Triadic Sign Research Articles

Advertising discourse as modelling and semiotic activity

The article is aimed at analysing the basic concepts of semiotics and their application in multimodal advertising texts of consumer goods. The purpose of the article is to study advertising discourse as a modelling and semiotic activity in English-language advertising discourse, as well as to outline the main semiotic strategies and linguistic means in the formation of English-language advertising messages. The main objectives are to review the works of Ukrainian and foreign researchers on the issue, to identify and describe the key semiotic strategies and linguistic means of English-language advertising texts, and to determine the role of semiotic strategies in interaction with the audience and their reproduction of cultural concepts through advertising communication. The article provides a comprehensive overview of some of the key principles and concepts of semiotics and their advertising relevance, highlighting the construction of denotative messages about a product and desired connotative associations. The article also explains the role of adherence to known codes and the use of intertextual references in advertisements to create a connection with the audience. This article draws heavily on fundamental semiotic theories such as Peirce's triadic sign model, the distinction between denotation and connotation, the role of codes and cultural conventions, and the phenomenon of intertextuality. The article shows how advertisers use signs, symbols and related meanings to create culturally resonating persuasive campaigns. The relevance of the study is to understand how advertising shapes attitudes and stereotypes, as well as how modern technologies change the ways of interacting with the audience through linguistic and semiotic strategies.

Narrating Agency and a Reflective Self in “Asymmetry” by Lisa Halliday

Advancements in modern “post-classical narratology” have undergone unprecedented growth in the last two decades, giving rise to various directions of narratological research within the cognitive and diachronic domains. One such approach is biosemiotics, which appeared at the crossroads of semiotics and cultural biology and combines a set of definitions for meaning-making and agency construction in philosophy, linguistics, culture, and all complex systems. Agency here represents any kind of subject activity (e.g., epistemic, cognitive, etc.) which is possible to determine by the indices and icons of subjectivity on the level of the storyline development and then compared at the level of the discourse. From the biosemiotic approach, the narrative discourse as a complex system is characterized by the meaning emergence and telic behavior of all its constituent parts striving at closure and a certain goal, i.e., having some sort of agenda (Mendoza-Collazos&Zlatev, 2022). Thus, the agency is supplementary to the acting of the self-reflecting subject in terms of intentionality, self-referentiality, and self-governing activity. Following the above definition of agency, this paper examines the possible ways of applying Peircian triadic sign theory to narrative agency construction in the contemporary novel “Asymmetry” (2018) by Lisa Halliday, operating with the notions of embodied or bodily agency (Caracciolo&Kukkonen, 2021) and biosemiotic agency (Tønnessen, 2015). Seeing subjectivity related to perspective-taking in the narrative discourse, it is important to trace the distribution of the icons and indexes of subjectivity on three levels: semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic.

Representation Signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Smile Film by Parker Finn

Abstract: This research focuses on understanding the signs that portray Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the film Smile, employing Charles Sander Pierce's triadic sign theory framework, encompassing Representamen, Object, and Interpretant. The research methodology employed is a qualitative descriptive approach, with textual and visual data forming the basis for analysis. The primary data sources include images and transcripts from the film Smile, released in 2022. The film Smile, directed by Parker Finn, was chosen as the representative work due to its successful portrayal of an individual's experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This representation involves various types of signs that depict the psychological state of the character Rose. The analysis is conducted using a sign analysis approach within the context of the film. Through this analysis, can comprehend how trauma is represented, interpreted, and processed in an individual's mind and emotions through the various signs that manifest in the film.

Effective components on the process of concept and meaning creation and their application in ontologies: focusing on Peirce’s triadic sign model

PurposeThis study aims to focus on the interpretation component of Peirce’s triadic model of sign to identify: the components affecting the interpretation of an object and the components affecting the meaning creation by people for use in ontologies. Ashura was selected because it is a historical event and a meaningful sign in Iranian religious culture.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study was conducted in two steps. In the first step, the Instagram pages of five groups of people were chosen as the sample and examined using qualitative content analysis. In the second step, 18 creators of Ashura works were selected, their lived experience in creating these works was collected using in-depth semi-structured interviews and analysed through phenomenology method.FindingsBased on the results, the concept is context-oriented; one cannot interpret the signs according to one’s personal preferences because the context, social rules and habits limit this interpretation. Accordingly, the use of reference systems and rules of logic, as well as artificial intelligence and computer science tools alone cannot help represent meaning in ontologies. Rather, individual characteristics, contexts, presuppositions and components existing in personal, social and technological worlds are effective on concept formation and meaning creation. Thus, these factors must be considered in ontology, especially for multi-faceted and context-oriented concepts, such as Ashura.Originality/valueThis research adopted a new approach and method to study ontology. This study focused on interpretation and adopted Peirce’s sign model for ontology design.

ANALYSING THE PICTORIALS OF VIOLENCE IN NIGERIA: A SEMIOTICS PERSPECTIVE

<p>Violence attributed to the various agitating groups in the country has become a common occurrence across the Nigerian states. This paper explored a cross-comparative analysis of the pictorials of activities of two northern Nigerian agitating groups (the Boko Haram sect and the Fulani herdsmen) as semiotics signs of violence within the Nigeria socio-cultural space. A corpus of 14 pictorials of online newspaper reportage of the activities of the agitating groups across the Nigerian States downloaded from the Internet served as the primary data in this study. Using Peirce’s triadic sign relations of icon, index and symbol, the study categorised the pictorials in the reportage and analysed them as semiotics sign carriage of violence showing that the communicative imports of the pictorials effectively explicate the magnitude of violence within the Nigerian socio-cultural space in their interpretations. The signs identified in the data include instrument of operation, ruins, body language, emotional display, etc., which are semiotics modals implicative of war, violence, destruction, agony, sorrow, agitation, etc., and symbolism of cruelty, ferocity, homicide and inhumanity generally. The paper concludes that pictorials are communicative signs carriage of concrete and implicative significations.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0989/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

A Translation Semiotics Analysis on the Thumb Fight

The world is familiar with Chinese wine but neglects its attractive partner, Thumb Fight (拇战). The Thumb Fight is a precious traditional Chinese drinking game. However, its rare research still focuses on its history, not the translation process during its dynamic playing logic. The semiotic is access to logic from Peircean. The translation process during Thumb Fight can be developed under the guidance of translation semiotics. This article analyzes the Thumb Fight playing process’s signs translating process based on the translation semiotics with Peirce’s triadic sign relations. All sign interaction is translating from translation semiotics in the broadest sense. The significant signs involved in translating are thought signs, finger signs, and oral signs. The article starts from a single player’s side to divide its translation sign system into three stages: opening ceremony, fighting progress, and winning result. Furthermore, to better understand its dynamic competition process, the article constructs a translation conceptual framework to analyze its signs translation, with the signs-- objects-- interpretant triadic relations. In the following standard case study, the theoretical analysis framework of translation semiotics can effectively show the process and behavior of signs translation.

Conceptualization in ontology based on Peirce’s triadic model of the sign: a qualitative content analysis

PurposeThis study aims to identify the effective components in object interpretation based on Pierce’s triadic sign model to determine how meaning is created and identify the components affecting conceptualization in ontology.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative approach was adopted, and 6320 comments posted on the Instagram pages of five groups forming the research population were analyzed by qualitative content analysis.FindingsConcepts are dynamic and context-oriented. Over time, a person’s concepts and mental patterns about an object are altered or eliminated. Social, political and economic conditions, governance, technology, interactions, language, environment, culture and social habits contribute to object interpretation and meaning creation.Practical implicationsIn designing ontologies, especially in a context-dependent field, attention should be paid to users’ mental preconceptions, mental patterns, context and personal characteristics. Instead of using words, researchers can use visual and multimedia signs. In addition to logic, statistics and computer science, personal and anthropological characteristics should be considered in the ontology design.Originality/valueThis study dealt with conceptualization, which is a principal component of ontology. Using Pierce’s triadic model sign and unstructured Instagram data, ontology was studied from a user and pragmatic viewpoint, independently of technical aspects.

Resemiotization of Illustrations in Children’s Picture Books Between English and Arabic

Translation is no longer limited to transfer the meaning contained in a language sign; it includes instead the transposition of meaning from one non-verbal sign system into another. Children’s picture books are multimodal texts that include two different semiotic modes; the text itself and the illustrations. The present study aims at investigating the extent to which illustrations (non-verbal signs) in children’s picture books are translatable/resemiotized from English to Arabic and whether this translation/resemiotization process is considered as an intersemiotic translation. To achieve the objectives of this study, Charles Peirce’s theory of signs was adopted. Six examples of illustrations and their Arabic translations were collected from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The selected illustrations, their meanings, and their relationships were analyzed using Peirce triadic sign model. The results revealed that illustrations in children’s picture books are translatable to a great extent, their translations are intersemiotic, and that they go through resemiotization process. Because illustrations are non-verbal signs which can be analyzed and broken down into representamens, objects, and interpretants (according to Peirce), thus can be translated into other non-verbal signs in any other language.

Macau Squares: Discerning the Triadic Sign Model of Built-Heritage

Despite an objectivist vision by many heritage conservation bodies, the extant literature mostly dwells on the value of heritage as something subjective and arbitrary. Semiotically treating built-heritage as a Peircian triadic sign, instead of a dyadic sign, could reconcile this apparent dichotomy. Some squares of Macau]’s Historic Centre are taken as case study. Using a Coasian perspective, this paper argues how the meaning-delimiting consequences of a triadic semiotic framework allow for a lower transaction cost in valuation and eventually a more sustainable conservation. This has been confirmed by an expert decision in designating the relatively new squares as heritage protected areas.

A Visual Semiotic Analysis on the Spongebob Movie

Visual Semiotics is a new semiotic branch that analyzes how visual signs or visual images convey messages. In visual semiotic, a sign can be a word, sound, or visual image. Spongebob Movie is one of category of visual semiotic. It consists of picture and subtitle on it. By using visual semiotic analysis, this research aimed to identify the sign found in the Spongebob movie: Sponge Out of Water and how it is interpreted. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water as the data of the research are collected by using qualitative audio and visual materials from Spongebob.fandom.com as the source of the data. It is twenty nine data analyzed by using visual semiotic with the theory proposed by Charles Sanders Pierce. This research uses qualitative data analysis as the method of the study. Each data of the research consists of the sign and meaning. The signs was identified based on Charles Sanders Pierce triadic sign (Representament, Objet, and Interpretant) and there are three steps in interpreting the sign namely, non-verbal communication legisign, framing techniques and communicative act.

Divergent Realities Across the Digital–Material Divide

This article utilises the example of Australia’s social welfare agency ‘Centrelink’ and its Online Compliance Intervention (OCI) program to illustrate the process of digital translation and digital determinations of material reality. The article explains the digital translation process through the adaptation of various aspects of Charles Sanders Peirce’s philosophy such as the triadic sign model, signification, fallibilism and synechism. Semiotics, or the ‘study of meaning making’, highlights the subjective nature of data analysis. A semiotic approach not only explains the differing realities of digital and material space and the lack of distinction between digital and material phenomena, but also provides further insight into algorithmic determinations of reality and the inherent limitations on our knowledge of digital or material reality. The same data can produce divergent realities within digital space and between the material and digital spaces. The article concludes that the design of algorithms, the nature of their representations and the outcomes they generate lack the complexity and nuance of reality, and disregards social influences on meaning and interpretation. As illustrated by the real-life failure of Centrelink’s OCI, this article warns against interpreting the digital as an accurate rendering of the real.

Rethinking educational theory and practice in times of visual media: Learning as image-concept integration

We propose a new relational direction in higher education that acknowledges external and internal images as integrated in thinking and learning. We expand educational theory and practice that commonly rely on discrete conceptual developments that exclude images. Our argument epistemologically relies on certain semiotic views that consider the role of iconic signs and iconicity (meaning making by the virtue of similarity) as significant in relation to knowledge and learning. The analogical and imaginative work required to discover similarity between external pictures and any educational concept is a form of iconic mind work that opens a space for transformational thinking and creative solutions. The novelty of our argument lies in the schematic philosophy of mind by C.S. Peirce, and specifically, an adaptation of Peirce’s triadic sign diagram for learning, exemplified via an ‘inquiry graphic’ sign and reflective method. This outlook seeks connections in diversity, arguing for an education that acknowledges and teaches intrinsic human relatedness to other humans, beings and things in the environment, thus challenging any notions of anthropocentrism and superiority. It calls for a reaction in international higher education to acknowledge the iconicity of concepts and thinking and embrace integrated image-concept signs for deep and critical teaching-learning, towards a modest educational contribution to counteracting social and environmental crises.

Foundations of the Theory of Signs (1938)

Abstract “Foundations of the theory of signs,” published by Charles W. Morris in 1938, deals with the relations between semiotics and science, and those between semiosis and semiotics, among others. Compared with previous research regarding the aspects of semiotics being meta-science, the three dimensions of semiosis, semiotic as organon of the sciences, etc., this article does push forward the development of linguistics and semiotics since the late 1930s. However, its discussions on semiotics being meta-science, the nature and classification of signs, the three dimensions of semiosis, organism in the sign relations, universals and universality of signs, and thing-language are either not logically rigid or inadequate in content and scope. For a piece of work discussing the theoretical foundations of signs, it does not consider sign transformation, a universal and ubiquitous sign activity, which is not consistent with the keyword “foundations” in its title. A critical analysis of these problems involving the aspects mentioned above may not only enrich the visions of triadic sign relations, semiotics, and translation semiotics, but also inspire future semiotic studies and even other new research related to signs.

Peirce’s resonances on Deleuze’s concept of sign: Triadic relations, habit and relation as semiotic features

AbstractThis article inspects Peirce’s resonances on Deleuze’s semiotic. Whereas most of the literature agrees that Deleuze adapts Peirce’s semiotic to serve his Bergsonian-based theory of sign, this article claims that the relationship of Deleuze with Peirce’s writings is more foliated than it may appear at first. The development of this hypothesis invites to trace back Deleuze’s works before his very acquaintance with Peirce in the 1980s. Therefore, one of Peirce’s classical issues – the role that relations and habits play for the triadic conception of sign – is considered with Deleuze’s early studies, in which he developed this same issue as to approach Hume (habit and relation, 1953) and Proust (triadic sign, 1964). This background echoes years later in Deleuze’s incursion to Peirce’s semiotic in the 1980s ninety-two classes and two books on cinema. In fact, Deleuze’s own triadic conception of sign and his acknowledged pragmatist inclination prove to be closer to Peirce’s pragmatism than the scholarly literature tends to think or argue. The aim of this article is not, however, to build an overwhelming philosophical identity between Deleuze and Peirce, it sets up instead a steadier basis from where to understand their differences. Deleuze’s ignored five-year long lectures on cinema shows to be exegetically revealing with respect to his debts towards Peirce.

Analysing videos in educational research: an “Inquiry Graphics” approach for multimodal, Peircean semiotic coding of video data

This article introduces an “Inquiry Graphics” (IG) approach for multimodal, Peircean semiotic video analysis and coding. It builds on Charles Sanders Peirce’s core triadic interpretation of sign meaning-making. Multimodal methods offer analytical frameworks, templates and software to analyse video data. However, multimodal video analysis has been scarcely linked to semiotics in/of education (edusemiotics), for the purpose of exploring higher education teaching-learning and settings. This article addresses the mentioned gap by introducing the IG approach, which links multimodality and edusemiotics primarily via Peirce’s triadic sign. The article offers a step-by-step IG coding guide, examples and explanations. IG application can be expanded to video analysis across many fields, levels and subjects, within and beyond higher education research, nationally and internationally.

Peirce’s Concept of Signs and Kindergarten Literacy

This article focuses on Peirce’s writings about his concept of triadic sign relationships and applies his theory to analyses of multimodal literacy events in a kindergarten classroom where the author was a participant observer. Examples are provided to explain Peirce’s descriptions of the elements of sign relationships – object, representamen, and interpretant. Peirce’s theories are used to understand how the kindergarten children and their teacher make meaning from the children’s multimodal writing productions. Possible objects and interpretants of the children’s multimodal writings are explored. Figures of the children’s drawings/writings and diagrams of relationships among sign elements in the kindergarten classroom are included in the paper.  https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.17.5.7

Differentiated non-differentiation: A diagrammatical approach to the trialectics of difference – from mono-dialectics to mono-trialectics

AbstractThere exist visual signs that have stood their ground throughout the ages for the simple reason that they fit the bill. They are evident or evidently true representations. The bill they fit are life, sentience, and sapience. Which is saying that it comes down to instinctive recognition, i.e., unexplainable, but unmistakably evident. They are true because we feel they are true. This paper attempts to counter the adage that “the obvious can only be explained to those that already understand it” by visually transforming the ancient sign best known as the “yin-yang sign” or Taijitu. The goal is to demonstrate that diagrammatical transformations reveal knowledge inherently present in the visual. In other words, an attempt to reinstate the status of diagram that the Taijitu originally had instead of an image, a visual, an emblem … labels that point more to what it demonstrates than to what it is, i.e., an actionable tool. To do so C. S. Peirce’s triadic sign will be juxtaposed to the sign under analysis, and his work on Existential Graphs will be used to orchestrate transformations, thus tapping into the diagrammatic nature of the sign. Following which, the similarities with Henri Lefebvre’s trialectics will be shown in the resulting diagrammatic transformations.

The role of séméiotique in François Delsarte’s aesthetics

AbstractThis article introduces the aesthetic theory of François Delsarte (1811–1870) and his conception of semiotics. Delsarte created his “applied aesthetics” as a modern scientific method for artists, particularly performers, to investigate the nature of human being. Delsarte’s approach to performance involved the actor in observing human behavior, interpreting it through categories of voice, gesture, and language, and rendering it in an expansive display of types. Delsarte’s applied aesthetics involves the performer’s attention to signs and sign action, a study he called séméiotique. We see Delsarte’s program for inquiry into truth in what I call the actor’s task, which develops his or her human being through observation, analysis, and creation. This was Delsarte’s “orthopedic machine for correcting crippled intellects” – the crippled intellects being those intellectuals and conservatory teachers whose ideas on aesthetics he found to be neither systematic nor attuned to God’s reason. While it is well known in theatre and dance scholarship that Delsarte’s ideas and methods advanced the training of actors, dancers, and orators, particularly in the United States, my paper instead introduces him as a voice in nineteenth-century thinking on signs and semiosis. Delsarte’s aesthetics are firmly based in Thomist assumptions about a triune god whose nature is reflected imperfectly in man. Yet it is striking that Delsarte characterizes the sign relation as mediated in a modern sense, prior to Charles Peirce’s development of his own triadic sign relation, and semiotics as a modern method of scientific inquiry.

Taal, cultuur en vertaling: Een semiotische benadering

The dilemma with translation of cultural elements and with the relation of word and image in plurimodal texts, led to the choice of a semiotic theory of translation. In a semiotic approach culture is considered as a web of signs in which texts are an embedded subsystem. Semiotically, translation is primarily the transmission of a cultural artefact into another cultural system of signs. Unfortunately, this simplified vision ignores the translator as an active interface. Charles Sanders Pierce had rightly introduced a triadic sign representation (1985, 5) in which an adequate role is attributed to the translator who translates the sign into another system of signs, thus creating permanent cultural mobility. Semiotically, translation is an act of cultural identity formation. Semiosis may be executed exoticisingly or naturalisingly, but it remains an irreversible unidirectional process. Ultimately, a translation is an intercultural symbiotic construction.

The Social Semiotic Analysis of Translation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Based on Peircean Model

The aim of the present article is to investigate the meaning of the signs in Persian translation of Heart of Darkness. To reach the desired goal, the researcher has used social semiotics and Peirce’s triadic sign model as the theoretical framework. In the current study, Peirce semiotics has been used for detecting signs. After detection 50 signs, the researcher used Peirce’s triadic sign model for analyzing the translation of each sign. The researcher decoded the signs to identify their components and analyzed them in social semiotic level to clarify whether they have the same impression on the Persian version of Heart of Darkness as their English source or not. After performing data analysis, it was cleared that 37 signs (out of 50) in the corpus of the study have the same effect and meaning in the target text as what they have in the source text.