Semiotic Environment Research Articles

Toward a semiotics of midwifery: Multimodal communication's effects on accessibility, equity, and power dynamics.

According to semiotics, we live in a world of signs, where almost anything can act as a signifier and convey meaning. But what of the semiotic landscape of midwifery? What signs are present within a client's multi-sensory experience of their midwifery care? How are these signs functioning to increase equity and accessibility? Or worse, how might certain aspects of the client's experience communicate unjust power dynamics? Semiotics allows us to examine a wide communicative and educational environment. By paying particular attention to the multivalent meanings of different signs-be they written, visual, oral, or even physical-we can start to see how multimodal communication plays a vital role in a client's perception of equity and power. One way to improve client experience is by approaching education and semiotic experience from the same place as trauma-informed care. A more health-literate sensitive approach viewed through the lens of semiotics assumes all clients have little previous knowledge or comfort within a care setting. This hyperawareness and criticality of the semiotic environment would allow midwives to acknowledge various sensory and communicative biases and intentionally redesign the entire client experience. The semiotic landscape is then curated to meet the needs of the most important audience-those marginalized and discriminated against whether that is because of education, finances, race, gender, or any other intersectional identity. We must acknowledge the fact that all sign systems can either reinforce abusive power relations or work to improve them. For what is at stake here is not just a client's overall comfort, but their full understanding of the care they are receiving, the options they have, and their autonomy within their entire perinatal experience.

Walking through kindergarten semiotic landscapes with multilingual children: A way to explore participation and engagement

Practitioners in Norwegian kindergartens are responsible for actively promoting and developing multilingual children’s language skills (Directorate for Education and Training, 2017). Children’s multilingual language skills develop through participation and engagement. The aim of this paper is to explore how the semiotic landscape encourages interaction and dialogue among children. Semiotic landscapes are public spaces with visible inscriptions made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010). Utilizing walking interviews as a method, we explored multilingual children’s perspectives on their semiotic environment. Analyzing the interviews through the concept of agency (Duran, 2015), we found dialogues marked by engagement on different levels. We discuss the difference between predictability and unpredictability in semiotic resources and found that the latter leads to stronger engagement and longer dialogues than instructional materials with high level of predictability.

A deficient presence

Abstract The collaboration between the visual and textual narrative in comics, richly loaded with cultural codes and background, leads to challenges in translation. Cultural transference in comics is inevitably obstructed and distorted. Even readers who understand both the source and target language may need help comprehending the entire narrative, not to mention monolingual readers. In an international city like Hong Kong, where cultures coexist independently yet interrelatedly, the incomprehensiveness of the translated version of Old Master Q Chinese Idioms LOL (2012) is instantly recognized by bilingual Chinese-English readers. A problematic transposition of semiotic and cultural knowledge and a disrupted interplay between the textual and visual narratives causes incomprehension. The translation of this comic series becomes even more challenging to achieve the clear intent of edutainment. This article will argue that translated comics will appear deficient to monolingual and bilingual readers even if they are equipped with the semiotic knowledge of the source and target language. The translation of multimodal texts is considerably constrained by a chain effect triggered by posting changes to any element in comics – a syncretic semiotic environment.

Digital modernization of Russian education in modern conditions

In modern conditions, education cannot remain the same as it was twenty years ago. It's not just that the formats for presenting information have changed, but the semiotic environment itself has transformed. Visual communication has become the main system of signs, and network communications have become the main communication channel. As a consequence, there was a fundamental change in the system of thinking, first of all, among young people, for whom such a communication mode is the most natural. The article is devoted to the consideration of these features, as well as the system of digital education itself.

The Sign-Symbolic Level of Urban Identity of the Inhabitants of Industrial Cities of the Southern Urals

The article deals with the comprehension of the phenomenon of urban identity in general and its sign-symbolic level in particular. By urban identity in the context of the presented scientific text, we mean a set of authentic features and characteristics, inherent in a particular city, that perform an attributive function, allowing to differentiate it from other cities; the process and result of a person’s identification with the city, based on the acceptance of its identity, on the emotional entry into the space of its material and sign-symbolic environment. The sign-symbolic level of urban identity assumes personal mastering of the city’s semiotic environment, its inclusion in the space of the event and emotional experience of its inhabitants, transformation of the objects of the city’s sign-symbolic space into a set of “memory places”.The author of the article conducted a culturological study of the urban identity of the residents of industrial cities of the Southern Urals (semi-formalized interviewing method; the array of respondents — 270 people), including its sign-symbolic component. Its specific features are culturocentricity (predominance of man-made sign-symbolic objects over natural and mixed ones); commemorativeness (dominance of memorial objects — memorial sculpture and sculptural compositions, museums, ethnoparks, historical buildings, other monuments of historical and cultural heritage — over objects of other types); retro-orientation (predominance of objects temporally associated with the past, mainly with the Soviet period); monotony (limited range of objects chosen by residents of one city); syncretism (identity of objects aimed at different audiences); collectivism (total predominance of objects — signs of group identity); centrality (centripetal localization of objects, their location mainly in the city center). The results of the conducted research allow us to speak, with a significant degree of confidence, about the very clearly manifested features of the Southern Urals cities inhabitants’ perception of their own small Homeland, about the problematic and strengths of the existing urban identity, the vectors of its correction and improvement.

The Constitution of the meaning of education and the cultural-semiotic environment ‒ mainstream revolution in modern pedagogy

The article deals with two main topics: an attempt is made to characterize the meaning of modern education and introduce the concept of a cultural-semiotic environment, the concept of which is proposed by the author and a group of methodologists and practitioners of pedagogy. The idea of the meaning of education is briefly explained, the process of meaning formation is set in more detail. Characterizing this process, the author analyzes one case and shows that meaning formation allows solving problematic situations by constructing narratives (schemes, metaphors, symbols, etc.) and a new objectivity; as a result, a new reality is created, as well as conditions for new activities. To define the meaning of modern education, the concept of an educational environment (as formed in education, related to pedagogical communication, semiotic loaded) is introduced. In addition, the current situation in the field of education is described. The leading position of the teacher is not the management and formation, but the support of the personality, stimulating and puzzling it, hints and help, organizing conditions and space for the student's activity and creativity, joint search for solutions, demonstration of their own position and work, willingness to discuss problems together with students and a number of other points that lie within the same reality. Four educational needs are analyzed, which form the appropriate pedagogical audiences: "universal" education, "specialized", "interest-based" and "missionary". The conclusion is made that the meaning of education is a complex field of meanings, assuming from the side of pedagogy and science the arrangement of the cultural and semiotic environment, and from the individual thinking, choice and actions. The complexity of building such a dual-use environment (providing the formation of an average type of person and the support of different types of personality) is that it should work for the four specified types of education, acquaint a developing young person with the main types of problem situations, and form the competencies necessary to resolve them.

EVALUATION OF RELEVANCE IN THE STRUCTURE OF A MULTIMODAL SCIENTIFIC TEXT

This article studies semiotic resources for expressing the evaluation of relevance in the framework of research practice. The analysis is carried out using a set of German linguistic articles. The central question is the use of linguistic and visual-graphic means in the semiosis of the evaluation of relevance. The methodological basis of the analysis is set by the theoretical guidelines of interactional sociolinguistics, linguistic semiotics, social semiotics and metapragmatics which defend the basic theses about the fundamental multimodality of any text and social conditioning of textual meanings by the goals and sociocultural context of the communicative practice. The article for the first time presents and systematizes the corpus data on graphic design used in a research article; the role of the visuality in creating the evaluative meaning of relevance; three main options for coding the evaluation of relevance are identified and described: linguistic, visual-graphic and mixed. In the context of a scientific research situation, both a separate application of semiotic modes of a verbal code and their interaction in the structure of a multimodal scientific text are analyzed. In terms of integration, contrast, and double coding, the semantic relations between linguistic and visual-graphic modes are categorized, as well as the relationship of each of the modes with the basic verbal code. The presented results of the analysis contribute to the theoretical understanding of how a researcher verbalizes, and a recipient interprets the evaluation of relevance in the multimodal semiotic environment of a textual whole.

Conceptual grounds of inclusive education

This article examines the contradiction between the new principles of the concept of inclusive education and the reference to the theory of development as the basis of this concept. Individualization of education is one of the central ideas of the concept of inclusive education, since unlike in traditional education and the concept of formation, the individual cannot be reduced to an averaged type, as well as students’ development as a single trajectory and a common pattern for everyone. The author's understanding of tutor movement and experience allowed formulating the approach and methodology that is an alternative to the concept of formation, reveals the actual experience of inclusive education. The approach implies the following positions: different trajectories of development for different types of personality; consideration pf the structures established in the prior development; creation of semiotic environment in communication that allows the individual fulfilling their potential and substantiating a new perspective; three tasks of support – initiation of problems and situations of becoming of the new, assistance in solution of these problems and support of development, vector of establishment and development in the fold of culture; differentiation of pre-personal and personal forms (“prama” and subjectivity). For clarification of the aforementioned provisions, the two cases are analyzed (the process of revealing an image in the drawing, as well as the story that took place with young Carl Jung). This analysis allowed characterizing the conceptual grounds of inclusive education. The article introduces the concepts of “social body” and “reflexive practices”, which alongside the positions of L. S. Vygotsky (bypass, reliance on the child’s mental structures, understanding the source of development as a social phenomenon, rather than biological) can be used for the development of inclusive education.

Trans-scripting as a multilingual practice: the case of Hellenised English

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the term ‘trans-scripting’ to examine fleeting, socially unstable practices of writing a language in a non-canonical script. As a theoretical notion, trans-scripting conceives of script as a semiotic resource whose situated choice and sequential alternation can create discursive meaning. The case study is on ‘Hellenized English’, a recent and overall quite rare practice of representing English in the Greek script. The analysis focuses on three YouTube videos which display a former Greek Prime Minister speaking English and use Hellenised English in subtitles. Graphemic microanalysis of these subtitles shows how trans-scripting draws on various techniques to scorn the politician’s English language skills and, by extension, his adequacy for office. This case study shows that in a digital era, the choice of a non-canonical script is enabled by digital communication technologies, embedded in a complex semiotic environment, and oriented to a networked audience. Trans-scripting practices capitalise on the poetic dimension of language by inviting viewers to gaze on linguistic forms and reflect on their difference to other potential representations of speech, as a basis on which to draw socio-political and moral conclusions about the represented speaker.

Ways of meaning

Abstract This paper explores one aspect of the operationalisation of a patient-centred ideology of care by examining an oncologist’s answers to questions asked by her patient and his companion during a palliative oncology consultation and comparing her answers to the markedly different answers of another oncologist. Halliday’s concept of register and Hasan’s semantic networks are used to examine the oncologists’ answers. Patients’ questions create the semiotic environment for clinicians to provide the information patients need for informed decision-making – an important aspect of patient-centredness. The answers clinicians provide construe their position towards this ideology of care. Findings suggest that one way patient-centredness can be operationalised, at the level of semantics, is through providing elaborated answers that explicitly display the reasoning employed by the oncologist.

Rethinking literary education in the digital age

This paper discusses the perspectives of literary education in the context of the transforming of the notions of literature, reading, and learning. While everyday semiotic practices are becoming increasingly digital and multimodal, school education in most countries is still largely focused on mediating original literary texts in print and their established interpretations. Less conventional sources of literary information – brief retellings, comic strips, memes, social media posts – tend to make up a large part of the students’ semiotic environment; yet these are usually dismissed by school education as inaccurate and irrelevant. Cultural semiotics, however, allows regarding pulverized versions of texts as a part of a natural educational system – the culture itself. A holistic approach allows not only integrating everyday semiotic practices into a school curriculum, but also revealing the inherent multimodality, transmediality, and creativity of the literary experience. The paper explores possible implications of semiotics in three aspects of literary education: multimodality and heterogeneity of literary experience; influence of digital media on the perception habits; reading as a creative building of a whole from different fragments. The overarching goal is to enrich school education through a deeper understanding of literary experience and a widening of the spectrum of acknowledged tools, formats and media. The theoretical survey is supported by real-life examples from school practice and recreational reading.

A Model of Command Behavior of Agents in a Qualitative Semiotic Environment. Part 1. A Qualitative Functioning Environment. Basic Definitions and Statement of the Problem

The mathematical model of the formation and functioning of a team of artificial intelligence agents with BDI architecture in a qualitative semiotic (sign) environment of functioning is considered in the work. As the basis of the mathematical model of the environment of functioning, the model of the “Group of robots–Environment” multi-agent dynamic system was chosen. A method for structuring the environment of functioning in the form of a partially ordered set of embedded subspaces of the state space of a dynamical system and a method for symbolizing the classes of states by symbol names that define these classes are proposed. Such a structure is defined as a qualitative conceptual framework of the environment and is called the semiotic environment of functioning. In terms of a qualitative semiotic functioning environment, a mathematical model of an intelligent agent with a BDI architecture is proposed and the conditions for the formation and functioning of teams of intelligent agents in this environment are formulated.

A Model of Command Behavior of Agents in a Qualitative Semiotic Environment. Part 2. Models and Algorithms for the Formation and Functioning of Teams of Agents

An algorithm for constructing a qualitative semiotic environment for a group of agents is proposed, which consists in determining the subspaces of the states of the “Group of robots–environment” dynamic system in the form of a qualitative conceptual framework of this environment. An algorithm for symbolizing the classes of states of a conceptual framework is proposed. In terms of a qualitative semiotic environment, a mathematical model of the agent with BDI architecture is proposed. The conditions for the formation and functioning of agents with BDI architecture in this environment are formulated.

Urban ecosemiotics of trees: Why the ecological alien species paradigm has not gained ground in cities?

The transportation and translocation of species beyond their natural habitats is considered to be one of the major causes of biodiversity loss these days. Concerns are growing also about urbanization and the resulting destruction of natural habitats. At the same time, the integration of urban environments into nature protection efforts has brought along the intent to apply the ecological alien species paradigm in cities. Yet, as the practices of urban landscaping demonstrate, this objective has not been achieved. In this article, we propose that the reasons behind it are largely related to the specifics of the city as a semiotic system. Multiplicity of codes and subjects of various origins is contested by the ecological alien species paradigm, yet characteristic of the urban semiotic environment. The city often serves the function of a cultural model, embodying the principles of setting the borders between Self and the Other. Also in this case, the ecological alien species paradigm has to face a different complex of meanings attributed to the Other. We demonstrate how two different models of the city are expressed in the interpretations of alien trees by using pyramid oaks and poplars in Estonia as an example.

Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 by Jeanne Colleran (review)

Reviewed by: Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 by Jeanne Colleran Jenna L. Kubly Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991. By Jeanne Colleran. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; pp. 252. In her own words, Jeanne Colleran’s Theatre and War aims “to investigate how the media, beginning with the Persian Gulf War, has altered political analysis and how this altercation has in turn affected socially critical art” (6)—specifically, dramas written for and produced in “mainstream” British and American theatrical venues (6–7). Although earlier scholarship deals with theatrical representations of other wars, Colleran’s book is among the first to deal exclusively with theatrical works written since 1991 that portray war and its aftermath. Although she both begins and concludes on a hopeful note of “art’s restorative powers” (11), the book’s most significant contribution is a skillful engagement with Baudrillard and a wide range of other theorists who critique the role of the media in the performance of war, followed by an inquiry into the theatrical works that sought to expose the media’s simulations, obfuscations, and biases. Colleran opens by setting forth her overarching approach with a consideration of how the rapid growth in media influenced the perception and presentation of war—the “new semiotic environment” (7). She traces the rise of the media and its power to construct news to the coverage of the First Gulf War in 1991, which marks a “historical juncture” (31), as the images broadcast directly into home televisions “provoke[d] public response and policy response” (14). This shift was evident in the ways in which media, politics, and even military strategy “converged [to] reshape the public sphere” (31). This coverage, Colleran and others argue, changed the way in which the public responded to the war, as the quantity of information did not necessarily equal veracity, leaving the spectator with the difficult task of interpretation. The theatrical works analyzed in the chapters that follow each respond to this evolving task of interpretation, as each work attempts to tell the “truth” about the war, often in conversation with, if not opposition to, mass media’s initial portrayal of the event. Among the forty works discussed are those by well-known playwrights like Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Harold Pinter alongside less familiar plays, such as Richard Norton-Taylor’s Justifying War and Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End. The book is organized thematically, each chapter considering an aspect of war and its presentation in the media plays that deal with the First Gulf War; dramatic responses to 9/11; sympathetic and historically based dramatic representations of “the enemy”; more abstract and allegorical modes; “war documents” and the reemergence of documentary drama; and plays tied to specific sites—namely Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan. Several themes run through Colleran’s analysis: the unresolved legacy of Vietnam; emergent US neoimperialist policies and their ties to a militarized, capitalistic culture; and the possibility of dissent and activism. Just as some plays point to the American past and its influence on political rhetoric, others take an even broader view of history, attempting to counteract the average American’s incomplete understanding of Middle Eastern history and the tendency to view Muslim people stereotypically—both deficiencies, the result of how the media chooses to frame their stories. In cataloging and analyzing the various theatrical responses to 9/11, Colleran argues that many of the earliest dramas tackled fundamental questions like “Why” and “Who,” and in seeking these answers, quickly moved beyond the heroes of 9/11 to instead “interrupt hypernationalist discourse” (104) and investigate how globalization, US dominance, and incorrect assumptions contributed to ongoing instability. Other works take a different angle, seeking to put a face on the “enemy” and their motivations, whether rational or beyond comprehension. Despite staging the terrorist, who might be “another man’s freedom fighter” (115), other plays also depict the constant state of anxiety about terrorists/terrorism in which post-9/11 citizens exist. The images of past acts are part of the constant fear that terrorists create, in that another, more horrific act is both “unprecedented” and yet “already imagined” (120). Finally, a theme that binds these...

"Xenophobia" in South Africa: Order, Chaos, and the Moral Economy of Witchcraft

This article explores the violent, anti-immigrant riots that swept through informal settlements in South Africa in 2008, during which more than sixty foreigners were killed and more than one hundred thousand displaced. In the first part of the paper, I draw on research conducted in informal settlements around the city of Durban to argue that many people’s perceptions of foreigners are informed by ideas about witches and witchcraft, which articulate with widespread anxieties about rising unemployment, housing shortages, and a general crisis of social reproduction. These ideas provide a semiotic environment in which anti-immigrant violence becomes thinkable. In the second part of the paper, I argue that these ethnographic data help us interrogate existing theories of xenophobic violence, which tend to see it as a reaction to the cultural confusion and social anomie that globalization allegedly triggers. This dominant approach relies on assumptions about order and chaos that are native to Euro-American culture and thus do not necessarily apply cross-culturally. I show that these assumptions have a long and troubling history in South Africa, where colonial administrators and mid-century social scientists drew on them in their attempts to manage African populations.

Theatre and war: theatrical responses since 1991

Introduction: Spectator of Calamities Five Political Crises: The New Semiotic Environment Turning History into Happening The Persians From the Ruins of 9/11: Grief and Terror Facing Terror War Documents Bodies Count The Spectacle of Our Suffering

Contact calls: Twitter as a dialogic social and linguistic practice

The rapid adoption of new forms of digital communication is now attracting the attention of researchers from a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences. In the landscape of social media, the microblogging application Twitter has rapidly become an accepted feature of everyday life with a broad appeal. This paper, from a dual autoethnography (Davies and Merchant, 2007) over one year, is a reflexive account of the experience of two academic Twitter users. We offer analyses of the functionalities of the semiotic environment and trace how our meaning making practices illuminate Bakhtinian (1986) principles of human communication, while at the same time constituting literacies that are distinctively new in character. We show how communication using Web 2.0 technologies can be described as semiotic and sociolinguistic practice and offer an appropriately dialogic and exploratory methodology to the study of New Literacies.

Two multimodal formats for responding to requests

The paper discusses action sequences that concern the transfer of an object or service, namely requests and responses to them. It focuses specifically on responses, describing how interactants construct them with linguistic, embodied and material resources. The data, a total of 16h, are drawn from video recordings of casual co-present conversations in English, and conversation analysis is used as the methodology. The majority of the requests are favorably responded to. The paper discusses how the acceptance and fulfillment of requests is achieved, by examining two social action formats for favorably responding to requests and by showing how linguistic and embodied practices are variously employed in the two. The first format covers requests that are responded to by fulfillment only (e.g. handing a sweet), while the second format includes favorable responses that consist of two parts, acceptance plus fulfillment as separate but linked actions (e.g. voicing an affirmative response token and assisting in disentangling a bag strap). It is noted that the ways of responding to requests in the database reflect the fact that, in co-present interaction, requests characteristically deal with concrete objects and events in the immediate semiotic environment and with present activities.

Movement in action: Initiating social navigation in cars

This paper studies how participants start social navigation in cars. It draws on audiovideo recordings of social interaction inside cars and on a methodology that studies situated multimodal social actions as they sequentially unfold in interaction. The paper studies what kinds of actions initiate or are treated as making navigation relevant, and how and when an initiating action is produced. The analysis shows that the design of the initiating action is indicative of the participants' situated understandings in a particular semiotic context of whether some driving action is required in the more distant future or right now. The analysis suggests that routes are not always planned before, nor do navigational plans always work. Navigation is also a social and collaborative activity that emerges from the requirements of the driving situation and in which co-participants display their understandings of the situation in a reflexive relationship with the semiotic environment and the events in it.