Semiotic Space Research Articles

Represent and perform: mega events and Russia’s imageries

ABSTRACTIn this article we explore the cognitive potential of the intertwined concepts of representation and performativity for studying a series of sportive and cultural mega events hosted by Russia from 2013 to 2019. Authors look at mega event as semiotic spaces generative of messages, symbols and images that might be conceptualised from the interrelated perspectives of representational and performative politics. The key research questions are: if cultural images produced by and distributed on behalf of the mega events’ hosts and organisers can be approached as representations and performances, what exactly do they represent and perform? More specifically, is there a central – presumably, illiberal – signified in the semantic representations and performances we analyse in the article?

Conceptual Localization of Yuri Stepanov’s Semiotic Theory in Chinese Linguistics

In the article the author makes an attempt to localize the semiotic theory of Yuri Stepanov into the Chinese humanitarian scientific tradition, in which signs are considered as the main tool for the transmission of cultural concepts. Semiotics as an independent field became the subject of study of the Chinese linguists in the late 80ies of the last century, during the beginning of the policy of reform and openness. Chinese researchers in their papers refer to the significant works of outstanding representatives of the Russian semiotic school, namely, the works of M. Bakhtin, R. Jacobson and Y. Lotman. However, in the Chinese linguistics, according to the author, the theory of evolutionary-semiotic series of cultural concepts developed by Yuri Stepanov is insufficiently presented today. It has broad prospects of application to the Chinese semiotic space and interpretation of its cultural signs and codes. The present publication is intended to fill the existing gap in the research paradigm of the analysis of cultural layers in the structure of Chinese concepts

‘Ain’t misbehavin’

Jazz music in children’s television communicates complex and subversive messages about the constructed notion of the child. As a musical and visual style, jazz has the potential to create a semiotic space for young viewers to explore a range of issues in ways not possible by more widely used genres of music for children. Whether as soundtrack, theme song or live performance on children’s television, jazz music provides the opportunity for resistant readings that undermine the very construction of childhood. I examine the use of jazz in early Hollywood cartoons and in the Hanna-Barbera productions of the early 1960s (The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear and Top Cat) in order to explain how sub-genres of jazz were used to signify age, social status, race and gender. This is followed by a discussion of jazz on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and how it has been used in didactic, instructional and progressive educational programming, often strategically for its connotations of race and sexuality. I argue that jazz in children’s television offers a forum in which often-complex and contradictory issues of adulthood can be accessed, contextualised and negotiated by the child. The experience that jazz represents negates innocence, the main defining quality of Western childhood. However, as an abstract art form, jazz on television captures the fluidity of childhood and challenges the puritanical and Romantic foundations of its white hetero-normative construction.

From systematic semiotic modelling to pseudointentional reference

Societies as open social systems work through semiotic modelling systems. We view their relevance for shaping primary and secondary needs, as well as metaneeds that are conditioned in social systems. Through conditioning in socialization, semiotic reality can be naturalized up to a level where we can start speaking about not only unconscious, but also unintentional semiosic activity. By that, the very realm of indexicality will be questioned. If indexicality is conjoined with unintended referentiality, then unintentional semiosis means the blurring and fusion of realities far beyond the so-called simulacral semiotic spaces. It is especially acute in the context of the development of technological availabilities where the physical, the semiotic, and the purely virtual reality merge. That quite novel phenomenon is exemplified by semiotic insularization. What follows is that it is hard to define the research object, for the subject is fading away, the real and the virtual are intermingling also in terms of their inhabitants (biological humans, computer users, avatars, virtual identities). Thus the pragmatic dimension of semiotics is gradually becoming lost. Also, the referential reality is moving farther from the informational space created and represented in “traditional” discursive flows, rather becoming based on pseudoreferential clues of meaning making.

Semiotic spaces in antidiscriminatory political discourse: Naming practices as indexes

ABSTRACTThis article explores the semiotic spaces occupied by organizations working against discrimination in Sweden. Expressions of identity, norm critique, and political goals are studied in relation to word production and language policy and planning. The study departs from interviews with representatives from three organizations within the hbtqi, antiracist, and disability movements. Other resources connected to them have also been analyzed, such as glossaries. Theoretically, this study draws on Yuri Lotman's concept of semiospheres, allowing the analysis to weigh in the whole semiotic process, including meaning production, policy work, and concrete word production. This approach completes an analysis of indexical orders. The results show that (a) organizations are aware of the importance of linguistic choices, (b) when new concepts and words are spread to the public, tension can arise and sometimes objections, and (c) word meanings change when used in public discourse. (Language policy and planning, semiosphere, indexical order, hbtqi, antiracism, disability, discrimination)

Signs of trouble: Semiotics, streetscapes, and the Republican struggle in the North of Ireland

Just as the political divisions in the North of Ireland are subject to ongoing critique, so too is its culture that maintains what scholars recognize as contested heritage. Ethno-political symbols, such as flags and murals, not only point to certain identities but also mark their territory. Whereas those emblems have been the subject of extensive research, political posters remain an overlooked source of rich iconography. This article fills that void by examining a collection of posters on display at the Irish Republican History Museum in West Belfast. The posters, in their original incarnation, emboldened the streetscapes of urban zones during “the Troubles”—a euphemism used to depict sectarian violence from the 1960s to the 1990s. In their afterlife, those posters have been preserved as material artefacts consumed by political tourists interested in gaining insight into the dissonance of heritage. Semiotics—the study of signs—provides a theoretical paradigm for this interpretation of the posters and their meaning. Moreover, Juri Lotman’s notion of the semiosphere (semiotic space) adds a deeper layer of analysis by directing critical attention to the role of the boundary where the performance of signs is most intense.

The Vardar River as a border of semiosphere – Paradox of Skopje regeneration

As suggested by its etymology, regeneration usually carries positive connotations while its negative aspects tend to be belittled. However, any renewal results in major morphological, physiognomic, functional or social changes, which imply changes in the meanings encoded in space. These transformations are not always welcome and they may lead to public discussions and conflicts. Skopje 2014 is a project within which such controversial transformations have been taking place. The area surrounding the Vardar River and its banks plays a major role here. On the river banks monumental buildings were erected, bridges over the river were modernised and new ones, decorated with monuments, were built for pedestrians. Bridges can be considered a valuable component of any urban infrastructure as they link different parts of a settlement unit (in the case of Skopje – left (northern) bank and the right (southern) bank; Albanian and Macedonian), improve transport, facilitate trade and cultural exchange. In this context, referring to Lotman’s semiosphere theory, they may become borders of semiotic space, which acts as a filter that facilitates the penetration of codes and cultural texts. Yet, in multicultural Skopje meanings attached to bridges seem to lead to social inequalities as they glorify what is Macedonian and degrade the Albanian element. To validate this assumption we carried out semiotic analysis of bridges over the Vardar River which were renewed or built within the Skopje 2014 project to identify their role in shaping the semiosphere of the Macedonian capital.

Lost, redefined, or preserved? Expressions of solidarity in Paul Auster’s 'In the Country of Last Things'

In his novel set entirely in a dystopian environment, In the Country of Last Things, Paul Auster portrays a disturbing vision of urban space where pervasive processes of disintegration and destabilisation profoundly determine the relations inside it. In this study the semiotic space of this unnamed city will be examined on the basis of the opposition between dominant dystopian space and impermanent sanctuaries located within the urban realm. The defining division of space has its reflection in the practical realisation of the concept of solidarity. The city is inhabited by society for whom moral codes and higher values can be considered relics of the past. Consequently, genuine solidarity has been replaced by what Sally Scholz calls ‘parasitical solidarity’. Temporary refuges, on the other hand, serve as the last anchorages of humanity trying to resist detrimental impacts from outside and to preserve natural gestures of solidarity.

Geopoetics of the North: The Literature of the Indigenous Peoples of the North of Yakutia

In the literature of the Indigenous Peoples of the North of Yakutia, the conceptual role is played by the image of the North, which is advisable to consider in the mainstream of geopoetics or poetics of space, revealing the regional picture of the world and the cultural landscape. In a general sense, geopoetics is thought of as a mental, intellectual, and artistic development of geographical space by man. In the study, we focus on the fact that the North in the literature of Yakutia is a cultural mental category, a unique space, in the aspect of the presence of real spatial components and those imaginative mythopoetic connotations that this space is endowed with. In this regard, the unique natural parameters of the North, its cultural and historical specificity, give reason to assert, first of all, the existence of the Northern text of Yakutia’s literature, a special semiotic space, and second of all, the Northern text is more a phenomenon not thematic, but mental, because it reflects a special version of the ethnic picture of the world.The study of this regional Northern text will allow us to outline the broad possibilities of comparative historical and typological research. The Northern text in the literature of Yakutia became the most representative in the second half of the 20th century, it is caused and formed by literary and extra-literary factors, is revealed in all semiotic systems. Its semantic core is the literature of small-numbered peoples of the North on the basis of characteristic themes, key images-concepts and symbolic motives. Literature of the indigenous peoples of the North of Yakutia includes literature of Yukaghir, Evens, Evenks people, which have different cultural and philosophical, historical and genetic roots, but also have territorial, contact-typological, ethnic unity.Semiotic space in literary texts representing the North, is represented mainly in the generalized historical-philosophical and natural-philosophical character, landscape-geographical and mythological uniqueness of the Northern region.

Semiotic space invasion: The case of Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign

Abstract This paper uses a social semiotic perspective to analyze Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage of the US presidential campaign from 16 June 2015, when he announced his candidacy for nomination as the Republican candidate until 8 November 2016, when he was elected as President of the United States. The paper argues that one of the keys to Donald Trump’s domination of media coverage was that, in presenting himself and his agenda, he foregrounded interpersonal meaning by making himself the focus of attention of the campaign through strategies that invaded various semiotic spaces to form a “sub-semiosphere” of Trump dogma. The effects of this were that what he did and what he said captured the majority of media attention at the expense of his opponents, enabling him to win the election, despite his complete lack of background experience as a politician.

A biosemiotic reading of Michel Onfray’sCosmos: Rethinking the essence of communication from an ecocentric and scientific perspective

AbstractInCosmos, Onfray argues in favor of a (re-) conceptualization of communication based on recent scientific discoveries. Similar to many researchers in the field of biosemiotics, the controversial philosopher posits that all life forms engage in constant semiosis. As opposed to being a singular characteristic that only homo sapiens possess, Onfray contends that all organisms are endowed with semiosic faculties that enable them to exchange information in purposeful and meaningful ways. Appealing to scientific logic, the philosopher debunks the common misconception that non-human vocalizations are merely the product of an internal machinery. Onfray offers concrete examples from both the animal and plant kingdom illustrating the astounding complexity of non-human semiosis. Nonetheless, in his reflections about the advent of hyperreality, the philosopher nuances his philosophical position by underscoring what makes the human primary modelling device of “language” the most sophisticated form of semiosis that exists in the biosphere. Although all material beings communicate with each other effectively in order to survive, to relate to each other, and to reproduce, Onfray recognizes that humans appear to have a heightened predisposition for symbolic exchange. The philosopher affirms that the human Umwelt is the richest and most complex semiotic space of all. Due to the pervasive nature of human semiosis in the modern world that threatens the ability of other life forms to create, stockpile, emit, and interpret signs, the philosopher also insists that preserving the fragile semiosic diversity of the “soundscape” is the key to averting the impending, anthropogenic eco-apocalypse.

Aesthetics in the high-rise apartment complex: a social semiotic perspective

ABSTRACTThe built-environment and language are different social semiotic systems; nonetheless, they share similarities. Both are about meaning-making. Both spatial and verbal texts unfold over time as we move through their semiotic space. Therefore, some aspects of linguistics and semiotics may be useful to draw on to understand better how our built-environment means. This article explores the concept of appreciation in residential high-rises, arguing that our appreciation of an object, and concomitantly our negotiation with the designer’s aesthetic, or attitude, has the potential to influence our appreciation of surrounding objects, a process referred to as spatial prosodic attitude. While research within social semiotics has accounted for our overall experience of a building through intersemiosis, a process whereby different semiotic systems integrate to produce a complex whole, it is argued that some inconspicuous objects do none of the semiotic labour, yet get the credit, while some salient value-ambiguous elements don’t get the credit they deserve. I call this parasemiosis, a process that enables an object to assume or be ascribed the value of its surrounding objects. This investigation provides additional semiotic resources for spatial discourse analysts to undertake analyses that are more robust, and for designers to consider during the design process.

THE CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE OF PERCEPTION IN TERMS OF GREIMASSIAN SEMIOTIC THEORY

The current study addresses the nature of the relation between perceptual, cognitive, emotional processes, and linguistic experience within the observer framework. As an extension of the already conducted investigations into the semiotics of the sensible, the conceptual triad SENSE : FEELING : EMOTION is introduced. The study argues that the ternion in question is a component of human expressivity constituting the semiotic space of the thymic category. The synergism of cognitive-semantic characteristics of the three concepts under study corresponds to the basic level of categorisation in modern English. More significantly, the aim of the analysis is to consider the valency models of the names of the conceptual triad SENSE : FEELING : EMOTION as well as their collocability potential. The present paper highlights that the structures of predicate valency of conceptual dependencies FEELING → SENSE (the valency index equals 0,38) outnumber the analogous structures FEELING → EMOTION (the valency index equals 0,24). The structures of object valency of the combinations FEELING → EMOTION (the valency index is 0,9) prevail over the combinations SENSE → FEELING (with the valency index of 0,1). The data obtained confirm the idea that the correlation between observer and observable is twofold: cognitive-perceptual correlation denotes the observer’s outward perspective, whereas cognitive-emotional correlation denotes the observer’s inward perspective.

From linguocentrism to acknowledgment of picture’s autonomy

Abstract In the presented paper we try to reconstruct Roland Barthes’ journey from the strict linguocentrism (i.e. logocentrism and phonocentrism) to the fact that even though the word and image find themselves in one semiotic space and might be under certain circumstances in a complementary relationship or work together to achieve the very same aim, at the same time, the images (and especially analogical images) always contain something which can’t be wholly translated into words.

Chris Ware e la costruzione dello spazio rizomatico

Space and time in comics are inextricably linked (Kukkonen 2013). Since the beginning of this medium, cartoonist have filled the extent of the page with details and complex structures to capture, cage and represent the flow of time for narrative purposes (Barbieri 1991 e 2010, Frezza 1999). On the comic page composed by the author, we often walk through the stories moving forward linearly panel by panel until the conclusion. The material support on which the story appears, far from being a neutral element, directs not only the relationship of the author with the semiotic space of the sequential narration (Noth 1990), but it also acts on the perceptive, affective and sensory relationship between device and readership. Therefore, the extent of the page and material support offer to cartoonist freedom and restrictions, impose rules and conventions that may be adopted or broken, or shown and overcome (Lefevre 2009). At a time of powerful reconfiguration of comics arrangements, in direction of massive convergence of media, cultures and technologies (Jenkins 2007), we have many examples of works working on the spatial structures, in a physical and semiotic sense, of comics media. Among these experimentations, we will be focusing on the case of Chris Ware, an authore capable of shaping rhizomatic temporal and narrative structures with a graphic style apparently simple and linear (on the rhizome concept we refer to Deleuze and Guattari 2003). In this renovated mediascape, conquers new spaces also a metariflexive and philosohical type of comic able to rethink its own iconopoietic terms: the best example of this graphic form able to be configured as a real adventure for images in the territories of though, is the work of Chris Ware (Tinkler 2008, Ball, Kuhlman 2011, Bartual 2012). In this essay we will analyze the graphic novel Building Stories (2012) (Dittmer 2014, Siirtola 2014, Morini 2015). We are going to try to understand the strategies with which the author uses the graphic novel as an instrument of thought to rethink the limits and boundaries of the page, setting himself outside the traditional sequential narrative logic in a multidimensional architecture direction. (Bredehoft 2006, Reid 2017). We are gong to investigate the unusual construction of the narrative space that is not limited just to the single page of the classic graphic novel, radically renewing the forms (Baetens 2008), with extra-narrative artifices in a story with open architecture that can be followed in several direction and through the most varied supports and devices (Hadler e Irrgang 2014). The construction of this atypical and non-hierarchical narrative space opens the door to a new idea of comics, capable of confronting - and benefitting from - with the hybrid, immersive, distributed and participated space of digital media and the Web.

The "Ten-Year Road:" Joys and Challenges on the Road to Tenure

This paper explores the pre-tenure experiences of five assistant professors employed in the faculty of education of a research-intensive university. Acting as co-researchers, the authors researched their experiences through a critical narrative approach. The analysis, informed by critically-oriented writing that extends Wenger's Communities of Practice. takes as axiomatic the notion that globalized processes of economic restructuring are mediating work in the academy and examines its local manifestations. Discussions explore issues of power, equity, shifting identities, and the need for improved navigational resources. The authors found that the process of critically and collaboratively researching their pre-tenure experiences offered insight into sites of personal and professional agency and also served as the impetus to form the social semiotic spaces that encouraged a sense of community. The Dean, a tenured member, but also a newcomer, serves in the role of critical friend.

Vadí/Nevadí: puppet play in Věra Chytilová’s Sedmikrásky (Daisies)

ABSTRACTThis work explores Věra Chytilová’s use of the aesthetics and semiotic space of the puppet theatre in her 1966 film Sedmikrásky (Daisies). Although critical response to the film has frequently highlighted the doll-like nature of the heroines’ appearance in the opening scene, I argue that it is Chytilová’s use of the puppet and its simultaneous status as both object and agent which underlies the film’s inquiry into questions of morality, violence, destruction, and consumption. This simultaneous status as object and agent – or animate and inanimate – elucidates not only the moral ambiguity of the heroines’ behaviour and corresponding massive variation in audience responses, but also the seeming contradictions in Chytilová’s own discussions of the film both before and after the Velvet Revolution. Using Otakar Zich’s and Henryk Jurkowski’s theoretical works on the phenomenology of the puppet theatre along with Heinrich von Kleist’s work on the moral sphere of the puppet, I present the puppet theatre as the film’s mechanism for exploring themes of consumption, destruction, performativity, and agency.

Architecture as Meaningful Language: Space, Place and Narrativity

A semiotics of architecture should focus on the process of the production of meaning through the articulation and organisation of space (and time). This articulation has, at least, a mental side (conception) and a material side (realisation). However, it would be misleading to try to reduce this double articulation into a formal logic alone (Pierce). Proxemics has convincingly demonstrated that spatial forms are part of social life and that their meaning depends on (and refer to) cultural values. We should study and think of the semiotics of space in the broader context of a semiotics of culture, insofar as its system of signs aims at the production of cultural meaning that is part of a code of social hierarchies and distinctions. In this paper, I propose a preliminary intersection between semiotics, literary theory and modal narratology. To decipher the social values that are inherent in spatial forms we need not only a general theory of their interpretation but also a theory of their manner of telling, their narrative structure, their plot, and how this plot is anchored and activated into specific and determinate social chronotopes. A possible strategy that would allow for the above intersection to take place could be a broad conception of the notion of 'text' that includes 'space' as a narrative process and as a discourse that follows a specific 'narrative grammar'. Therefore, architectural semiotics should lay emphasis on the process of the conception, design and production of spatial meaning as if this process was the writing of a social text, a codification of a narrative in space. In this paper, I will focus on a fragment of this project, examining some of the semiotic correlations and conceptual conjunctions between literature and architecture.

Ideological Base of Political Discourse

This article deals with the concept of “political discourse”, “political language” and “political communication” in modern linguistics. As far as these terms are used as synonyms, the question arose about the differential features of these concepts, as well as about the role of the ideological system that underlies political discourse. The separation of the mentioned naming units in “language of politics” and “political language” seems to be quite qualifying, because the language of politics, considered as a working language in the framework of political activity, as well as the political language regarded as a specifically used common language for the purpose of manipulation and / or persuasion by the electorate, intercross and reflect the relations between politicians and the society and can change borders depending on from the communicative situation. Political communication is a broader concept and comprises all processes of information influence and interactions in politics related to the power struggle. Depending on the source of information impact, ways of perception and assimilation of informational content, as well as on the characteristics of the communication process itself, there are different types of political communication. At the same time, it is pointed out that an important component of political communication is a certain symbolic reality. As a synonym for political communication, political discourse is used, which should be considered in a broad sense. In this context it is supposed that political discourse includes a semiotic space containing a certain set of speech actions and genres specific to the political sphere. Essential to political discourse is ideology as a symbolic system, whose goal is not to reform the belief system, but to influence the actions of a person in favor of supporting a particular politician or party. The characteristics of the ideological basis of political discourse are singled out.

Семиотическое пространство культуры Русского Севера

<p>Семиотическое пространство культуры Русского Севера включает Валаамский и Соловецкий архипелаги, а также топонимы, характеризующие духовное и материальное бытие Спасо-Преображенских монастырей, природные объекты, флору и фауну региона. Актуальность исследования обусловлена возрастающим интересом к духовно-нравственному, историко-культурному и ландшафтному пространству Русского Севера, духовность которого определяется фундаментальной ролью Соловецкого и Валаамского православных монастырей. Целью данной статьи является определение<strong> </strong>культурно-исторического, топонимического и ландшафтного пространств Русского Севера. Задачи исследования — соотнести духовную культуру северных монастырей с материальной и природной культурой Русского Севера; выявить роль мирских названий культурных ландшафтов Валаамского и Соловецкого монастырей.</p><p>В статье представлены результаты эмпирического исследования геокультурного пространства Валаамского и Соловецкого монастырей. Для определения семиотического пространства Соловков и Валаама использованы методы сбора информации, лингвистического анализа выявленных в ходе полевых исследований и из различных источников названий географических объектов, расположенных на островах Валаамского и Соловецкого архипелагов; использован синтез различных подходов: философских, исторических, географических, религиозных, литературных. Исследование топонимии Валаама русского происхождения проводилось в 2000–2012 гг. и опубликовано в научных статьях и в монографии «Валаам: Град Земной — Град Небесный» (Михайлова, 2013). В данной статье впервые публикуется классификация топонимов, характеризующих природу Валаама. Следующим шагом нашего исследования является изучение семантики и структуры компонентов топонимов, описывающих хозяйственно-экономическую деятельность Соловецкого монастыря. Полевые, архивные и другие исследования проводились автором на островах Соловецкого архипелага в 2012–2016 гг. и опубликованы в научных статьях и в монографии «Преображение Русского Севера» (Михайлова, 2015). Классификация топонимов островов Соловецкого архипелага, представленная в данной статье, более полно отражает различные виды деятельности Соловецкого монастыря, его историю и природу. На основе собранного топонимического материала автор впервые проводит также сравнительный анализ семиотического пространства Соловков и Валаама.</p><p>Семиотическое пространство Русского Севера характеризуют названия природных объектов, расположенных на островах Валаамского и Соловецкого архипелагов, а также топонимы, описывающие культурное пространство, хозяйственно-экономическую деятельность Спасо-Преображенских монастырей. Топонимы, созданные разными поколениями людей, раскрывают гармонию рукотворного и природного ландшафтов, дополняют культурный образ монастырей Русского Севера.</p>