Semiotic Tools Research Articles

Why is the learning of elementary arithmetic concepts difficult? Semiotic tools for understanding the nature of mathematical objects

The semiotic approach to mathematics education introduces the notion of “semiotic system” as a tool to describe mathematical activity. The semiotic system is formed by the set of signs, the production rules of signs and the underlying meaning structures. In this paper, we present the notions of system of practices and configuration of objects and processes that complement the notion of semiotic system and help to understand the complex nature of mathematical objects. We also show in what sense these notions facilitate the description and comprehension of building and communicating mathematical knowledge, by applying them to analyze semiotic systems involved in the teaching and learning of some elementary arithmetic concepts.

Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round Public Discourse, National Identity and the War: Neoliberal Militarization and the Yellow Ribbon Campaign in Canada

The yellow ribbons that have become so ubiquitous in Canada as the emblem of the national “Support Our Troops” campaign are highly charged semiotic tools in a battle for control of public discourse, marking the growing militarization of Canadian society in an age of empire. I read the Yellow Ribbon here as neoliberal cultural pedagogy, an everyday means by which individuals learn and teach specific cultural values and tropes, both explicitly and implicitly. As a symbol and a commodity, and perhaps more importantly as an everyday social and cultural practice, the Yellow Ribbon offers a glimpse into the dense cultural and political forces involved in the re-scripting of Canadian national mythologies,according to a logic of militarized neoliberalism.

Multimodal Redesign in Filmmaking Practices: An Inquiry of Young Filmmakers’ Deployment of Semiotic Tools in Their Filmmaking Practice

This article traces the trajectory of one particular scene in the work of three media students writing and filmmaking. The analysis scrutinizes the role of semiotic tools, such as synopsis and storyboard, in students’ filmmaking practice. Moreover, the use of interactional data combined with textual data allows for a rich recording of the activity, aiming to integrate a multimodal analysis into a sociocultural perspective on learners’ composing practices. The findings indicate that the students are not able to transfer their particular meaning from the written mode into the language of moving images because they downplay the role of the semiotic tools available to them in the educational context.

Referencias al medio ambiente en los mensajes publicitarios. Investigación de la publicidad en España entre 2006 y 2007

The present article sets out the approach and some of the conclusions gathered from the research project “The treatment of the Environment in traditional advertising” carried out within the framework of an agreement between The Ministry of the Environment and the University of Valladolid. The object of the study was to ascertain and analyse how the Environmental Crisis is transformed into signs and identifiable and intentional representations in advertisements. The research was carried out by taking over 1000 advertisements from the Infoadex database, which had been broadcast on television and radio or printed in daily and non-daily newspapers in Spain in the years 2006 and 2007. The advertising produced in this time frame and geographical area was selected by a group of experts and using an identifying features template that collated all adverts that had any reference to the environment. The filtered sample was analyzed using semiotic tools and through a sociological analysis model converted into a SPSS programme matrix of 110 variables on the representation of the environment in each of the 1398 advertisements examined. The data revealed the massive impact that the environment is having on advertising, not only in the traditional energy and automotive sectors, –where the least damage to the environment is regarded as a benefit–, but also in sectors such as food or household goods, where the environment had become an essential reference of creative strategy in more than 10% of cases. The study highlighted the profusion of terminology regarding the impact on the environment included in a somewhat vague manner in many of the adverts. The findings report was considered the driving force behind the decision of the Ministry of the Environment to sign an agreement with the Self-Regulation of Advertising Association.

Game Design as Textual Poaching: Media Literacy, Creativity and Game-Making

This article addresses practices of textual appropriation in computer games made by young people. By focusing on how young people's production work makes reference to popular media texts, it examines the basis on which such work claims to be legible as a game text: how it claims to be literate in the context of an after-school game-making club. The analysis builds on studies of ‘identity work’ at play in children's discussions of popular media, but develops this by looking at practices of media production rather than consumption. To realise this move, the article draw on methods of textual analysis developed for the study of multimodal, interactive texts. The article contributes to debates about the nature of creativity and how this can be taught and learned, particularly with respect to media education. It draws on an account of creativity developed by Vygotsky, in which creativity is described in terms of the transformation of cultural resources using semiotic tools, including concepts. This account allows the positioning moves realised by young people's game texts in terms of creative literacy practices to be traced, whilst avoiding notions of creativity which are either reductively skill based or unhelpfully celebratory.

Investigating Mediations in Student Activities in an English Immersion Context in Mainland China

This study aims to investigate the role of mediation in the learning process from a sociocultural perspective, activity theory in particular. This study was carried out in a primary English immersion school within the CCUEI Programs in Mainland China. Data were collected mainly through observations and interviews, which were then supplemented by field notes. Techniques of discourse analysis were used to analyze the data. The recorded peer talk presents an emic picture of what occurred during children’s interactions. Research findings show that mediation includes task, teacher talk, peer talk, subject content, semiotic artifacts and other semiotic tools. Peer talk as well as linguistic resources constitutes an important resource aside from teacher talk, where the subject content serves as an important mediational tool in the activity and the content-based immersion programs, while offering students opportunities of using the language in meaningful interactions. The results offer insights to both students and teachers about language learning and about pedagogy and professional education respectively.

Repetition, use of L1 and reading aloud as mediational mechanism during collaborative activity at the computer

This paper reports on an investigation of semiotic mechanisms mediating collaborative activity during pair/group work interaction at the computer. The study is informed by sociocultural theory. The participants were university students of L2 Spanish performing three tasks in two modes of implementation: computer vs. paper-based. The questions addressed relate to the degree and functions of repetition, L1 and reading aloud deployed during interaction in both media. The findings suggest there is a high degree of variation in the use of these semiotic tools. No significant medium-related difference was found in the degree to which these mechanisms were deployed by the participants, but a significant difference was found between the use of the three mechanisms overall. The functions for which the mechanisms were used provide some interesting insights into the nature of semiotic mediation during interaction in general and into the role of the computer in the L2 classroom, in particular.

Translating Irrealia – Creating a Semiotic Framework for the Translation of Fictional Cultures

Abstract This paper aims to propose a third generation semiotic method for analyzing inter-linguistic translations. The paper concentrates on translation issues related to the literary genres related to "genre" literature such as science fiction or fantasy, aiming to provide a semiotic method with which to interpret the texts as holistic entities and to isolate the specific elements that create the textual world. The translation method is based on semiotic tools and theories by Lotman, Eco and Tarasti among others, and is built around the basis of an earlier model by the same author (Loponen, 2006). To help isolate and interpret textual elements that create the genre specific texts as holistic entities, the paper introduces the concept of irrealia into semiotic translation studies.

The grammar of aesthetic intuition: on Ernst Cassirer’s concept of symbolic form in the visual arts

This paper provides a precis of Ernst Cassirer’s concept of art as a symbolic form. It does so, though, in a specific respect. It points to the fact that Cassirer’s concept of “symbolic form” is two-sided. On the one hand, the concept captures general cultural phenomena that are not only meaningful but also manifest the way man makes sense of the world; thus myth, religion, and art are considered general symbolic forms. On the other hand, it captures the formal structures and semiotic tools thanks to which meaning is constructed within each general symbolic form (Cassirer called these structures “modes of objectivation”); thus, in art, perspective or the golden section are well-known examples of symbolic forms, now in a narrow sense, i.e. they are means to configure parts into an organized, meaningful whole. The paper will comment on art along both these two dimensions, but its main goal is to provide with concrete examples of aesthetic symbolic forms in the narrow sense in order to show how conceptual meaning can be inscribed in the space of aesthetic intuition.

Making musical sense: the multimodal nature of clarifying musical listening

The present study concerns the multimodal nature of music education. How children (aged 4–8 years) respond when faced with the challenge of talking about what they hear in pieces of music is studied. The semiotic tools children and their teachers use in these situations and how they transduce between modalities (verbal, sound, colours and gestures) are analysed. Paradoxically, this analytical focus on multimodality results in an emphasis on the importance of verbal language in the learning situations studied. Some implications for music education are discussed.

Restoring Social Legitimacy: Discursive Strategies Used By a Pharmaceutical Industry Leader

Purpose – This paper seeks to better understand discursive strategies used by organizations to restore their fading legitimacy. Our investigation focuses on how a leader of the pharmaceutical industry uses narratives to maintain and restore legitimacy at two levels. Our longitudinal case study is built around two events representinga threat to the legitimacy of the pharmaceutical industry. Our study brings to light the subtle techniques employed by a pharmaceutical leader to restore legitimacy during those two cloudy periods for the big pharmas. Design/methodology/approach – This research analyzes the president’s letter of the annual report using semiotic tools that catch the essence and goals of the narrative sections. Our case study covers 20 of Pfizer most recent annual reports (1988-2007). Findings – The study shows that some narratives sections are built to protect legitimacy on two fronts. Most of the time, pharma’s discourse is built to maintain their legitimacy in front of its main stakeholder (shareholders) by presenting the firm’s main “object of desire” as the enhancement of shareholder’s value. But in period of crisis, the firm’s narrative are built to restore legitimacy in the eye of the general public. To do so, they change their discourse to present a screen object (related to the theme of the crisis) as the goal of the companies’ action. Originality/value – The paper brings together multiple elements of narratives sections to show how big pharmas built their discourse to restore legitimacy by adapting their defensive texts to specific screen objects as a response to a crisis.

Space odyssey: towards a social semiotic model of three-dimensional space

The aim of this article is to articulate a set of principles that can be applied to both the analysis and design of three-dimensional spaces. To achieve this aim, the article discusses the way three-dimensional spaces can be organized as a semiotic resource — a mode, which, like other modes, is multifunctional. The discussion begins by introducing a powerful social semiotic tool, Halliday's metafunctional theory (1978), which has previously been used to theorize numerous semiotic resources in western cultures: language, visual images, speech, music, sound and movement. It then `opens up' a grammar of three-dimensional space using Halliday's notion of three communicative functions. The research presented in this article is illustrated with a museum example, the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, Sydney. However, it is equally relevant to natural spaces as well as built spaces across a broad range of other fields: homes, schools, workplaces, retail sites, hospitals and virtual spaces.

Subsídios para uma caracterização do discurso institucional

Este texto é uma tentativa de caracterizar o discurso institucional unicamente por meio do instrumental teórico da semiótica. Objetiva-se ainda esclarecer outra questão: é possível distinguir o discurso institucional de outros tipos de discurso com base apenas na materialidade do texto, isto é, sem recorrer a elementos que lhe sejam exteriores? O resultado obtido com tal caracterização, independentemente de suas virtudes e vícios, não visa ao estabelecimento de uma definição, mas tão somente a um melhor conhecimento das características intrínsecas a esse tipo de discurso.

Gestures as semiotic resources in the mathematics classroom

In this paper, we consider gestures as part of the resources activated in the mathematics classroom: speech, inscriptions, artifacts, etc. As such, gestures are seen as one of the semiotic tools used by students and teacher in mathematics teaching–learning. To analyze them, we introduce a suitable model, the semiotic bundle. It allows focusing on the relationships of gestures with the other semiotic resources within a multimodal approach. It also enables framing the mediating action of the teacher in the classroom: in this respect, we introduce the notion of semiotic game where gestures are one of the major ingredients.

Painful pleasures: Sacrifice, consent, and the resignification of BDSM symbolism in The Story of O and The Story of Obi

This paper examines slash fan fiction's contributions to BDSM discourses and symbolism. BDSM is culturally delegitimated as a sexual pathology, and protest against it highlights broad concerns about sexual consent within patriarchy while also misdirecting unease about sexual coercion onto the ritualized and eroticized exchange of power rather than social systems of domination. Contrasting the BDSM classic The Story of O with The Story of Obi, a Star Wars–based slash rewrite, facilitates a conceptual separation between erotic domination and the historical and cultural contexts that give shape to individual enunciations of sexualized power exchange, particularly by shifting from a psychoanalytic paradigm to consideration of chivalric "suffering for love." By calling upon the extensive shared knowledge of fan readers and the symbolism attached to the sexual conjunction of two same-sexed bodies, authors of slash fan fiction produce a constantly proliferating array of BDSM representations that challenge the speciation of erotic domination as an inherently destructive, unidirectional deadlock. They thus create unique narrative and semiotic tools for rethinking erotic uses of power.

A critical discourse analysis of racial literacy in teacher education

What does racial literacy look and sound like in a teacher education book club? Using the tools of critical discourse analysis, we describe, interpret and explain how each member of the group draws on a range of discursive and embodied resources for racial literacy; particularly, how they maneuver the book club discourse to resolve what constitutes anti-racist action in the book. In this article, we demonstrate the complex ways in which the students seek to make meaning around this issue and in doing so, draw on and develop a set of semiotic tools we refer to as racial literacy. We trace the multiple modes (visual and linguistic) used by individuals and the shifts in these modes over the course of the conversation. Such shifts, we argue, hold the potential for the development of a more intricate form of racial literacy.

From Play to Art—From Experience to Insight

This article investigates the role of play and playlike activities (imagination, art) in developing and using symbolic tools. We understand processes of development of symbolic tools as coordination between two types of relationships: the subject–object relationships and the subject–subject relationships. This coordination begins when a new, playlike frame of activity is introduced in the interaction. The imaginary frame of activity changes relationships between the participants. Furthermore, the imaginary activity frame may enter into interaction with the out-of-play activity frames (“reality” frames). Structures and relationships built within the imaginary frames are then used to shape the actual understanding of the world (subject–object relationship) as well as the interpersonal relationships and identities of the participants. Introduction and further development of imaginary frames is a recursive process that takes place on different but related time scales: from microdevelopment through ontogenetic development to cultural development. Our project was designed to demonstrate some of the key moments that occur in the symbolic construction, in an “untangled” manner. To that effect, we designed a drama workshop to outline and illustrate processes that take place at the point of introduction of a new, imaginary frame and at the point when this imaginary frame begins to interact with the out-of-play frames. The aim of the workshop was to magnify each stage in construction of semiotic tools by “walking” professional researchers through a series of playlike activities.

Learning to use scientific concepts

In responding to the research on conceptual change, this article attempts to make two points. First, scientific concepts are not possessed by individuals; rather, they are part of a culture’s resources, which individuals learn to use for their own or for group purposes. Second, particular concepts are most effectively mastered when the learner is deeply engaged in solving a problem for which they function as effective semiotic tools in achieving a solution. On these grounds, it is argued that the mastering of scientific concepts is best achieved through learning to use them in motivated inquiry.

Desafiando o ocidente: Tagore e a canção "Meu ser interior"

O estudo da canção “Amar praner manus” (“Meu ser interior”), composta pelo poeta e músico indiano Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), analise a relação intersemiótica entre os signos verbal e musical que compõem a canção. Para isso, utiliza-se a teoria geral dos signos (elaborada por Charles Peirce) e as ferramentas da semiótica musical (desenvolvidas por W. Dougherty, José Luiz Martinez, T. Turino e outros). Partindo-se de uma análise de cada signo separadamente, alcança-se o campo da referência – da relação entre o poema e a música – procurando-se considerar o problema da significação musical e da capacidade do signo musical de representar objetos não-acústicos. Ao final, procura-se compreender como essa canção está inserida numa rede mais ampla de signos culturais. Neste sentido, a pesquisa do contexto cultural da época de Tagore, marcada pela redefinição das identidades e pela valorização da cultura nativa, esclarece a relação entre a canção e seu tempo.
 
 Palavras-chave: Canção. Relação Intersemiótica. Teoria Geral dos Signos. Ferramentas da Semiótica Musical.

Multiscale textual semiotic analysis

There has been a wide range of semiotic analysis regarding literary texts. The present study, as far as literature is concerned, focuses on Umberto Eco's fourth novel Baudolino (2000), taking it as a typical example of multi-volume texts that seem to demand a careful approach. So, through this study, the analyst — in order to distinguish the preferred to the scientific reading — may use the common and rather traditional semiotic tool of isotopies, projecting it into Greimas' Generative Grammar, and on the way meaning is articulated in associative networks. Thus, it is examined whether this algorithmic confrontation leads to a multiscale analysis, with its bi-dimensionality verifying the concept of intertextuality, as conceived by Kristeva (1974, 1980). More specifically, the study methodologically passes through the theoretical concept of isotopies, as presented by various scholars, to carry on with the homogeneity traced with the associative networks. Next, the literary extracts from the original text show whether meaning can be anchored in phases, revealing how typology is related to topology (Lemke 2000).