Semiotic Reading Research Articles

Shifting Paradigms: Semiotic Reading of the Built Environment Transformations in Lithuania 1986–2004

Summary The research delves into the complex and multi-layered transition of Lithuania from a Soviet to a post-Soviet society, focusing on the architectural landscape as a reflection of ideological shifts. It explores the period from Gorbachev’s initiation of perestroika in 1986 to the Baltic States’ entry into the EU and NATO in 2004, a time marked by significant transformations within the architectural, social, and political realms. First, using Greimasian Square, the study categorises and analyses the reactions toward Soviet Modernist architecture, observing the gradual shift from a representation of state ideology to a canvas reflecting a myriad of individual and collective experiences, also assuming the artistic value of the architects’ output. Second, utilising frameworks from Western architectural criticism figures such as Peter Blake, Robert Venturi and the Situationists, the study contextualises and collates with architectural trends in public interiors or private constructions in Lithuania. Additionally, presumptions are correlated with a crisis in the architectural profession, characterised by a rise in private constructions without architects. Through semiotic view architectural discourse becomes a vital element in understanding the broader cultural and political shifts in post-Soviet Lithuania.

THE MYTH OF ‘ABŪ LAHAB’ IN Q.S. AL-MASAD [111]: 1

The Qur’anic story of “Abū Lahab” is often misunderstood by some who assume that the story is factual-exclusive. This article is designed to examine how the concept of Abū Lahab is understood in Qur’anic terms, and how it is embodied in today’s context. This research uses a library research method with a descriptive-analytical pattern, through Roland Barthes’ semiotic approach as a theoretical basis. Barthes argues that the language system can be understood through two steps of semiotic reading, the first is what he calls the linguistic system (language-object), and the second is the mythical system (metalanguage). To arrive at the mythical system, it is necessary to extract meaning through the signifier system, which consists of three elements: the signifier element, the signified element, and the sign element in the second layer of the semiotic system. Through Roland Barthes’ semiotic reading, the concept of Abū Lahab that is understood to be exclusively addressed to ‘Abd al-‘Uzzā is a myth. Abū Lahab is not a personal name, but a general and universal title. ‘Abd al-‘Uzzā is only one historical representation of the figure of Abū Lahab. From Barthes’ semiotics, Abū Lahab is more accurately understood as ‘anyone who opposes the truth and is intolerant (radical) towards other groups, not hesitating to carry out offensive resistance to them if it is not in line with their personal or group ideology or political interests’. Thus, in the modern context, anyone can potentially become “Abū Lahab” as the khiṭab of Q.S. Al-Masad if they share these characteristics.

Endless Rondo or “Variations on a Theme of Phil Connors”? Musical Form, Function, and Leitmotivic Design in Groundhog Day

Abstract This article addresses music's influence on the dramatic and formal discourse in the film Groundhog Day. Suggesting that the film's ludic and narrative traits are further exhibited through its combination of both musical rondo and variation form, I address Groundhog Day through the lens of musical form, discussing its effect on Phil's transformational experience of time as Chronos to time as Kairos, which ultimately helps him break the time loop. I then demonstrate music's multiple diegetic and nondiegetic functions within the film: (1) as musical commentary; (2) as a conduit between God and Phil; and (3) as leitmotif through composer George Fenton's subtle manipulation of the Eighteenth Variation of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. I conclude with a semiotic reading of the film's banquet scene, demonstrating how music's diegetic and nondiegetic interaction with the film and its form elevates the discourse surrounding Phil and the film's musico-cinematic form to a higher degree of dignity.

Perjuangan Seorang Ibu dalam Puisi Kukusan Karya Emi Suy dan Puisi Bunda Airmata Karya MH Ainun Najib: Kajian Sastra Bandingan

This research aims to determine the relationship between the poem Kukusan by Emi Suy and the poem Bunda Airmata by MH Ainun Najib. The theory used in this research uses comparative literary theory which discusses metaphor, symbols and relevance in the two poems. The data collection technique uses first level semiotic reading, namely heuristics. The data analysis technique uses the second level of semiotic reading, namely hermeneutics. The results of the analysis of the poem "Bunda Airmata" by M.H. Ainun Najib and "Kukusan" by Emi Suy are that they both raise the theme of a mother's struggle, although through different writing styles, context and symbolism. In "Our Lady of Tears," the mother is described as a figure who has a deep spiritual dimension, guides her children in religious values, and is able to convey emotional strength through her tears. On the other hand, "Steamed" depicts the mother as a figure who faces struggles like the bamboo steaming process, reflecting resilience and strength in facing the pressures and difficulties of life.

Resistance, Conformity, and Negotiation to Socio-cultural Anxieties: A Semiotic Reading of Female Aswang Characters in Selected Philippine Horror Films

The Philippines has a rich tradition of folklore, often portrayed in horror films to reflect cultural anxieties and hegemonic ideologies to circumvent political censorship. Among the most popular horror genres in the country is Aswang. This study examines the depictions of female Aswang in Aswang (2011), Corazon ang Unang Aswang (2012), and Maria Labo (2015) through Barthesian Semiology. Female aswang characters and their narrative exposition were analyzed on a micro, meso, and macro level. In the micro level, the Filipina aswang as a cultural reject tries to resist male chauvinism through her transformation towards her true nature, gaining control over her life, and divergence from the societal norms. On the other hand, she is represented in aswang films as someone who is being boxed with societal prescriptions, depicted as the weaker one, and is governed by her emotion. The meso level discusses how the female aswang is viewed in the context of her community, and how the latter affects her perception of herself and her decisions in life. The three films underscore the expectation on women to be domesticated, and the lead characters portrayed how women respond to these societal standards. Additionally, the macro level investigated how female aswang characters are discursively positioned in relation to socio-cultural struggles in the past and present to uncover their hegemonic constructs on poverty, injustices, mental health, and historical distortion. Keywords: Aswang, horror films, Philippine folklore, semiotics, socio-cultural anxieties.

The ‘people’ of Israel according to Judith: A Greimassian semiotic reading of Judith 5:1–24

The concept, ‘people’, could in fact be a driving force behind the authorship of the Judith narrative. On this particular theme, many insightful contributions that have already been made by various scholars are applauded. The theme and concept of people still remain a topic that needs further exploration. In this article, the use and significance of the concept ‘people’ in the Judith narrative, is explored. The aim is not only to identify and describe the concept, but aspires to further demonstrate its distinct function in view of the reader. The analysis will be done from both the figurative and the thematic level of analysis of the Greimassian semiotic approach to literary texts. It is asserted that the utilisation of the concept ‘people’, is possibly an intentional literary strategy by the author, to encourage the reader (first and implied) to embrace the idea of Jewish reunification in the second temple period.Contribution: This is a literary analysis of the occurrence, use and significance of the concept, ‘people’, in the book of Judith, particularly chapter 5:1–24. The study focuses on the distinctiveness of the people of Israel and its possible function regarding the readers. The values making the people of Israel unique are studied and the suggestion made that this could have been the impetus behind the authorship of the story. The study is intuitive and does contribute towards the understanding of the religious dynamics of the book of Judith.

SEMIOTIC AND MULTIMODAL REPRESENTATION OF EXISTENTIAL CONFLICT IN FICTIONAL DISCOURSE

The article represents an attempt to build and apply a linguosemiotic model of existential conflict research in modern English fictional discourse. The modern tendency of philological and socio-humanistic studies to involve the tools of semiotics, discourse theory, and multimodality in the process of complex analysis of a literary work as an artistic model of reality is highlighted. The research is based on practical blocks of illustrative material, selected discursive fragments from a literary work, which contain an existential conflict. Basically, the key point here is the analysis of intra- and interpersonal conflict based on the theoretical achievements of semiotics and linguosemiotics (Ch. Pierce, Yu. Lotman, U. Eco, G. Pocheptsov) and the theory of discourse and multimodality (G. Kress, K. O’Halloran, C . Forceville, M. Halliday). It makes it possible to provide a detailed research of existential conflict in fictional discourse with the identification of latent, ambivalent meanings and the relevant reconstruction and interpretation of the conflict by the reader. The paper aims at projecting the modern tendency towards the synergy of various aspects of conflict studies across the humanities. Therefore, the goal of the paper is to outline the advantages of an integral approach to the study of conflict in modern linguistic conflictology and to build a linguosemiotic model for the analysis and interpretation of existential conflict in fictional discourse. Thus, the paper`s core objectives involve: 1) to study the achievements of the semiotic and multimodal approach in its application to synthetic level communicative systems containing conflict; 2) to reveal the place, role and potential of the existential conflict in fictional discourse using the above-mentioned methods; 3) to present a linguosemiotic model for the study of existential conflict in modern English fictional discourse. The theoretical and methodological base of the research involves general-scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, deduction as well as the method of linguosemiotic and multimodal analysis to determine the components of semiosis of existential intrapersonal conflict in fictional discourse. The results of the research consist in the creation of an integral semiotic model of the analysis of existential conflict in modern English-language fictional discourse, which assumes the presence of a static and dynamic component in its structure, revealed, in particular, in the process of semiotic reading of the work in three successive stages of mimesis, semiosis, and synthesis. The process of conflict interpretation presupposes a comprehensive approach to semiotic reading activity developed in consecutive steps. The linguosemiotic means of representing the existential conflict at different levels of the literary work, which have a multimodal nature, have been revealed. The temporal, psychological, and sign-symbolic characteristics of the existential conflict, which make up the semiotic space or semiosphere of the literary work, are analyzed and classified. As a result of the identification and unification of the factors that determine the way of development of existential conflict in fictional discourse, the linguosemiotic model of the analysis of this type of intrapersonal conflict was reconstructed. The model covers the study of the semiotic components of the sign-symbolic, psychological and temporal space and the surface and deep levels of the semiotic reading of the literary work, at which the cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects of the conflict are decoded and reconstructed.

Visualising state biographical narratives: A rhetorical analysis of Chinese and North Korean propaganda photographs

Biographical narratives generate a continuous sense of political community across the state’s past, present and future, and provide the state with ontological security. Building on growing International Relations scholarship that highlights the power of visuals in shaping global politics, our article proposes visual rhetorical analysis as a tool to interrogate how governments employ images to tell their biographical narratives. The rhetorical approach transcends the methodological divide in the current ‘visual turn’ literature between the cognitive psychological and poststructuralist perspectives. We illustrate the analytical value of the rhetorical approach through an empirical study of how the totalitarian regimes of China and North Korea communicate their biographical narratives – the ‘rightful great power’ narrative and the ‘family state’ narrative, respectively – through propaganda imagery of their leaders. To this end, we develop a close semiotic reading of selected photographs of Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un in different narrative settings.

The Unveiled City: Multicultural Representation of Tokyo by Hashtag Labeling on Instagram

Abstract The birth and progress of civilization are linked to the development of cities. This study investigates how people view and experience Tokyo, the populous megalopolis and major tourist hub. A digital art installation unveils a Tokyo that exists only through interaction. The authors reduce the city’s culturally dependent representation through a database using hashtags in 47 languages. The automated processing of the database finds trends in Tokyo’s representations on Instagram using Computer Vision (CV) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), yielding results in the art installation like current semiotic readings of the city.

SEMIOTIKA RIFFATERRE DALAM PUISI “LAGU SEORANG GERILYA” KARYA W.S. RENDRA

The poem entitled "Song of a Guerrilla" is a great literary work that is able to express the contents of his thoughts into beautiful poetic verses that make the author interested in researching poetry from W.S Rendra. The purpose of this study is to describe a guerrilla song poem using the study of riffatere semiotics. This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach by describing the facts that are then analyzed. Research data in the form of words, phrases, clauses, sentences contained in poetry texts. Riffatere semiotic reading steps: (1) Heuristic reading and hermeneutic reading, (2) Indirectness of expression, (3) Determining matrices, models, and variants, (4) Hypogram of W.S. Rendra's song of a guerrilla poem, and (5) Summing up data and writing reports. The results of this study describe the meaning that poets want to convey through poetry is about their lovers until the end of their lives on the battlefield. The matrix of a guerrilla's song poem is struggle, resilience, oppression. The model on a guerrilla's song poem uses symbolic and metaphorical meanings.

The Aesthetics of the Syntactic Unconsciousness: A Semiotic Reading in the Poetic Necessity

This paper is an attempt to re-read texts of poetic necessity from a new perspective depending on delving deeply into the syntactic structure and the extent of the syntactic unconscious directed by the formal restrictions of the poet and to explore the connotations of this attitude and relate them to their context and to reveal aesthetic aspects achieved according to them.

Representation of Gender Binarism in Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait with Stalin”

Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait with Stalin” 1954, has been related to biographical, cultural, and national references. It is examined as an allegory of the artist’s troubled personal relationships with political figures; her antagonism towards the Soviet Union leader, Joseph Stalin, her af-fair with the Marxist revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, who was later assassinated by Stalin, and her involvement in the communist party. Moreover, critics have shed light on Kahlo’s factual references, such as her Tehuana dress which is seen as an appreciation for her Mexican herit-age and also as a disguise for her physical problems. In this paper, we try to disregard these conventions, instead, we focus on several hidden premises in the painting such as power rela-tions (Michel Foucault) and gender problems (Helene Cixous). These concepts are explored through the semiotic reading of the details including the composition, texture, and elements of the art artwork.

Fantastical Authenticity in Correctional Officer Recruitment Videos

ABSTRACT Criminal justice agencies increasingly recruit new personnel online using social media. This paper analyzes correctional officer recruitment videos appearing on YouTube. Engaging with literature on social media representations and authenticity, we examine the content and the themes appearing in these videos. We use a grounded theory approach to data analysis accompanied by a semiotic reading of these video texts. We argue that these video representations convey a sense of fantastical authenticity, meaning there is a mythical or embellished dimension to these depictions and accounts. We also find that these videos communicate establishment narratives about prisons and prison work. We also situate our analysis in broader literature on social media use and communications by criminal justice agencies. We conclude with reflections on what this means for understanding representations of criminal justice as well as social media use by prison authorities in North America.

GI Photos of Calcutta: Toward a Vernacular Understanding of War

Abstract During World War II, more than a hundred thousand US soldiers, popularly known as GIs, camped in Calcutta, India, to steer the Eastern Front war against the Imperial Japanese Army in the China-Burma-India theater. The port city became a strategically relevant transit hub for the soldiers to airlift food and military resources, alongside channeling information to war zones. But it also acted as a site for the rest and recreation of the soldiers. With higher salaries and added scope for leisure in Calcutta, the pervasive presence of the GIs introduced a new orientation of military relationship with the public—more cordial, touristic, and commercially transactional than the British officials. Military photographer Clyde Waddell captured the recreational activities of GIs in the streets of Calcutta at their behest and self-published sixty photographs in 1946. Though the images depict everyday scenes in the colonial city, their thematic elements and semiotics betray the ideological designs of the US Army in an era of changing global equations. Waddell's images inhabit a curious location between wartime reportage and personal memorabilia. This article undertakes a semiotic reading of such photographs by Waddell to situate the complex location of the American GIs in the erstwhile capital city of the disintegrating British colony.

Semiotic Reading of the Year 2020–2021 Based on the Press Photos of the Year

Semiotic Reading of the Year 2020–2021 Based on the Press Photos of the Year

Propagating Afrikaner nationalism: The Voortrekker stamps as icons of an ideology, c.1933–1949

AbstractThis paper posits the importance of visual representations in cultivating a national consciousness among white Afrikaners in South Africa. It provides a case study of stamps issued to commemorate the centenary of the Great Trek in 1938 that sought to raise awareness of and funds for the Voortrekker Monument project. Although stamps are, ordinarily, symbols of banal nationalism, the Voortrekker stamps resonated strongly with the sentiments the Afrikaner volk (people). They reified an iconography of the Voortrekkers and the narrative of the Great Trek already embedded in a canon of texts, images and rituals. The paper provides a semiotic reading of the designs of the stamps and shows how they shaped the cultural imaginary of Afrikaners. Although the Voortrekker stamps were issued with the approval of the postal authorities, they were actually commissioned by the Sentrale Volksmonumentekomitee [Central People's Monuments Committee (SVK)], which had close ties to the National Party (NP) opposition. Although the project was largely state sponsored, the SVK insisted upon its autonomy. Thus the government sanctioned a project over which it exercised no jurisdiction. The United Party paid a price for accommodating sectional Afrikaner interests when it lost control of the state in 1948.

Coming-of-Age of Teenage Female Arab Gothic Fiction: A Feminist Semiotic Study

This feminist semiotic study explores the folkloric imaginary of the jinn in the context of children’s and young adults’ Arab Gothic literature. Across the Middle East, the jinn is a common trope in literature, folklore and oral storytelling who, in diegetic terms, can manifest as the Gothic figure of an aging female, deranged older woman or succubus (known as sa’lawwa in Arabic). In this study, a novel feminist semiotic framework is developed to explore the extent to which the Gothic female succubus either haunts or liberates Arab girls’ coming-of-age fictions. This issue is addressed via a feminist semiotic reading of the narratives of Middle Eastern woman author @Ranoy7, exploring the appeal of her scary stories presented on YouTube. Findings reveal tacit fears, ambivalences and tensions embodied within the Arab Gothic sign of the aging female succubus or jinn. Overall, the research develops feminist insights into the semiotic motif of the female jinn and its role in constituting Arab females as misogynistic gendered sign objects in the context of the social media story explored.

Пролептический символ «бабочка» в «Коллекционере» Джона Фаулза: семантико-семиотический аспект

The aim of the study is to present the semiotic mechanisms of the artistic and plot realisation of a proleptic symbol in the metatext of a postmodern novel. The symbol of “a butterfly” was considered using the material of the metatext of the novel “The Collector” by John Fowles in various semantic and semiotic aspects. The analysis of the plot, language and characters of the novel showed that the symbol of “a butterfly” is realised in the semiotic space of the novel as a symbol of “beauty”, “art”, “collecting” and “death” and also functions in the metatext as a proleptic (preliminary) symbol. Another proleptic symbol (“a collector”) was analysed as the paratext of the novel. The complementary symbols of “a butterfly” and “a collector” make it possible to expand the semantics of the metatext of the novel to the general philosophical and aesthetic concept of the author. The study is original in that it is the first to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the proleptic symbol of “a butterfly” and identify variants of contextual “reading” of this sign-symbol at different levels of the metatext of the novel. As a result of analysing the text of the novel, the researcher has managed to identify the mechanism of semiotic reading of the metatext: the dominant role in structuring the metatext is assigned to the sign-symbol of “a butterfly” and the accompanying sign-symbol of “a collector”, which perform a proleptic function and are realised in a variety of symbolic meanings in the context of the novel.

A Hermeneutical and Semiotic Reading of Little Amal: A Walk through Brex-e-Lit

This study explores the pervasive socio-political implications of the refugee crisis in the language and narrative structure of the interactive fiction of Little Amal: The Walk. Hermeneutics and semiotic compositional elements contribute to the on-going meaningful interaction between the interlocutors within the context of the successive narrations in the story. In this paper, we investigate the multimodal semiotic elements in conjunction with the cultural and political implications intended. The study contributes to interactive fiction through the modelled methodological framework. Using the Four-Legged Stool hermeneutical approach (Mburu 2019) and a hybrid of two approaches, namely, Visual Grammar (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006) and Semiotic Elements (Machin and Laden 2018), the study pursues approaching Little Amal to delve into its hidden implications. The study adapts Mburu’s approach to become a three-legged stool, where the language and the narrative structures support the cultural, theological, and biblical interpretation of the narrative, hence the political implication in any literary text, especially the interactive ones. The study results confirm that Britain invades both ‘first- and third-world’ cultures, linking it to Brexit and British superiority over the world. The Walk, reveals how Brexit can be viewed as a British nostalgia for the lost empire.

Social Semiotic Reading of Shalawat Badar: The Response of the Pesantren Community to Indonesian Politics

Literary work is a product of a socio-political context and ideology that exist and develop within a particular society, and this applies to literary texts of religious genres, one of which is Shalawat Badr (the Shalawat Badrs). Drawing a theoretical framework from social semiotics, meaning making as a socio-cultural practice, this study analyzes the religious text of Shalawat Badr composed by KH Ali Manshur, a kiai (Muslim cleric) from Jember, East Java during the 1960s. Results of textual and contextual analysis of the Shalawat Badr text suggest that the author successfully blended this literary text of religious genre with the dynamics of political contexts of his time. This Shalawat Badr not only represents the author’s feelings and ideological orientations in searching for the ultimate meaning of life but also deliberate and purposeful engagement with the socio-political realities of his time. In particular, Shalawat Badr reflects the identity and medium of movement and resistance of the Pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) to the dynamics of national politics especially at the end of the Old Oder era. Additionally, the textual material of Shalawat Badr highlights the socio-policital contestation of the Indonesian society in the Old Order, especially the resistance of Islamic boarding schools to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) movement. Indeed, the meaning and attribution of Shalawat Badr continue to evolve with time, that is, from the political resistance and struggle of the Pesantren vis a vis the PKI to the practical electoral instrument of the Nahdhatul Ulama (NU) Party to becoming part of music business industry by Islamic music groups in the latest era.
 مستلخص
 العمل الأدبي هو نتاج سياق اجتماعي سياسي وأيديولوجيي ويتطور في مجتمع معين ، وهذا ينطبق على النصوص الأدبية ذات الأنواع الدينية ، ومن بينها صلوات بدر. تأخذ هذه الدراسة إطارًا نظريًا من السيميائية الاجتماعية، أي ممارسة اجتماعية ثقافية، وتحلل هذه الدراسة النص الديني لصلوات بدر من تأليف الكياهي علي منشور، وهو عالم من علماء جمبر، جاوة الشرقية خلال السنة الستينيات. تشير نتائج التحليل النصي والسياقي لنص صلوات بدر إلى أن المؤلف قد نجح في مزج هذا النص الأدبي من النوع الديني بديناميكيات السياقات السياسية في عصره. لا تمثل صلوات بدر فقط مشاعر المؤلف وتوجهاته الأيديولوجية في البحث عن المعنى الحقيقي للحياة ولكن أيضًا انخراطه المتعمد والهادف في الحقائق الاجتماعية والسياسية في عصره. وعلى وجه الخصوص ، تعكس صلوات بدر هوية ووسيلة حركة ومقاومة المعاهد الإسلامية لديناميكيات السياسة الوطنية خاصة في نهاية عهد النظام القديم (orde lama). بالإضافة إلى ذلك ، تسلط المادة النصية لصلوات بدر الضوء على التنافس الاجتماعي والسياسي للشعب الإندونيسي خلال عهد النظام القديم ، وخاصة مقاومة المعاهد الإسلامية لحركة الحزب الشيوعي الإندونيسي (PKI). ويستمر معنى وإسناد صلوات بدر في التطور بمرور الوقت ، أي من المقاومة السياسية ونضال المعاهد الإسلامية تجاه الحزب الشيوعي الإندونيسي إلى الأداة الانتخابية العملية لحزب نهضة العلماء (NU)، إلى أن تصبح جزءًا من صناعة الأعمال الموسيقية من قبل مجموعات الموسيقى الإسلامية في العصر الحديث.
 الكلمات المفتاحية : صلوات بدر؛ المعاهد الإسلامية؛ السياسية؛ السيميائية الاجتماعية