Dass wir alle in einer gemeinsamen Wirklichkeit leben, setzen wir meist unhinterfragt voraus. Sehen Andere die Welt dann doch einmal anders, mag es uns scheinen, als sähen sie diese einfach nicht so, wie sie wirklich ist. Schwerer fällt uns anzuerkennen, dass andere zuweilen in ganz anderen Wirklichkeiten unterwegs sind als wir selbst. - Tom Poljansek zeigt, wie sich die Vorstellung einer Pluralität menschlicher Wirklichkeiten mit der Annahme einer wahrnehmungsunabhängigen Realität vereinbaren lässt, ohne sich in einen Relativismus der vielen Wirklichkeiten zu (...) verlaufen. In Auseinandersetzung mit »kontinentalen« und »analytischen« Ansätzen legt er eine elegante Theorie menschlicher Wirklichkeiten vor, die konstruktivistische und realistische, phänomenologische und naturalistische Motive unerwartet miteinander verbindet. (shrink)

Rhythm is generally taken to refer to a temporal pattern of events. Yet in recent years, across diverse fields in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, it has come to serve as the conceptual marker for a wide range of new approaches to understanding relations and relationality, following most explicitly from the late work of Henri Lefebvre. This article explores the temporal aspect of such relational thinking, in particular asking how time is implicated in relations, and how it can be (...) meaningful in those relations. The sense of time is surveyed from the perspectives of both cognition and metaphysics as well as with reference to music scholarship and social theory, and key threads are drawn, from the writings of Gaston Bachelard and Charles Sanders Peirce in particular, in order to suggest that time can be a sign, and that the signifying properties of rhythm have critical social consequences. (shrink)

Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...) needs to delineate a semiotic threshold, which is a problem not encountered by evolutionary epistemologists. Instead, the latter recognizes that all organisms are knowers that evolve knowledge, which they recognize to extend toward phenomena produced by organisms such as behavior, cognition, language, culture, science, and technology. Secondly, biosemiotics attempts at continuing adaptationist notions on how organisms relate to their environment, while especially Applied Evolutionary Epistemology comes to redefine the nature of the organism–environment relationship in such a way that it recognizes the spatiotemporal boundedness of existence, which in turn makes adaptationist accounts obsolete. (shrink)

The article deals with diversity of language signs in legal terminology. The aim of the article is to show the influence of both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors on the specificity of various linguistic units in the legal terminology. Though all terminological systems possess some similar features, there may be certain traits characteristic only for some of them. As specific systems of signs, legal terminologies show some peculiarities that are discussed in the article from the point of view of oppositions to (...) highlight the semiotic specifics of language units used by lawyers and also the organization of the terminological system under consideration. The oppositions under consideration emerge due to both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Extra-linguistic factors determine such oppositions as terminology of law: terminology of jurisprudence, modern terminology: historical terminology, terms: nomenclature signs. Linguistic factors stipulate the opposition of primary and derived terms. A combination of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors determines the following oppositions: native terms: borrowed terms, terms of the basic terminological system: terms attracted from other spheres of knowledge. Within these types of oppositions a number of more specific ones were elicited. The interaction of synchronic and diachronic approaches the article is based on allowed the authors to focus on the permanent semantic properties of the language signs pertaining to tribal customary and modern law, and on those emerging in the course of the evolution of law. (shrink)

12th century scholar al-Ghazali wrote about a variety of topics and his distinctive points of view of them allowed him to make his marks on a civilization. The first topics that come to mind with regards to al-Ghazali are suspicion, knowledge and experience. He went through an era of crisis of suspicion at one point of his life and he managed to make it out of that crisis of depression thanks to ‘a divine light Allah put in his heart”. This (...) paper aims to study and clarify his view about knowledge in the context of suspicion and the point he arrived at as a result. It also aims to emphasize the parts for which he was influenced by previous philosophers while constructing his views, Avicenna and Farabi in particular, and makes comparisons on some occasions. This method applies particularly to the part where his view of the inadequacy of reason in the field of metaphysics is discussed. This Study is composed of the topics of how aGhazali approaches reason, what he means by reason, how knowledge could be obtained and finally, the breakthrough he brought about in the classification of sciences. Sourcing from his understanding of knowledge. (shrink)

What is the most important reason for using Computer Vision methods in humanities research? In this article, I argue that the use of numerical representation and data analysis methods offers a new language for describing cultural artifacts, experiences and dynamics. The human languages such as English or Russian that developed rather recently in human evolution are not good at capturing analog properties of human sensorial and cultural experiences. These limitations become particularly worrying if we want to compare thousands, millions or (...) billions of artifacts—i.e. to study contemporary media and cultures at their new twenty-first century scale. When we instead use numerical measurements of image properties standard in Computer Vision, we can better capture details of a single artifact as well as visual differences between a number of artifacts–even if they are very small. The examples of visual dimensions that numbers can capture better then languages include color, shape, texture, contours, composition, and visual characteristics of represented faces, bodies and objects. The methods of finding structures and relationships in large numerical datasets developed in statistics and machine learning allow us to extend this analysis to very big datasets of cultural objects. Equally importantly, numerical image features used in Computer Vision also give us a new language to represent gradual and continuous temporal changes—something which natural languages are also bad at. This applies to both single artworks such as a film or a dance piece and also to changes in visual characteristics in millions of artifacts over decades or centuries. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of coining terms and nomenclature signs with proper names illustrated by the example of the English language legal terminology. The article begins with the discussion of the problems of intersection of two linguistic areas and differentiation between terms and nomenclature signs. It is observed that linguistic units with proper names possess a cultural specificity in the legal English as compared to the Russian terminological system of law. Linguistic and extra-linguistic factors influencing language units’ formation (...) with the help of proper names in legal English, their structural and semantic specificity are revealed. The latter is considered from the point of view of the two-level semantics of language signs. The authors come to the following conclusions: structural variability of the units under consideration especially strongly manifest in formation of legal nomenclature; systemic linguistic oppositions of terms and nomenclature signs with proper names determine the semantics of these units; the basis of the meaning of a term and a nomenclature sign is a notion, its essential components being included into the definitions; differential semes of the meanings are assigned to the proper name elements of terms; all semes of nomenclature signs with proper names constitute an inseparable whole and are not assigned to any specific elements of these units; the meanings of nomenclature signs with proper names specify those of the terms in the hierarchical structure of the terminological system and in particular legal situations. (shrink)

The prevalent idea that semiosis is evolutionary is a driving point for biosemiotic research, starting from the Peircean premises of continuity and including a large number of views on how signs evolve. In this paper I wish to add a small pinch of skepticism to an otherwise productive point of view. Briefly, the question to be asked is: Is there any proper and fair connection between the logical abstraction of signs, genetic expressions interpreted as signs and the animal usage of (...) signs? And how do we go about answering this? Instead of attempting a negative account of the possibility of an evolutionary view of biosemiosis, I will attempt to make an argument in favor of skepticism as a way to make a more fine-grained distinction across the areas where biosemiotic thinking seems to have some impact. The aim is then to find philosophical strategies to overcome this skepticism when possible, while also raising some awareness about the possible limits of current biosemiotics regarding the ideal evolutionary chain of signs. Ultimately, the idea is reexamining some core assumptions of the biosemiotic point of view at its most general, accounting for some possible ways in which theory may move forward. The potential incompatibility of theoretical standpoints between some of the different approaches that may be taken is, it will be argued, a desirable outcome for biosemiotic research. That is, the way we deal with the possible theories on the evolutionary continuity of signs will also affect our different research programs, and having a nuanced philosophical discussion on it can only contribute to the expansion and clarification of where different positions within biosemiotics currently stand. (shrink)

The prevalent idea that semiosis is evolutionary is a driving point for biosemiotic research, starting from the Peircean premises of continuity and including a large number of views on how signs evolve. In this paper I wish to add a small pinch of skepticism to an otherwise productive point of view. Briefly, the question to be asked is: Is there any proper and fair connection between the logical abstraction of signs, genetic expressions interpreted as signs and the animal usage of (...) signs? And how do we go about answering this? Instead of attempting a negative account of the possibility of an evolutionary view of biosemiosis, I will attempt to make an argument in favor of skepticism as a way to make a more fine-grained distinction across the areas where biosemiotic thinking seems to have some impact. The aim is then to find philosophical strategies to overcome this skepticism when possible, while also raising some awareness about the possible limits of current biosemiotics regarding the ideal evolutionary chain of signs. Ultimately, the idea is reexamining some core assumptions of the biosemiotic point of view at its most general, accounting for some possible ways in which theory may move forward. The potential incompatibility of theoretical standpoints between some of the different approaches that may be taken is, it will be argued, a desirable outcome for biosemiotic research. That is, the way we deal with the possible theories on the evolutionary continuity of signs will also affect our different research programs, and having a nuanced philosophical discussion on it can only contribute to the expansion and clarification of where different positions within biosemiotics currently stand. (shrink)

The prevalent idea that semiosis is evolutionary is a driving point for biosemiotic research, starting from the Peircean premises of continuity and including a large number of views on how signs evolve. In this paper I wish to add a small pinch of skepticism to an otherwise productive point of view. Briefly, the question to be asked is: Is there any proper and fair connection between the logical abstraction of signs, genetic expressions interpreted as signs and the animal usage of (...) signs? And how do we go about answering this? Instead of attempting a negative account of the possibility of an evolutionary view of biosemiosis, I will attempt to make an argument in favor of skepticism as a way to make a more fine-grained distinction across the areas where biosemiotic thinking seems to have some impact. The aim is then to find philosophical strategies to overcome this skepticism when possible, while also raising some awareness about the possible limits of current biosemiotics regarding the ideal evolutionary chain of signs. Ultimately, the idea is reexamining some core assumptions of the biosemiotic point of view at its most general, accounting for some possible ways in which theory may move forward. The potential incompatibility of theoretical standpoints between some of the different approaches that may be taken is, it will be argued, a desirable outcome for biosemiotic research. That is, the way we deal with the possible theories on the evolutionary continuity of signs will also affect our different research programs, and having a nuanced philosophical discussion on it can only contribute to the expansion and clarification of where different positions within biosemiotics currently stand. (shrink)

This article argues for basic similarities between folkloric and literary narratives. It deals with the relation between narrative structure and the constituent sentences of the narrative text and proposes an adaptation of Hjelmslev's notion of connotative semiotics to account for this. It also draws upon philosophy of action and Austin's 'A Plea for Excuses'.

I would say that syntax is a significant, if shifty, index of a writer's perspective on his subject-matter. In this light, please consider the syntax of my title. It is two nouns connected by a logical term, ‘as’. On one version of the programme for this lecture series, the word ‘as’ is misprinted as ‘and’; this makes a big difference. A simple conjunction of two nouns, ‘Literature and Discourse’, would suggest that I accept the meanings of the two words as (...) stable, unanalysed. The connective ‘as’, however, is intended to announce that this juxtaposition of the two noun terms is an analysis of the two nouns, particularly the first – an examination of the nature of the first term in the light of the meaning of the second. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – (...) its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

This research uses semiotic of metaphor to unmask the underlying meaning beneath the semiotic of consumerism on television advertisements. This research attempts to explain how advertised products are being used, through the means of semiotic of metaphor by scrutinizing the dynamic relationship between sign and signifier. Semiotic of metaphor makes the products ‘alive’ within human society hence, this implies that the very existence of human beings is no longer determined by the presence of another human being, instead the very existence (...) is now determined by the presence of certain commercial products in possession. The society, in term of consumerism, views the products as animate or living entities within the sphere of living. Commercial advertisements use metaphorical expressions to relate and exchange in two major concepts: products are humans, and humans are products’ users. Thus, nowadays, humans tend to seek their purpose of living and existence through consumerism. The result of this research shows that television commercial advertisements mainly work by means of certain metaphorical symbolism: it shapes society’s perspective into believing that the very existence of human beings, the actualization of self, and differentiations among them are achieved by using or purchasing certain advertised products therefore, the products serve as the symbols of those achievements. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 557-599.

In the Chinese tradition, the relationship between art and philosophy is conceptually explored in terms of the relationship between dao and wen, which may respectively be viewed as representing philosophy and art. Over history, discourses on dao 道 and wen 文 are central to studies of Chinese literature, art, culture, and civilization. But just as dao holds a range of ideas in Chinese philosophy, wen is also one of the most complex terms in Chinese tradition, whose denotations and connotations are (...) multifaceted and open to interpretations. This article argues that the elusive nature of wen can be understood adequately from the perspective of language philosophy and aesthetics via its relationship to the metaphysical principle of the Dao. By examining the discourses on wen and dao, this article advances a thesis with three interrelated ideas: wen as manifestations of the Tao is an instance of “humanized nature”; the birth of wen marked the beginning of reflections on literature and art, hence inaugurating aesthetics in the Chinese tradition; and the early discourses on wen have determined the distinctiveness of Chinese aesthetic consciousness. (shrink)

Over the centuries the term “talent” has changed semantically and slowly transformed itself into a floating signifier or become an accidental designator. The term “talent” no longer has one single meaning and a “referent” in real life, but instead a multiplicity of meaning and references to something beyond real life, something indefinite and indefinable. In other words, today we do not know specifically what the term “talent” in talent management really means or refers to. Indeed, this is problematical, because in (...) late modernity the term “talent” has become a popular and frequently used key term among business consultants and, within the science of human resource management, a cornerstone in the discipline of “talent management”, and not knowing what the term really means will turn any talent discussion, talent identification and talent recruitment into a question of subjectivity and belief in talent rather than objectivity and knowledge of talent. (shrink)

Combining insights from narrative analysis in sociology and trope theory in anthropology, this article develops a theory of tropes that emphasizes their historical production and political effects. Tropes function politically to enable some narratives, identities and resolutions while foreclosing others. As a powerful tool for socio-historical analysis, a consideration of tropes is crucial for deconstructing the taken-for-granted predicates and the `dangerous' consequences of political narratives. To illustrate the argument, the trope of `the Sixties' is analyzed as a case study.

Seeing the limitation of the thesis of ‘mediatisation of religion’ (Hjarvard 2008; 2011), I would like to present a case study of Buddhist organisational usage of televisual discourse in Taiwan in this article. The example of one of the most watched prime-time docudramas—Da-Ai Drama (produced by an iconic Taiwanese Buddhist organisation, Tzu-Chi)—challenges the limited scope of ‘mediatisation of religion’ and encourages a critical review of the terms ‘religions’ and ‘secularisation’. The article also explicates the way in which Tzu-Chi utilizes multimedia (...) approach to transfer the ideal of celestial Bodhisattva into a discourse of ‘human Bodhisattva’, which encourages the laity to participate in Tzu-Chi's voluntary programmes. A sect of acting philosophy is reinforced through multimedia approach and a wide range of voluntary programmes in the organisation. (shrink)

Donald Davidson and John Searle famously differ, among other things, on the issue of animal thoughts. Davidson seems to be a latter-day Cartesian, denying any propositional thought to subhuman animals, while Searle seems to follow Hume in claiming that if we have thoughts, then animals do, too. Davidson’s argument centers on the idea that language is necessary for thought, which Searle rejects. The paper argues two things. Firstly, Searle eventually argues that much of a more complex thought does depend on (...) language, which reduces a distance between himself and Davidson. Secondly, some of Davidson’s suggestions are promising – in particular the idea that we may lack a vocabulary to capture the contents of animal thoughts. Based on this insight, one might, pace Davidson, grant thoughts to animals. However, this does not mean, pace Searle, that it should be possible to construe even the simplest of such thoughts as propositional. Perhaps we need to move beyond Davidson and Searle by developing a theory of nonpropositional thought for animals. (shrink)

The paper will discuss the role of the visual in French urban space. It will reveal the close connections between visual and semiotics where the visual dimension is central rather than marginal. We will evaluate altogether the psychological, legal and social impacts of the new shapes of our own environment. Rethinking our public space shapes our identities, unveils the ‘hidden’ powerful discourse behind these new urban models.

A life form and its environment constitute an essential unit, a microcosm. This microcosm is sustained by a privileged dialectic relationship in which the embedded agent- an entity endowed with a particular physical architecture- and its specific environment, coupled, mutually influence each other. Identical principles rule both the basic forms of semiotic organisation and the upper forms. When we distinguish these two levels of semiotic structuring we are distinguishing the semiotic relations that involve a stimulus-response relationship, which is dyadic in (...) nature, from those that involve a more complex relationship where the capacity of symbolically encoding allows organisms to go beyond the immediacy of sensory awareness. However in all instances of semiotic structuring, there is the presence of a living system that evolves in an environment individuating and assigning a value to typical environmental features. Acknowledging this fact is crucial: the inquiry into how elemental life forms interact with their environments leads to the identification of the fundamental role played by the physical architecture of the agent and sheds light on the semiotic process that is common to all life forms, ultimately highlighting the very nature of meaning and reality. (shrink)

This paper revisits Giorgio Agamben’s text The Time That Remains and through a comparative analysis contrasts the author’s reading of St Paul’s Romans to relevant Derridean thematics prevalent in the text. Specific themes include language, the law, and the subject. I illustrate how Agamben attempts to revitalise the idea of philosophical anthropology by breaking away from the deconstructive approach. Agamben argues that language is an experience but is currently in a state of nihilism. Consequently, the subject has become lost; or, (...) more specifically, the subject and its object have not disappeared in language but through language. The resuscitation of experience is thus required to defeat this condition: only in language does the subject have its site and origin. Unlike deconstruction, which highlights an inherent paradox within a situation unearthing a questionable foundation, Agamben argues that, by investigating the “exception,” one finds neither a norm nor an inherent truth of the situation, but the confusion which surrounds them both. (shrink)

By comparing some founding concepts underlying developing interest in the role of signs and symbols in social life, such as the nature of the sign in Charles Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure and in Emile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead, and then exploring recent developments in structuralism and symbolic interactionism, a critical appraisal of their theories of meaning is made in the context of an emerging semiotic sociology.

This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss’s failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of communications research in connection with the Centre d’Études des Communications de Masse (CECMAS). Although semioticians and poststructuralists used cybernetic discourse (...) critically and ironically, I argue that their embrace of a ‘textocratic’ perspective – that is, a theory of power and epistemology as tied to technical inscription – sustained elements of the technocratic reasoning dating back to these 1920s efforts to reform French universities. (shrink)

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

Naming, according to Sebeok, constihttes the first stage of zoosemiotics. This special but common use of language acrually inaugurates more complicated procedures of human discourse on non-human kingdom, including classification of its members. Because of language's double articulation in sound and sense, as well as the grapheme's pleremic (meaning-full) rather than cenemic (meaning-empty) characteristic (according to Hjelmslev). Chinese script is capable of naming and grouping animals randomly but effectively. This paper attempts to describe the said scriptorial "necessity of naming" (Kripke) (...) in classical Chinese by citing all the creatures, real or fabulous, with a /ma/ (horse) radical. (shrink)

This article examines fashion models as gender myths and cultural iconsthrough a cultural history of modelling. It reveals the construction of models’ personas by the successive addition of meaningful signs:physique, manner, attitude, nationality, class, race, salary, chameleonism, slenderness and so on. On the basis of empirical material on models’ experiences gathered from interviews, secondary oral sources and autobiographical material, the author approaches models’ bodies, identities and public personas as artefacts performed through the reiteration of collectively defined gender standards and practices. (...) This approach overcomes the contrast cast in fashion discourse between visibility/invisibility, private/public, real/unreal while disclosing the hegemonic beauty standards as fiction. (shrink)

Fugue and chaos are used in their contemporary meaning. Elements of the fugue, albeit a ‎small number of universals, will be demonstrated in the area of visual and verbal colors. ‎Chaos dominates the internet, fashion, and everyday life. The visual and verbal colors are ‎differentiated and their communicative potential is indicated alongside the diachronic changes. The prototypes of colors are the interface between visual and verbal colors.‎.

The paper analyses aspects of multilingual and multimodal narratives employed during the COVID-19 lockdown, attempting to identify how they were used in professional and public environments. More specifically, the paper looks at editing choices, photography, design, drawing, colour, and writing to get a better understanding of multimodal communication, semiotics, image analysis, and their correlation with the written text and the way it has been perceived and interpreted, be it in online or print-based contexts. Methodologically, this is a contrastively inspired research (...) project, looking specifically at Portuguese-speaking contexts of the Island of Madeira and English-speaking contexts of the United Kingdom, taking into account instructions about the COVID-19 pandemic. These are mainly bilingual English–Portuguese and multilingual texts, multimodal manifestations, and communicative and semiotic effectiveness. (shrink)

The paper is focused on Genesis 1 – 3 where the primordial man [adàm] is created ‎and he was given the proper name Adam [adàm]. ‎ In Hebrew man and Adam are the same word, spelled the same way – [adàm]. ‎Different translations of Genesis 1-3 use for the first time the proper name Adam in ‎different places versions Gen 2:25; The German Luther ‎Bible Gen 3:8; Some English Protestant versions Gen 3:17; Bulgarian Protestant and many ‎English Protestant versions Gen (...) 3:20-21). The paper decodes the phenomenon by ‎studying the Hebrew original and several semiotic views on common and proper names ‎‎. Through these opinions the ‎important question “Who wrote the Bible?” is discussed. The analysis interfaces the new ‎linguistic relativity theory.‎ Four layers of symbolism are decoded: 1. The man became Adam; 2. The two men in ‎Gen 1:27 and in Gen 2:7 man [adàm] ‎is made by earth, ground [adamà]; 3. The two men in the New Testament ; 4. Edom, Adam and cultural discourses in both Testaments.‎. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Reports of widespread misconduct in organizations have become sadly commonplace. Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, accounting fraud in large corporations, and physical and sexual harassment in the military implicate not only the individuals involved, but the organizations and fields in which they happened. In this paper we describe such situations as instances of “moral collapse” and develop a multi-level theory of moral collapse that draws on institutional theory as its central orienting lens. We draw on institutional theory because of (...) its explicit concern with the relationships among individual beliefs and actions, the organizations within which they occur, and the collective social structures in which norms, rules and beliefs are anchored. Our theory of moral collapse has two main elements. First, we argue that morality in organizations is embedded in nested systems of individuals, organizations and moral communities in which ideology and regulation flow “down” from moral communities through organizations to individuals, and moral ideas and influence flow “upward” from individuals through organizations to moral communities. Second, we argue that moral collapse is associated with breakdowns in these flows, and explore conditions under which such breakdowns are likely to occur. (shrink)

The semantically ambiguous nature of the sign and aspects of non-classicality of elementary matter as described by quantum theory show remarkable coherent analogy. We focus on how the ambiguous nature of the image, text and art work bears functional resemblance to the dynamics of contextuality, entanglement, superposition, collapse and decoherence as these phenomena are known in quantum theory. These quantumlike properties in linguistic signs have previously been identified in formal descritions of e.g. concept combinations and mental lexicon representations and have (...) been reported on in the literature. In this approach the informationalized, communicated, mediatized conceptual configuration—of e.g. the art work—in the personal reflected mind behaves like a quantum state function in a higher dimensional complex space, in which it is time and again contextually collapsed and further cognitively entangled. The observer–consumer of signs becomes the empowered ‘produmer’ creating the cognitive outcome of the interaction, while loosing most of any ‘classical givenness’ of the sign. These quantum-like descriptions are now developed here in four example aesthetic signs; the installation Mist room by Ann Veronica Janssens, the installation Sections of a happy moment by David Claerbout, the photograph The Falling Man by Richard Drew and the documentary Huicholes. The Last Peyote Guardians by Vilchez and Stefani. Our present work develops further the use of a previously developed quantum model for concept representation in natural language. In our present approach of the aesthetic sign, we extend to individual—idiosyncratic—observer contexts instead of socially shared group contexts, and as such also include multiple idiosyncratic creation of meaning and experience. This irreducible superposition emerges as the core feature of the aesthetic sign and is most critically embedded in the ‘no-interpretation’ interpretation of the documentary signal. (shrink)

The majority of those who comment upon the theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe - both supporters and critics - treat the work of the two authors as a coherent unity. I see acute differences that demarcate the ideas of Laclau and Mouffe: differences that impede any straightforward delimitation of the authorial identity `Laclau and Mouffe'. The purpose of this paper is to bring to the fore the incommensurate political differences that separate the work of the two authors, and (...) to establish the superiority of Mouffe's position. At its most basic both authors view politics as described in their co-authored Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: i.e. `as a practice of creation, reproduction and transformation of social relations' (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985: 153). This agreement, however, conceals the fact that the authors describe the political articulation of social relations in distinct ways, and that those descriptions are implicated in, and reinforce, contrasting ethico-political commitments and prescriptions. These differences reflect the differences between the politics of the Marxist tradition retained by Laclau - albeit understood as a negative apparition of its former (ultimately) fully positive self - and Mouffe's radical democratic pluralism. This latter perspective - in its more recent formulations - represents a political compound of civic-republicanism with a defense of liberalism; this is a political imaginary that retains little if anything from the Marxist tradition. (shrink)

Timo Maran has defined “biosemiotic criticism” as the study of human culture with an emphasis on the recognition that all forms of life are organized by sign processes. That approach guides this investigation of the sonic devices and practices that have been used in encounters between birds and humans in agricultural spaces. “Bird-scaring” has been a long-standing component of the semiotic relationship between humans and birds in what I am calling the agricultural semiosphere. The struggle between humans and “pest” species (...) over the control of agricultural resources has spurred technological development, and an examination of the sonic tools that have been involved in bird-scaring practices, from wooden rattles to digital sound recordings, intersects with scholarship on sound technology and media studies. The field of ecoacoustics provides a conceptual framework for the sonic dynamics of the interspecies communication under examination. To the extent that the essay also explores the sign relations between humans and birds it has a place in the growing corpus of biosemiotic criticism. The historical account of bird-scaring practices is presented in three sections, demarcated by changes in technology as well as shifts in the mode of semiotic reference. Across the analysis, a historical approach to bird-scaring is interwoven with a discussion of biosemiotic and ecoacoustic themes and concepts. (shrink)

We propose a new relational direction in higher education that acknowledges external and internal images as integrated in thinking and learning. We expand educational theory and practice that commonly rely on discrete conceptual developments that exclude images. Our argument epistemologically relies on certain semiotic views that consider the role of iconic signs and iconicity (meaning making by the virtue of similarity) as significant in relation to knowledge and learning. The analogical and imaginative work required to discover similarity between external pictures (...) and any educational concept is a form of iconic mind work that opens a space for transformational thinking and creative solutions. The novelty of our argument lies in the schematic philosophy of mind by C.S. Peirce, and specifically, an adaptation of Peirce’s triadic sign diagram for learning, exemplified via an ‘inquiry graphic’ sign and reflective method. This outlook seeks connections in diversity, arguing for an education that acknowledges and teaches intrinsic human relatedness to other humans, beings and things in the environment, thus challenging any notions of anthropocentrism and superiority. It calls for a reaction in international higher education to acknowledge the iconicity of concepts and thinking and embrace integrated image-concept signs for deep and critical teaching-learning, towards a modest educational contribution to counteracting social and environmental crises. (shrink)

The introduction claims that there might exist an evolutionary bridge from possible genres in nature to human cultural genres. A sub-hypothesis is that basic life-conditions, partly common for animals and humans, in the long run can generate so-called life-genres. To investigate such hypotheses a framework of interrelated key communicational concepts is outlined in the second, main part. Four levels are suggested. Signs are seen as elements in utterances. Further, sufficiently similar utterances can be perceived as kinds of utterances or genres. (...) Genres are kinds of communication in a species' life-world. Utterance and genre are the framework’s key concepts. Both are seen as products and processes and as constituted by five reciprocal aspects: form, content, act, time, and space, the necessary elements to initiate and interpret communication. A model illustrates this integrative principle. Part three dwells with the idea of life-genres, and part four exemplifies and problematises how a chimpanzee’s ‘begging’ for meat, a fish’s nest-making, and kinds of birdsongs, could be seen as possible life-genres. The last, short part gives a brief summary, highlights challenges, and reflects over the framework’s relevance for biosemiotics. (shrink)

By reflecting on a variety of cartoon representations of teachers and their work, this paper outlines a semiotic approach to undertaking research on teachers' professional cultures.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 1-29.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 89-126.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 205 Seiten: 115-148.

Is visual argumentation possible? My personal opinion is that it is, despite of the burden of verbal argumentation and the numerous critiques made against visual arguments. Insofar as most of these critiques are related to the difference between words and images, I will focus my paper on this issue, which is a theoretical one, as it seems to me that taking these critiques seriously is a first step before analyzing concretely how visual arguments work.

This essay attempts to explore trademark law and the marks themselves from a semiotic viewpoint to provide a deeper understanding to (trademark) law as a system of signs. Although the language of trademark law may suggest slightly different meanings, for the purpose of this essay “trademark” will refer to an area of law (unless otherwise indicated) and “mark” will refer to the individual sign. The first part of this essay will provide a brief overview of semiotics. Second, it will outline (...) a general look at trademark law as set forth in the Lanham Act. The third section is a semiotic approach to provide a deeper understanding of trademark law. Finally, the essay will analyze a seminal trademark case whilst using semiotics to address legal meaning within the case. Semiotics teaches that no absolute meaning can be found. This essay, then, attempts to secure at least one particular meaning of the Qualitex case and what it means in trademark law today. (shrink)