human group in the moment they choose to prepare (...) and eat a particular food. Therefore, this article contains a contrastive analysis of how Mexican, Texan, and Italian cuisines show how spicy and hot food is interpreted depending on the values that ​​are given to it in regards to being considered a dish, a spice or a vegetable. It bases its analysis on the mechanisms built around the meaning of chile in order to express cultural characteristics and differences. The recipes and their narrative processes, in addition to the use of color, allow the identification of parameters to describe the various cuisines through recipes books. (shrink)

Social semiotics is now widely regarded as one of the leading research areas. This study is the first attempt to present a holistic overview of social semiotics based on the data in the Web of Science core collection database from 2001 to 2020. The study investigates, among other issues, social semiotics’ publishing tendency, the most productive authors, countries, institutions, and hotspots. The results exhibit a steady rise in its publications and citations. The current analysis (...) verifies the growing quantitative and qualitative research contributions and influences of this field. Furthermore, what the journals focus on are the innovative and contemporary themes, manifested predominantly in sign, multimodality, gender, experimental semiotics, advertising, culture, and social media, which involve a wide range of methodologies to make the research more acceptable and constructive. These results are expected to offer refreshing insights that inspire scholars in formulating scientific agendas and advising their research strategies, thereby facilitating substantial contributions to the domain. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 197 Seiten: 119-140.

Despite recent noticeable changes in women’s educational opportunities in developing countries such as Iran, there is still much controversy surrounding the common assumption that a direct relationship exists between women’s empowerment and formal literacy. According to the social semiotic method, the present research explores the hidden side of the female educational experience and its relationship with empowerment. In the current study, we conducted 39 interviews and analyzed the collected data using Van Leeuwen’s semiotic approach. The results are based on (...) the analysis of three semiotic sources, all of which are ubiquitous in the daily life of Iranian students: uniforms, queues, and homework. The findings indicate that the emphasis on the ideological aspects of educational experiences, in the form of a ritualistic approach by the educational system’s agents, causes a gradual semantic break between students and educational goals. Such an emphasis also instills an ambiguous and contradictory understanding in the student’s mind, of which the final result is the alienation and internalization of passive patterns of social action. (shrink)

This paper explores a semiotic notion of body as starting point for bridging biosemiotic with social semiotic theory. The cornerstone of the argument is that the social semiotic criticism of the classic view of meaning as double articulation can support the criticism of language-centrism that lies at the foundation of biosemiotics. Besides the pragmatic epistemological advantages implicit in a theoretical synthesis, I argue that this brings a semiotic contribution to philosophy of mind broadly. Also, it contributes to overcoming (...) the polemic in linguistics between, loosely put, cognitive universalism and cultural relativism. This possibility is revealed by the recent convergence of various semiotic theories towards a criticism of the classic notion of meaning as double articulation. In biosemiotics, the interest to explicate meaning as multiply articulated stems from the construal of Umwelt as relying on the variety of sense perception channels and semiotic systems that a species has at its disposal. Recently, social semiotics developed an unexplored interest for embodiment by starting from the other end, namely the consideration of the modal heterogeneity of meaning. To bridge these notions, I employ the cognitive semantic notion of embodiment and Mittelberg’s cognitive semiotic notion of exbodiment. In light of these, I explore the possible intricacies between the biosemiotic notion of primary modeling system and concepts referring to preconceptual structures for knowledge organization stemming from cognitive linguistics. Further, Mittelberg’s concept of exbodiment allows for a construal of meaning articulation as mediation between the exbodying and embodying directions of mind. (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)

While participation in social media has become everyday practice among young people, there have been few studies examining how youth as social media users are represented in the media discourse. Focusing on the promotional materials of an award-winning and widely-viewed documentary film, The Social Dilemma, this paper examines the media depictions of youth that attract the public’s attention. Through a social semiotic analysis, we analyzed the representational, interactive, and compositional meanings in the poster and trailer to (...) identify how young people have been represented in the media discourse. Our findings show that they are constructed as vulnerable social media users who are manipulated by social media companies. We argue that such depictions of youth not only negate their sense of agency but also ignore their active engagement in the participatory culture afforded by social media. The implications of such depictions propagate a protectionist perspective of youth. This can undermine efforts towards the development of an empowerment approach in digital literacy education. (shrink)

Intersemiotic projection is one of the most common configurations in the knowledge construction process of academic comics. Although previous studies address some general features of intersemiotic projection, further research on interdependency relations of intersemiotic projection is needed in order to map out the whole system. This study, based on the social-semiotic approach to multimodal studies, proposes a systemic framework of image-text paratactic and hypotactic projection in academic comics. This framework identifies three sub-categories of paratactic projection and hypotactic projection, respectively: (...) Emergent, Adjoined, Sequential, Compound, Subsumed, and Fused. The use of these projection configurations contributes to the realization of the communicative purposes of academic comics to evidence, exemplify, emphasize, explain, elaborate, and visualize the discussed knowledge. This research attempts not only to contribute to the theoretical development of multimodality from the social-semiotic perspective by refining and enlarging the multimodal hypotactic projection framework but also to provide an effective and applicable tool for comics analysis. (shrink)

War is so enduring in human history that it plays a pivotal role in the formation and disruption of social order. As the author argues, drawing on Malešević, ‘war, far from being an aberrati...

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)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 303-325.

The rise in Study Abroad participation among college students has increased interest among educationalists wondering about the impact of SA on students, particularly when students return home without evidence of deep engagement and understanding of other cultures and people. The purpose of this case study was to locate one potential source of the meanings ascribed to the SA experience, through analysis of multimodal representations on the institutional website of a popular SA program provider. In this study, Kress’ model of multimodal (...) social semiotic communication was employed in the analysis of the ensemble of modes of communication on the website, and their role in the production and dissemination of discourses of SA. Findings indicate that discourses of tourism prevail over discourses of education, and the representations enacted on the institutional website are mirrored in the discursive practices of students. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore website interactivity as discourse. Whereas the use of writing, images and layout in web design has been explored extensively, interactivity, that is, interactions between a web user and the website system, remains an underdeveloped area of discourse studies. To analyze interactivity as discourse, the article uses data from a research project on offline and online shopping for electronics, viewing the offline-online relationship as recontextualization in the sense that webshop interactivity represents and transforms (...) in-store shopping actions. Using a methodology that combines analytical framework for interactive sites and approach to discourse analysis, the article maps cursor resources and interactive webshop features as actions and compares them to the actions that constitute in-store shopping. On this basis, the article offers reflections on how interactivity plays a defining role in the digital resemiotization of social practices. (shrink)

Social distance, as a non-static cognitive attribute of acceptance among particular groups across different contexts, has been resemioticized during the coronavirus crisis and legalized worldwide to reduce global strain on healthcare systems and prevent deaths. Concerning this, brand designers have tried to persuade the brand community to benefit from products or services safely by staying away from others as much as possible instead of in-person contact. This research was conducted to discover the semiosis process of social-distancing resemioticization through (...) creating values of brands during the post-coronavirus crisis. The corpus consists of 124 brands – all sampled purposely from 2019 to 2021 – which was investigated via a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods using an integrated model in a functional perspective. All the results highlight the fact that, although brand designers have attempted to creatively resemioticize social-distancing during the coronavirus crisis as a means of increasing or enriching brand values, still some semiosis layers of brand discourse have been overlooked. Pertaining to this, the authors try to apply a new perspective of marketing semiotics to appraise consumer investments in light of a socio-cultural setting by conducting an inquiry about the semiosis of individual brand discourses to manage consumer perceptions regarding brand equity. (shrink)

The individual and social formation of a human self, from its emergence in early childhood through adolescence to adult life, has been described within philosophy, psychology and sociology as a product of developmental and social processes mediating a linguistic and social world. Semiotic scaffolding is a multi-level phenomenon. Focusing upon levels of semiosis specific to humans, the formation of the personal self and the role of friendship and similar interpersonal relations in this process is explored through Aristotle’s (...) classical idea of the friend as ‘another self’, and sociologist Margaret Archer’s empirical and theoretical work on the interplay between individual subjectivity, social structure and interpersonal relations in a dynamics of human agency. It is shown that although processes of reflexivity and friendship can indeed be seen as instances of semiotic scaffolding of the emerging self, such processes are heterogeneous and contingent upon different modes of reflexivity. (shrink)

Understanding social cognition referring to narratives without relying on mindreading skills has been the main aim of the Narrative Practice Hypothesis proposed by Daniel Hutto and Shaun Gallagher. In this paper, I offer a semiotic reformulation of the NPH, expanding the notion of narrative beyond its conventional common-sense understanding and claiming that the kind of social cognition that operates in implicit false belief task competency is developed out of the narrative logic of interaction. I will try to show (...) how experience is shaped through meaning by the structure of narrativity and the way this can account for how narrative competencies do not just depend on language acquisition, but permeate the interactive competencies of pre-linguistic children and some social non-human animals. Developing during primary and secondary intersubjectivity and rooted in the semiotic ability to deceive and manipulate others, semiotic narrativity is the key bridge that leads us to mind and beliefs starting from basic perceptions, emotions and embodied enactive interactions. I will test my Narrative Practice Semiotic Hypothesis on Autism spectrum disorders, where social cognition skills don’t work properly, connecting NPSH to the Social Motivation Theory of Autism. I will finally answer some criticisms towards the original NPH, connecting its semiotic reformulation to early mindreading in infants and to some very recent experiments by Krupeneye et al. and Buttelmann et al. about false beliefs understanding in primates. (shrink)

The Archaeology of Semiotics and the social order of things is edited by George Nash and George Children and brings together 15 thought-provoking chapters from contributors around the world. A sequel to an earlier volume published in 1997, it tackles the problem of understanding how complex communities interact with landscape and shows how the rules concerning landscape constitute a recognised and readable grammar. The mechanisms underlying landscape grammar are both physical and mental, being based in part on the (...) mindset of the individual; the same landscape can thus evoke different meanings for different people and at different times. People's perception has greatly influenced the construction of landscapes over millennia but, until recently, the potential of this area has been largely untapped. Apart from chapters focusing solely upon human interaction with landscape, there are several which skilfully integrate artefacts and place with landscape (e.g. Gheorghiu and Sognnes). Other chapters look at the way people have marked the landscape through such mechanisms as rock-art (e.g. Clegg, Devereux, Estévez, Fossati, Kelleher and Skier). Rock-art establishes personal and communal identity in relation to landscape and it is clear that other forms of visual expression were in place which distinctively created special places within the landscape. Landscape constructs can bind cultures together; bringing the old ways of reading the landscape into contemporary life (e.g. Smiseth). Defining early and late prehistoric landscapes and segregating these into, say, mundane domestic and ritualised spaces rely on both clear and subtle archaeologies and in this volume distinct monument clustering and ritualised linearity are considered (e.g. Mason and Nash). A volume such as this cannot escape the influence of New World approaches, such as anthropology, and in many respects chapters by Bender, Muller and Merritt give context to other chapters within the book. Finally, one must consider text as a means of constructing landscape and this is considered by Heyd, who eloquently deconstructs the travel diary of a 17th century Japanese poet. This will be an important volume for archaeologists, landscape scholars and students. The many approaches used are tried and tested, forming an invaluable resource and not just another edited book. (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)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 205 Seiten: 243-260.