Semiotic Text Research Articles

All click and no play? Game comics, comic games, and user agency

ABSTRACT This contribution examines game-like digital comics, departing from Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s concept of “game comics” that he discusses in his doctoral dissertation and in following articles (2017, 2020). Game comics, as the name suggests, would be interactive, playful comics, closely related to video games. In Goodbrey’s words, they are “a type of hypercomic that presents some of the key features of a game and uses some of the key features of the comic form as the basis for its gameplay” (2020, p. 45, "Game comics: Theory and design"). Firstly, the article defines comics, establishing a new taxonomy of digital comics (distinguishing between “homothetic,” “linked,” and “expanded”) and positioning game comics as belonging to digital ones, yet as much more fluid objects than Goodbrey’s. Secondly, it reframes the concept of interactivity within a novel framework, envisioning four types of user agency (narrative, interpretive, material, and social) that a semiotic text encourages or hinders. Lastly, it discusses a selection of game comics and reconsiders the relation the concept bears to that ofcomic games (Backe, 2020, "Game-comics and comic-games") – video games remediating comics’ affordances, seen as game comics’ hypothetical reverse. In interrogating the specifics of these objects and reflecting on the different types of user agency they prompt, the article concludes that the space between comics and games is fuzzier than taxonomies considering media in isolation would suggest.

Exploring Narcopolis as a Postmodern Narrative and Semiotic Text

Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis (2012), inspired by his own experience as an opium and later heroin addict, paints a vivid picture of the seedy underbelly of 1970s Bombay. The novel features a multitude of characters from the opium dens of Bombay and threads multiple narratives, subversive and carnivalesque, to create a postmodern chronicle of the city. This article analyzes the narrative techniques in Jeet Thayil's novel Narcopolis (2012) to explore traits of postmodernity. It contends that the occurrence of multiple narratives, whose reliability is questionable, indicates a Barthian death of the author, encouraging the readers to give meaning to the text. Also, an inquiry into the novel’s commentary on its own narrative style indicates self-reflexivity. A study of the chronotope will be undertaken to decipher the temporality in the novel. Besides, the article will look out for possibilities of embedded narratives, plot digressions, and intertextuality. It also intends to scrutinize the novel using the tools of social semiotics. Linguistic analysis of discourse entails a monolithic approach, wherein it considers language as the only mode of interpretation of a text. Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen suggest that this limitation can be overcome by social semiotics, which studies a text in its multimodality. Signs, linguistic as well as nonlinguistic, are apparent through multiple modes, such as language, sound, visual, and so forth. The incorporation of certain pictures, changes in typography of certain pages as well as the book cover of Narcopolis poses a rich possibility of the semiotic understanding of the text through visual mode. Lastly, this article will aim to establish a connection between the narrative techniques and the semiotic interpretation of the text.

Administration Of Fear Through Symbols About Covid-19 In Indonesian Online News

The Covid-19 outbreak is a global fear. This fear is partly triggered by diverse media representation. Information containing representations of COVID-19 has the potential to reduce fear. However, in reality, representations through these symbols have the potential to be used by those in power to exercise their power, especially to get rid of their political opponents through representation. The representation of Habib Rizieq Shihab as a violator of health protocols is suspected to be an attempt by the authorities to eliminate his political opponents through fear of the COVID-19 outbreak in symbols spread in the media. This research wants to answer how the administration of fear in symbols regarding violations of the COVID-19 protocol by religious figures in the representation of Habib Rizieq Shihab in Indonesian online news. This research explores the concept and criticizes the concept of administration of fear, which is a construct from dromology-based theories by Paul Virilio. This research uses Barthes' textual semiotics method (Barthes' 5 codes), which analyzes several online news texts in Indonesia. From the results of the analysis, it is revealed that the media representation of Habib Rizieq Shihab is a form of administration of fear carried out by the authorities through symbols about COVID-19 in the media by constructing logistics of perception and environmental construction that represents Habib Rizieq based on fear of the epidemic and fear of Islam (Islamophobia).

The transposing illustrator: Challenges and opportunities meeting the authorial illustrator that interacts, documents and bears witness of the unrepresented and the non-representable

What could be gained by exploring transposition as critical framework for illustration? Obviously, there was always the possibility of adapting narration from one semiotic text to another. In times of structural injustice, war and migration, what may be the contribution from the field of illustration? May the illustrator’s transposition lead to a more nuanced storytelling beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy? The ambition behind the artistic research project ‘Illuminating the non-representable’ was to be a laboratory for testing the definitions of illustration and illumination and to create a companionship of affirmative ethics Braidotti refers to. Challenges in illustrating the Holocaust have been a central topic in the project.

Пластическая культура в контексте семиотических систем олонхо

The Yakut heroic epic Olonkho contains valuable information about the plastic culture of Sakha, which historically developed based on national and cultural traditions, as the relationship of a Person with the outside world. The work considers ritual actions as a semiotic text with the inclusion of mnemonic-sacred symbols in it, also the rituals are considered in the context of the theory of «rites of passage», the plastic of the main character during his experience of heroic anger, as an informational and communicative sign. Human plasticity – physical action, gesture, pose, facial expressions, objects of the material world surrounding him, time and place of action, teleology and actionality make up the ritual syntax. The decoding of the main character’s sporting and hunting movements, the plasticity of the heroic anger, the combat duel reflects the multidimensional behavior of the hero as a person.

Enunciative Meaning-Making in Vizijos by Vytautas Mačernis

This article is a textual analysis of Vizijos (Visions), a cycle of poems by Vytautas Mačernis (1921–1944). The analysis focuses on enunciative meaning-making. The theory of enunciation (énonciation) originated in lingustics, as an inquiry into the speaking subject which, by an act of enunciation, appropriates the system of language. The introductory part of the article presents enunciative textual analysis as a modification of so-called standard greimasian textual semiotics. As a case in point, a textual analysis, by Algirdas Julien Greimas, of a poem by Marcelijus Martinaitis (“Ašara, dar tau anksti...”) is discussed, highlighting Greimas’ reluctance to discuss enunciative meaning-making. Next follows a brief discussion of an outline for inquiry into the formal apparatus of enunciation as proposed by Émile Benveniste. A model of dimensions of enunciative meaning-making that are relevant to a textual analysis of a lyric text is presented.The first part of the textual analysis is dedicated to the “Įžanga” (“Prelude”) of Visions. It is inferred that in terms of enunciative meaning-making the “Prelude” is distinct from the other parts of the work. It is argued that the “Prelude” does not live up to the standard set by those other parts. In order to demonstrate what that standard is, “Pirmoji” (“The First”) vision and excerpts of other parts are discussed. Throughout the demonstration, it is suggested that an inquiry into enunciative meaning-making leads to a different understanding of Visions than the one proposed in comprehensive studies by Virginija Balsevičiūtė-Šlekienė.

넷플릭스 오리지널 시리즈 <킹덤> 속 좀비에 대한 표상과 그 기호학적 해석

This study applies a semiotic text analysis method to track the generation of symbols in the image text of Netflix’s original series Kingdom and the conversion process of its symbolic meaning. Specifically, this study understands the role and function of zombies in the drama and their implications in its text. Also, analyzing zombies in the drama requires understanding the relationship with other narrative subjects or structures of Joseon society along with the overall narrative context and development. Based on the significance of the semiotic methodology, this study aims to determine the symbols generated and expressed in the text by analyzing each symbol in Kingdom. Furthermore, through semiotic text analysis, this study explores the dirty, deformed, damaged bodies of zombies and their physical expression reproduced in the drama. Moreover, it analyzes the representation and relationship of each symbol in Kingdom and reveals the layer of ideology that the work intends to present.

Коммуникативный инструментарий современного феминистского киберактивизма: к постановке проблемы

Modern Russian feminist discourse, being a poorly described area of communicative interaction, turns out to be one of the most important factors in the formation of the axiological determinants of Russian society today. In this regard, the article presents an analysis of new forms of social and linguocultural interactions - feminist cyberactivism, broadcast in the network environment for political activities and representing a significant part of today's online content. The authors focus on the description of specific linguistic features of different semiotic text units (online flashmob, information cards and communities/blogs of Russian fem-activists), demonstrating the ideological views of the feminist movement. Particular attention is paid to the methods of verbal explication of the problematic field of feminist cyberctivism (primarily, the definition of gender inequality index in Russia) and identification of the basic semasiological mechanisms for the "modification" of pragmatic parameters of the Russian-speaking feminist blogosphere. By developing the sense-forming component of feminist discourse, which is a critical reflection of female subjectivity, "from a certain angle", feminist cyberactivism demonstrates a high degree of involvement of the civil society in political processes, since it is essentially aimed at implementing not an informational, but rather an influence function (to evoke the desired emotional response in the recipient and to urge the need to share an updated position). The authors assume that a (subsequently) detailed consideration of the phenomenon of feminist cyberactivism, which is both the main means for the expansion of the fem-community in Russia and its constitutive feature, can answer many questions of the social and, more broadly, civilizational structure of Russian society.

How Post-Graduate Information Science Students Design Information Resources? Multimodal Information Literacy Perspectives

Information literacy have been conceptualized by numerous researchers and organizations for a long time. Especially after the prevalence of ICT and screen-based digital communication tools which make a constant connection among people, information literacy has recently been re-conceptualized regarding the new culture, user agency, and text structure. Under these conditions, individuals are seen to make meaning of existing information resources and create new information resources as the parts of socialized information construction processes. Therefore, individuals are considered active designers of information resources. In this respect, this study aims to explore how individuals design information resources which are expected to have multimodal semiotic text structure. A qualitative descriptive method was adopted, and data was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. 16 post-graduate Department of Information and Records Management students joined the study. 64 information resources (participant-generated texts) were analyzed. Results demonstrate that the semiotic structure of information resources is far from having high meaning-making potential and mostly dominantly monomodal instead of being multimodal. The study recommends that information literacy education should also focus on how to design semiotic rich and multimodal information resources to be effective contributors to information construction.

A Social Semiotic Analysis of Register Variables in the Indonesian Government-Distributed English Textbook

While the inclusion of Genre-Based Approach (GBA) as language pedagogy globally has received extensive attention in recent years, research on evaluating ELT textbooks focusing on the register representation remains relatively scarce. Drawing on the framework of social semiotic text analysis as the functional variety of language and register theory: field, mode and tenor, the present study aimed to explore Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture-endorsed secondary school English textbook from the perspective of textbooks as “a resource for making meanings—language as a social semiotic.” The findings revealed that language textbooks should be viewed as sociocultural artifacts that feature register or the context of situation representation. This article examines the research question in what ways register variables are portrayed in one Indonesian Ministry of National Education-approved secondary school English textbook, which deploys various genres and discursive resources. This critical analysis reveals that verbal texts with different genres in the textbook represent a myriad of contexts of which both teachers and students need to become aware. The implication of this study suggests that both teachers and students need to equip with skills in analyzing and reading as well as in critical language awareness analysis. Both teachers and students should have the opportunity to engage critically with textbooks as a socio-semiotic agent, for instance.

«ДЕРЕВЬЯ КАЧАЮТСЯ БЕЗ ВЕТРА»: РЕЦЕПТИВНЫЙ И ИНТЕРТЕКСТУАЛЬНЫЙ ЖЕСТ ДЕНИСА ТРЕТЬЯКОВА («ЦЕРКОВЬ ДЕТСТВА»)

The article is based on the hypothesis of Yu. Kristeva on gesture as a semiotic text. The text of Denis Tretyakov’s song “Trees (Trees swing without wind)” is considered as a receptive and intertextual gesture. Оbservations made in this article offer the key to this text / gesture: step by step reconstruction of its creative communication with fragments of religious and mystical teachings (Kabbalah, Crowlianism, etc.), literary and journalistic works (“Apollo Bezobrazov” by B. Poplavsky, “Trees took the form of wind” by W.S. Burroughs). As a result, it is established that all the problematic and thematic fields and connections of the text are transferred to the cosmic sphere, and this allows its author to create a universal ontological model of the world.

A Semiotic Analysis of Novel Faces in Hot Water by Abdallah Tayeh

The aim of this study is to investigate the semiotics of the cover, title, characters and the settings of Faces in Hot Water (1996) by the Palestinian writer Abdallah Tayeh. The study shows how important is semiotics in aesthetically and cognitively shaping the novel. The study adopts a qualitative research method by applying semiotic analysis to create a new understanding of the literary text and its interpretations. Built on semiotic analysis, the writer embodies the prevailing norms, traditions and culture of the Palestinian society. The writer also reveals semantic signs that are not visible. He in fact captured the implied meaning behind the semiotic text. The research shows that Tayeh uses many semiotic signs to refer to the various concepts of issues related to the Palestinian culture, society and beliefs.

Dan Shen's Rhetorical Narratology and Umberto Eco's Semiotic Theory of Interpretation

Dan Shen's Rhetorical Narratology and Umberto Eco's Semiotic Theory of Interpretation

“In my head, I have a cleaning lady:” Symbol form and symbolic intention in the everyday use of money

Abstract Money is a symbol. Beginning with this simple notion, we have completed a qualitative study of how money exists in people’s everyday lives and how it is used symbolically. A review of the financial, economic, psychological, and semiotic literature shows that even though money is written and talked about exhaustively, little symbol theory appears in economic writing, and we rarely found money mentioned in semiotic texts. We used a qualitative, phenomenological approach to identify critical thematic elements and underlying structures of participants’ experience. We also incorporated an accepted symbol-structure template in our analysis of the functions, emotions, actions, and reactions in the transactions our participants described. Participants refer to money both as wealth in the abstract and as concrete amounts about to be used. Our analysis of money in the abstract describes a structure of experience involving belonging, privacy and secrecy, unequal distribution, quantitative uncertainty, reflections of life history, and values. Our analysis of money in the concrete reveals a symbolic intention and a variety of “Others” engaged in the symbolic action.

ПОРІВНЯЛЬНИЙ АНАЛІЗ ОБРАЗУ ВЧИТЕЛЯ НА РАДЯНСЬКОМУ ПЛАКАТІ 1940-Х – 1980-Х РОКІВ

The article examines the peculiarities of the artistic representation of the image of the teacher in the Soviet mass art on the basis of comparative and semiotic analysis of Soviet posters of the 1940s – 1980s. The peculiarities of the image of educators in the dynamics from the late Stalin era to the “perestroika” are revealed. The artistic images presented on the posters are considered in two discourses: ideological and everyday. It is shown that the artistic representations of the teacher's image reflected the evolution of Soviet society, its structure, the place of educators in the Soviet system, the age and gender specifics of their work. The change of value orientations from socialist to mass consumption society is clarified, the dissonance between mass-ideological and individual-household, which formed the activity of educators as subjects of culture of the Soviet era, is shown. Analysis of visual sources and their comparison helped to track changes in the values of Soviet society and to create a projection of society’s changed values. The interpretation of the teacher’s place in society, as well as the adaptation of the artistic language of mass art to the tasks of socialist realism are determined. The influence of agitation and propaganda of the Soviet everyday life on the reflection of the image of the teacher in the semiotic text of the poster is found out. By 1970s - 1980s, the Society had received a large number of sources from which they could draw information. The teacher finally loses the position of the sacred bearer of knowledge, his work is perceived as a creative process, but social protection from the state has not returned. In the poster, this can be seen in the inclusion of signs and symbols that should codify the function of teaching, a new color and spatial solution, or in general, a return to the principles of the genre. The work was carried out within the framework of the research theme of the Department of Culturology of the Poltava National Pedagogical University named after V.G.Korolenko “Polylogue of the global and regional in the formation of the socio-cultural identity of the individual” (state registration number 0120U103840)

La carga semántica de un sintagma fijo en “El niño yuntero”, de Miguel Hernández

Se muestra cómo determinados elementos textuales, concretamente, un sintagma fijo, deconstruido dentro del poema de Miguel Hernández “El niño yuntero”, parte de la colección El viento del pueblo (1937), posee una carga semántica tal que la proyecta a lo largo de todas las estrofas. En este sentido, podemos considerarlo como un signo hegemónico. Además, se explica cómo ese mismo texto reproduce parte de las circunstancias sociohistóricas en las que se encontraba España durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX, particularmente la Guerra Civil (1936-1939). Las teorías en las que se basa este artículo son la semiótica textual, el análisis crítico del discurso y la sociosemiótica.

The role and place of intentionality as the basis for teaching foreign languages in line with the dialogue of cultures

The article represents an effort to specify the essential characteristics of the relationship between the intentionality of consciousness, language and culture, and on this basis to reveal the features of the process of foreign language teaching.The author considers intentionality as a phenomenon that defines and provides the content of consciousness, allowing one to commit an act of self-determination and gaining subjectivity. In the activity of consciousness, the author distinguishes intentional flows of both relatively objects and subjects, which is a prerequisite for comprehending another I, a different cultural entity, and at the same time a condition for self-knowledge and deeper penetration into one’s own culture.Culture is a complex semiotic text, it is a context in which the language being studied as a secondary modeling system acts as a means where various phenomena can be sequentially described and interpreted by students.The openness of the subject to the world, nurtured in the course of intentional teaching of language and culture, allows its utter uniqueness, and at the same time utmost universality, to manifest itself. Such an attitude actualizes the internal regularity of human actions, the possibility of self-development and the formation of a system of deferred actions, which allows a person to realize, take place, actualizes the intentional field of his capabilities.The author comes to the conclusion that the process of foreign language teaching should be interpretative, significative, semiotic in nature. Taking into account during teaching а foreign language the intentional conditioning of any action, including speech, will ensure the achievement of a coordinated consciousness.

ANALISIS PENERAPAN ETIKA FOTO HUKUM CAMBUK DI SERAMBINEWS.COM PERIODE NOVEMBER DAN DESEMBER 2018

This study aims to examine the ethics of whip law journalism in serambinews.com on November to December 2018. It uses the analysis of Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic text with a qualitative approach. In this study, the researcher took three photos as objects to be studied. The data collection techniques used in this study are text observation method and documentation method. Based on the review of the Sign, Object and Interpretation of those three photos, it shows that thosephotos are not in accordance with the ethics of photojournalism. Some things are not in accordance with the ethics of photojournalism. It still clearly seeing the face of the perpetrators who were sentenced to caning without censorship which should be disguised or not shown clearly, either by blurring or taking photos from an angle that does not show the face of the perpetrator. Keywords: Ethics, Photojournalism, Whip Law, Serambinews.com.

Rapunzel, Benjamin Button and Little Red Riding Hood in This and Any Other Possible World: Philosophical, Rhetorical and Textual Semiotic Excursions in Inter-Textual Formations Amongst Advertising, Literary and Filmic Texts

The theory of counterfactuals has been widely applied in economic and management sciences, including marketing. Among the various facets of the counterfactuals literature that have been addressed by branches of philosophy and linguistics, such as philosophy of language, logical semantics, linguistic semantics, modal fictionalism, pragmatics, I am focusing on the specific topic of possible worlds. In particular, by drawing on semantics, textual semiotics and rhetoric, I am addressing how fictive elements, embedded in a fabular world and once conceived of as counterfactual attain to be actualized in advertising discourse as part of our cultural world. By adopting Eco’s fundamental premise that our world is first and foremost culturally constituted, and by recruiting rhetoric as an essential complement of a hybrid semantic/textual semiotic approach, I venture into the fantasy island of cinematic and literary fiction, only to show that this and other possible worlds are not that far apart. The managerial applications for brand genealogists, but also in terms of developing advertising texts by drawing on a combinatorial logic of properties and individuals from fictive worlds are highlighted as an addendum to the practical implications of philosophical and semiotic theory.

FRAGMENTS OF THE COMMUNICATIVE AND CULTURAL SPACE OF THE CITY OF TIRASPOL

The purpose of this study is determined by the desire to decipher the cultural codes of the city of Tiraspol. The object of analysis is some fragments of the Tiraspol urban space. The subject of research is the originality of the communicative field of urban space, the translation of the meanings of which is carried out by verbal and non-verbal means. The methodological basis of the study was made up of the procedures of descriptive, semiotic, intertextual methods. As a result of the study, a cultural and communicative portrait of the Transnistria capital urban space was presented, some groups of onyms with regional and ideological connotations were identified. Conclusions. The historical traces manifested over time leave markings in the urban cultural and semiotic space. Urban areas, monuments, buildings, other architectural structures, some institutions that form the cultural index system of the city take in this space an important position, since they are associated with historical events, the activities of individuals and collectives, with precedent events of regional and international significance. In the city koyne, the specific system of urbanonyms, including toponyms (most of all hodonyms) that arose on the basis of precedent anthroponyms, georthonyms, chrononyms, as well as ergonyms, hemeronyms, artonyms and other onyms expresses these phenomena. The practical application of the research results is possible in the study of communicative registers for the transmission and storage of information using objects of urban environment, perceived as a semiotic text, as well as in studying methods of broadcasting national-cultural and regional heritage.