The present article is divided into two parts. Its theoretical introductory part takes under scrutiny how proper name has been previously dealt with in linguistics, philosophy and semiotics. The purpose of this short overview is to synthesise different approaches that could be productive in the semiotic analysis of naming practices. Author proposes that proper names should not be seen as a linguistic element or a type of (indexical) signs, but rather as a function that can be carried by different linguistic (...) units. This approach allows us to develop a transdisciplinary basis for a wider understanding of naming as a sociocultural practice. The empirical part of the article uses one certain village in Estonia in Laane-Virumaa district as an example to demonstrate how toponyms structure the social space, how they carry the memory and how naming practice highlights such changes in the semiotic behaviour of the social life that otherwise could have remained hidden. (shrink)

Juri Lotman. Mask in an artistic world of Gogol, and the masks of Anatoli Kaplan. The paper deals with an intersemiotic problem — how it is possible to represent a verbal image by the means of sculpture. It was written as an afterword for a German edition of N. Gogol’s Dead Souls (illustrated by photos on mask-sculpures by Anatoli Kaplan) thus using a style meant for general reader. However, it includes a deep analysis and several important conclusions about the fancy (...) worlds of Gogol and Kaplan, and about the possibilities to create connections between them. It is stressed that the very artistic illustration is possible only due to its independence, due to the subjective seeing of the author. (shrink)

This article attempts to analyse Russian postmodernist poetics, proceeding from the concept of the “trans-semiotic stairs”, as presented by J. Faryno for describing the avant-garde. Examples from various texts are used to demonstrate how postmodernist texts contain divergent processes: the culturally specific and unique dissolves in tautology, meaningful entireties are dispersed into atomized empty particles. The significant teleological model of the avant-garde ceases to function here. A play by J. Brodsky, Marble, is examined on this background, as well as the (...) position of the author that differs from the “postmodernist” context. (shrink)

The present article is divided into two parts. Its theoretical introductory part takes under scrutiny how proper name has been previously dealt with in linguistics, philosophy and semiotics. The purpose of this short overview is to synthesise different approaches that could be productive in the semiotic analysis of naming practices. Author proposes that proper names should not be seen as a linguistic element or a type of (indexical) signs, but rather as a function that can be carried by different linguistic (...) units. This approach allows us to develop a transdisciplinary basis for a wider understanding of naming as a sociocultural practice. The empirical part of the article uses one certain village in Estonia in Laane-Virumaa district as an example to demonstrate how toponyms structure the social space, how they carry the memory and how naming practice highlights such changes in the semiotic behaviour of the social life that otherwise could have remained hidden. (shrink)

The present article is divided into two parts. Its theoretical introductory part takes under scrutiny how proper name has been previously dealt with in linguistics, philosophy and semiotics. The purpose of this short overview is to synthesise different approaches that could be productive in the semiotic analysis of naming practices. Author proposes that proper names should not be seen as a linguistic element or a type of signs, but rather as a function that can be carried by different linguistic units. (...) This approach allows us to develop a transdisciplinary basis for a wider understanding of naming as a sociocultural practice. The empirical part of the article uses one certain village in Estonia in Lääne-Virumaa district as an example to demonstrate how toponyms structure the social space, how they carry the memory and how naming practice highlights such changes in the semiotic behaviour of the social life that otherwise could have remained hidden. (shrink)