General Semiotics Research Articles

The Critique of Glottocentricism

Abstract As general semiotics, semiotics provides a general theory of sign and correlate sign model. As such, semiotics avoids limitations connected with so called Saussurean sémiologie (in reality connected with information theory and the concepts of code and message). One limitation is glottocentrism which is phonocentric, anthropocentric, ethnocentric. When glottocentrism prevails, semiotics cannot adequately account for communication, modeling, and dialogism as generated in human biosemiosis, in the interconnection between verbal and nonverbal. We propose to critique glottocentrism in global semiotic terms, following European scholars (Barthes, Derrida, Kristeva, Rossi-Landi) and beyond (Bakhtin, Sebeok, Morris). Dialogue among these voices is transnational, translinguistic, transdisciplinary. Moreover, as indicated by “semioethics” (introduced by Augusto Ponzio and myself), our approach accounts for the sign’s vocation for the other.

Journals of semiotics in the world

Hereby we provide a list of all semiotic journals currently published in the world, which includes 53 titles. From among these, 42 are printed on paper (among them six international journals on general semiotics, 16 journals specializing in some branch of semiotics, and 20 regional semiotics journals), while 11 appear only as electronic publications. All in all, these journals publish articles in 16 languages.

Semiotics and Picture

Arab scientists gave this sign science the name “alsimiotika”, Europeans prefer to use the term “semiology”. Americans prefer to use “semiotics”, after the American thinker and philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce have used it. Semiotics belong, whatever its label, from its origins and its methodology to structural. Semiotics is a field of knowledge that have characterized recent studies, and since its appearance it is concerned with the interpretation of the meanings, the signs, and the symbols. General semiotics is believed that it is still in its beginning, and in pre-form of evolution as a science. Said Benkrad sees the mechanism to determine the nature of the image, is to know the way through the image reaches the eye, considering that the transfer on the subject is represented by an iconic bond that suggests the relationship between the image and significance is a relation based on similarities that make both transmit without mediator.

Sign Systems Studies and the Semiotic Journals of the World

Abstract This article provides a brief overview of the journal Sign Systems Studies, apparently the oldest journal of semiotics in the world. It was established by Juri Lotman in 1964, produced in Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. In addition, we provide a list of all semiotic journals currently published in the world, which includes 46 titles; from these 39 are printed on paper (among them 6 international journals on general semiotics, 14 specialized in some branch of semiotics, and 19 regional semiotics journals). Seven journals appear exclusively on the web. Altogether these journals publish articles in 16 languages.

Semiotica Tartuensis: Jakob von Uexkiill and Juri Lotman

Abstract The essay provides a brief analysis of correspondence between two scholars whose heritage forms the basis of contemporary Tartu semiotics-Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) and Juri Lotman (1922-1993). A comparison between Uexküll's and Lotman's work demonstrates a series of features in which their approaches are in concord. We find some aspects of local culture as supportive of their way of thinking. We also claim that the theoretical integration of Jakob Uexküll's and Juri Lotman's approaches is at the heart of the contemporary semiotics, which has a task to develop a theoretical and methodological apparatus that would delimit and specify the scope of general semiotics and that could be used as a basis for all branches of semiotics.

Signs and terminology: Science caught between language and perception

After briefly discussing various problems that can result from linguistic ambiguities, I attempt to provide an introduction and overview of various aspects and theories that are relevant to scientific terminology. These include a general semiotics (i.e., theory of signs), the distinction of semantic conceptual content and aesthetic nonconceptual content and their relationship to each other, a discussion of different types of scientific concepts (e.g., essentialistic and cluster classes, natural kinds, type approach), and the importance of specifying epistemological recognition criteria for empirical concepts in addition to their ontological theoretical definitions and the specification of contexts in which the concepts are used and on which theories they depend upon. I then provide a distinction of raw data, data, metadata, information and knowledge, and discuss the relation between images and data and how efforts to standardize data and metadata can affect scientific terminology. I briefly introduce new methods and techniques for increasing semantic transparency and communicability in science, which include the organization and the management of scientific terms within taxonomies, and their formal representation in ontologies. The usefulness of terminological standardization and its possible negative effects on scientific progress is then discussed, and finally the question is addressed of whether one can distinguish types of terminologies that benefit from standardization from those that could suffer from it.

Juri Lotman in English: Bibliography

The bibliography provides a list of all known English-language publications by Juri M. Lotman (including in co-authorship and reprints), in chronological order, described de visu. The first English translation of J. Lotman’s work appeared in 1973, altogether there is 109 entries in the list. The bibliography demonstrates that in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the translations were published in the context of slavistics, whereas after 2000 Lotman’s work starts to appear in the anthologies of general semiotics.

Nonwestern semiotics and its possible impact on the composition of semiotics theory in the future

We traditionally are used to a dichotomy between theoretical and applied levels in semiotic studies. Therefore, there exists a general-semiotics as the theoretical mode and a discipline-semiotics as the applied one. Clearly, the existing general semiotics arises from the West and all nonwestern semiotics seem to be reduced to the category of the applied- or discipline-semiotics. However, this scholarly dichotomy tends to be incomplete or unsatisfactory in the semiotic globalization era. This paper intends to point out that general or theoretical semiotics, far from being some original meta-semiotics or “semiotic philosophy,” is itself a synthetic body of a more general theoretical source outside of semiotic proper and found within various disciplinary scholarships. Thus, the composition of theoretical semiotics as such is also related to various conventional disciplines, including nonwestern ones. In this sense, a developed nonwestern or eastern semiotics would contribute also to the progress of semiotic theory in the future.

Life and Temporality: The Place of Biosemiotics within Peirce’s General Semiotics

Abstract I would like to present some new perspectives on the reciprocal foundational links which are discemable between Peirce's general semiotics on the one hand and anthroposemiotic and biosemiotic inquiry on the other. To this end I offer an examination of the peculiar place occupied by temporal relations within the relational framework of Peirce's semiotics. I support these considerations by drawing on previous work about a relational world-view presently emerging as a unifying perspective within diverse fields of inquiry (biology, quantum physics, philosophy of inquiry, and mathematics), which I have previously characterized as a "relational tum". A common, positive feature of these developments is the recognition of the relational nature of physical reality. This portends an implicit repudiation of the traditional nominalistic bias of the physical sciences and removes an important obstacle to the acceptance of semiotic ideas. However these new approaches have, up to now, failed to consider any relations other than dyadic relations or their dyadic combinations. I argue for the need to supplement the Peircean elucidation of semiosis in terms of triadic relations with other equally unique relational features, which I characterize as " radical temporality" and selfreference. A brief sketch of the different roles played by relations of temporality in organisms in general ( biosemiotics) as opposed to organisms immersed in a historically constituted culture of symbols and artifacts (anthroposemiotics) serves to disclose the relations of mutual epistemic dependence that underlie these disciplines.

Social Semiotics as Appliable Semiotics

Abstract Along with the development of semiotic theories by Saussure and Peirce, there emerged another branch of semiotics, social semiotics, in the last few decades. In a way, it is a natural development of general semiotics, and is complementary with it. In contrast to general semiotics, it focuses on parole and the application of the semiotic theories to other fields. In the present article, it shows its features different from the Saussurian and Peircian semiotics,traces its path of development and proposes six characteristics which characterize it as appliable semiotics; social in nature, practical in orientation, resource for meaning-making, cross-discipline, variable and changeable, and multimodal. As appliable semiotics, social semiotics works with the following four aspects; resources for social interactions, liability to change along with the change of contexts, following certain semiotic principles, and performing two major functions; representational and interactional. The result of the application of social semiotics is multimodal discourses, whose areas of research include the following four aspects; discourse and social practice, genre, style and modality. Multimodal discourses are coherent in terms of the following four aspects; rhythm, composition, information-linking and dialogue. Finally, a relative comprehensive theoretical framework of social semiotics as appliable semiotics is designed and presented.

Cybersemiotics and Human Modelling

Cybersemiotics, in forging a new philosophy of science, addresses the failure of all disciplines to recognize and adequately account for qualia and motivation, interrogates the status of ‘knowing’ contra the computational information-processing paradigm, and explores the role of the observer in knowing. The present article discusses these key features of cybersemiotics and, in particular, their consequences for biosemiotics (to which cybersemiotics is a contributor). It argues that the constructivist basis of ‘languaging’ in the cybersemiotic project presents a potential impediment. It suggests that although ‘language’ is clearly in question in conceptualizing ‘knowing’ and ‘observing’, the main issue for cybersemiotics has to do with the more general process of ‘modelling’ that features in biosemiotics. Whilst the future of research in the sphere of biosemiotics will be enhanced by a greater understanding of ‘observership’, the article argues that aspects of the relationship of constructivism and realism will need to be made clear, and that the tools for this are available closer to cybersemiotics’ home in general semiotics.

On the Theory of General Semiotics

Abstract Since I began studying the problems of semiotics in 1990, I have published eight books on the subject (seven in Russian and one in English), as well as many publications in print and in electronic sources. (See a short bibliography of English publications at the end of this paper.) All of these writings were devoted to the problems of general semiotics. In them, I considered a variety of different issues, and dealt with many of them in an original and innovative way that had not been applied before. In this paper, I will elaborate on some of the themes I presented in my other papers. I will focus on those topics that seem to me to be the most important, and will try to discuss them clearly and concisely.

Semioticians Make Strange Bedfellows! Or, Once Again: “Is Language a Primary Modelling System?”

Like other sciences, biosemiotics also has its time-honoured archive, consisting of writings by those who have been invented and revered as ancestors of the discipline. One such example is Jakob von Uexküll. As to the people who ‘invented’ him, they are either, to paraphrase a French cliché, ‘agents du cosmopolitisme sémiotique’ like Thomas Sebeok, or de jure and de facto progenitor like Thure von Uexküll. In the archive is the special issue of Semiotica 42. 1 (1982) edited by the late Sebeok and introduced by Thure von Uexküll. It is in the opening essay that Thure von UexküIl tries to restore Jakob von Uexküll’s role as a precursor of semiotics by negotiating the Elder with Saussure and the linguistics-oriented ‘semiology’ in his wake. However, semiotic mapping, in the strictly ‘disciplinary’ sense, of Jakob von Uexküll is no easy task because he ‘knew neither Peirce nor Saussure and did not use their terminology’ (Thure von Uexküll 1982,2). Because Thure prefers to call the Elder’s science ‘general semiotics’ (Thure von Uexküll 1982), this paper begins by assessing Thure von Uexküll’s semiotic configuration of Jakob, probe into the force and limits of the linguistic analogy, revisit the already time-honoured debate on the primary and secondary modelling systems, which was made famous by the Moscow-Tartu semioticians in the early 1970s, but severely criticized by Sebeok and his followers. The paper engages Sebeok from several fronts, directed first at his relegation of the Saussurian linguistic model, then at his critique of the Primary Modelling System, and finally at his reservation about evolutionism in light of the current debate on gene/meme co-evolution.

De la sémiotique de la représentation théâtrale à l’anthropologie culturelle: Pourquoi le théâtre (résiste)? — From the semiotics of theatrical representation to cultural anthropology or why theater (resists)?

From the semiotics of theatrical representation to cultural anthropology or why theater (resists)? In this paper I propose an epistemological approach to the field of theatre semiotics from the beginning of the 20th century to our days. Firstly, I point out two different periods that have influenced theatre semiotics. The first one centres on reflections and studies by the Prague School of Structuralism. More precisely, I address Jan Mukařovsky’s essays about art and society as well as Jindrich Honzl’s contributions to the study of sign and system in theatre. The second period presented here is that of theatre semiotics in the early 70s and late 80s in France. My goal here is to expose the main reasons that led theatre semiotics to a deadlock in the early 90s. Theatre semiotic research has been rich and fruitful in the beginning of last century. However, in our days it is generally deemed unadvisable to describe theatre representation in terms of sign and system. Although theatre semiotics used to be presented in French university classes, it is no longer possible to do so. Even though general semiotics has progressed by denying the importance of structure and by refusing to search for the minimal sign and its code, theatre semiotics has remained faithful to old communicational semiotics research. Throughout my contribution, I would like to examine the kind of semiotic field best fit to approaching an artistic domain such as theatre. In other words, I would like to show that Western theatre, granted it can be seen as a semiotic object, is first and foremost an artistic and cultural one. In order to do so, I propose a theoretical and methodological framework based on a specific semiotic model: the “indicial semiology” proposed by Anne-Marie Houdebine. Inspired by Juri Lotman’s essays about culture and art, I will try to set “indicial semiology” in the general field of a cultural anthropology.

Homogeneización y difusión de la moda en los medias de comunicación audiovisual - En torno a El Sistema de la Moda de Roland Barthes

The System of Fashion is the main reference and the starting point to determinate the contribution o f audiovisual media on homogenization and worldwide transmission ofFashion. At the same time, this paper intends to pay tribute to a book whose (late) appreciation as a paradigmatic text of the early structuralism applied. Semiotics (Sémiologie) is . still far from recognise is theoretical and methodological contribution to general Semiotics. The final section on this paper presents a typology of Fashion shifters in movies and examines the role ofTV in amplifying the Fashions shifters of movies and magazines.

The Semiotics of Furniture Form: The French Tradition, 1620-1840

This paper outlines and illustrates a few of the principles that might serve as a basis for a general semiotics of furniture form, meaning a description and analysis of domestic objects and utensils as a coherent system of signs related to human activity, to physical, social, and psychological needs, as well as to material context. The approach is both structural and inductive, anchored in specific examples drawn from French and English traditions between 1620 and 1840. The Louis styles are central to the argument, which proceeds from formal characteristics of shape, structure and immediate function to questions of aesthetic, psychological, and ideological intent.

Hints and guesses: Legal modes of semio-logical reasoning

Legal semiotics is an internationally proliferated subfield of general semiotics. The three-step principles of Peirce’s semiotic logic are the three leading categories: firstness, secondness and thirdness, grounded on the reverse principles of logic: deduction, induction and — Peirce’s discovery — abduction. Neither induction nor abduction can provide a weaker truth claim than deduction. Abduction occurs in intuitive conclusions regarding the possibility of backward reasoning, contrary to the system of law. Civil-law cultures possess an abstract deductive orientation, governed by the rigidity of previous written law, whereas the actual fragility of a common-law system with cases and precedents inclines to induction, orienting its habituality (habits) in moral time and space. Customary law gives credit to abductive values: relevant sentiments, beliefs and propositions are upgraded to valid reasoning. The decision-making by U.S. case law and English common-law is characterized as decision law with abductive undertones.

What are the signs of narrativity? Models in general semiotics

L'A. passe en revue les methodologies utilisees par Saussure, Peirce, Propp, Greimas et Tarasti pour l'etude des signes et examine leurs influences reciproques qui ont mene a une caracterisation de la grammaire du recit.

Color and semiotics: A two‐way street

The aim of this article is twofold: to make semioticians interested in visual semiotics better acquainted with the very elaborate aspects of color theory, from which they could take models to develop other aspects of visual semiotics, and to make color theorists more familiar with general semiotics, a paradigm that can encompass and organize the whole study of color. General semiotic notions are described and illustrated with examples taken from the domain of color, and an account of some of the advances of color theory is given within the framework of semiotic categories. Aspects such as color semantics, color grammar, color harmony, color combinations, and others, are reviewed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Col Res Appl, 23: 390–401, 1998

About signs and symptoms: can semiotics expand the view of clinical medicine?

Semiotics, the theory of sign and meaning, may help physicians complement the project of interpreting signs and symptoms into diagnoses. A sign stands for something. We communicate indirectly through signs, and make sense of our world by interpreting signs into meaning. Thus, through association and inference, we transform flowers into love, Othello into jealousy, and chest pain into heart attack. Medical semiotics is part of general semiotics, which means the study of life of signs within society. With special reference to a case story, elements from general semiotics, together with two theoreticians of equal importance, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American logician Charles Sanders Peirce, are presented. Two different modes of understanding clinical medicine are contrasted to illustrate the external link between what we believe or suggest, on the one hand, and the external reality on the other hand.