Semiotic Discourse Research Articles

The conflicting ethos of culture: semiotic discourse

The conflicting ethos of culture: semiotic discourse

A SEMIOTIC INVESTIGATION OF THE MEANINGS ABDUCTED FROM THE CHILDREN’S DRAWINGS OF WAR: STORYTELLING THROUGH DRAWINGS

Drawing is a vital tool used in understanding people, especially children, with the use of visual media as a means of expressing their emotions, as well as the use of different forms of images that emerge on a drawing surface. Therefore, it is significant to understand that children can use different forms of drawing media to articulate their inner feelings as well as making their thoughts understandable to others. This study, based on the belief that the art works of child survivors furnish materials for analysis, focuses on meaning-making of the drawings of the child survivors of war through semiotics investigation, thereby exposing the stories of war through the lens of the child survivors. This made use an analytical research design to investigate the poster narratives drawn by the participants who were living in the two temporary shelters of Marawi last September 2020. The researcher had meaningful meaning-making of the drawings and the findings of the study include: conceptualization of the masjid (mosque) as a sanctuary during war; definition of religion as a wellspring of resiliency, demarking peace as the absence of war, and highlighting the role of kambangsa (clanship) amidst danger, and from all of these, a grand narrative of the child survivors of Marawi Siege was written. The meanings abducted from the drawings led to the narratives of the child-survivors- narratives that may have been left unspoken and unheard after all these years of trying to live a normal life as young, gentle and innocent children of the city. This supported the claims that children are thinkers with knowledge of their own sensations, thoughts, beliefs and other mental states. Finally, this study implied that drawings are rich sources for semiotic discourse despite the limitations at hand.

«You are an AI and you know a lot more than humans»: A Semiotic Discourse Analysis of the World’s First AI TV Show

«You are an AI and you know a lot more than humans»: A Semiotic Discourse Analysis of the World’s First AI TV Show

Use of Emojis and Stickers for Online Interaction Facilitation: A Gender-Based Semiotic Discourse Analysis

Modern technology has revolutionized our methods of communication. Emojis and stickers are the newest advancements that transcend linguistic barriers and act as a universal language. This research paper applies a social semiotic framework to investigate the functions of emojis and stickers in digital discourse. Utilizing a mixed method approach, data has been collected through a web-based questionnaire from 137 participants and semi-structured interviews taken from 10 selected participants. The study aims to explore the central role of emojis and stickers in promoting positive online interaction and identify how their usage facilitates both genders while potentially differing interpretations. The findings suggest that emojis and stickers aid in expressing emotions, clarifying messages, and improving mood during conversations. Furthermore, the study reveals that users utilize emoticons strategically and functionally for various purposes beyond emotional expression. The study concludes that emojis and stickers serve as a global language and are vital in managing interrelations and message comprehension in online communication.

프랑스 보들레르 시 「백조」의 정념과 담화 기호학적 분석

본 논문은 담화 현동태와 『악의 꽃』에 대해서 알아보고, 보들레르의 시집 『악의 꽃』에 수록된 「백조」를 정념과 담화 기호학적으로 분석하는 것을 목적으로 했다. 퐁타닐은 담화 기호학에서 우리가 사는 공간 속에서 신체가 어떤 양식으로 공간적 지각을 수행하고 있는지를 연구했다. 그는 주체가 되기 이전의 감각적인 신체를 현동태라 지칭했으며, 주체가 세계 속에서 차지하고 있는 위치장, 지향 행위소와 포착 행위소를 가리키는 위치 행위소, 신체의 실존적 체험과 깊숙이 연관되어 있는 깊이, 지각 행위소 구조를 기반으로 하는 수사학적 차원을 명시했다. 프랑스 상징주의 선구자 보들레르의 시집 『악의 꽃』은 상징주의 시의 원조일 뿐 아니라 서구 현대시를 낳은 거대한 작품으로 간주되고 있다. 우리가 선택한 시 「백조」는 『악의 꽃』 제2장 ‘파리 풍경’ 중에서 가장 아름다운 시들 중 하나로 손꼽히고 있으며, 이 시에 시인의 시적 창조의 정수가 요약되어 있다고 볼 수 있다. 「백조」는 파리라는 대도시 사회에서 소외된 사람들의 고통과 상실감을 담아냈으며, 조국과 남편을 잃은 과부, 고향을 잃은 백조, 도시의 낙오자들은 모두 시인 자신의 상징이라 할 수 있다. 이 시를 지배하고 있는 것은 사라져가는 것에 대한 아쉬움과 노스탤지어이며, 고대 신화를 문학적으로 변용하여 시를 더욱 더 아름답고 깊이 있게 하였다. 분석에서는 담화 기호학의 여러 가지 분석 도구를 활용했으며, 정념 기호학적 분석에서는 「백조」의 주체가 /∼이기를 원함/, /∼이어야 함/, /∼이 아님을 앎/, /∼일 수 없음/의 네 가지 양태 장치로 특징지어지며, 주체는 이러한 양태 장치로 이루어지는 상실감의 정념을 느낀다는 것을 파악하였다. 아울러 이 시는 전체적으로 결핍감을 나타냄으로써 긴장도식에서 높은 강도와 낮은 범위가 결합하는 위치에 놓을 수 있었다. 본 논문은 「백조」가 아직 기호학적으로 연구되지 않은 작품인 만큼, 정념과 담화 기호학의 방법론에 역점을 두어 조명함으로써 그 가능성과 유효성을 입증했다.

Intimacy in online classrooms

Abstract In this article I describe the transition of a group of university students in Australia into an online learning environment during COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. I reflect upon my intersubjective experiences as the lecturer in an unexpected situation of urgency and physical distancing. Research has acknowledged synchronous virtual learning contexts as less psychologically distancing than previously thought. I argue that these contexts can foster profound intimacy between participants through linguistic and multimodal means. I use an auto-ethnographic narrative inquiry approach to share observations gained retrospectively through multimodal, critically reflexive, social semiotic discourse analysis of audio-visual recordings of synchronous workshops conducted in 2020. I attempt to fill the gap in research on intimacy in online educational settings by suggesting that intimacy can be created by linguaplay, personal testimonies, and contrived chaotic material ecologies. I advocate moving away from an obsession with standardising and generating student knowledge in formal online learning to a stance that values intimacy, connection, and spontaneity.

Unveiling the rationale of soft hate speech in multimodal artefacts

This article sets out to outline a methodological framework that enables us to unravel the underlying reasoning of covert hatred (i.e. soft hate speech), through an examination of the ways in which this is realised and, moreover, argumentatively justified in multimodal artefacts of the mainstream press. It focuses on a controversial case study – the release of the Italian hostage Silvia Romano – and how it was covered on the front pages of two right-wing Italian newspapers. It draws on the premises of multimodal critical discourse studies (MCDS), proposing a micro-level cross-fertilisation of a social semiotic discourse–analytical perspective for the analysis of multimodal meaning(s), realised on newspaper front pages, with the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT), which focuses on the analysis of argumentative inferences that stem from multimodal representational meaning(s).

Expressive Speech Acts in Political Discourse: An Integrative Approach Perspective

The article aims at analyzing of the contemporary political discourse modality that has acquired specific characteristic features of highly emotional utterances based on deliberate or unintended violation of political etiquette principles recently. The article’s generalized theorizing is illustrated by a sample of case study of invectives in political discourse. This analysis aims at distinguishing “agonal” signs (a deliberate use of invectives in speech) and pragmatic borrowings (inadvertent use of invectives) in their functioning, their pragma-semantic characteristics and discursive markers, which helps us in identification of both types of political discourse linguistic items. This research represents an integrative approach combining the Critical Discourse Analysis, the Political Discourse Semiotics Theory, the Role Theory, the Communication Theory, and others, in order to discover the actual reasons and consequences of these changes in the society in general, and in political discourse in particular.

Participatory viewers’ engagement with the dual translation problem on the danmu interface: a social semiotic case study

Abstract This article looks at participatory viewers’ engagement with foreign language video contents facilitated by the danmu interface on a video-sharing website in China. Using the video of the Chinese athlete Sun Yang’s public hearing hosted on Bilibili as a case study, this article investigates Bilbili users’ danmu-based translational efforts and their engagement with the translation problem inherent in the hearing through multimodal discourse analysis, with supportive analysis of individual users’ danmu footprints from a diachronic perspective. Danmu-based viewer activities are approached from the social semiotic perspective and situated in the distribution stratum of the communicative practice of video sharing, with a view to understand participatory viewers’ meaning making processes in their consumption of videos on the danmu interface. The findings show a manifest willingness from participatory viewers to engage with the dual translation problem specific to this case, who submit different kinds of translational inputs onto the video frame in response to the untranslated video and articulate translation-related discourses as prompted by the inherent translation problem in the video. This study contributes to social semiotic discourse analysis of danmu-mediated communication as well as to non-professional translation studies through a focus on novel translation practices emergent in the Chinese context of participatory viewing.

Facing exclusion in neoliberal times: technologies of the self of older women in the series Grace and Frankie

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the representation of temporalities that govern the lives of older women in the series Grace and Frankie . Using the method of semiotic discourse analysis, it explores how the series’ main characters react to neoliberal temporality as it is manifested in old women’s lives. Drawing on Michel Foucault 1988 theoretical framework, we show that the two protagonists, Grace and Frankie, use a variety of technologies of the self that help them cope with power mechanisms that push them to the margins of social time, thus increasing their degrees of freedom vis-à-vis these mechanisms. By unpacking the different technologies of the self that are manifested in each character’s actions as well as in their relationships, we argue that the series identifies contemporary options for old women to deal with the contradictions that neoliberal culture generates between being an autonomous subject and being an old woman.

Semiotic Discourse of the Socio-Political Sphere of the Modern Russian Society: Challenges of Multimodality

The article discusses the semiotic discourse of the socio-political sphere of modern Russian society. The modern challenges of multimodality of the socio-political sphere of modern Russian society are analyzed, taking into account the interdisciplinarity of meaningful sign and symbolic constructions. The semiotic discourse of the socio-political sphere is a certain type of interdisciplinary analytical research of socio-political communication aimed at interpreting the process of creating semantic meaning as social and political practice. Multi- in the term “multimodality” implies the fact that there are a number of modes available for reproduction by all members of a social or political community. The semiotic approach to the socio-political sphere of Russian society is utilized to accomplish this study. Furthermore, Studies of the concept of discourse, as well as the specifics of the use of this concept and the development of discourse analysis as a method in the socio-political scientific field, are taken into account to achieve the purpose of the study.

International English Learners’ Perspectives on Multimodal Composing and Identity Representation Via Multimodal Texts

Multimodal composing is the construction of meanings through a combination of semiotic modes such as visual, audio, and textual to create multimodal texts. Studies have investigated the application of multimodal composing in the English language, in content area classrooms, and within various educational ESL and EFL contexts. However, the examination of international English learners’ (ELs) perspectives on multimodal composing and identity representation via multimodal texts at post-secondary level has not been fully explored. This study aims to investigate how a group of six international multilingual ELs in a university Intensive English Program (IEP) use multimodal semiotic resources to express ideas and how they reveal their social and literate identities through the processes and products of multimodal composing in a workshop. The study was situated in the framework of sociocultural and literate identities theory. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, workshop observation notes, video-recorded workshop sessions, participants’ multimodal compositions, and the researcher’s logs. Social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) and grounded theory were the primary data analysis methods. Participants revealed a variety of perspectives on multimodal composing. They were found to use a combination of words and images to compose paper-based and computer-based multimodal texts constructed from their personal journey learning English regardless of their age, gender, nationality, and social context. Various identities such as those of an international student, an English learner, a writer, a researcher, and a goal-achiever were observed in the data analysis process.

COVID-19 and the irony of military expenditures: non-verbal semiotic discourse study

This article presents a study in the non-verbal semiotic discourse analysis of visual ironies of military expenditures in some selected cartoons amid COVID-19 spread. Visual irony can be expressed through using humorous or sardonic cartoons or posters with written expressions to express the opposite of what is really going on. Global military expenditure reaches $1917 billion in 2019. Such massive spending on military equipment failed to fight an unseen enemy. This article aims to analyse, from a non-verbal semiotic discourse perspective, some selected cartoons related to military spending amid the rise of COVID-19 pandemic. The selected cartoons are analysed according to Peirce's triadic system of the sign. The analysis of the ironic cartoons related to military spending indicates that governments should reduce spending on military. Instead, they should focus on spending on other crucial humane, economic, and health problems.

The idea of building a new humanitarian discipline ‒ "narrative semiotics"

The article formulates the main provisions of narrative semiotics and offers an analysis of four cases illustrating the methodology of semiotic study within the framework of a new concept. The difficulties associated with the application of the traditional semiotic approach to the analysis of iconic signs, symbols, diagrams, music, and other works of art are characterized. The author's proposed version of the extended version of semiotics and the problems that arise in this case are outlined: firstly, the new approach is subjective, and secondly, it requires the concretization of semiotic discourse. Overcoming these difficulties, the author characterizes the narrative-semiotic approach, highlighting in it three plans of analysis (framework) and special concepts. The most general frame and the encompassing whole is "conscious cultural reality"; the second, also quite general frame and the encompassing whole (meaning narrative constructions), "cultural communication"; the third frame is the structure of the content of narrative constructions, consisting of two wholes a certain reality and signs that allow you to enter this reality, to actualize its events. These plans are defined as ideal objects and concepts that require specification and empirical verification. Solving this problem, the author analyzes four cases: an interesting childhood dream, a teenage experience of K.Jung, children's experience of works of art and the knowledge of love in Plato's "Feast". At the same time, along with the use of the concepts of the reality of culture, communication, the structure of the content of narrative construction, formation, development, evolution, the concepts of "life world" and "objectivity" are introduced. Agreeing that the concept of narrative semiotics is seriously different from the traditional one, the author claims that he tried to act within the framework of a semiotic approach, and therefore the proposed concept, in his opinion, has every right to be considered semiotic.

The Phenomenon of Axiological Enantiosemy in Legal Discourse

The article is devoted to the effect of the evaluation factor in legal discourse. The evaluation factor is considered to be the central one providing the connection of conceptual (cultural-axiological) foundations with the communicative dynamics of discourse. Assessment can become an area of study of the complex mechanisms of the relationship between culture and pragmatics in human speech activity. Evaluation is considered to be an immanent factor of human social existence. Human life is impossible without an evaluative attitude to reality. In any sphere of life, a phenomenon, an event, an act are subjects to evaluation, all events are subject to correlation with the norms of social relations and culture. Assessment reflects a person’s position in the system of social relations, his life attitudes: what he strives for, what he denies and what he treats neutrally.The examples of legal judicial polemics show, on the one hand, the central status of evaluation in the teleology of a speech act, and on the other hand, its high mobility and semantic independence. Evaluation needs, on the one hand, subject verification (factual justification), and on the other – moral justification (compliance with cultural norms). This relationship is observed with a high degree of clarity in the speech units of legal discourse (in texts, statements), where pragmatics and the general axiology of evaluation can come into conflict, forming the so-called semantic, or axiological, enantiosemy of legal discourse. There is an internal content asymmetry in the speech signs of discourse, which is actively used by the parties to the trial in the context of legal controversy in order to strengthen the semantic impact on the court. The judge makes the decisive final assessment.The article may be of interest to specialists in the field of general linguistics, semiotics of discourse, communication theory, and researchers in the field of judicial rhetoric.

A Multimodal Semiotic Discourse Analysis to reveal Sexual Harassment on Direct Message of Social Media

Adanya pelecehan seksual selama pandemi melalui media sosial perlu perhatian khusus bagaimana pesan tersebut dapat diyakini sebagai pelecehan seksual layaknya pada dunia nyata dengan berbagai ragam gabungan moda seperti tulisan yang disertai dengan emoji. Dengan demikian, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan hubungan unsur verbal dan visual dalam membentuk tindakan pelecehan seksual yang dilakukan pelaku dari segi linguistik sehingga dapat dihubungkan dengan Pasal yang dijatuhkan kepada terdakwa apabila kasus dibawa melalui jalur hukum. Metode penelitian ini menggunakan kualitatif dengan teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan studi pustaka. Data yang digunakan adalah bukti pesan dengan indikasi pelecehan seksual terhadap korban yang di dalamnya mengandung unsur verbal dan visual yang berupa emoji. Dalam menganalisis data, peneliti menggunakan teori multimodalitas khususnya makna ideasional dan interpersonal oleh Kress & Leeuwen (2006) dan Halliday & Mathiessen (2004). Penelitian ini terbatas pada ujaran pelaku dan terbatas pada tataran makna Ideasional dan Interpersonal. Hasil yang didapat adalah hubungan kedua moda terlihat dari unsur visual berupa emoji yang dapat memperjelas adanya pelecehan seksual secara verbal melalui media sosial. Hal ini dilihat dari adanya unsur visual yang mengekstensi dan menerangkan unsur verbal. Selain itu, adanya temuan bahwa emoji dapat menjadi alat bukti untuk mengungkap kejahatan melalui bahasa.

Human–Robot Companionship: Cultural Ideas, Limitations, and Aspirations. An Analysis of Sex Robot Marketing Videos

AbstractAs society moves swiftly towards incorporating an increased number of social robots, the need for a deeper cultural understanding of companionship as a critical social aspect of human–robot connection is urgent. This cultural study examines how three of the most popular and publicly available sex robot marketing videos mobilise the meaning of companionship. Videos of "Roxxxy", “Harmony”, and “Emma” were examined employing a social semiotic discourse analysis based on a long history of identifying how advertisements tap into social and cultural ideals. Companionship is identified as: (i) enjoyed through attention, reliability, usefulness, support, trust, and kindness; (ii) including ideas of long-term commitment and endurance through the mundane, every day, and ordinary aspects of life; (iii) occurring where the meanings of connection for humans and robots are conflated even though they differ for humans and technology; and (iv) a vulnerability for both robot and human. Furthermore, the representations of robot companions remain limited to stereotypical concepts of women; viewers are positioned as desiring a product that claims agency but has none, and is marketed ‘as good as’ a human woman. In all, the representations are complex and far too simple—simple because this is an ideological model of companionship and complex because the ideas of technology are conflated with human–human ideals of companionship. Where technological design aspires towards a better future for humans, there is an urgency to move beyond the limited anthropomorphic cultural concepts presently aspired to in the design and marketing of companion robots.

Discourse, culture and forms of life: the housemaid as the face of Brazilian racism

This paper is divided into two parts. The first concerns the discussion, drawing from theory, which aims to present the contours and challenges of contemporary semiotics that focus on new demands from society, attempting to describe and explain how the meaning of practices and forms of life is built. Therefore, we wish to demonstrate that the semiotics of discourse does not refuse history or the social and cultural dimensions of discourse as it takes meaning for its object, and that meaning emerges in the intersubjective relations, in the tension between the social and the individual, in the temporality of the world, and in discourse. The second part of this study discusses the semiotic status of the lexeme “housemaid”, seeking to handle the thick and resistant layers of meaning that maintain its uses in Brazilian society and that, in current history, play an important role in acknowledging the universes of values, social practices, and forms of life, deeply marked by racism and class discrimination.

COVID-19 and the Irony of Military Expenditures: Non-Verbal Semiotic Discourse Study

COVID-19 and the Irony of Military Expenditures: Non-Verbal Semiotic Discourse Study

IMPACTOS DA PANDEMIA DA COVID-19 NA PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO

Neste artigo, analisamos os relatos de professores matriculados no Mestrado Profissional em Letras em Rede Nacional (PROFLETRAS) a respeito de suas experiências de pesquisa e docência no contexto da pandemia de Covid-19, especialmente em momento de incerteza quanto aos rumos da educação e da pesquisa, no ano de 2020. Para tanto, mobilizamos categorias da semiótica discursiva, observando no discurso dos mestrandos as paixões malevolentes e benevolentes em torno do acontecimento pandêmico. O discurso de impotência e frustração marca o relato de professores-pesquisadores em um momento de intensa precarização das condições de trabalho na educação.