Semiotic Significance Research Articles

Re-thinging Embodied and Enactive Psychiatry: A Material Engagement Approach

Emerging consensus among enactivist philosophers and embodied mind theorists suggests that seeking to understand mental illness we need to look out of our skulls at the ecology of the brain. Still, the complex links between materiality (in broadest sense of material objects, habits, practices and environments) and mental health remain little understood. This paper discusses the benefits of adopting a material engagement approach to embodied and enactive psychiatry. We propose that the material engagement approach can change the geography of the debate over the nature of mental disorders and through that help to develop theoretical and practical insights that could improve management and treatment for various psychiatric conditions. We investigate the potential role of Material Engagement Theory (MET) in psychiatry using examples of aetiologically different mental illnesses (schizophrenia and dementia) in respect of their shared phenomenological manifestations, focusing particularly on issues of memory, self-awareness, embodiment and temporality. The effective study of socio-material relations allows better understanding of the semiotic significance and agency of specific materials, environments and technical mediations. There is unrealised potential here for creating new approaches to treatment that can broaden, challenge or complement existing interventions and practices of care.

Narrative as “legal tender”: the semiotic meanings of “exchange” in Malcolm Bradbury’s Rates of Exchange

Abstract Malcolm Bradbury’s novel Rates of Exchange, taking the economic term “rates of exchange” as a central metaphor, depicts various exchanges occurring in the socio-economic landscape of Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of governmental emphasis on economic development, the novel intricately explores exchanges among diverse entities, playing with multiple meanings of the term “exchange”. In this way, the novel itself becomes a form of “legal tender,” exchanged for reader comprehension, communication, and participation. It highlights the ubiquitous presence of exchange and the risks associated with the uncertain exchange rates between different entities. Furthermore, it invites readers to participate in the story-telling and the nostalgic journey back to British literary tradition. This paper, drawing on Roland Barthes’s semiotic theory along with structuralist and poststructuralist concepts, investigates the multifaceted meanings of “exchange” in the novel. Through this analysis, the paper aims to illuminate the semiotic significance of various narrative forms and the profound thematic concerns in Bradbury’s work.

INTEGRATING TRADITIONAL CHINESE CLOUD PATTERNS INTO MODERN INTERIOR DESIGN: A VISUAL SYMBOLISM STUDY

Cloud pattern is a typical representative of traditional Chinese patterns, which contains rich cultural connotation and aesthetic value and is widely used in modern interior design. This paper aims to explore the specific application of cloud pattern in modern interior design and its cultural and aesthetic value as a visual symbol. By analysing the history, cultural background and artistic characteristics of cloud patterns, the paper examines the decorative function, semiotic significance, emotional value and global application of cloud patterns in modern design. It is emphasised that cloud pattern not only retains the essence of traditional culture in modern design, but also satisfies modern people's aesthetic needs and emotional experience through innovative application, and demonstrates its cross-cultural communication power globally. This paper provides modern designers with inspirations and methods for integrating traditional cultural elements, and promotes the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture.

Towards a sociolinguistics of in difference: stancetaking on others

Abstract This paper proposes a sociolinguistics of in difference, an inquiry-based approach to stancetaking on others. It describes how multilingual speakers in an online context orientate towards a stance-object and affiliate, align and negotiate difference through embodied performances, as part of advancing an ethics of responsibility for the other and aesthetic investments. In the analysis of such orientations, I draw on virtual interactional data to illustrate how in difference through stancetaking is entextualized in the aesthetic, embodied performance of parody, in so-called Coloured English, Kaaps and a mixture of other languages by an emerging R&B and pop group in Cape Town. I demonstrate how the group invest in embodied performances merge the material, linguistic, cultural and semiotic significance of the body to undermine fixity and categorization. But also, how push-back from YouTube commentators, influencers, reactors take up evaluative, affective and epistemic stances as they move from difference to in difference. I conclude with the argument that in order for us to take adequate account of an ethics of responsibility for the other and describing aesthetic investments in embodied performances we have to recalibrate our theoretical and methodological toolkit to understand what it means to use language with dignity, to encounter each other in spaces of dignity and to just be dignified in diversity.

Spiritual thirdspace and silent faith: reading the parallax between Buddhism and Christianity in the movie <em>Silence</em> (2016)

Scorsese’s movie Silence (2016) can be (re)contextualized to state that Jesuit priests Ferreira and Rodrigues found spiritual ‘Thirdspace’ when their missionary work was violently suppressed during Edo Japan. To survive the banal violence, suffering and pain and counter the psychological breakdown incurred by the Buddhist inquisitor, the priests seek an alternative, spiritual assimilation and dissimilation entity that paradoxically juxtaposes with the denouncement of faith (fumi-e) and identifies with God’s silence that preserves it. At this point, a Heideggerian ‘out-of-joint’ situation is experienced, reaching Christianity’s true meaning: God-forsaken man is left to decide in existential freewill how to continue his faith under challenging circumstances. The ‘Thirdspace’ identified here differs from Catholic and Christian beliefs, practices and Buddhist doctrinal rituals and occurs when Rodrigues silently preserves his faith, like his mentor Ferreira. This silent faith becomes the indestructibly true, epistemological element. There is higher semiotic significance when Rodrigues’ suppressed Christian soul symbolically returns through his wife, who places the Cross in his hands, establishing a transcendental connection that traverses both religions’ limits and boundaries. Despite the two religions’ ‘un-meeting’ spiritual contradictions, the wife’s act suggests man’s ability to help each other towards mutual, spiritual destinies. When Europe sees Christianity as a missionary endeavour, and its experience of Japanese cruelty culminates, a ‘shift in perspective against its background’ occurs that never returns gaze; the priests never look back at European origin after their ‘roots were cut’. This transposition of locations that prevents a returning gaze is the parallax that re-establishes true Christian faith in both priests.

SOCIOLOGICAL SURVEY FOR ASSESSING THE MEDIA FORMATION OF ARCHITECTURAL OBJECTS AND SPACES OF LVIV

The media formation of architecture and urban spaces is their informative essence, their content and symbolic richness for people. If we consider architecture from the perspective of information transmission, there arises a need to study the influence of its physical and mental characteristics on society. The media formation of Lviv's architectural environment affects the frequency of visits to certain places, people's well-being in urban spaces, and the semiotic significance of the city's architecture for people. Therefore, conducting a sociological study is necessary to analyze the media formation of architecture and urban spaces in Lviv. The research tasks involved identifying the most mediatic objects in Lviv, assessing people's perception of the media formation of various architectural styles at different hierarchical levels, and the type of information conveyed by these objects. It also aimed to determine citizens' attitudes towards changes in the media formation of the city's architectural space by comparing different architectural environments. Additionally, the study sought to understand people's vision of Lviv's architectural mediacy in the future. The research results showed that Lviv's mediacy is characterized by historical diversity, evokes semiotic associations, and influences people's well-being in urban spaces and the popularity of certain locations. Based on the assessment of citizens regarding the media formation of architecture and spaces in Lviv, conclusions have been shown that homogeneous environments, such as historical or contemporary ones, are perceived much better. The combination of diverse architectural styles can lead to confusion and added tension. Therefore, it is important to emphasize the need for a thoughtful approach to designing new architecture within established environments since it has a direct impact on how it is perceived by people.

Wooden spoons and “pulling the mom card”: A critical discourse-historical analysis of an interview with a social worker

Despite increasing acknowledgement within and beyond the social work profession of our role in enacting violence against people we claim to care for and serve, discursive strategies that rationalize and naturalize violence are endemic within social work discourse. In this article, I use critical discourse-historical analysis to examine one interview I conducted with a practicing social worker in Alberta, Canada. Grounded in an intersectional critical approach to inquiry, I elucidate how rationalization strategies for professional violence emerge in ordinary social work talk and situate one social worker’s description of her practice within a historical context of the fabrication of social work in Canada. I focus on this social worker’s reports of threatening clients with a “virtual wooden spoon” to identify linguistic and discursive patterns at play and their semiotic significance as means to rationalize and normalize professional power and control. I specifically situate the analysis within the context of social work as a story of racist, classist, and ableist violence often committed by morally exalted, wealthy, white women. I conclude by reflecting on the importance of examining discursive strategies to rationalize, dismiss or diminish violence in our everyday social work talk.

Pragmatic Analysis of 2019 Nigerian Presidential Election-Related Newspaper Cartoons

This study undertook a pragmatic analysis of the 2019 Nigerian Presidential Election-Related Newspaper Cartoons to establish the central issues, their contextual underpinning, the engendering pragmatic acts and strategies and their implication to media, society and politics. It was designed to address the knowledge gap created by extant studies which evaded the appraisal of this slant of political discourse that would provide a better understanding of the political cartoons. To address this issue, the paper adopted the Pragmatic acts theory and the theory of social semiotics to account for the ensuing issues and their semiotic significance. The descriptive research design was adopted with a purposive sampling technique to allow for a qualitative analysis of the data selected for the study. Twenty-five cartoons were purposively selected for this paper. The selection was premised on the critical issues that tainted the general elections of 2019. These were subjected to pragma-semiotic analysis. Three discourse issues were identified – partisan contest, electoral fraud, and corruption. These were constrained by six contexts, which are the contexts of rivalry, game, defeat, victory, corruption, and war with the pragmatic acts of satirizing, warning, and sensitizing, strategically crystalized through the strategies of negative lexicalization of opposition, satirisation of politicians’ identity, and invocation of actor’s precedence. It, therefore, concludes on the note that it takes more than a literal sense to understand the construction of political cartoons of criticism and thus needs conscious efforts to unravel the issues and pragma-semiotic means of decoding them. The study hence recommends that political cartoon studies should be initiated and their proliferation should be censored due to their sensitive construction of reality and its implication for media, politics and society.

Музыкальное семиотическое пространство в современном художественном тексте (по материалам Национального корпуса русского языка)

The study is devoted to the analysis of the implementation of the music semiotic space in a modern literary text and is carried out on the basis of the Russian National Corpus, which records the works of fiction of the last two decades. The objectives of the study were to identify language units that represent the music semiotic space in a literary text; define their main functions; establish the symbolism of music in contemporary works of art. It is noted that the music semiotic space is closely connected with the culture of the society, it is an integral and important part of it, the basis for understanding what is happening in the semiotics of music. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the appeal to the units of music semiotic space as components of a literary text, important for the authors to translate cultural meanings, emotions, aesthetics, psychological characteristics of the heroes of the works. It was revealed that when the units of the music semiotic space perform informational and emotional functions, their semiotic significance is minimal, while their main functions in semiotic terms are aesthetic, expressive (emotional), psychological. Moreover, the image of a musical phenomenon is usually combined with a description of that strong impression (up to transformation of personality, feelings, behavior), which it has on the hero of the book. In addition, it is noted that the components of the semiotic music space actualize their symbolic, aesthetic, emotional functions when used in comparisons and metaphors, including conceptual ones. For the authors of modern works of art, it is important to depict the world as sounding, filled with music, which forms a common cultural space for the author and readers, indicates the unity of their cultural codes.

Models of Spatial Polarities in Jamal Abu Hamdan’s Novels

The researchers’ interest in the setting and especially the element of place in the novel has long been discussed in relation to narrative discourse. The significance of place has surpassed its importance as an element of the plot to its connotative implications. Narrative space goes beyond a mere description of the surrounding setting to create polarities in relation to other harmonious elements. Juri Lotman refers to this relationship between literary space and other narrative elements as spatial polarity. Spatial polarity cannot be realized in isolation from other narrative elements such as time, characters, and events. Once narrative space has been exploited as a functional narrative element, it creates paradoxical semiotic significance which foreshadows other textual, geographic, referential, and functional significance. By analyzing the narrative blog by Jamal Abu Hamdan, the researchers introduce a study of spatial models and spatial polarities in Hamdan’s novels from a semiotic point of view.

On the Traditional Carpets of Kyrgyzstan Southern Regions

This article examines the woven carpet as an excellent resource for studying trends in material culture. Technological aspects of carpet making, and the semiotic significance of decorative complexes are among the priority issues for research. As an inseparable part of traditional material and spiritual culture, folk-decorative applied art, which is connected with the applied and at the same time aesthetic development of the objective world, occupies a leading place. Carpet weaving is noted as a form of artistic expression of ethnic groups in applied arts. Analysis of the processes and phenomena occurring in each individual cultural component is a necessary condition for restoring a unified picture of the development trend and state of the culture of the society as a whole.

COVER DESIGN, FILM POSTER, AND SUBTITLES: SEMIOTICS OF PARATEXTS IN SELECTING PARODIES

A literary text becomes complete only when all its linguistic components are seen together to form meaning. French literary theorist Gerard Genette introduced a term called ‘Paratext’ to identify the additional parts of a text like subtitle, prefaces, introductory notes that contribute meaning to the text. A parody is generally understood as a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony. In the field of literature, a parody comes with the effective imitation of the content of the parodied work in a satirical and ironical way. Paratext also attributes a lot in detailing the imitation of a work which fulfills the nature of parody from cover to cover. The relationship between a paratext and a parody can be better understood from a semiotic perspective. When paratexts are considered as linguistic, cultural, and contextual signs, they make the reader acquainted to the text. Hence, this research paper analyses the semiotic significance of paratexts in selecting parodies with reference to cover design, cover illustrations, subtitles, and film posters of select parodies.

تجليات سيميائية في رواية شيفرة بالل ألحمد خيري العمري

Semiotic analysis is concerned with monitoring the signs that reveal the components of text. This study aims to highlight the defining semiotic features included in Ahmed Al-Omari's Bilal's Code with particular reference to semiotic features including title, cover, dedication, preface, semiotics of colors, body language, characters, and time and place components. Using the descriptive- analytical method based on the mechanisms of semiotic analysis, the study tries to highlight the features of the semiotic formation that has played an important role in the foundation of the novel's aesthetic and narrative structure.The study came up with a number of results. The cover of the novel opened the text space on the symbols of racism and rebellion against torture. The title of the novel underlines significant connotations that the receiver has to unravel in order to study the relation between the symbol of the code and the connotations associated with the name Bilal. The beginning of the novel also highlighted Bilal's character, a child who possessed the qualities of boldness, endurance, and secrecy. The author also made use of the language of eyes in terms of sarcasm, love and hatred, perplexity and indifference. The features of the face and its expressive forms ranged from a face symbolizing identity, a face devoid of feelings, and a worried face. The tones of the voice also varied to indicate enthusiasm at times, astonishment in addition to sarcasm, anger and pain .Each character is associated with a symbol that goes along with its nature and its characteristics related to color and behavior. The novel also highlighted the semiotic significance of time and place.

Sacred Skin: The Religious Significance of Medieval Scars

While numerous studies have addressed medieval wounds, few scholars have critically examined the religious role of scars in medieval Europe. This article incorporates theological writings, hagiography (saints’ biographies), chivalric romances, and the visual arts to assess the semiotic significance of medieval scars. This article uses Roland Barthes’s notion of semanticization as an organizing principle. As Barthes has shown, the process of meaning-making is contingent upon its social context. Indeed, semanticization allows the conventionality of signs to operate. This article explores how Western medieval Christianity, with its repository of values and symbolism, enabled scars to function as signs. The religious context undergirding medieval scars allowed them to transcend from traces of accidental bodily markings to portals to rich theological significance.

Varia: Cultural Nationalism and Postcolonial Imperatives in Irene Salami-Agunloye’s Emotan: A Benin Heroine and Emmy Idegu’s Ata Igala the Great

This article examines the efforts of postcolonial creative writers, particularly dramatists, who attempt to rethink the seeming erosion of African culture in the face of western cultural expansion. The present research adopts the methods of descriptive and content analysis, as it dwells on books, journal articles, and internet materials to examine its subject. Of immediate interest are two Nigerian plays, Ata Igala the Great by Emmy Idegu and Emotan: A Benin Heroine by Irene Salami-Agunloye, which are read as paradigmatic texts for interpreting problematic postcolonial relationships. The article contributes to discussions related to colonialism and the hidden agenda of neo-colonialism, which are often interpreted in terms of western economic interests underlying cultural expansion. The article demonstrates how African postcolonial writers have striven to reverse this trend by promoting Africa’s cultural aesthetics as they represent indigenous ways of life and their problematic interaction with western cultural patterns. The discussed works focus on cultural canons related to African life, such as consultation with oracles, ancestor worship, and festivals; and they demonstrate the aesthetic specifics of African dance, music, songs, and their semiotic significance. The article concludes that even though the two plays “speak back” to power, their strength lies in the articulation of certain aesthetic patterns that contribute to African self-location. Thus, the plays not only attempt to assert African culture, but they also strive to rethink the meanings of western cultural imperialism.

Differentiating discourse and text on the basis of the integrational approach

This article provides criteria of differentiating discourse and text on the basis of the integrational approach. Discourse is viewed as ainter-subject process of interaction of minds aimed at constructing language signs, while text is considered as a stimulus for such interaction. It also deals with the views of famous linguists and studies the discourse and the text in broad understanding, particularly as psychological and philosophical phenomena. Additionally, it studies these two “unidentified objects” from the point of view of an integrationist, and defines as there is no single system of linguistic symbols sitting motionless in the mind the area of linguistic, neatly divided into departments, and the use of language consists in creatively endowing certain phenomena with semiotic significance in order to carry out meaningful operations over the world in accordance with the needs of a continuous stream of unique communicative situations in real time.

Структурные особенности кинестетической репрезентативной системы в дискурсивном пространстве

The paper aims to identify the structural features peculiar to classifications of non-verbal components of communication in the kinaesthetic representative system within the frame of discursive space. Considerable attention is paid to a detailed analysis of the main approaches to studying the typology of kinaesthetics and its characteristics. Scientific novelty lies in classifying non-verbal components of communication and their correlation in the semiotic field. The authors were the first to apply the model of spontaneous semiosis while differentiating gesture manifestations presented as an icon. As a result, semiotic significance of functional and non-functional classifications of non-verbal components of communication in the context of their interaction in a communicative act was substantiated.

Text Semantic Field Method as a Possibility of Systemic Approach to the Study of Literary Text: on the Material of the Novel “HOME OF THE GENTRY” by I.S. Turgenev

The article is devoted to identifying the explanatory potential of the text semantic field method as a system method in understanding the nature of connections between different levels of a literary text. It allows us to reach the super-category of the author's image, which acts as the organizing beginning of a literary text. Thus, the text semantic field is both the object and the method of the research. The method of comparative analysis revealed that the overcoming of natural language oppositions, inherent in the artistic text, can be manifested to a greater or lesser extent: from the weakening of semantic oppositions of natural language due to the enhanced semantic convergence of implicitly related semantic units, which can be observed, as shown by the study, in the novel by I.S. Turgenev Home of the Gentry, to the complete destruction of natural language oppositions, originally inherent, as it was proved in the works of O.I. Valentinova, in the aesthetics of polyphony. The comparison made possible to clarify that the principles of the organization of text semantic fields in artistic texts can perform opposite functions: to increase the semiotic significance of the image category, as it happens in the novel analyzed by I.S. Turgenev, or, on the contrary, as proved in the research of O.I. Valentinova, to indicate a decrease in the semiotic significance of the image category, which is a constitutive property of polyphonic texts. The use of the comparative method also allowed us to show that overcoming the oppositions of natural language, as a mechanism for the formation of text semantic fields not only of a literary text, but also semiotically complex texts of a different etiology, performs different functions. A comparison of character education text semantic fields of literary texts with the study of E.Yu. Medvedev the principle of formation of the text fields in the Orthodox liturgical sermons have clarified that if the destruction of the oppositions of natural language in a literary text generates occasional oppositions, will appear on the me of the artist, overcoming the oppositions of natural language in liturgical preaching brings to the ontological meanings that exist outside of the will and consciousness of the preacher.

The Cultural Significance of Timbre Analysis

This article is in three interrelated parts. In Part 1, I present a methodology for analyzing timbre that combines spectrogram analysis and cultural analysis. I define a number of acoustic timbral attributes to which one may attune when analyzing timbre, organized as oppositional pairs of marked and unmarked terms, in order to both aid in spectrogram analysis and account for some of this cultural and perceptual work.In Part 2, building from Allan Moore’s definition of four functional layers in pop texture, I argue for the adoption of a fifth layer, which I term thenovelty layer.I study its construction in 1980s hit singles via the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. The novelty layer is imbued with several layers of semiotic significance: it functions in opposition to the melodic layer, comprises instruments whose timbral characteristics are more resistant to blending with the rest of the ensemble, and often uses “world instruments” in 1980s popular music. This latter point is a reflection of the problematic treatment of world music by 1980s music culture. I use my approach to timbre analysis to define the timbral norms for the novelty layer as opposed to Moore’s other layers.In Part 3, I create a dialogic narrative analysis of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid (1984) that demonstrates what it might mean to transgress these norms. This analysis, in acknowledging the problematic cultural associations of the song, illustrates the rich discourse that can be produced when timbre is made central to the analytical process.

Unearthing Forbidden Stratagems: Talk, Transgression and Reading The Duchess of Malfi

ABSTRACT This essay explores the way that the social interactions of the classroom play a role in shaping sign production. It examines the talk of one second year Advanced Level English literature class in North London during their study of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi through the lens of Volosinov’s theories of language. It seeks to locate these emergent discourses within wider socio-political frameworks concerning gender, race and power. By assessing the semiotic significance of Webster’s Duchess and more contemporary figures such as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, in these discourses, it suggests that the process of negotiation in this classroom is characterised by acts of transgression.