Semiotic Processes Research Articles

Managing multilingualism in a tourist area during the COVID-19 pandemic

Intense mobility of people and languages driven by tourism, which propels “cultural transformation of places” (Urry, 1995:2) across the world, is manifested in their linguistic landscapes through varying regimes of multilingualism. Linguistic landscapes, which render themselves for “visual consumption” (Urry, 2005), emerge from the sedimentation and synchronization of diachronic semiotic processes which index current societal developments. The recent period of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a noticeable impact on linguistic landscapes globally through the emergence of a noticeable and coherent layer of pandemic regulatory signage. In a longitudinal study covering the period between the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020 to its decline in August 2022, we trace the implementation of regulatory measures in a highly frequented tourist region in Slovakia whereby the actors involved in the tourist industry implemented the official pandemic legislature aimed at preventing the spread of the disease. Our overall goal is to explore the management of “pandemic regulatory discourse”, i.e., how producers of regulatory signage manage multimodal resources to convey their authority and stance towards regulations, to legitimize regulatory measures, and to ensure compliance with them. The study is grounded in the theoretical-methodological approaches of ethnographic linguistic landscape studies, geosemiotics, sociolinguistics of globalization, sociopragmatics, and language management theory.

Kinetic intensities and moral registers of pandemic place branding

Emblematic of late capitalist modes of value creation, place branding draws on semiotic processes as well as on affective mobilization both to structure the representation and fruition of specific locales and to produce publics. Such governmental projects of people and places, however, are always open to possible acts of recontextualization. This article discusses the complex forms of social and semiotic regimentation (and subversion) underlying place-branding projects by exploring two social media campaigns that involved the city of Milan during two key moments of the Covid-19 outbreak. Revolving around different moral discourses of speed, both campaigns resulted in a partial or failed uptake. The initial (February 2020) celebration of fast-paced metropolitan work ethics evoked by #MilanoNonSiFerma (‘Milan doesn’t stop’) – a marketing and political faux pas – was followed (in May 2020) by a reparatory campaign #UnPassoAllaVolta (‘One step at a time’), aimed at endorsing the meditative quality of slow temporality. These morally inflected shifts in kinetic intensity materialized alternative forms of ethical sociality and disciplinary practices, showing how the semiotic regimentation of affects through moral registers and chronotopic formulations plays a key role within the fusion of media and capital characteristic of our post-Fordist present.

Narrative modeling and its implications for cultural practices

Abstract Paul Cobley stated that the semiotics of narrative should not be conflated with narratology. This statement becomes a starting point for an inquiry into the semiotics of narrative by looking at the concept of narrative signs and its future as a new theory of narrative. Narrative signs embedding semiotic processes convey the meaning of narrative in the areas of the prelinguistic, the linguistic, and the extralinguistic by way of signs, models, and semiosis. What is more, the concept of narrative modeling for Cobley enables further inquiry into cultural activity through the act of narration for transvaluation. In this regard, a new theory of narrative involves time, emotion, abduction, and the dialogic self, leading to the narrative-related ideas of cognition, identity, and human subjectivity. Based on Peirce’s semiotics and a biosemiotic approach, narrative modeling makes human beings participate in sign activity, that is, cultural activity through dialogic interaction between culture and nature. Consequently, this paper proposes that the study of the mysterious narrative through narrative modeling is geared to seeing how it affects humans and also how they see and make a world through various cultural practices.

Multilingual Realities, Monolingual Ideologies: Social Media Representations of Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States

Abstract Little is known about how monolingual ideologies and their effects manifest in online contexts as compared to offline contexts. We conducted a corpus-assisted discourse study to investigate this, with a focus on Twitter representations of Spanish as a heritage language in the USA. We analysed two corpora (one English and one Spanish—over 30 million words), examining frequencies, collocations, concordance lines, and larger text segments. The results revealed evidence of the same ideologies found in offline contexts: normative monolingualism (drawing on the one-nation-one-language ideology and language purity ideologies) as well as raciolinguistic ideologies. We show how the semiotic processes of iconization and erasure lead to the (evidently erroneous) essentialization of Spanish heritage language speakers as a homogeneous group of un-American, racialized immigrants with broken language. This discursive creation of difference constitutes the basis for the systematic discrimination of Spanish heritage language speakers, thus reflecting and reproducing social inequality. Our findings therefore indicate the necessity of extending planning measures to protect heritage language speakers (and other minority groups) from offline contexts to online contexts.

Translation as meaning-construction under co-textual and contextual constraints: A model for a material approach to translation

ABSTRACT The concept of materiality challenges translation studies to reassess its assumptions about meaning in order to better account for translational phenomena that occur outside verbal communication and linguistic representation. This article combines the idea of materiality with semiotic and textual theories to conceptualize meaning as a construct formed in the interplay of the text and its constituent elements, recipient, and environment of reception. Building on this, translation is reconceptualized as a general-level semiotic process rather than just a linguistic or cultural phenomenon. Translation is seen as an asymmetrical process that involves the interpretation of a material text as well as the composition of a semiotic sign-complex whose form and meaning are subject to co-textual and contextual constraints. This model shows how materiality allows for a generalized translation theory that is applicable to a wide range of specialized cases and compatible with studies in other fields in a philosophically sustainable way.

Circulating Emotions: UNESCO's original initiative on Artificial Intelligence

We propose to analyze how emotions and stereotypes circulate, using the example of recent UNESCO publications in artificial intelligence (AI). Yuri Lotman outlined two types of restrictions imposed by culture on human behavior, regulated by shame or fear, respectively. This distinction coincides with the division of the collective into ‘we’ and ‘they’ groups. The circulation of emotions is a semiotic process, and in the discourse on AI, the primary emotion is fear. Today, our attitude to artificial intelligence is regulated by fear and is based on dividing the collective into ‘we’ (ours, people) and ‘they’ (others, AI). However, several international organizations are discussing issues related to the ethics of AI. They propose moving from a system of relations with AI based on fear (‘we’ – ‘he’) to regulation based on shame (creating a new ethical community around ‘we’). This community should be understood in the spirit of anthroposemiotic studies of recent years: human interaction, collectives, habitats, and imaginations. In 2022, UNESCO launched an original graphic project to block the circulation of AI-associated fears and stereotypes. The graphic novel Inside AI is presented in several language versions. The versions of the title can be interpreted as illustrating types of semiotic existence: virtual (in Spanish), actual (in French), and realized (in English). The task of blocking the circulation of fear and overcoming it by immersing yourself in the world of AI is carried out through the prism of gender discourse. Readers are invited to take a journey into the world of AI in the company of four characters, three women, and one man. Specific gender features and fears mark each of them's discourse. Today, as the function of graphics as a marker of metalinguistic expression increases, the UNESCO graphic novel is intended to combat fears and stop the circulation of gender stereotypes simultaneously.

Cognitive processes of the environmental perception: A methodological approach to the semantic aesthetics of open-air archaeological contexts

The article presents an on-going methodological framework for understanding aesthetic experience, with specific reference to the semantic semiotics of the natural landscape and open-air archaeological contexts. The approach involves two broad perspectives: First, a socio-psychological which refers to the “aesthetic enjoinment” (a kind of pleasure) of the cultural visitors and which is approached from the point of view of socio-cultural experiences that are revived aesthetically and secondly, a structural – functional approach concerning the mechanisms which activate the cognitive processes of the environmental perception. The aim of this research is to ascertain the semiotic processes by examining the naturalized and phenomenological dimensions of the environmental space which are activated in the simple viewing of open-air antiquities.

Phénomènes liés à la transformation : la sublimation de l’expérience dans la publicité touristique en français

Adopting the tourism semiosphere as a context, our theoretical framework evokes certain complementary semiotic processes involved in the generation of meaning. This perspective, linked to the notion of the institution of meaning, allows us to understand the intertwining of discursive and non-discursive action as well as the dialectical component that feeds the genesis and evolution of tourism imaginaries. Considering that discourse is the vehicle of imaginaries, we address the construction of the tourist object, the focal point of otherness. We analyse the discursive indices relating to its fundamental vocation: the capacity to transform. With some examples, we study the discursive manifestations of transformation, its role in the construction of a sublimated tourist experience, which emphasizes the value of the object.

Language symbols for conveying culture

Recent studies have addressed the possibilities of adopting the Latin alphabet in the Kazakh script. However, little attention has been given to the investigation of the role of the script as a set of language symbols in transferring national cultural values. This paper seeks to lend insight into the historical and cultural dimensions of the Kazakh national script. We take a holistic approach to analyze the semiotic processes in Kazakhstan over time by unifying linguistic, cultural and historical perspectives. We highlight the role of language symbols in expanding cultural and spiritual heritage and passing down national cultural values through generations. The emergence of the Kazakh script, the alphabet and their preservation in written monuments, inscriptions of religious content, and publications served as the main means of distributing the national spiritual values, identity and socio-historical treasures. The complex study enabled us to conclude that the transfer of the Kazakh script to the Latin alphabet helps preserve national values, expand the scope of use of the Kazakh language in accordance with the needs of the society and flexibly transmit all modern scientific and technical achievements. The study contributes to the research of language policies in Central Asian countries.

Основы теории «языка» в двустороннем консенсусе. О работе И. Сталина «Марксизм и вопросы языкознания» с позиций коммуникативной модели. Часть II

In Joseph V. Stalin’s work Marxism and Problems of Linguistics (1950), a num­ber of general issues of the theory of the verbal process are touched upon, the in­terpretation of which is generally consistent with traditional (including modern quantitatively predominant) linguistic views on the phenomenon of “language”. The linguistic consensus is observed in several positions that arise as a result of theoretical simplification (inaccurate metaphor): 1) “language” exists as objec­tive verbal forms, constitutes a unity that ensures communication between peo­ple and which can be an object of study and description; 2) “language” is gram­mar and vocabulary; 3) “language” is connected with thinking; there are no thoughts without “language”; 4) “language” is a common property for a given collective (nation, people), “language” unites all those who speak it; 5) “lan­guage” is a mystical (“magic”) object. This article proposes a critique of the Marxist-linguistic consensus from the point of view of the communicative model. A simplified (linguistic) model of a word-containing semiotic process is the result of excessive attention to the verbal substrate (“words”), of an attempt to present verbal units as self-organized semantic-formal modules responsible for everything that happens in the field of communicative meaning (sense) for­mation. As a result, a theoretical construct “language” is created, designed to save researchers’ a priori attitude to the matter of words (which, at the right mo­ment, when confronting with reality, is casuistically replaced by “speech”, which, however, is also verbal). The inefficiency of “language” (and “speech”) lies in the imposition of its own action on verbal “bodies”, while the generation of meaning in natural word-containing communication is entirely carried out by the complex personal impact of the semiotic actor.

INTERLINGUAL TRANSLATION: AN ATTEMPT AT UNDERSTANDING SOME BASIC CONCEPTS

This paper attempts to look at some small fragments of interlingual translation studies. The article begins by exploring Roman Jakobson’s tripartite division of translation of which interlingual translation is a component part. Then it presents in some detail the interlingual translation process. This is followed by two main sections where the core concept in interlingual translation theory and practice – “translation equivalence” (TE), some other concepts related to it, and three main approaches to TE are examined. It is clear from the paper that interlingual translation is a very complex social semiotic process, and that the concept of TE is employed in so many different senses that recently it has been denied by some scholars any value, or even any legitimate status in translation theory and translation practice. However, based on what is going on in the field of interlingual translation studies, it is suggested that the complexity of the interlingual translation process and the diversity of opinions on the concept of TE do not mean that scholars have complicated the problems. Rather, they have really contributed to the advancement of knowledge in the field, not with the intention of a final verdict, but as food for thought and invaluable reference materials for further research, making interlingual translation theory and practice an ever-moving academic discipline.

Exploring the translation–development interactions from an emergent semiotic perspective

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (Greater Bay Area or GBA), a megalopolis in China, has developed rapidly and achieved remarkable results in recent years. This study aims to explore the translation–development interactions in the GBA from an emergent semiotic perspective. Following the studies on translation and development (Marais, 2014, 2018; Olivier de Sarden, 2005), this study views development as a semiotic process of making meaning under specific affordances and constraints, while translations could be regarded as meaningful intercultural mediations or adaptations that help to transcend language barriers and support regional development. Through exploring different translation practices in education, economics and the media, this study analyses how translation plays a mediating role in the development of the GBA in multiple respects. It first examines the adaptation of curriculum designs of translation courses in the universities of the GBA and then analyses the functions of the translation industry in support of the economic development of the GBA. Finally, it analyses the translations of international publicity material on the tourism websites of the GBA to explore the ways in which translation mediates in the cultural exchanges and coordinated developments regarding the GBA and its component parts. The research findings show that translation practices interact with the developmental contexts at the linguistic, economic and cultural levels, contributing to the coordinated development of the GBA.

From biosemiotics to physiosemiotics. Towards a speculative semiotics of the inorganic world.

Abstract In the first part of the article, biosemiotics will be presented in its historical and theoretical dynamics. New areas of research that have emerged in the speculative field of biosemiotics, such as ecosemiotics, will be explored. In all its developments, biosemiotics, which identifies semiosis with life, excludes inorganic matter from any semiotics processes. However, the inorganic world is a fundamental part of the biosphere, especially if we consider the emergence of life. In order to include inorganic matter within semiotic processes of the biosphere we will use James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis reinterpreted in the light of semiotics. If we use the hypothesis of planet Earth as a living system in its complexity and if we consider that every living system is intrinsically semiotic, then inorganic matter must also participate in semiotics processes. In this sense, the semiotics of the inorganic world reveals that it participates in a sort of non-human agency. This type of speculative semiotics engages semiotics processes that are constitutive of matter and that can be read as the story of the planet itself. In conclusion, I will propose a physiosemiotics as semiotics of matter.

Critical Analysis of the Influence on Power and Coordination of the Concepts of Religion and Discourse

The article analyzes the critical discourse analysis as one of the paradigms in the discursive study of religion. Critical discourse analysis examines discursive and critical views on religion together, and is able to show the features and priorities of these areas, which are not among the main trends in modern science. The issue of discourse analysis is raised and discussed in the context of logic, semiotics, philosophy of language, analysis of relations, consensus, the legitimacy of ethical and moral values. The article represents and describes the importance of discourse in the understanding of religion as a concept and accepting the role of religion in everyday social relations through the critical discourse analysis and the discursive study of religion. It also provides guidelines for the analysis of discursive structures and analyzes the processes of revival and change in the field of religion. The concept of discourse is considered separately and its different meanings are shown. It analyzes how the process of critical analysis is carried out in the context of discursive research, and analyzes the main directions of practical critical discourse analysis. The problem of analysis of a discursive event arises in the context of non-linguistic conditions of occurrence of discourse (economic, political, etc.). It has been established that the meaning of discourse since the foundation of discursive analysis includes not only written or oral expression, but also non-linguistic semiotic processes. It has been shown that for each discursive sphere, epistemic beings differ both in terms of axiological value and in terms of subjective regulation. Keywords: religion, power, discourse analysis, coordination, religious discourse.

The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel

The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel

Semiotic analysis of cultural representations in Iranian English textbooks

The Peircean semiotic approach suggests a non-linear and dynamic view of culture to examine it through signs, sign systems and meaning-making processes. This approach emphasises that images, texts and tasks are considered semiotic resources, generating cultural meanings through semiotic processes. This study aims to reveal the concept of culture in a dynamic manner concerning the semiotic potential embedded in the Iranian EFL textbooks used in junior high schools from the perspective of a semiotic framework. Semiotic analysis showed that cultural meaning-making is directed through guided semiosis, hampering students’ exploration of cultural potential meanings, cultural reflection, understanding and awareness. The denotational and the indexical relationship between texts and images also does not foster students’ intercultural understanding of living and maintaining in a global community, and hence, teachers need to move towards the symbolic aspect of texts and images through unguided semiosis to develop students’ cultural understanding of self and others.
 Keywords: Cultural, English textbooks, Peircean, semiotic, unguided semiosis;

The project, the everyday, and reflexivity in sociotechnical agri-food assemblages: proposing a conceptual model of digitalisation

Digital technologies have opened up new perspectives in thinking about the future of food and farming. Not only do these new technologies promise to revolutionise our way of meeting global food demand, they do so by boldly claiming that they can reduce their environmental impacts. However, they also have the potential to transform the organisation of agri-food systems more fundamentally. Drawing on assemblage theory, we propose a conceptual model of digitalisation organised around three facets: digitalisation as a project; “everyday digitalisation”; and reflexive digitalisation. These facets reflect different relations between concrete practices and representations, imaginaries, and narratives, while representing different modes of agency: the collective, the distributed, and the individual, which, we argue, highlight contrasting ways for human and non-human actors to engage with digitalisation. With this model anchored in assemblage theory, we offer a tool for critically and comprehensively engaging with the complexity and multiplicity of digitalisation as a sociotechnical process. We then apply our theoretical framework to two ethnographic studies, one explores the growth of digital technologies in Switzerland as a way to govern and monitor national agriculture, the other focuses on Indonesia, where small digital startups have begun to dot the landscape. By identifying the material and semiotic processes occurring in each case, we notice similar issues being raised in terms of how digitalisation is co-constructed in society.

Indeterminacy and final causation in the process of sign determination

In semiotics, final causation can be related to the process of determination (PAPE, 1993). From Peirce’s point of view, determination is not a causal determinism, but a delimitation of a range of possibilities. One starts from objects towards interpretants, in a process mediated by the sign, in which the dynamic object works as a force that constrains interpretants to correspond to their objects. The correspondence between object and interpretant is important because it is through a generated interpretant that the object of a sign can be known. Even though this process of determination coincides with the idea of final causation, there is a certain indeterminacy in it. For Peirce (EP 2:353, 1905), vagueness and generality are two types of indeterminacy. In the terms of the phenomenological categories, vagueness is an indeterminacy of the order of firstness, generality an indeterminacy of the order of thirdness, and both, to some extent, are opposed to that which is defined, which belongs to secondness. Each aspect of the sign may vary according to the three phenomenological categories. Consequently, degrees of imprecision are added to the semiotic process, which is a determination process. Peirce asserts that the perfect precision of thought is theoretically unattainable (SS 11, 1903). Every sign is vague or general at least to some degree. In this paper, we seek to perceive degrees of indetermination and causality from an analysis of the kinds of objects and interpretants proposed by Peirce in the system of 28 sign classes.

Билингвизм Московской Руси и его отражение в литературных памятниках XVI века

The article examines the problem of bilingualism in literary monuments of the XVI century. A brief digression into the history of the study of this issue in the Russian linguistic tradition is given. The conservatism existing in scientific practice in the consideration of semiotic processes, which are often reduced only to the opposition “Church Slavonic — Old Russian”, is emphasized. The richness of stylistic forms and speech formulas in the language practice of the XVI century is noted. The polemical works of this period are analyzed in order to identify and prove the unevenness of bilingualism and its dependence on socio-cultural conditions, the linguistic personality of the author, the genre of the literary monument and axiological characteristics that are indirectly included in the text. Historical-linguistic, contextual-semantic, comparative and stylistic methods are used in the course of studying the language material. They allow us to explore the monuments of different cultural traditions in line with the multifunctionality and polysemanticism of the so-called hybrid literature of the XVI century. The most characteristic features of the monuments are documented: contamination of colloquial and everyday elements, command speech and Church Slavonicisms; the use of biblical intertexts; reflection of high and low in the semantics of verbal turns; emotive fullness of language as a new rhetorical technique in the communicative space of the Old Russian text. The conclusion is made about the ambiguity of language processes in the heyday of bilingualism in Moscovite Rus’ of the XVI century, about the change and complication of bilingualism due to the growth of intercultural ties in literature, the transformation of the book tradition and the emergence of new speech habits in verbal creativity.

Drawing a Dream: Joaquín Peinado’s Artwork and the Semiotic in José María Hinojosa’s La flor de Californía

The juxtaposition of dream narratives from Spanish surrealist writer José María Hinojosa’s La flor de Californía (1928) and artist Joaquín Peinado’s four drawings found interspersed throughout the collection demonstrates a symbiotic relationship between the artist and writer’s creative purposes, in true surrealist fashion creating an “image-text.” Thus, the present article argues that Peinado’s drawings represent a key element for understanding La flor de Californía and should be considered an integral part of the dream texts. Julia Kristeva’s ideas on signification and the interplay of the symbolic and the semiotic orders present in poetic creation prove useful in understanding this interplay of image and word. Hinojosa’s texts, along with Peinado’s drawings, attempt to re-create this process of signification, in which the text, although tied down by the symbolic order—that is, systems and realism—, constantly pushes to evade logic and allow the semiotic to emerge through genotexts. Hinojosa and Peinado’s combined creation of drawings and writings are examples of one such attempt to obliterate the social constraints of the symbolic order and allow the reader/viewer to witness indirectly the semiotic processes of the pre-Oedipal phase.