Today, data and intervening digital media provide critical lines of communication with our social and business connections. Even those we know personally will typically connect to us via digital means. As a consequence, data and the digital space add a third dimension to the individual: we are now mind, body and digitality. This essay considers how digitality affects outcomes for the individual by exploring the mechanisms of digital influence. By using Peirce’s theory of semiosis to explain the process of digital (...) translation, this essay demonstrates how digitality influences the development of the individual, undermines personal autonomy and changes the nature of legal personhood thereby providing points for future legal intervention. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the broad applicability of the concept of symbol in human communication, beyond but including verbal language. The starting point is Charles Sanders Peirce’s understanding of symbolicity as signification grounded on habits. The goal is to be able to conceptualize mediality in general and media interrelations, particularly in relation to symbolicity. Informed by a multimodal view on media, the author provides a systematic overview of symbolicity within the context of communication among human minds structured around two crossing parameters: (...) symbols being limited or widespread among people and symbols not being part of or being part of systems – languages. Based on this overview, I clarify the role of culture in language notions and conceptualize language in relation to mediality. I also suggest a way of more precisely describing similarities and differences between languages and media types, without either conflating or totally separating the two concepts. Finally, I investigate how the dependence of language and media type conceptions on culture affects the idea of intermediality. Together, these investigations and conceptualizations promote a more comprehensive understanding of symbolicity in general and a deeper knowledge of the role of symbolicity in human communication, including verbal language, and intermedial relations involving all kinds of different media types. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 423-446.