Linguistic Semiotics Research Articles

Industrial discourse in the context of court interpreting in Sweden

The article examines industrial discourse as part of spoken legal language in a courtroom setting in Sweden and its impact on the interpreting process and results. The paper draws up a brief overview of the discourse key features, the concept of communicational failure (a misfire) and presents analyses of authentic audio recordings from court trials interpreted from Swedish to Russian. The study is based on the linguistic semiotics approach with focus on the subfield of semantics. A special attention is paid to legal vocabulary and technical terminology. The eventual outcome of the article might be seen as an attempt to unravel the nature of mistakes and interactional misfires in connection with spoken industrial discourse.

Релігійний концепт Бог / Θεοσ / God в новогрецьких, англійських та українських пареміях

The article deals with the religious concepts found in modern Greek, English and Ukrainian proverbs (paremias). The relevance of this research is due to the fact that it identifies similarities and differences of this concept concludes different ethnic groups. They are verbalized not only and not so much in language codes, but in memory of the historical extent of their existence. The results of the analysis of common and distinctive features in three languages are illustrated on the example of the religious concept «Бог / Θεός / God». The religious concepts occupy a special place among cultural concepts. They are a reflection of human mentality, because they permeate all spheres of life. The religious concept is characterized as a multidimensional mystical-semiotical and axeological formation within three major contexts – spiritual world-outlook, cultural history, and linguistic semiotics. The concept БОГ / ΘΕΟΣ / GOD finds its implementation in proverbs, which points to its significant role of everyday life of the Greek, English and Ukrainian-speaking communities. The concept «God» is the basic cultural concept. The Christians believe that God is something unrecognizable and mysterious, and He absorbs the idea of soul, eternal life, kindness, openness and sincerity. Indeed, people in everyday communication use some proverbs and sayings marked by religious concepts. The ideological groups of the concept БОГ / ΘΕΟΣ / GOD were formed on the basis of a continuous sample. The most interesting way is to trace the transformations of certain concepts of culture, which from different perspectives can be considered the key components of the mental peculiarity of the people in one or another historical period. We found some definitions of this concept such as: 1) Owner; 2) Almighty Power; 3) Help; 4) Fair punishment.

LINGUOCULTURAL CODE: THEORETICAL BASIS OF RESEARCH

Language is the "spirit of the people". Today the generally accepted idea is the one of the anthropocentrism of language. The formation of the anthropocentric paradigm has focused researchers' attention on a person, on its place in culture because the linguistic personality is the center of cultural tradition. Within the framework of this paradigm, cultural linguistics are developing – the science focused on the cultural factor in language and the linguistic factor in the person; the science that aims to study the correlation and the communication between language and culture, between language and consciousness. The formation of the stable nomenclature is the cultural linguistics' problem of high priority. One of the most important concepts in this field is the concept of linguistic-cultural code, along with the concepts of "cultural code" and "verbal code". The article is devoted to the analysis of modern approaches to the study of the concept of linguistic-cultural code, which is a verbal embodiment of the cultural code. It aims to analyze existing works on this problem and define the theoretical foundations of the study of the linguistic-cultural code. The article reveals typological and functional characteristics of linguistic-cultural code systems. It describes methods of classification of codes within the system on the thematic and substantive grounds, namely the division of codes into substantive and conceptual ones. The purpose of the classifications of this kind is to identify and organize material means of expressing culturally relevant information. The article considers the system of the hierarchical ordering of linguistic-cultural codes and uses the term "subcode" to denote the linguoculture of lower-level systems. The linguistic and cultural interpretation of the subcode as a unit of the lower level than the code and of its place in the system of cultural codes with branchy vertical and horizontal internal connections, forming a figurative cultural paradigm, appears to be relevant. The conclusions of the article may serve as the theoretical basis for further practical research in the field of linguoculture and linguistic semiotics.

Exploring Approaches to Interpreting Studies

AbstractThis article explores the relevance of semiotic perspectives on and approaches to Interpreting Studies. Interpreting can be perceived as textual (re)production, as communicative interaction, and as a sociocultural activity, and can be studied in the linguistic and structural approach at the micro-dimension, the pragmatic and communicative approach at the meso-dimension, and in the sociocultural approach at the macro-dimension respectively. Different degrees of applicability can be identified in structural semiotics, interpretive semiotics, and social semiotics. Multimodal analysis integrating linguistic semiotics, paralinguistic semiotics, and non-linguistic semiotics is identified as having great potential in examining the communicative process of interpreting in its entirety.

Medical semiotics; its influence on art, psychoanalysis and Sherlock Holmes.

Semiotics is the analysis and interpretation of signs and the basis of medicine since antiquity. It is suggested that the growth of technology has led to the virtual eclipse of the clinical examination with consequent loss of skill, empathy and patient trust. This paper views the value of medical semiotics through the method of the 19th century Italian doctor, Giovanni Morelli, which has had a significant but little recognised impact on the early development of psychoanalysis, the detective novel and art connoisseurship. Semiotics and, specifically, the linguistic semiotics of Ferdinand Saussure have been influential in the fields of the visual arts, literature and the social sciences since the 20th century. With its roots in the medical treatises of antiquity, medical semiotics should again be brought to the forefront of medical practice.

A Brief Introduction to Zhuanglin Hu, President of the Chinese Association of Linguistic Semiotics (CALS)

A Brief Introduction to Zhuanglin Hu, President of the Chinese Association of Linguistic Semiotics (CALS)

Report on the Ninth Biennial Conference of the Chinese Association of Linguistic Semiotics (CALS) Held in Suzhou (Oct. 22–24 , 2010), China

Article Report on the Ninth Biennial Conference of the Chinese Association of Linguistic Semiotics (CALS) Held in Suzhou (Oct. 22–24 , 2010), China was published on December 1, 2010 in the journal Chinese Semiotic Studies (volume 4, issue 2).

Greeting of the President of the IASS at the Nanjing International Symposium on Cultural Semiotics and the 8th Annual Conference of Chinese Association of Linguistic Semiotics

Article Greeting of the President of the IASS at the Nanjing International Symposium on Cultural Semiotics and the 8th Annual Conference of Chinese Association of Linguistic Semiotics was published on June 1, 2009 in the journal Chinese Semiotic Studies (volume 1, issue 1).

Die Kodierung von Emotionen in Texten Teil 1: Grundlagen

This is the first instalment of a two-part study that examines emotions from the perspective of linguistic semiotics. The underlying issue at stake is the relationship between linguistic forms and the meanings attached to them. This part of the study lays the theoretical foundations for a consideration of the issues involved.

Introduction: From linguistic semiotics to cultural semiotics: Semiotic and narrative studies in China

Introduction: From linguistic semiotics to cultural semiotics: Semiotic and narrative studies in China

General Tendencies in Semiotic Research

Modern linguistics knows a great number of semiotic researches which focus on a literary text both as a subject matter of literary semiotic and linguosemiotic study. While literary semiotics deals with controversial issues of the style of literary works, linguistic semiotics investigates literary texts paying special attention to the significance of the language unit which reflects the real phenomena, relations and actions turning into a linguistic fact as soon as strong and historically, culturally correlated ties appear in between the linguistic unit as a sign and its referent.

Essential properties of language, or, why language is not a code

Despite a strong tradition of viewing coded equivalence as the underlying principle of linguistic semiotics, it lacks the power needed to understand and explain language as an empirical phenomenon characterized by complex dynamics. Applying the biology of cognition to the nature of the human cognitive/linguistic capacity as rooted in the dynamics of reciprocal causality between an organism and the world, we can show language to be connotational rather than denotational. This leaves no room for the various ‘code-models’ of language exploited in traditional linguistics. Bio-cognitive analysis leads to deeper insights into the essence of language as a biologically based, cognitively motivated, circularly organized semiotic activity in a consensual domain of interactions aimed at adapting to, and, ultimately, gaining control of the environment. The understanding that cognition is grounded in the dynamics of biological self-organization fits both the integrational model of communication and distributed cognition. A short discussion of the key notions of representation, sign and signification, interpretation, intentionality, communication, and reciprocal causality is offered, showing that the notion of ‘code’ is only misleadingly applied to natural language.

The Dynamics of the Verbal Stem in Herero

The paper aims at analysing changes in the verbal stem in the Herero language from different linguistic viewpoints in order to properly explain the sophisticated nature of verbal behaviour. The presented morphophonemic phenomena concern (1) internal mutation, esp. total assimilation understood as vowel harmony, (2) external initial mutation, esp. (a) deverbative formations based on lenition, (b) mutation caused e.g. by the reflexive marker on preceding morphemes, and (3) external suffixal mutation, esp. verbal extension based on different subsystems such as e.g. partial consonant harmony. These morphophonemic changes are later on discussed on the one hand in terms of attraction, cf. (2)(a), interpolation, cf. (1), permutation, cf. (3) and radiation, cf. 2(b), on the other hand in terms of axiomatic semiology. The latter, composing a part of linguistic semiotics, strictly separates phonemic phenomena from morphological ones; the former belongs to cenematics dealing with the meaningful combination of sounds...

The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama by Keir Elam (review)

Book Reviews KEIR ELAM. The Semiotics o/Theatre and Drama. London and New York: Methuen 1980. In a previous article published in 1977 (Sub-stance, 18/19), Keir Elam noted that the small number ofanicles with a semiotic approach to theatre stemmed from the difficulty of getting into this field by reason of its complexity and the lack of methodological apparatus available at the time. One of the chief handicaps was the confusion between text and performance that was often perpetuated by researchers in the field. Elam tries to avoid this confusion right from the beginning of his book by positing the two distinct notions of "theatre" and "drama," "Drama" refers to that "mode of fiction designed for stage representation and constructed according to particular (dramatic) conventions" (p. 2), whereas "theatre" is that "complex of phenomena associated with the peIfonneraudience transaction: that is, with the production and communication of meaning in the performance itself." Thus "drama" comes under the heading of linguistic semiotics inspired by the various theories of discourse, whereas "theatre" belongs to the realm of communications theory. Elam's entire book is based on this fundamental theoretical difference; its two main axes (according to the amount ofspace and importance assigned to them) are: a) theatrical communication, codes, systems. and the performance text (ch. 3); and b) dramatic discourse (ch. 5). Between the two is a chapteron dramatic logic (ch. 4)· Going back to 1931 and the renowned founders of modem theatrical semiotics, especially the members of the Prague School (Otakar Zich, Jan MukafowskY, Petr Bogatyrev, Jill VeltruskY, BruW,), Elam attempts to trace the importance of their discoveries and the evolution which has occurred since then. From the brief historical overview in his first two chapters. the following conclusions may be drawn: J) that semiotics has long been in search of a minimal theatrical unity patterned after the linguistic model, which it would bave liked to define as the theatrical sign. In fact, all such attempts have so far proved inadequate. failing to take into account the complexity of the theatrical phenomenon. Book Reviews 2) that if it is possible to envisage a theatrical semiotics, it is most certainly by examining the signifying systems, systems of signs and codes which make any play a coherent whole and assure communication between the audience and the perfonners . Elam devotes considerable space to this second point in his third chapter, no longer dealing with the theatrical sign, but tackling the much broader issue of theatrical communication. Is there such a thing? And if so, how does it take place? These are the two essential questions which have occupied a whole school of semioticians who (following the work of Birdwhistell. Moles and McLuban) are trying to find a simple model of communication (Corvin, Ruffini, Bettetini). Elam also attempts to provide a model, based on Umberto EcO'5 communications model in A Theory of Semiotics, which can be applied to the theatre (pp. 38-39). Once again it becomes clear that it is absolutely necessary for the theatre to be continually evolving. without the possibility of the process ever becoming fixed. Nor can it be made to repeat itself in order for us to understand its subtleties and structures more easily. From what he has defined as "dramatic and theatrical sub-codes" (the same distinction he had made at the beginning of the book). Elam draws up an impressive chart of all of the possible levels on which a play may be understood: systemic,linguistic, intertextual, formal, epistemic, aesthetic, logical, ethical, ideological, psychological, and finally, historical (pp. 57-62). The advantage of this table is that it shows us the extremely complex networks which a simple perfonnance sets up in the theatre. The theatrical event is constantly shifting and changing, and for anyone who tries to comprehend it in its totality, it turns out to be the crossing-point of multiple systems, codes, and signs, all impossible to isolate, continually influenced by various factors, originating both within and beyond the petfonnance. It is a mechanism which can be grasped only while it is in motion, and falls apart as soon as it stops. Elam next turns his attention to the dramatic text, as indicated...