Semiotic Actions Research Articles

Language and the game of chess

AbstractThe comparison between a game, in particular the game of chess, and language, has a long tradition in philosophy and in language sciences. Greimas was thus following in the wake of his predecessors Saussure, Hjelmslev, and Wittgenstein when he put forward a semiotic view of this analogy. I shall review and comment on the texts of these three earlier thinkers as a way of introducing the views of Greimas and examining the shift in his thinking and the position he adopts. An interpretative reading of the brief article he devoted to the question enables us, moreover, to underline what the semiotic action of theorising language actually consisted of, in its method and epistemology, and also to show that underneath the demand for scientificity lies a “quête inquiète” The expression belongs to Denis Bertrand, who very rightly states: “This is why the formalism of Greimas cannot be separated from an ethic. The articulation of significations is inseparable from an unquiet quest for meaning” (Bertrand 1993: 16). (unquiet quest) regarding the “paraître imparfait” (imperfect appearance) of meaning.

Partnerorientierung zwischen Realität und Imagination: Anmerkungen zu einem zentralen Konzept der Dialogtheorie

AbstractThis paper attempts a critique of the notion of ‘dialogue’ in dialogue theory as espoused by Linell, Markova, and others building on Bakhtin’s writings. According to them, human communication, culture, language, and even cognition are dialogical in nature. This implies that these domains work by principles of other-orientation and interaction.In our paper, we reject accepting other-orientation as an a priori condition of every semiotic action. Instead, we claim that in order to be an empirically useful concept for the social sciences, it must be shown if and how observable action is other-oriented. This leads us to the following questions: how can we methodically account for other-orientation of semiotic action? Does other-orientation always imply interaction? Is every human expression oriented towards others? How does the other, as s/he is represented in semiotic action, relate to the properties which the other can be seen to exhibit as indexed by their observable behavior?We study these questions by asking how the orientation towards others becomes evident in different forms of communication. For this concern, we introduce ‘recipient design’, ‘positioning’ and ‘intersubjectivity’ as concepts which allow us to inquire how semiotic action both takes the other into account and, reflexively, shapes him/her as an addressee having certain properties. We then specifically focus on actions and situations in which other-orientation is particularly problematic, such as interactions with children, animals, machines, or communication with unknown recipients via mass media.These borderline cases are scrutinized in order to delineate both limits and constitutive properties of other-orientation. We show that there are varieties of meaningful actions which do not exhibit an orientation towards the other, which do not rest on (the possibility of) interaction with the other or which even disregard what their producer can be taken to know about the other. Available knowledge about the other may be ignored in order to reach interactional goals, e. g. in strategical interactions or for concerns of socialization. If semiotic action is other-orientated, its design depends on how the other is available to and matters for their producer. Other-orientation may build on shared biographical experiences with the other, knowledge about the other as an individual and close attention to their situated conduct. However, other-orientation may also rest on (stereo-)typification with respect to institutional roles or group membership. In any case, others as they are represented in semiotic action can never be just others-as-such, but only others-as-perceived-by-the-actor.We conclude that the strong emphasis which dialogue theories put on other-orientation obscures that other-orientation is neither universal in semiotic action, that it must be distinguished from an interactive relationship, and that the ways in which the other figures in semiotic actions is not homogeneous in any of its most general properties. Instead, there is a huge variation in the ways in which the other can be taken into account. Therefore close scrutiny of how the other precisely figures in a certain kind of semiotic action is needed in order to lend the concept of ‘other-orientation’ empirical substance and a definite sense.

Discursive construction of the ‘key’ moment in the Umbrella Movement

AbstractA mass civil disobedience movement brought Hong Kong’s key business and commercial districts to a standstill in September 2014 when low-key class boycotts coalesced into a wide-scale social movement propelled by thousands of people who flocked to the support of student protestors after an ‘unwarranted’ 87 rounds of tear gas were fired by the police. This paper will explore the discursive construction of thiskey precipitant(Kimmel 1990), that is a ‘key’ moment, which recontextualised an on-going universal suffrage campaign into an historical event that allowed, “deeply seated structural forces to emerge as politically potent and begin to mobilize potential discontents” (Kimmel 1990, 9-10). Drawing on the multi-perspective framework of the Discourse of Illusion (Bhatia 2015a) the paper will analyse this key ‘moment’ in Hong Kong’s local memory, which represented one unitary moment of change that transformed the intended course of events. The Discourse of Illusion in this respect will draw on three interrelated components: historicity (one’shabitusas key to the creation of discursive illusions, dealing as it does with the growth and change of perceptions over time); linguistic and semiotic action (subjective conceptualisations of the world give rise to one’s linguistic and semiotic actions, often through dominant metaphorical rhetoric); and the degree of social impact (as language and actions of individuals and groups engender many categories and stereotypes).

Construction of discursive illusions in the ‘Umbrella Movement’

Using the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong as an example, this article explores the construction of discursive illusions in the South China Morning Post’s (SCMP) coverage of the event under discussion. More specifically, the article investigates how a multi-perspective analytical approach, namely that of the discourse of illusion, can allow a closer look at how and to what extent abstract constructs with significant social implications are discursively formed. In this respect, the framework draws on three interrelated components: historicity (habitus as key to the creation of discursive illusions, dealing as it does with the growth and change of perceptions over time), linguistic and semiotic action (subjective conceptualisations of the world give rise to certain linguistic and semiotic actions, often through metaphorical and dominant rhetoric) and the degree of social impact (as language and actions of individuals and groups engender many categories and stereotypes). The analysis reveals the use of various linguistic and rhetorical tools, including insinuation, temporal referencing, metaphor, recontextualisation and (re)framing by the SCMP, the most prominent English newspaper in Hong Kong, in its creation of multiple identity categories.

Students' web-based actions when linking theory and practice

This study used representational affordances of IT to trace meaning making as the semiotic actions of training teachers in a web-based educational practice. Eighteen weeks of asynchronous communications were analysed using mediated discourse analysis. Results showed a process orientation in communication. Students were exposed to a variety of experiences and opinions, helping them to find ways to relate to theory. The link between theory and practice was helped by strategies as: 1 building upon the collective - from I to we; 2 introducing a cultural or historical shift; 3 making 'different' known and shared by the group; 4 revisiting earlier established concepts from the course. Results point towards the importance to address design aspects of working with the impact of other's represented experience and 'distance' as representations of actions providing distance to self, practice and thought as pedagogical aspects of the web-based environment.

Biosemiotics and Self-Referential Loops

Abstract This paper explores the various ways in which selfreferential loops are tacitly embedded in the interplay of some of the most basic and foundational notions of biosemiotics-notions ordinarily conveyed through the informal use of such terms as " signification", "information", and "purpose". The examination proceeds by proposing a new way of understanding Peirce's account of the triadic nature of semiosis. The manifold correlations that link representamens to their objects and interpretants are clarified through the disclosure and articulation of the implicit function of self-referential relations in semiotic action. These ideas are initially discussed at the level of human language and are subsequently generalized to the level of biosemiotics. This generalization is reached by considering how the disclosed correlations can be partially extended to the sphere of those basic semiotic transactions that obtain within and between organisms and among organic systems in general. In a separate section there follows a brief account of the explicit role of self-referential processes in Robert Rosen's modeling of organisms in terms of non-formalizable circularity, as clarified and expanded in a recent revival of his ideas through the work of several authors. The triadic structures within semiotic transactions and those arising in Rosen's (M, R)-systems are compared. Finally some realizations springing from the preceding discussions are pointed out. One is the need to integrate the conceptual restructuration sought by biosemiotics into a wider conception of natural philosophy-into a view that is receptive to new epistemic insights disclosed by current physics and mathematics. Another advances a heuristic strategy for reaching that goal.

Environmentalists NGOs and the construction of the culprit: semiotic analysis

Purpose – This article aims to analyse how environmentalist NGOs build the figures of guilty and evil businesses in texts published on the web sites of two ironic prizes. These texts are good examples of criticism based on reversing and analysing semiotic productions of organisations, like advertising and environmental reports, as a part of on-line environmentalist campaigns. Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on textual semiotics and a semiotic-based approach to rhetoric; the methodology is qualitative and exploratory. A part of the text published on the web sites of the two ironic prizes (Pinocchio and Angry Mermaid) are analysed in order to identify different models and strategies of criticism. Findings – The article identifies a series of critical strategies: semantic/paradigmatic, syntagmatic/meta-textual, referential, narrative and inter-textual criticisms. It underlines the fact that on-line criticism is an anti-ideological semiotic action, which can be compared to some forms of ecological thought. Nonetheless, it is based on some forms of rhetoric and ideology, which can be analysed with semiotic tools. Research limitations/implications – This paper presents a qualitative, exploratory analysis of two cases: results cannot be directly generalized, but methodology and findings can be transferred to other cases (epistemological principle of transferability). Practical implications – Methods and results of this paper can help in enriching research on the rhetoric of environmental communication, and can integrate more quantitative approaches. Results can suggest new approaches to business communicators, in order to avoid environmental criticism and “boomerang effects”. Originality/value – The attempt to apply semiotics to the analysis of communication campaigns is rare and perhaps quite innovative. The approach can enrich the fields of PR and business communication studies, of rhetoric analysis and of environmental communication analysis.

Community Formation and the World as Its Own Model

The article examines the published research and implications of establishing the term community by using the world as a model and defining community as a group built and transformed by semiotic and material actions. The author argues that the idea of community formation through engagement has had success in language education when applied to pedagogical approaches that link learners with social aspects of the world. According to the author, the social aspects of community formation can be examined in language classroom lessons and serve the goal of creating an atmosphere of heightened communicative awareness and improvement while preparing students for a multilingual life.

A model for developing students’ example space: the key role of the teacher

Our research addresses the role of examples to foster the students’ development of the mathematical concepts, and of their mathematical ways of thinking. We consider the notion of example space introduced by Watson and Mason (Mathematics as a constructive activity: learners generating examples, 2005), particularly when it is not formed by a simple juxtaposition of examples, rather it is endowed by a certain structure. Such a structure is provided by the semiotic actions and by the theoretic and logical dimensions of the mathematical activities. However, the formation of structured example spaces is far from being an automatic process. In this paper, we focus on the genesis of examples and on the role of the teacher in helping the students to structure their examples spaces through the so-called cognitive apprenticeship method. We point out that the genesis of examples is often accomplished within a complex cyclic dynamics, the “cycle of examples production and modification”. We illustrate it by means of two emblematic episodes from a classroom discussion. We show that the teacher’s intervention can be crucial in helping the students to modify a wrong example, to generate the right one for the task and to start the long-term process of building up the structure of their own space of examples.

Semiotic and theoretic control in argumentation and proof activities

We present a model to analyze the students’ activities of argumentation and proof in the graphical context of Elementary Calculus. The theoretical background is provided by the integration of Toulmin’s structural description of arguments, Peirce’s notions of sign, diagrammatic reasoning and abduction, and Habermas’ model for rational behavior. Based on empirical qualitative analysis we identify three different kinds of semiotic actions featuring the organization of the argumentations, and related to different epistemological status of the arguments. In such semiotic actions, the students’ argumentation and proof activities are managed and guided according to two intertwined modalities of control, which we call semiotic and theoretic control. The former refers to decisions concerning the selection and implementation of semiotic resources; the latter refers to decisions concerning the selection and implementation of a more or less explicit theory or parts of it. The structure of the model allows us to pinpoint a dialectical dynamics between the two.