The interesting and deep commentaries on our target article reflect the continued high interest in the problem of colour categorisation and naming. Clearly, colour remains for many cognitive science related disciplines a fascinating microworld in which some of the most fundamental issues for cognition and culture can be studied. Although our target article took the stance of practically oriented engineers who are trying to find the best solution for orchestrating the self-organisation of communication systems in artificial agents, most commentators focus (...) on the implications for cognitive science and we will do the same in our reply. (shrink)

The use of AI-generated videos centered on the face raises various concerns among professionals and audiences due to the difficulty of providing coherent descriptive tools of their cultural significance. At the same time, the focus of artists and their audiences shifts from the art as a text to the collaboration process between artificial intelligence (AI) and the involved social actors. This raises significant concerns between policymakers and other social actors looking for guidelines for the appropriate use of AI as a (...) tool, collaborator or substitute for creative workers, which can have immediate and long-term impacts on society and culture. Semiotics of culture provides descriptive tools for understanding and evaluating artistic texts and their role in semiotic space, the semiosphere. This article addresses how Lotman’s theory can contribute to the methodology for analyzing AI-generated texts as dynamic models. The theoretical framework developed by Lotman in his research on artistic text, dynamic systems and culture can be applied to the studies of current shifts related to AI-generated arts. This paper looks at the reception of AI-generated videos focused on face representations. In doing so, it analyses the dynamic processes in the creation process of AI-generated videos through their reception in related texts. The findings of this article highlight how Lotman’s theoretical framework can contribute to the methodology to analyze the cultural dynamics evoked by AI-generated artistic texts. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 210 Seiten: 129-149.

The article discusses evolutionary aspects of mimicry from a semiotic viewpoint. The concept of semiotic scaffolding is used for this approach, and its relations with the concepts of exaptation and semiotic co-option are explained. Different dimensions of scaffolding are brought out as ontogenetic, evolutionary, physiological and cognitive. These dimensions allow for interpreting mimicry as a system that scaffolds itself. With the help of a number of mimicry cases, e.g. butterfly eyespots, brood parasitism, and plant mimesis, the evolutionary (...) dynamics of mimicry in the open bio-semiosphere is investigated. The main argument is that biological mimicry largely develops through sign relations and communicative relations between organisms. It is proposed that mimicry systems should be described as two-layered structures composed of the ecological composition of the species involved and the semiotic structure of their communication. (shrink)

Digital cultural archives and databases are promising an era of heritage democratization and an enhancement of the role of arts in everyday cultures. It is hoped that mass digitization initiatives in many corners of the world can facilitate the secure preservation of human cultural heritage, with easy access and diverse ways for creative reuse. Understanding the dialogic processes within these increasingly vast databases necessitates a dynamic conceptualization of data they contain. The paper argues that this can be found in Juri (...) Lotman’s cultural semiotic notion of text and text’s functions in culture. It elaborates on the three key characteristics of text – expression, boundary, and structure – as manifested within the digital semiosphere. At the same time, the textual dialogues within digital archives are increasingly conditioned by metadata, which is hereby conceptualized as metalanguage inducing a modeling effect on archived texts and defining their possible sphere of dynamics. To balance the explanations of creative operations of digital archives, the paper also demonstrates their auto-communicative mechanisms for facilitating cultural continuities and stability. (shrink)

The Language Dynamic identifies a number of mechanisms that enable the meaning potential of language from the phoneme through grammar and discourse and onto ideological systems. This book, which underpins functional theories of language with concepts from biological and cultural evolution, social semiotics and systems theory, is relevant to all who are interested in how and why we can mean and what it means for us as humans to be semiotic agents.

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

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

The notion of culture implies the relative stability of sets of algorithms that become entrenched in human brains as children become socialized, and, to a lesser extent, when immigrants become assimilated into a new society. The semiotics of culture has used the notion of signs and systems of signs to conceptualize this process, which takes for granted memory as a natural affordance of the brain without raising the question of how and why cultural signs impact behaviour in a durable manner. (...) Indeed, under the influence of structuralism, the semiotics of culture has mostly achieved synchronic descriptions. Dynamic models have been proposed to account for the action of signs (e.g., semiosis, dialogism, dialectic) and their resulting cultural changes and cultural diversity. However, these models have remained remarkably abstract, and somewhat disconnected from the actual brain processes, which must be assumed to be involved in the emergence, maintenance, and transformations of cultures. Semiotic terminology has contributed to a systematic representation of cultural objects and processes but thephilosophical origin of its basic concepts has made it difficult to construct a productive interface with the cognitive neurosciences as they have developed and achieved notable advances in the understanding of memory over the last few decades. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that further advances in semiotics will require a shift from philosophical and linguistic notions toward biological and evolutionary models. (shrink)

A model called the “semiotic ladder,” which consists of “consecutive semiotic squares,” is proposed in this paper, through which the meanings of the deep structure of a narrative can be depicted as fluid and dynamic. It shows the stages of producing meanings in the narrative, from beginning to end. To see this, several narratives in the epic and mythological genres are analyzed in order to discover their abstract and deep structural meanings, and to prove the dynamic nature of (...) meaning in the semiotic ladder. According to the analysis, the process of the semiotic ladder depicts the displacement and fluidity of narrative meanings using consecutive semiotic squares, and this pattern can be applied to and implemented in all narratives. Also, the semiotic ladder allows us to clearly observe the pattern of movement of the narrative subject schema in the path of accomplishing the object. (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)

Communicative interactions across different species have so far received relatively little attention from cognitive or behavioral scientists. Most research in this area views the process of communication as the adaptive interaction of manipulative signalers and information-assessing receivers. This paper discusses some shortcomings of the information/influence model of communication, particularly in the empirical study of interspecific communicative interactions. It then presents an alternative theoretical model, based on recent contributions in psycholinguistics and semiotics. The semiotic alignment model views communication as a (...) dynamic process of joint semiosis resulting in the alignment of the interactants’ own-worlds (Umwelten). It is argued that this model can improve our understanding of communicative interactions between heterospecifics and provide the basis for future work in the empirical study of interspecific communication. (shrink)

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

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

The essay seeks to single out, describe, and analyze the main semiotic features that compose the fundamentalist understanding of authoriality. Given a definition of authoriality as the series of semiotic dynamics that induce a reader to posit a genetic relation between an author and a text, the fundamentalist authoriality is characterized as displaying six main traits. First, centrality of the written text: in order to postulate a perfect coincidence between a transcendent intentio auctoris (intention of the author) (...) and an immanent intentio lectoris (intention of the reader), fundamentalist exegetical and juridical hermeneutics must be anchored to a stable message, canonized into a written verbal text or into a corpus of written verbal texts. Second, fundamentalist authoriality rests on the assumption of the immutability and mono-centrism of the religious semiosphere that irradiates from the written text. Third, literalism, infallibility, and non-contradiction are attributed to the relation between the written text, its exegetical hermeneutics, and the pragmatic normative orders to which it gives rise. Fourth, fundamentalist authoriality rules out any potential duplicity of the operations that ‘extract’ meaning from religious texts. Fifth, the assumption of the immutability of the religious text leads to exclusion of any operation that might alter the form of both its expression and content, hence to stigmatization of translation. The sixth feature of fundamentalist authoriality encompasses all the previous ones: in fundamentalism, a religious text is not actually a text anymore, but a mirror, whose passive reflection of the exegete’s mind undermines the semiotic nature of the relation between the reader and the text. (shrink)

The concept of ‘semiotic fitting’ is what we provide as a model for the description and analysis of the diversity dynamics and nativeness in semiotic systems. One of its sources is the concept of ‘ecological fitting’ which was introduced by Daniel Janzen as the mechanism for the explanation of diversity in tropical ecosystems and which has been shown to work widely over the communities of various types. As different from the neo-Darwinian concept of fitness that describes reproductive (...) success, ‘fitting’ describes functional relations and aboutness. Diversity of a semiotic system is strongly dependent on the mutual fitting of agents of which the semiotic system consists. The focus on semiotic fitting means that, in the analysis of diversity, we pay particular attention to decision making, functional plasticity, recognition windows, the depth of interpretation of the agents, and the categories responsible for the structure of the semiotic system. The concept of semiotic fitting has an early analogue in Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of ‘Einpassung’. The close concepts of ‘semiotic fitness’, introduced by Jesper Hoffmeyer and by Stéphanie Walsh Matthews, ‘semiotic selection’, introduced by Timo Maran and Karel Kleisner, and ‘semiotic niche’, introduced by Hoffmeyer, provide different versions of the same model. If community is constructing itself on the basis of fitting, then nativeness of the community is a product of fitting, not vice versa. Nativeness is a feature that deepens in the course of community succession. The concept of ‘semiotic fitting’ demonstrates the possibility to analyse the role of both indigenous and alien species or other agents in a community on the basis of a single model. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 555-569.

Every manifestation of information, semiosis and meaning we have been able to study experimentally has a physical form. Neglect of their dynamical (energetic) ground tends towards dualism or idealism, leaving the causal basis of semiosis and the causal powers of representations mysterious. Consideration of the necessary physical requirements for the embodiment of semiotic categories imposes a discipline on semiotics required for its integration into the rest of science, especially for the emerging field of biosemiotics, as well as any future (...) extensions to chemistry physics or other realms that might constitute a general, primal semiotics. Without this discipline, or something equally strong, there is a risk of projection of anthropomorphic semiotic terminology onto unsuitable hosts, leading, if unchecked, to the sort of animism that biology in particular has only recently escaped. The problem is suspect whenever teleological notions are used outside of mental or social contexts.1 Although our animistic ancestors may have had a closer rapport with Nature than modern scientists, contemporary scientific explanation requires an understanding of causal structure (Salmon 1984). On the other hand, unless the causal rendition of semiosis can capture full blown cognitive semiosis, it is likely to be too restrictive for the evaluation of primal semiosis in general. (shrink)

Communicative interactions across different species have so far received relatively little attention from cognitive or behavioral scientists. Most research in this area views the process of communication as the adaptive interaction of manipulative signalers and information-assessing receivers. This paper discusses some shortcomings of the information/influence model of communication, particularly in the empirical study of interspecific communicative interactions. It then presents an alternative theoretical model, based on recent contributions in psycholinguistics and semiotics. The semiotic alignment model views communication as a (...) dynamic process of joint semiosis resulting in the alignment of the interactants’ own-worlds (Umwelten). It is argued that this model can improve our understanding of communicative interactions between heterospecifics and provide the basis for future work in the empirical study of interspecific communication. (shrink)

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

On the example of the analysis of the content of films-leaders of the box office box office, the value dynamics of the symbols of success is revealed as an objectively occurring sociocultural process in film communication. Cultural production and consumption are being rethought as the self-communication of society, which has sustainable trends. The connections of the sociocultural process of symbolizing success with communicative, semantic and semiotic processes have been studied. The specificity of the dialectical contradiction between sociocentric and (...) personocentric symbols of success is described. The theoretical provisions that reveal the structural and functional side of the socio-cultural process of symbolizing success are presented, its objectivity is proved on the example of the analysis of an array of films, the dominant tendencies in the halo of the cultural space of the general film market are determined. The book is addressed to scientists, students and teachers interested in cultural dynamics, social communication, the role of cinema in modern society. (shrink)

To relate theories of affordance and frame with the tradition of formal aesthetics, philosophical iconology and the life sciences (keyword Vitality Semiotics) is the starting point of the paper. According to this approach, the structural preconditions of images, as determined by materials, techniques and the composition of the design means, become essential. Through these structures, the producers are able to set impulses that become decisive for the interpretation of space and time or the "scene" as a dynamic event. Against the (...) social and cultural background of the recipients the "scene" gains a meaning to their life. This means to understand the productʼs conception and composition as an affordance which determines the framework of the reception conditions. The benefit of this approach lies in the identification of changes in the self-understanding and thus of trends in to new standards of societies. This is to be illustrated by Exekiasʼ drinking bowl around 540/30 BC in Munich. (shrink)

The article provides an overview of different approaches to the semiotic study of landscapes both in the field of semiotics proper and in landscape studiesin general. The article describes different approaches to the semiotic processes in landscapes from the semiological tradition where landscape has been seen as analogous to a text with its language, to more naturalized and phenomenological approaches, as well as ecosemiotic view of landscapes that goes beyond anthropocentric definitions. Special attention is paid to the potential (...) of cultural semiotics of Tartu–Moscow school for the analysis of landscapes and the possibilities held by a dynamic, dialogic and holistic landscape definition for the development of ecosemiotics. (shrink)

This paper presents a specific concept of the legal system, bringing a contribution to the Theory of Law, from the line of analysis of the Semiotics of Law. The entire methodological approach of this concept is based on the contributions of the École de Paris, from a theoretical-semiotic perspective derived from the studies of Algirdas Julien Greimas. The analysis seeks to further and qualify previous studies and publications, and focuses on the task of presenting the concept of juridicity, deriving (...) the description of the concept of the legal system from it, understood as a set of connections between legal texts. Consequently, the paper presents a Mesh Model for the description of the legal system, replacing the positivist concept of the Pyramid Model, through restoring the relationship between Law and Moral, between Law and Society and Law and Justice. Throughout the theoretical explanation, the paper tries to trace, develop and qualify the main points with arguments that distinguish the operation of the legal system, such as the concentric movement, micro-universes of meaning, discursive practices, the task of legal actors, dynamic inter-textuality, the role of interpretation, the process of the production of legal meaning and the search for textual justice. (shrink)

Biological mimicry can be considered as having a double-layered structure: there is a layer of ecological relations between species and there is a layer of semiotic relations of the sign. The present article demonstrates the limitations of triadic models and typologies of mimicry, as well as their lack of correspondence to mimicry as it actually occurs in nature. It is argued that more dynamical semiotic tools are needed to describe mimicry in a theoretically coherent way that would at (...) the same time allow comparative approach to various mimicry cases. For this a five-stage model of analysis is proposed, which incorporates classical mimicry theory, Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt-theory, as well as semiotic and communication analysis. This research model can be expressed in the form of five questions: 1) What is the formal structure of mimicry system? 2) What are the perceptual and effectual correspondences between the participants of mimicry? 3) What are the characteristics of resemblances? 4) How is the mimicry system regulated in ontogenetic and evolutionary processes? 5) How is the mimicry system related to human cultural processes? As a practical example of this semiotic methodology, brood parasitism between the common cuckoo Cuculus canorus and his frequent host species is examined. (shrink)

The premise of this article is that cognitive development involves both conceptual and semiotic achievements. From this perspective, the authors emphasize the distinctness of the semiotic issues and develop a differentiated appreciation of the semiotic aspects of cognition, particularly in the field of elementary mathematical cognition. The authors provide semiotic analyses of the differences between counting, adding, and multiplying and of the conventional place-value system. The authors introduce the concept of the field of reference of a (...) sign, the differentiation of the field into foreground and background, and the dynamics within the field of reference. Finally, the authors relate these ideas to the dynamics between two dimensions of semiotic relations: the sign-referent dimension and the sign-sign dimension. (shrink)

For all human sciences, understanding of how the mind works requires a new theory that starts from the assumption of potential infinite variability of human symbolic forms. These forms are socially constructed by the person who moves through an endless variety of unique encounters with the world. A theory of symbolic forms needs to capture the essence of hyperdynamic, irreversible nature of the stream of consciousness and activity. The human mind is regulated through a dynamic hierarchy of semiotic mechanisms (...) of increasingly generalized kind, which involves mutual constraining between levels of the hierarchy. It is demonstrated that semiotic mediation leads to a triplet of personal-cultural constructions — a new symbolic form, a metasymbolic form, and a regulatory signal to stop or enable the construction of further semiotic hierarchy. In everyday terms — human beings produce new problems, together with new efforts at solving them, and make decisions when to stop producing the former two. Hence, semiotic mediation guarantees both flexibility and inflexibility of the human psychological system, through the processes of abstracting generalization and contextualizing specification. Context specificity of psychological phenomena is an indication of general mechanisms that generate variability. Scientific investigation of human psychological complexity is necessarily oriented to the study of variability within the individual person’s psychological time-space. (shrink)

In recognition of the central place that the concept of tragedy holds in the historical understanding of culture and society, this paper features an analysis of its presence, current state, and value in the digital environments of the postmodern era, with special attention to videogames. Thus, the overcoming of a classic model of tragedy in the cybertextual condition is first determined, along with the discursive dimension underlying said overcoming. To this end a theoretical statement to the issue of tragedy is (...) proposed, from the perspective of the cybertext as procedural rhetoric. This will establish the formulation of a semiotic analytical model that problematizes Greimas’ actantial system under the light of the digital and interactive reality of videogames. To avoid this constraint, we propose to attach a new variable to the base of the generative trajectory: the “configurative synthesis,” product of the so-called “gaming/playing function.” This addition will integrate the figures of the game and the player in the dynamic distinction of the “quasi-Actant.” Finally, a sample of 79 cases will be observed in regards to the implications of the cybertextual notion of tragedy to the narrative and discourse of videogames. (shrink)

Communication Studies currently undergoes a crisis of paradigms that requires an ontological review that must begin with a debate about the conditions of possibility of every communicational phenomena. In this article we argue that semiosis offers a conceptual framework that allows for the study of communication as qualitative action. Semiosis, or the action of the sign, is here defined as a fundamental process based on perception that models the world of species, creating cognition and culture. At the core of semiosis (...) are dynamic structures that the authors have defined as ‘ontological diagrams’. The first purpose of Semiotics of Communication is to understand how these modeling systems evolve ontologically and phylogenically, producing, in the case of human culture, means of communication ever more varied and technologically advanced. (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)

Darwinian evolution, as it was first conceived, has two dimensions: adaptation, that is, selection based upon “apt function”, defined as the “good fit” between an organism’s metabolic and biological demands and the environment in which it is embedded; and heredity, the transmissible memory of past apt function. Modern Darwinism has come to focus almost exclusively on hereditary memory, eclipsing the—arguably still-problematic—phenomenon of adaptation. As a result, modern Darwinism retains, at its core, certain incoherencies that, as long as they remain unresolved, (...) preclude the emergence of a fully-coherent theory of evolution. Resolving the incoherencies will involve clarifying the relationship between embodied memory and apt function. In short, adaptation is a problem of semiotics: the organism must interpret the environment to fit well into it. This is well-illustrated by the constructed environments built by colonies of social insects, such as hives or nests, and the ancillary structures that contain them, forming an organism-like system known as a superorganism. The superorganism is marked by a kind of extended physiology, in that these constructed environments often serve as adaptive interfaces between the nest and ambient environment, and are constructed to manage the matter and energy flows between environments that constitute the process of adaptation. These constructed environments are also semiotic phenomena: interpretive structures, governed by information flow between the member insects and the structures they build. I review our findings on one such example: the mounds built by the fungus-cultivating termites of the genus Macrotermes. These structures are dynamic forms that are sustained by flows of soil from deep horizons up into the mound. The form, and hence the function, of the mound is determined by several environmental cues, most notably water and wind, as well as how termites interpret these cues, and signals that flow between termites, both directly and vicariously through the structures they build. (shrink)

This entry addresses the action theoretical semiotics derived from A. J. Greimas’s theory and positions it in the context of edusemiotics. Greimas’s narratological theory is discussed and investigated in terms of its fruitfulness for education. The entry focuses on the major features of Greimas’s theory such as his famous actantial model as well as the anthropomorphic, or human- and subject-centered, approach in general. According to Greimas, at the core of the meaning of every significant discourse, there lies a typical human (...) situation within which the actants – or entities that assume certain roles in a narrative story – function as Subject and Object, Sender and Receiver, and at times also as Helper and Opponent. Greimas’s central analytic tools, the semiotic square and the generative model, are interpreted in dynamic terms and applied to the analysis of education as a meaningful practice. These tools help us see education as a value-based action and shed a critical light on the presupposed dualism between nature and culture in the context of education. For the analysis of action, Greimas’s major concepts prove themselves to be especially useful. The conception of competences expressed, specifically, in modal verbs such as want, can, know, and must is significant for education. As such, education becomes an action that strives to develop students’ competences. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces by Ivo Assad IbriRobert E. InnisIvo Assad Ibri Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces Springer, 2022, xxvii + 341 pp., incl. indexIn the chapter on 'The Heuristic Power of Agapism in Peirce's Philosophy' in his recent book, Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces, Ivo Ibri points out that access to Peirce's work requires something on the part of the reader that is "not readily available (...) in everyone's spirit: a sense of poetry, an aesthetic sensitivity that will, ultimately, become the sharpest and strongest tool to penetrate the deepest meaning of his philosophy" (116). Such a sensitivity is manifested in Ibri's own responsiveness to Peirce's accounts of the permeating qualities of things in a dynamic universe of emerging novel orders and patterns. Ibri's book presents the record, indeed the culmination, of a well-known and wide-ranging long-term engagement with the work of Peirce. It makes available in English translation the contents of the two-volume [End Page 257] collection of his papers in Portuguese published in 2020 and 2021, although a number of them were originally published in English. The title of the book indicates the dynamic triadic nature of Ibri's central Peircean themes: semiotics and pragmatism and their theoretical as well as historical 'interfaces.'Paradoxically, taken alone, the book's main title, 'Semiotics and Pragmatism,' gives no indication that it is principally about Peirce. The reason, I think, is that there is an interwoven duality of, or tension between, the tasks that Ibri has taken upon himself to accomplish in the intellectual journey manifested in the book's contents: (a) Thinking about Peirce, on the one hand, and (b) Thinking with and through Peirce, on the other. This duality of tasks accounts both for the expository and argumentative richness of Peircean themes and the accompanying sense of intellectual engagement and exploration as they are taken up in the various parts of the book: art as an articulated realm of 'nameless things,' the presence of a poetic ground and its links to Schelling in Peirce's philosophy, the nature of abduction and of agapism as heuristic principles, the scope of Peirce's theory of signs and interpretants, the theory of beliefs and the intellectual dangers and poverty of dogmatism, the nature of habits and rational conduct, the centrality of the categories for Peircean pragmatism and objective idealism, the relations between pragmatism, pragmaticism, and neopragmatism, and other technical and subsidiary topics of current social and political importance. The discussion of these themes involves wide-ranging and generous linkages to other parallel discussions that support or expand Ibri's own positions and existential commitments.Ibri frames in a variety of ways the inextricably intertwined strands of semiotics and pragmatism (or pragmaticism) in Peirce's work and argues forcefully in other chapters for Peirce's metaphysical vision of an emergent creative universe marked by the "infinite faces of chance" (122), a vision rooted in Schelling's objective idealism and in scientific discoveries of the 19th century. The organization of the book is thematic and does not develop in linear fashion as a treatise. It can be seen as sequence of engagements or as a series of analytical spirals in which the topics and issues of the book, focused on Peirce's heuristic fertility, are taken up in a kind of dialectical dance of 'retrievals and continuations,' leading inevitably, as Ibri points out, to a high number of repetitions and recapitulations. This is partially due to each chapter in the book, while free standing, functioning as a heuristic device for exploring and arguing for the nature and power of Peirce's interlocking main positions and their shared conceptual underpinnings.In a stimulating chapter on 'The Poetics of Nameless things,' Ibri writes that the Peircean claim of a "correspondence between external and internal worlds" is the "deepest root of pragmatism" (60). This root gives rise to a system of spiraling tendrils marking the growth of the [End Page 258] Peircean philosophical project. We can think of the chapters of Ibri's book as themselves spiraling, and at times entangled, analytical tendrils that support the growth of our... (shrink)

The current study investigates classroom interactivity in L2 tertiary literature classrooms in Hong Kong and Taiwan when ESL/efl students engage with and interpret literary texts in classroom talk as a pedagogic process of text recontextualization. It proposes a more ecological-based approach to language and languaging dynamics that is complementary to current social semiotic approaches to multimodality. It also aims to open up a more embodied analysis of the meaning-making process in tertiary literature classrooms. The multimodal investigation of real-time (...) classroom interactivity based on a multi-scalar approach showcases an embodied coordination of vocalization and gesticulation as integral aspects of the dynamic whole-body sense-making activity that arises in the pedagogic process of text recontextualization. The dynamics vary from students’ solo speech in individual presentation to teacher–student interactions in group discussion and to student–student interactions in role-play. The distributed language view of first-order languaging dynamics demonstrates the embodied and distributed dimensions of the real-time classroom interactivity that couples pedagogic subjects to the affordances of their pedagogic environment. It also provides insights into the impact of pedagogic activities on the multi-scalar dynamics of the meaning-making process with reference to embodied speech–gesture coordination. The paper demonstrates the value of applying an ecologically embodied perspective to multimodal studies in classroom research and stimulates a re-thinking of some of the important aspects of classroom interactivity that have received little attention thus far. (shrink)

My intention in this paper is to contribute the debate on “realism” in order to raise a different sort of question: not whether ‘reality’ exists or does not exist, but rather what effects does the belief in this or that reality produce (as Peirce put it 150 years ago). I will turn to Eco’s later thought, and to his support for a form of ‘negative’ realism, and try to demonstrate how his appeal to Peirce’s distinction between Immediate and Dynamical Object (...) is affected by a common-sense interpretation of what ‘real’ amounts to. Peirce in fact distinguished between the “existence” of facts and their “reality.” The former implies a dynamic of blind force, a dynamical reaction. Yet, “reality consists in the future” (CP 8.284), in the public recognition of what it always will be, or we hope will be, in the long run (Peirce uses the word “mellonization”). In Eco’s work, though, the Being or the Real, seen as pure Something, is understood after the form of a Thing, above all External, which simply says many ‘No’s. Peirce’s pragmaticism leads us further on, concentrating on the concept of habit that is also detectable in Eco’s analysis. We could say that Peirce distinguishes brute existence hic et nunc from the persistence of habits. Acts and dispositions to act, and not facts (as opposed to interpretations) appear as real; and it is in this respect that I think we can find a promising line of research for better explaining Eco’s theory of realism. (shrink)

We live in societies emphasizing security and its complementary side of fear. In this work, I analyze the peripheral messages disseminated in the urban environment, whose function is that of regulating human and collective conduct through orienting specific forms of affective meaning-making. According to the perspective of Cultural Psychology of Semiotic Dynamics, affect and cognition work always together. Affect has the primacy in the relationship with the world and on top of affective distinctions we build conceptual distinctions. Thus, (...) I describe a type of semiotic process I have called “atmos-fear,” that works through the production of empty representamen that frames meaning. The concept of “atmos-fear” could be fruitfully developed to understand phenomena of politics, communication and construction of the Other in contemporary societies, where the dialogical relationship between security and fear is at stake. (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)

This book presents programmatic texts on biosemiotics, written collectively by world leading scholars in the field (Deacon, Emmeche, Favareau, Hoffmeyer, Kull, Markoš, Pattee, Stjernfelt). In addition, the book includes chapters which focus closely on semiotic case studies (Bruni, Kotov, Maran, Neuman, Turovski). According to the central thesis of biosemiotics, sign processes characterise all living systems and the very nature of life, and their diverse phenomena can be best explained via the dynamics and typology of sign relations. The authors (...) are therefore presenting a deeper view on biological evolution, intentionality of organisms, the role of communication in the living world and the nature of sign systems - all topics which are described in this volume. This has important consequences on the methodology and epistemology of biology and study of life phenomena in general, which the authors aim to help the reader better understand. (shrink)

How is linguistic communication possible? How do we come to share the same meanings of words and utterances? One classical position holds that human beings share a transcendental “platonic” ideality independent of individual cognition and language use (Frege 1948). Another stresses immanent linguistic relations (Saussure 1959), and yet another basic embodied structures as the ground for invariant aspects of meaning (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Here we propose an alternative account in which the possibility for sharing meaning is motivated by four (...) sources of structural stability: 1) the physical constraints and affordances of our surrounding material environment, 2) biological constraints of our human bodies, 3) social normative constraints of culture and society, and 4) the local history of social interactions. These structures and constraints interact in dynamical ways in actual language usage situations: local dialogical and social dynamics motivate and stabilize the profiling of a conceptual space already highly structured by our shared biology, culture, and environment. We will substantiate this perspective with reference to recent studies in experimental pragmatics and semiotics in which participants interact linguistically to solve cooperative tasks. Three main cases will be considered: The dynamic grounding of linguistic categories, the construction of conceptual models to relate entities in a scene, and the construction of shared conceptual scales for assessing and appraising subjective experiences. (shrink)

According to C. S. Peirce, resemblance or similarity is the basis for the relationship of iconic signs to their dynamical objects. But what is the basis of resemblance or similarity itself and how is the phenomenon of iconicity generated? How does it function in cultural practices and processes by which various forms of signs are generated (say, for example, the cartographical procedures by which maps are drawn, more generally, the diagrammatic ones by which networks of relationships are iconically represented)? To (...) what extent are they themselves performances (maps are always both the result of mappings andthe impetus for re-mappings)? With examples from texts by Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald and Reif Larsen, I will argue that literary texts provide us with uniqueresources for exploring, among other matters, the performative dimension of iconicity in the complex interaction among icon, index and metaphor as aprerequisite for semiosis, the generation of signs. (shrink)

The right to a fair trial as a fundamental human right has been widely established in the international community. While the notion of a fair trial is typically associated with procedural safeguards, fairness can be reflected in spatial dimensions. Courtroom design, apart from achieving its main functional objectives, reflects the institutional ideology of how justice can be staged in public. In alignment with the perspective that courtroom as theatre consists of a sign system, this paper adopts a semiotic approach (...) to the courtroom setting of Chinese criminal trials. With a thick description of space, mobility and attire, it attempts to probe into how judicial ideology is symbolically framed in the field. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork of three courts, this paper discusses how courtroom space is constructed semiotically as a performative stage on which legal dramas unfold. Ultimately this paper argues that a semiotic investigation of Chinese courtrooms will shed light on an understanding of its judicial value, ideology of justice and dynamics of power relationship. (shrink)