Practices Of Signification Research Articles

Joshua McCarter Simpson's Songs and Mid-Nineteenth Century Antislavery Activism

AbstractThe Ohio-based Black songwriter, Joshua Simpson, published two books of antislavery songs in the mid-nineteenth century, Original Anti-Slavery Songs in 1852 and Emancipation Car in 1854. Unlike most other known songsters, which were compilations of poetry from several authors, Simpson authored original lyrics for borrowed melodies, and he did so with extraordinary care, engaging the original song to enhance his activist messages. Employing the rhetorical practice of signification, his linkage of new lyrics with preexisting songs sometimes builds upon meaning from the original text, reusing it to add weight to the moral and political arguments against slavery. He also extends nature imagery and lyrics about the comforts of home and family in traditional ballads and contemporary sentimental songs to his new lyrics, but more often his signifying practice is ironic. He inverts the original song's sentimentality in deliberately discomforting ways that could persuade Americans to assist self-emancipating people and work toward wholescale abolition of slavery. Simpson's most radical songs talk back irreverently to the originals, especially minstrel tunes containing degrading caricatures and proslavery propaganda as well as patriotic anthems proclaiming hypocritical platitudes. Simpson did not simply write new songs; he transformed some of the most popular and beloved songs of his era, harnessing their renown to sharpen his activist messages.

Mixing Oil and Water: The Shrimp–Petroleum Nexus in Coastal Louisiana

AbstractThe Shrimp‐Petroleum Festival is an annual event in Morgan City, Louisiana, that celebrates the history of the two industries in this coastal city. The festival came under media scrutiny and public criticism in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in part because of the seeming incompatibility and incongruence of the two things being celebrated. From a local perspective, however, the convergence of the two industries is far from incompatible and the two resources in question, shrimp and oil, are categorically similar within local discourses of identity, well‐being, and economic prosperity. In that capacity, it offers an insight into how precarious and contingent the seemingly self‐evident dichotomies commonly invoked in normative environmentalism are. It also offers insight and into the range of assumptions and signification practices involved in assigning meaning to particular kinds of resources and particular kinds of human–nature relations.

SUBJECTIVITY IN MUSICAL DISCOURSE

Subject in the Lacanian conception are described as ‘lack subject’ and castrated by language (symbolic law). Language, on the one hand, is an element that the subject needs to be able to do practice of signification in order to form a stable identity, but on the other hand, castrate the subject because becomes a barrier for the subject to experience the union with the [m]other in the imaginary phase. The impossibility of the subject experiencing a final identity through symbolization of language ultimately gave birth to the never-ending identification practice which became the forerunner of the dynamic of social life. In music, this identification is understood as a ‘preliminary identification’ of musical discourse agencies (which is inaudible) that define music as text. For music to work, the listener must link himself to musical discourse. The subject can only try to experience reality through symbolization. In the musical context, which is believed as a non-verbal sign system, this effort of symbolization is mostly discussed by tracing pre-symbolic (pre-linguistic) aspects through ideas such: abjection, melancholy, uncanny, acoustic mirror, sonorous envelope, and fantasy thing/fantasy space.

Museu


 
 
 Inscritos na perspectiva da Análise de Discurso, neste estudo, consideramos Museu como espaço de linguagem, mais especificamente, como “prática de significação” (ORLANDI, 2014). O objetivo do trabalho é analisar as condições de produção de um museu prisional: trata- se, sobretudo, de compreender como esse museu especializado significa e é significado na relação com o espaço urbano, com textos expográficos e com artefatos que compõem seu acervo. A partir das análises, observou-se o funcionamento de versões controversas e a instalação da “política do silêncio” (ORLANDI, 1997).
 
 

Systemic Intertextuality. A Morphogenetic Perspective

If late modern literary production is structured by any principles rendering order to the otherwise nebular character of the process, this is the idea of intertextuality that paves the way for the dissolution of well entrenched structures, literary conventions and institutionalized canons. By fostering and facilitating the erosion of boundaries between elite and popular culture, mechanisms of intertextuality show that literature is not only a fixed collection of texts, but also a dynamic social system including structured practices of production and reception together with their institutional, cultural and technological determinants. The paper aims to provide a sociologically-oriented model of intertextual relations taking place within the social system of literature. In this context, circulation, dissemination, and recycling of literary motifs is viewed from a perspective of morphogenetic processes which result in the structural elaboration and systemic change due to the mobilization of social, cultural, and economic capitals in an effort to alter pre-existent practices of signification. Consequently, literature is discussed as an intertextual system in statu nascendi, a sphere of social practices that knows no sense of institutional boundaries or structural constraints.

Alfabetizar letrando: possibilidades para uma cartografia porosa

Este artigo objetiva contribuir para o debate sobre o sentido do significante cartografia escolar que, ora fixa-se na defesa do processo de alfabetização, ora no de letramento, como se fossem processos incomunicáveis e totalizantes. Assumindo os fundamentos da Teoria do Discurso, nossa proposição aqui é a da articulação em detrimento da dicotomização desses conceitos, defendendo o sentido de alfabetizar letrando. Trata-se de uma proposta que parte da compreensão de que o processo de letramento vai além, e não contra o entendimento de alfabetização. Na bibliografia dominante, a alfabetização cartográfica é compreendida como um processo específico e imprescindível, que exige um trabalho metodológico e didático-pedagógico para se ensinar a lógica do sistema cartesiano do mapa, ao passo que o letramento estaria atrelado ao domínio e uso social das linguagens cartográficas. Defendemos aqui uma ação pedagógica sob a perspectiva do alfabetizar letrando, que desloca a ênfase habitual da localização espacial como centro do processo, criando condições para uma cartografia porosa que permita aos alunos se apropriarem da linguagem cartográfica também como práticas socioespaciais de significação.
 Palavras-chave: Cartografia escolar, alfabetizar letrando, linguagem cartográfica, práticas socioespaciais de significação.

Twitter culture: irony comes faster than tourist mobility

ABSTRACT Recent developments in the research field of the tourism sciences show a growing interest in customer satisfaction. Increasingly mediated communications develop new signification practices within social networks, as Twitter, where tourism companies discover what users think of the service offered, through methodologies such as Sentiment Analysis [Pang, B., & Lee, L. (2008). Opinion mining and sentiment analysis. Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval, 2(1–2), 1–135] and digital natives [Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6] produce short textual content regarding the service of tourist companies, as in the case of Trenitalia. From the analysis of sentiment on tweets about Trenitalia, it emerged that Internet users tend to employ ironic devices, difficult to recognize by a software tool. Starting from this limit, the main intent is to examine how social networks offer a new context to the enunciative practice of irony. To detect these aspects, the thinking aloud technique is used, aiming to understand how digital actors re-build signification practices of tourist mobility and to demonstrate how online reputation and customer satisfaction detection systems are not always effective in understanding why users, when they review a tourist service, use veiled communication methods.

Mythological Indifference in Schelling and Nerval

Mythological Indifference in Schelling and Nerval

Marx's critique of ideology for discourse analysis: from analysis of ideologies to social critique

ABSTRACTThe notion of ideology is related to social and material reality and especially to the processes of social reproduction. Therefore, the analysis of ideology seems to fall into the domain of discourse analysis. The analysis of language and practices of signification in social contexts constitutes the basic triangle of discourse analysis. However, the Marxist concept of ideology always refers to some kind of falsity, that ultimately enables the researcher to not only analyse but also to criticize ideologies. Ideologies are always in some way false, injust or inadequate. It is at this point that discourse analysts usually raise the most serious objections as they understand truth itself as a discursive product, resulting from powerful struggles of domination and exclusion. The present article explores in how far the Marxist notion can be used for the purpose of discourse analysis. It argues that even the notion of falsity as present in classical Marxism can be adapted for understanding and criticizing contemporary ideologies. I start by presenting some common understandings of ideology in the field of Discourse Studies (I). In a second step I will analyse elements of the notion of ideology in Marx's early writings, especially in the debate with the Young Hegelians (II) and ask what this means for empirical discourse analysis. I will then point towards elements of the critique of ideology in Marx mature ‘political economy’ that could be fruitful for Discourse Studies (III). Finally, I will try to reconcile a Marxist concept of ideology based ultimately on a notion of falsity with such discourse analytical approaches highly suspicious of the possibility of the existing ‘politics of truth’ (IV). We will see that, due to the relation between ideas and material organization in ideologies, the critique of ideologies becomes not only a critique of practices of justifications but turns into a genuine social critique.

The metaphorical dimension of LGBTQ Information: Challenges for its subject representation

Having language as a practice of signification, permeating every system of representation that subsidizes forms of resistance and escape lines, one has the possibility of visualizing the processes by which the identities of the subjects are constructed, leading us to think The performativity. It is proposed to enter the sphere of the gender discussions, under the gore of the discourse, being situated theoretically-methodologically in a discursive-deconstructionist perspective, resorting to Foucaultian-based poststructuralist studies, in addition to the relation with queer theorizations, in the form of documentary research of an exploratory nature based on 25 minutes published between 2006 and 2013 by two Non-Governmental Organizations - NGOs in the Cariri Cearense region of Northeast Brazil. The objective was to understand the contribution of the Knowledge Organization - KO in the representation of the discursive practices of the LGBTQ universe. Guiding the research under the contributions of Albrechtsen and Hjørland (1995), Hjørland (1997, 1999, 2002), Tennis (2012) and Guimarães (2008) in the scope of Information Science. In addition to the contributions of the work of Foucault and studies of representation and linguistics. Finally, the results revealed that the themes of the LGBTQ discursive community constitute a complex and highly metaphorical universe, much owed to the marginal conditions that refer to the history of this area, with strong prejudices about sexual practices. This situation demands a greater ethical concern with the indexation and classification systems, so that they can represent all the thematic wealth of the domain, from the documents of the subjects and the communities able to lead the understanding and search of identities that surround them.

Multiple dimensions of mediation within transnational advertising production: cultural intermediaries as shapers of emerging cultural capital

ABSTRACTThe paper re-conceptualizes cultural intermediaries as shapers of “emerging cultural capital” (Prieur, A., and M. Savage. 2013. “Emerging Forms of Cultural Capital.” European Societies 15 (2): 246–267; Savage, M., F. Devine, N. Cunningham, M. Taylor, Y. Li, J. Hjellbrekke, and A. Miles. 2013. “A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment.” Sociology 47 (2): 219–250) and re-frames their practice of signification and negotiation as informed by “multiple dimensions of mediation.” Drawing on a case study of Nike’s transnational advertising production and interviews with key actors within the context of production, the paper examines how the creative/cultural labour process cuts across global and national fields of cultural production and consumption through which popular culture and middle-brow tastes were mediated, signified and represented. In particular, a television campaign for the Japanese youth market was critically analysed to reveal how specific new tastes, lifestyles and consumption practices were legitimized as emerging forms of cultural capital. Consequently, their taste-making practices are profoundly implicated in symbolic struggles and cultural changes emerging within/from the increasingly “globalizing” field of cultural production.

Performando a Teatralidade no Jogo de Enquadramentos: repensando a tessitura do dramático

Resumo: Através da análise de proposições contemporâneas e postulando o jogo de enquadramentos como princípio da construção da poética da cena, este artigo contextualiza as noções de teatralidade e performatividade como funções que coexistem. Deslocadas do campo da crítica teatral para o da atuação, teatralidade e performatividade aparecem como noções operacionais de uma análise da práxis atoral, servindo de base para uma revisão da teoria e do lugar do dramático como uma suposta prática da significação, permitindo apresentá-lo como uma modalidade de enquadramento entre outras.

A EPIDEMIA DE ZIKA E OS LIMITES DA SAÚDE GLOBAL

Resumo O vírus Zika foi isolado pela primeira vez em 1947 em Uganda. Se a doença existe desde então, por que somente agora há atenção da mídia, da ciência, das agências financiadoras e dos órgãos nacionais e internacionais? A partir de uma visão crítica da saúde global, que considera os contextos sociais, políticos e ideológicos, nos quais a Zika é enquadrada, almeja-se analisar a atual epidemia de Zika em quatro eixos: (1) investigação dos processos sociais, culturais e políticos; (2) análise das práticas de significação; (3) estudo das zonas negligenciadas/silenciadas; e (4) atenção à diversidade de experiências individuais de saúde e de doença. As tensões políticas aqui identificadas e discutidas - referentes ao controle das doenças negligenciadas, determinantes sociais, de classe e de gênero - enquadram-se em dinâmicas que ultrapassam as fronteiras nacionais. Nesse sentido, os processos de significação e as respostas dadas à epidemia mostram os atuais limites da saúde global.

D. Pulkowski, The Law and Politics of International Regime Conflict

Having read Pulkowski’s book one will no longer completely agree with the International Law Commission’s (ILC) statement in its report on the ‘Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law’ of 2006 that ‘[t]he whole complex of inter-regime relations is presently a legal black hole’. Pulkowski succeeds in bringing some light into the dark, at least as far as the aspect of regime conflict is concerned. International regimes are defined as ‘institutional arrangements that promote particular societal goals through their norms, rules, and procedures’ (p. 19). As a paradigm to discuss the law and politics of regime conflict he chooses the transnational trade in cultural products understood as ‘goods and services that convey ideas, symbols and ways of life’ (p. 42). The choice is indeed comprehensible, because it is quite obvious that such cross-border trade may easily endanger ‘a society’s distinct practices of signification, representation and symbolization’ (p. 8), be it by cultural homogenization or even clashes as assumed by Huntington, or rather by gradual ‘cultural hybridization’ (p. 10). Pulkowski rightly points out, however, that cultural policies today are no longer part of states’ exclusive domestic jurisdiction and are therefore exposed to other influences (pp. 11 et seq.). Actually, the global framework for cultural industries consists, first, of the trade regime, particularly the rules of WTO/ GATT, second, the human rights regime, particularly the communication rights and the right to take part in cultural life as protected, e.g., under the International Bill of Rights, and, third, the culture regime whose core document is now the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions of 2005 (CDC).

Penerapan Cultural Studies dan Aliran Filsafat dalam Desain Komunikasi Visual

Cultural studies is a diversity knowledge from different variety of perspectives, through the production of theory trying to intervene in political culture. Cultural studies explores culture as a practice purport in the context of social force. In this case, cultural studies is not only based on one point only, but also cultural studies tries to compose a variety of theoretical studies of other disciplines developed wider, so that covers a wide range of academic theories that already existed, including Marxism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, and feminism. By eclectic method, cultural studies puts the positioning to all knowledges, including on its knowledge which integrates with culture, practice of signification, representation, discourse, authority, articulation, text, read, and consumption. Cultural studies could be described as a language game or formation of discourse associated with relation to power in signification practice of human life. In addition to cultural studies, there is also feminism theory participated in the concept of feminist cultural studies that reconstructs and transforms view of misperception between feminism and cultural studies. Feminism affects cultural studies, but not all feminism can be viewed as cultural studies, and not all cultural studies talks about gender. Both of cultural studies and feminism have substantive importance in relation to power, representation, pop-culture, subjectivity, identity and consumption. The theory of social construction is also has connectivity with cultural studies. Construction of reality is inseparable from mark, symbol, and language. Media are full of reality constructed for people to affect people as ethics persuasion in media do.

Ashes to ashes: the stewardship of waste and oeconomic cycles of agricultural and industrial improvement, 1750–1800

This essay examines the development of a cycle in the eighteenth-century Netherlands, in which urban filth and industrial ashes were allocated in rural areas as fertilizer for producing raw materials that supplied urban factories. The essay interprets the oeconomic norms, values, and goals that drove this development as open-ended, gaining context-bound meaning through socio-material ‘imagineering,’ interconnecting city and countryside. It first examines how developing practices of waste collection and fertilization were entangled with practices of signification, driven by and feeding into oeconomic imaginaries of thrift and ‘sustainability’ (‘duurzaamheid’). Second, it explores how entrepreneurs and administrators mutually engaged with soils, crops, and ash through land reclamations, in situ experimentation, societal communication, and statistical surveys, finally leading to a centralized stewardship of filth and ash in 1804. In the process ‘oeconomy’ was defined more specifically, made to refer to the cultivated order that sustained the circulation of materials within a bounded domain.

“Meng? It Just Means Cute”: A Chinese Online Vernacular Term in Context

“Meng? It Just Means Cute”: A Chinese Online Vernacular Term in Context

How Slovenia got the anti-burek system: The history of the burek and its semantic production

In modern Slovenian popular culture, media, vernacular etc., the burek – an important and popular dish among numerous immigrants to Slovenia and their descendants, and also probably the most popular Slovenian fast food – is probably the handiest and most often used signifier for immigrants from the former republics of the SFRY, the Balkans, the SFRY and the phenomena associated with it. The paper attempts to describe why and how this conceptual hyperinflation occurred precisely to this folded or rolled nutritional superhero, which most likely arrived in Slovenia in the early 1960s. The beginnings of the layering of all these meanings go back to the eighties, when the burek finally started to become a part of certain foreign urban food practices particularly among young people, which at the time were not seen as particularly meaningful. However, the fact that the burek found itself in the hands of "non-immigrants" was disturbing to some: the burek became a target of nationalism, which to some extent encouraged numerous young people during the nineties to appropriate it and to associate it with alternative or oppositional political meanings. But even in this case it would be insufficient or wrong to understand the burek as merely a symbolic object, chosen by college students and other young people during the nineties solely for its symbolic value – for its close but controversial association with Slovene nationalism. First we have to ask ourselves what was available during those times – cheap, accessible and providing at least a modicum of choices. The paper mirrors modern studies of material culture which assert the idea that materiality is an integral part of culture and society, and that without materiality, culture and society cannot be fully understood. The meanings of objects, and thus the meaning of the burek, are not understood (merely) as products of discourses and practices of signification, but (also) as embedded in the objective, material field in numerous and complex ways.

Blue Roses and Yellow Violets: Flowers and the Cultivation of Color in Nineteenth-Century France

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the flowers and gardens visible in France became increasingly defined by the imperatives of commodity capitalism, in particular by the perpetual quest for variety and novelty that characterized the fashion industry. Focusing on the important role that color played in this process, this article shows how floriculture disrupted not only the relationship between the natural and the artificial and the real and the imaginary but also contemporary aesthetic standards and practices of signification.

Boasian Legacies in Linguistic Anthropology: A Centenary Review of 2011

ABSTRACT I review scholarship in linguistic anthropology produced in 2011 with attention to the continuing influence of Franz Boas' program for the anthropology of language laid out in his 1911 “Introduction” to the Handbook of American Indian Languages. Although the aims of linguistics and cultural anthropology have changed, many of the tenets of the Boas plan remain central to the subdiscipline of linguistic anthropology. The scope of linguistic anthropological inquiry today includes more than language as denotational code, covering practices of signification and communication in their social and cultural contexts. This expansion has brought new perspectives to the questions pursued by Boas and his students, and this review considers the current place of topics such as indigenous language change, language and race, linguistic relativity, and secondary rationalization alongside approaches to performativity, intertextuality, circulation, and semiotic mediation with an eye to the Americanist legacy of the subdiscipline. [Franz Boas, intertextuality, relativity, ritual performativity, race].