Semiotic Interpretation Research Articles

Landscapes lost

In practical life a landscape will function as a bridge between the factual and the normative. Landscapes are part of the identity and ‘memory‐bank’ of social groups, and can function as a tool for public sector management. Landscapes can be given a semiotic interpretation, from which flows the idea that several landscapes may cover the same area. It also follows that landscape change must be kept analytically separate from material change in an area. A national park regime is viewed as an attempt to preserve a small number of the landscapes within an area. A national park policy diverts attention from what is happening outside the parks, as has been the case in Norway. Landscapes outside are lost in the sense that due attention is not paid to the natural and social changes taking place. The national parks policy in Norway is heavily biased towards area protection in remote mountain regions. It is argued that one reason for this, is the definition of the ‘original’ Norwegian landscape found in the national‐romantic painting tradition in Norway that dates back about 100 years.

Design issues in a semiotic description of user responses to three interfaces

Semiotics has been used as a theoretical basis for systematizing the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of human-computer interaction. This paper focuses on the descriptive qualities of semiotics which are useful for understanding the user perspective of computer systems. The end goal is to assess the application of such semiotic description in interface design. An experiment is presented in which volunteers were asked to use and describe three interfaces created with the Apple Macintosh product Hypercard. A semiotic interpretation is given to their responses based on six principles taken from the relevant literature. The evaluation is then used to lay down a set of general guidelines for interface design.

Time and the Mind Body Problem: A Quantum Perspective

The Semiotic Interpretation (SI) of QM pushes further the Von Neumann point of view that `experience only makes statements of this type: an observer has made a certain observation; and never any like this: a physical quantity has a certain value.' The supposition that the observables of a system `possess' objective values is purely idealistic. According to the SI view, the state- vector collapse cannot result from the Schroedinger evolution of a system (even with its environment), but only from the empirical production of a mathematical symbol, irreducible to the quantum level. The production of a symbol always takes some time. Thus the state-vector collapse cannot be instantaneous (Schneider 1994), a specific prediction of the present model. From this interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, the appearances of the body are the result of state-vector collapses of several types, i.e. the production of different kinds of symbols. In fact the universe of symbols is very rich: a symbol can have a conceptual `value' (like in physics and then give rise to a measurement), or other qualitative values (like in many human behaviors). In the latter case, the Semiotic Interpretation of QM gives a way to understand how a mental representation can modify the state of the body.

Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II

Studies of how societies preserve the past have focused on the social frames of memory. This study of Abraham Lincoln during World War II extends a semiotic interpretation of culture as it focuses on memory as a social frame. Memories invoked in the context of a present crisis are rooted in generational experience. One-third of all Americans living in 1940 were born during the late nineteenth century, when Civil War resentments were fading and remembrances of Lincoln were more positive and vivid than ever. This generation understood the meaning of World War II by keying it to the Civil War. Patterned arrays of images of Lincoln were invoked by local and federal agencies to clarify the purpose of World War II, legitimate the preparations for it, and then to orient, inspire, and console the people who fought it. As a model for the present and of the present, images of Lincoln comprised a cultural system that rationalized the experience of war. I compare and contrast memory as a cultural system with constructionist theories of collective memory and discuss it in light of the erosion of American society's grand narratives

Samtale mellem religion og filosofi

Universal philosophy of religion is occupied with religion as a human manifestation, its essence and its function in human life. Special philosophy of religion is entrusted with giving a rational elucidation of the teachings of a particular religion, e.g. christianity. the medieval philosophers operated in this way and so do modern philosophers of religion as Kierkegaard and Løgstrup. In principle there is no difference between philosophy of religion and philisophy of science. The tasks of christian philosophy of religion are of the same kind as the tasks of philosophy of science and humanities get from phychoanalytic interpretation of literature, semiotics or hermeneutical bioloy.Philosophy has difficulties in answering the problems which traditionally have been answered by religion. Philosophy is a confession to reason, but the totally rational world is a caricature. Philosophy and reason are not the highest forms of life, but ought to take up a serving function. therefore the paper concludes in a dichotomy between academic considerations and some unacademic aphorisms.

Semiotics and Avant-garde Theatre

This article deals with a very short period in the long history of the semiotic conception of theatre. It concentrates on the relationship between the theatrical avantgarde and the theories developed during some twenty years in Czechoslovakia, by Otakar Zich on the one hand and the members of the Prague Linguistic Circle on the other. Broadly speaking, this is the Prague School theory of theatre. A Polish scholar has called it “semiotics of theatre in statu nascendi.” This designation is no doubt pertinent as far as the recent development of the discipline is concerned; its more remote past still remains largely unexplored. But another commentator went much further, claiming that until 1931, the year when Zich's treatise on the theatre and Mukařovský's article on Chaplin's City Lights appeared, “dramatic poetics—the descriptive science of the drama and theatrical performance—had made little progress since its Aristotelian origins.” In fact, semiotics is a very old discipline and the semiotic interpretation of the theatre was not invented in Czechoslovakia between the two World Wars.

Adelman van Luik: De eerste opponent van Berengarius van Tours

Adelman of Liège was the first who opposed Berengar of Tours in his views regarding the eucharist. He did so in a letter written at about 1051. Adelman defended a real transition of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood by referring to the so-called corpus Christi-mystery and by expressing his doubts about the validity of sense perception. Berengar replied explaining the transition as a process of assumption into a higher dignity, and not as a total destruction of the original bread and wine. By stressing the symbolic character of the sacrament he introduced a semiotic interpretation.

Texts on-line

The study of signs is divided between those scholars who use the Saussurian binary sign (semiology) and those who prefer Charles Peirce's tripartite sign (semiotics). The common view of the opposition between the two types of signs does not take into consideration the methodological conditions of applicability of these two types of signs. This is particularly important in the field of literary studies and hence for the preparation of electronic programs for text analysis. The Peircian sign explicitly entails the discovery of a truth of meaning that claims to be universal and not reducible to a collection of opinions based on fragmented information; it also imposes the task of elucidating a transhistorical and universal significantion encoded in a text. Contrary to Peirce's view of the sign, our use of computer programs for text analysis, however, demonstrates that we implicitly treat every literary text as a set of linguistic data (letters, phonemes, syntagmatic segments, etc.) which are reducible to units that can be treated separately. A brief comparison of the results obtained from computer analyses of the French poet Stephane Mallarme's text, “Le Cygne,” with those obtained from two Peircian analyses (by Riffaterre and Champigny) of the same text demonstrates that our current methods of computer textual analysis are based on a Saussurian semiology, which is unidimensional and limited, and that these methods are still quite unable to produce a semiotic interpretation based on a totalizing hierarchy of the text's various discursive components.

Review: Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music by V. Kofi Agawu; Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Carolyn Abbate

Review: Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music by V. Kofi Agawu; Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Carolyn Abbate

GATES AS SIGNS OF AUTONOMY IN MUSLIM TOWNS

sion with Oleg Grabar about the Muslim built environment. He advised me to investigate the word khatta and its exact meaning and implication for Muslim towns. That advice gave me a key for future essays, among them this study. Most of the works that have dealt with gates have concentrated on monumental portals such as those to cities and mosques; they range in theme from semiotic interpretations to the geometric innovations of their builders. Gates to shared residential spaces such as dead-end streets have been neglected by historians, mainly because they are not attracted to gates that are neither as elaborately nor as elegantly built as monumental gates are. Here I will argue that residential gates play a role as symbols of control in society and deserve attention because they can contribute to the understanding of the sociocultural structure of societies where they are found. Contemporary scholars have been misled in their observations of the morphology of streets in Muslim towns; they describe them as either a labyrinth of thoroughfares and alleys, or as they exist today a network of linear streets organically arranged. But in the past there were gates all over the city that divided this labyrinthine space into many smaller spaces for the exclusive use of particular groups. These places closed in by gates had a function that has been lost today and that affected many aspects of city life. The same traditional physical organization had a totally different quality than that we see

Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music

Of all the repertories of Western Art music, none is as explicitly listener-oriented as that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet few attempts to analyze the so-called Classic Style have embraced the semiotic implications of this condition. Playing with Signs proposes a listener-oriented theory of Classic instrumental music that encompasses its two most fundamental communicative dimensions: expression and structure. Units of expression, defined in reference to topoi, are shown here to interact with, confront, and merge into units of structure, defined in terms of the rhetorical conventions of beginning, continuing, and ending. The book draws on examples from works by Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven to show that the explicitly referential, even theatrical, surface of Classic music derives from a play with signs. Although addressed primarily to readers interested in musical analysis, the book opens up fruitful avenues for further research into musical semiotics, aesthetics, and Classicism. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Time-binding and Native people: A semiotic interpretation

Time-binding and Native people: A semiotic interpretation

Reality, the museum, and the catalogue: A semiotic Interpretation of early German texts of museology

Reality, the museum, and the catalogue: A semiotic Interpretation of early German texts of museology

"May Your Life Be Marvelous:" English Language Labelling and the Semiotics of Japanese Promotion

A recent trend in consumer research is the broadening of the notion of consumer behavior to include activities not merely epiphenomenal to marketing. Another trend with earlier historical origins is the semiotic interpretation of consumption activities. These trends are merged in the present article, which contrasts the vehemence with which Japanese cultural uniqueness is linked with the spirit of the language ( kotodama ) with the Japanese readiness to use English language loanwords in establishing an identity for indigenous product offerings. The article focuses on the investing of indigenous consumer goods with meaning through use of loanwords in a culturally conservative blocked market context. It explores the meaning of such investment from the perspective of consumer and analyst, using product labels and other promotional vehicles as a primary data base. Finally, it treats the diffusion of cultural elements such as language and lifestyle, and their subsequent adaptation to local systems of meaning, as a significant macroconsumption pattern.

Ceremonial Dialogues in South America

In native South America, ceremonial dialogue is a widespread and prominent, yet simultaneously enigmatic, form of ritualized language use. This paper examines the ceremonial dialogic complex through the interpretive lens of a semiotic hypothesis, namely, that ritualized dialogic form is a sign vehicle, a “model of and for” linguistic and more generally social solidarity. A comparative correlational study confirms this semiotic interpretation, showing that the ceremonial dialogue is used in situations of potential conflict—the maximally distant social relations within a given society. This paper also raises a broader theoretical issue concerning the role of metacommunicative devices in social action, suggesting that it is the “meta‐signal” itself that enables actors to formulate an image of action—thereby regulating it—simultaneously as it occurs.

Towards an Interpretation of semiotics and history

Towards an Interpretation of semiotics and history

The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture.

The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture.

The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture.

The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture.

Dean MacCannell and Juliet Flower MacCannelI: The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture

Dean MacCannell and Juliet Flower MacCannelI: The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture

The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture by Dean MacCannell and Juliet Flower MacCannell (Indiana University Press; 224 pp.; $18.50) - The Sociology of Culture by Raymond Williams (Schocken Books; 248 pp.; $7.95 [paper

The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture by Dean MacCannell and Juliet Flower MacCannell (Indiana University Press; 224 pp.; $18.50) - The Sociology of Culture by Raymond Williams (Schocken Books; 248 pp.; $7.95 [paper