DOCSLIB.ORG

30 June, 2017 Curriculum Vitae Michael Silverstein

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
30 June, 2017 Curriculum Vitae Michael Silverstein 30 June, 2017 Curriculum Vitae Michael Silverstein phone: 773/ 702-7713 Department of Anthropology facs: 773/ 702-4503 The University of Chicago 1126 East 59 Street email: [email protected] Chicago, Illinois 60637-1580 U.S.A. Born 12 September 1945, Brooklyn, New York Education Peter Stuyvesant High School, New York, New York, September 1959 – June 1962. Diploma (Class Salutatorian). Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 1962 – June 1965 [Social Class of 1966]. A.B., summa cum laude, in Linguistics and Romance Languages, June 1965. Phi Beta Kappa, 1965. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, July 1965 – June 1969. National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow in Linguistics, July 1965 – June 1969. Teaching Fellow in Linguistics, September 1966 – June 1969. Ph.D. in Linguistics, June 1972. Sigma Xi, 1971. Regular Teaching Employment The University of Chicago: Associate Professor of Anthropology and of Linguistics, July 1971 – June 1974 [on leave, 1971-72]; Associate Professor of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Behavioral Sciences (Cognition and Communication), July 1974 – January 1978 [on leave, October 1974 – December 1975; July – December 1976; 1977-78]; Professor, February 1978 – June 1984 [on leave, 1978-79; October – December 1979; October – December 1980]; Samuel N. Harper Professor (with concurrent appointment in the Committee on Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods, 1984-1996; Committee on General [from 2002- , Interdisciplinary] Studies in the Humanities, 1996- ), July 1984 – June 1997 [on leave, January – June 1985]; Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Psychology (with concurrent appointment in the Committee on General [changed to: 2 Interdisciplinary] Studies in the Humanities), July 1997 – [on leave, January – December 2002; 2012-13]. Director, Center for the Study of Communication and Society, July 2004 - . Visiting Teaching Appointments The University of Chicago: Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropological Linguistics (Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics), Autumn Quarter, 1970. Australian National University (Canberra): Visiting Professor of Linguistics, School of General Studies [=Faculty of Arts], May – August [Winter Term], 1972. Temple University (Philadelphia): Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology, 1977-78; Adjunct Associate Professor, 1978-79. The Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore): Visiting Professor of Anthropology, Autumn Semester, 1978. University of New Mexico (Albuquerque): Visiting Professor of Anthropology and of Educational Foundations, Summer Term, 1980. [In conjunction with The Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America.] Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.): Visiting Professor of English, Summer Quarter, 1986. [In conjunction with the International Summer Institute of Structural and Semiotic Studies.]; Visiting Professor of Communication Studies, Summer Quarter 1999. [In conjunction with the Summer Institute in Communication.] University of Arizona (Tucson): Visiting Professor of Linguistics (Hermann and Clara Collitz Professor of Historical Linguistics), Summer Term, 1989. [In conjunction with The Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America.] University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia): Visiting Professor of Anthropology, Spring Semester, 2000. University of California at Santa Barbara: Visiting Professor of Linguistics, Summer Term, 2001. [In conjunction with The Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America.] Aalborg University (Denmark): Faculty, Discourse Nexus 3.0 Institute, August 2005. 3 New Bulgarian University (Sofia): Faculty, Late Summer School of Semiotic Studies (Sozopol), September 2011. University of Chicago: Professor, Linguistic Society of America 2015 Linguistic Institute, July 2015. University of Kentucky (Louisville): Visiting Professor of Linguistics, Linguistic Society of America 2017 Linguistic Institute, July 2017. Resident Fellowships Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, July 1969 – June 1972. Visiting Research Fellow, Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), November – December, 1980. Visiting Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University (Canberra), July – August, 1981. Senior Research Fellow, Center for Psychosocial Studies (Chicago), September 1983 – June, 1993. Visiting Fellow, Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), October, 1992. Field Work Wishram and Wasco Chinookan. July, 1966; June – September, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 [incapacitated by accident], 1971; January, 1972; August – September 1973; January, 1974; August, 1974; July – December, 1976. Yakima Reservation, Washington, and Warm Springs Reservation, Oregon, and in various locales along the Columbia and Klickitat River drainages. Linguistics; mythology; salvage ethnography; etc. Supported variously by: Phillips Fund (American Philosophical Society); National Science Foundation (through Graduate Fellowship Program); Society of Fellows (Harvard University); Adolph Lichtstern Fund (Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago). Yakima, Rock Creek, Warm Springs Sahaptin. Occasionally, at time permitted, during concurrent Chinookan work. Gitksan (Tsimshian). March – April, 1969, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and August, 1969, in Albuquerque, New Mexico [in collaboration with Bruce J. Rigsby, then of University of New Mexico]. 4 Linguistics: syntax and inflectional morphology. Supported by: Phillips Fund (American Philosophical Society) and the Society of Fellows (Harvard University). Worora and related Northern Kimberley Aboriginal Groups (Wunjawudjagu, Unggumi, Umiidee). September, 1974 – December, 1975. Centered at Mowanjum Community, via Derby, Western Australia. Linguistics, social anthropology, applied “action anthropology” of a complex contact community in transition. Supported by: Australian Institute of Aboriginal [and Torres Straits Islander] Studies, Canberra; Adolph Lichtstern Fund (Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago). Project affiliated with Department of Anthropology, University of Western Australia (Perth), and Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University (Canberra). Other Grants and Research Fellowships Wasco Dictionary Project [in collaboration with D. H. Hymes (University of Pennsylvania) and D. H. French (Reed College)]. July – December, 1976, based at Rhododendron, Oregon. Supported by: National Science Foundation (SOC-75-10051) and National Endowment for the Humanities (RO 22872-75-479) grants to University of Pennsylvania. Dilemmas of Focus in Linguistics [in collaboration with E. P. Hamp (University of Chicago) and C. F. Voegelin (Indiana University)]. International conference held at Burg-Wartenstein, Austria, September, 1977. Supported by: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Native Theories of Language. January – December, 1979. Supported by: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (Fellowship Program). Lexicography in New World Context. Conference held in conjunction with 1980 Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, 30 June – 3 July, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Supported by: National Endowment for the Humanities (RD 300093-80-0177trng.) grant to The University of Chicago. Constraints on Modelling Real-Time Language Processes [in collaboration with W. Marslen-Wilson and L. K. Tyler (Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen) and D. Swinney (Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts)]. Conference held at Port Camargue, France, 20 – 27 June, 1982. Supported by: National Science Foundation (International Programs Grant to Tufts University), Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, and the Center for Psychosocial Studies, Chicago. 5 PI (on behalf of advisees) of a continuing series of National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Research Grants from Programs in Cultural Anthropology, in Linguistics, in Law and Society, in Technology and Society, etc. Initiative on Language and Diachrony, 1998-2000. Conference series and faculty seminar. Provost’s Projects Fund, The University of Chicago. Political Communication Initiative, 2000-2005. Coordinated research projects; faculty seminar; workshops; major conference, “Constru(ct)ing the Current: Theorizing Media in a New Millennium”; hiring of Mellon Fellow in Communication and Society. Division of the Social Sciences Consortial Research Project Fund; Provost’s Projects Fund, Mellon Fellowship Fund, The University of Chicago. Co-organizer (with C. Ball [Notre Dame] and A. Paz [Toronto]), Structuralism’s Centenary Project, 2013- . Series of conferences and lectures, variously funded by University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, University of Toronto, leading to a publication in ca. 2016 [see 2015c; 2015i]. Co-organizer (with James Costa [Université de Paris Libre]), of Chicago—Paris Conference on Sociolinguistics/Linguistic Anthropology, supported in part by University of Chicago Paris Center, 12-14 June 2017. Professional Honors and Prizes John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1979. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Prize, July 1982 (Fellowship, 1982-87). Annual Meeting Keynote Speaker and Overseas Traveling Lecturer (5 universities), Israel Anthropological Association, 1988. Hermann and Clara Collitz Professor & Lecturer, Linguistic Society of America, 1989. Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, 1989-90. (Elected) Fellow, American Academy
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Roman Jakobson, Parallelism, and Structural Poetics
    Chapter 2 Roman Jakobson, Parallelism, and Structural Poetics In the early to mid-twentieth century these very issues regarding the conver- gence of poetics, style, language, and discourse structure were being exten- sively explored by eastern European literary theorists.1 The discipline that eventually emerged from the movement became variously known as, “critical theory, semiotics, structuralism, literary linguistics, cultural studies,”2 and one could add “structural poetics.” The movement was also in many ways a pre- cursor to DA. Structural poetics pioneered the analysis of literature, namely poetry, as discursive linguistic communicative function, or to use their termi- nology, a “semiotic system.” Saussurean structural linguistics functioned as the theoretical bedrock for evaluating literary texts as discourse. It is to Saussure’s theory of language that we now turn. 2.1 Structuralism, Structural Semiotics, Linguistics, and Discursivity French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure innovatively conceptualised language (Fr. langue) as an integrated and organised system of signs (i.e., semiotic sys- tem) whose various parts, or constituents (i.e., signs or signifiers), are only properly understood as a part of the greater structural (i.e., semiotic) system. Saussure conceived of gross constituent units, or “constituents” for short, as ar- bitrary signifiers (signs) that point to something meaningful (signified). There is a distinction, then, between the signified (meaning) and the signifier (form). The sign, or signifier, is the form that that which is meaningful (i.e., signified) takes within the system of forms. Implicit to this concept of the signifier and the signified is the idea that signification is activated precisely through the sign’s place within the greater 1 This movement is most directly associated with various schools of literary linguistic theory including New Criticism, Russian Formalism (or simply “formalism”), the Prague School, Structuralism, and Czech Structuralism.
    [Show full text]
  • Contesting Regimes of Variation: Critical Groundwork for Pedagogies of Mobile Experience and Restorative Justice
    Robert W. Train Sonoma State University, California CONTESTING REGIMES OF VARIATION: CRITICAL GROUNDWORK FOR PEDAGOGIES OF MOBILE EXPERIENCE AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE Abstract: This paper examines from a critical transdisciplinary perspective the concept of variation and its fraught binary association with standard language as part of the conceptual toolbox and vocabulary for language educators and researchers. “Variation” is shown to be imbricated a historically-contingent metadiscursive regime in language study as scientific description and education supporting problematic speaker identities (e.g., “non/native”, “heritage”, “foreign”) around an ideology of reduction through which complex sociolinguistic and sociocultural spaces of diversity and variability have been reduced to the “problem” of governing people and spaces legitimated and embodied in idealized teachers and learners of languages invented as the “zero degree of observation” (Castro-Gómez 2005; Mignolo 2011) in ongoing contexts of Western modernity and coloniality. This paper explores how regimes of variation have been constructed in a “sociolinguistics of distribution” (Blommaert 2010) constituted around the delimitation of borders—linguistic, temporal, social and territorial—rather than a “sociolinguistics of mobility” focused on interrogating and problematizing the validity and relevance of those borders in a world characterized by diverse transcultural and translingual experiences of human flow and migration. This paper reframes “variation” as mobile modes-of-experiencing- the-world in order to expand the critical, historical, and ethical vocabularies and knowledge base of language educators and lay the groundwork for pedagogies of experience that impact human lives in the service of restorative social justice. Keywords: metadiscursive regimes w sociolinguistic variation w standard language w sociolinguistics of mobility w pedagogies of experience Train, Robert W.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Linguistic Movements: Neogrammarianism, Structuralism, Transformationalism
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 041 282 AL 002 492 AUTHOR Katranides, Aristotle TITLE Three Linguistic Movements: Neogrammarianism, Structuralism, Transformationalism. PUB DATE Mar 70 NOTE 14p.; Paper given at the fourth annual TESOL Convention, San Francisco, California, March 18-21, 1970 EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF-$0.25 HC-$0.80 DESCRIPTORS *English (Second Language) , *Language Instruction, *Linguistics, Linguistic Theory, Structural Linguistics, *Teaching Methods, Transformation Generative Grammar IDENTIFIERS *Neogrammarianism ABSTRACT The relevance, the application, and the importance of linguistics to teaching English as a foreign language is discussed. The author's assumption is that linguistics is "irrelevant to the aims, and inapraicable to the tasks of such teaching," and agrees with linguists such as Rosenbaum that the goal of linguistic science is "to determine inductively the laws governing the behavior of observable data." Developments in linguistics during thepast 100 years can be grouped into three main movements: (1) Neogrammarianism, which introduced rigorous requirements ofan exact science into historLcal linguistics by concentratingon the observation of phonetic phenomena; (2) Structuralism, which forcefully promoted the anthropological view that all human languagesare equal in complexity of structure, and was responsible for the widely accepted view that linguistics is a panacea for all problems inevery type of language-teaching activity; and(3) Transformationalism, which has not yet contributed anything new to an understanding of natural languages but has put linguistics in some theoretical perspective and freed it from the excessive preoccupation of the structuralists with taxonomic procedure. Some time ago, language teachingwas freed from philology; quite recently language teachingwas freed from literary studies; it should now be freed from linguistics.
    [Show full text]
  • [email protected]
    Palacký University, Olomouc Roman O. Jakobson: A Work in Progress edited and with an introduction by Tomáš Kubíček and Andrew Lass Olomouc 2014 Recenzenti: prof. PhDr. Petr A. Bílek, CSc. prof. PhDr. Dagmar Mocná, CSc. Publikace vznikla v rámci projektu Inovace bohemistických studií v mezioborových kontextech. Tento projekt je spolufi nancován Evropským sociálním fondem a státním rozpočtem České republiky. Zpracování a vydání publikace bylo umožněno díky fi nanční podpoře udělené roku 2014 Ministerstvem školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy ČR v rámci Institucionálního rozvojového plánu, programu V. Excelence, Filozofi cké fakultě Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci: Zlepšení publikačních možností akademických pedagogů ve fi lologických a humanitních oborech. Neoprávněné užití tohoto díla je porušením autorských práv a může zakládat občanskoprávní, správněprávní, popř. trestněprávní odpovědnost. Editors © Tomáš Kubíček and Andrew Lass, 2014 © Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2014 ISBN 978-80-244-4386-7 Neprodejná publikace Content Introduction .................................................................................................................5 Parallelism in prose ...................................................................................................11 Wolf Schmid Reopening the “Closing statement”: Jakobson’s factors and functions in our Google Galaxy .......................................25 Peter W. Nesselroth Elective Affi nities: Roman Jakobson, Claude Lévi-Strauss and his Antropologie Structurale ..............................................................................37
    [Show full text]
  • From Linguistic Events and Restricted Languages to Registers. Firthian Legacy and Corpus Linguistics Jacqueline Léon
    From Linguistic Events and Restricted Languages to Registers. Firthian legacy and Corpus Linguistics Jacqueline Léon To cite this version: Jacqueline Léon. From Linguistic Events and Restricted Languages to Registers. Firthian legacy and Corpus Linguistics. The Henry Sweet Society Bulletin, 2007, 49, pp.5-26. halshs-00220455 HAL Id: halshs-00220455 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00220455 Submitted on 26 Mar 2008 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Léon J., 2007, « From Linguistic Events and Restricted Languages to Registers. Firthian legacy and Corpus Linguistics » Bulletin of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas, n°49 :5-26 From Linguistic Events and Restricted Languages to Registers. Firthian legacy and Corpus Linguistics1 Jacqueline Léon Laboratoire d’Histoire des théories linguistiques, CNRS, Université Paris Denis Diderot It is generally acknowledged, among present-day corpus linguists working on registers and genres, that the notion of register has Firthian sources and more generally that it originates from British contextualism regarded as « the only tradition that suggests this kind of direct correlation between the functional organization of meaning in language and the organization of context. » (Eggins et Martin 1997 :239).
    [Show full text]
  • Paper Super-Diversity Discourse
    Paper Super-diversity discourse by Karel Arnaut©& Massimiliano Spotti© (KU Leuven / Tilburg University) [email protected] [email protected] © January 2014 Draft -- Do not quote Entry: Super-diversity discourse For: The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction (Wiley Blackwell) Editor: Karen Tracy Authors: Karel Arnaut (KULeuven) & Massimiliano Spotti (Tilburg University) E-mail addresses: [email protected] ; [email protected] Abstract: Super-diversity discourse is a relatively new, primarily academic discourse whose increasing presence in the domains of social work, institutional policy, urban and national politics, and the media is signalling a rapidly growing uptake, albeit one that is disciplinarily fragmented and geographically unevenly spread. Arguably, super-diversity’s uptake suggests that its discourse is catching the imagination of the humanities and social sciences as a recognizably productive and an auspiciously novel vantage point that sits comfortably with certain existing explicitly post-colonial anthropological and sociolinguistic takes on diversity and identity, as well as with more recent diversity-related shifts or ‘turns’ towards, among other things, complexity and (urban, digital, etc.) translocality. After presenting the notion of super-diversity, exploring its conceptual Umwelt and its uptake most prominently in sociolinguistics, attention is given to the future prospects and perceived dangers surrounding its discourse. 1. Super-diversity and its conceptual Umwelt Super-diversity rests on the growing awareness that over the past two and a half decades the demographic, socio-political, cultural and socio-linguistic face of societies worldwide has been changing as a result of (a) ever faster and more mobile communication technologies and software infrastructures, along with (b) ever expanding mobility and migration activity related to major geo-political changes around 1990 (Blommaert 2012).
    [Show full text]
  • Epistemological Tensions Between Linguistic Description and Ordinary Speakers’ Intuitive Knowledge: Examples from French Verb Morphology
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Serveur académique lausannois Epistemological tensions between linguistic description and ordinary speakers’ intuitive knowledge: examples from French verb morphology Christian SURCOUF École de français langue étrangère, Faculté des lettres, Université de Lausanne Abstract In this article, I address epistemological questions regarding the status of linguistic rules and the pervasive––though seldom discussed––tension that arises between theory-driven object perception by linguists on the one hand, and ordinary speakers’ possible intuitive knowledge on the other hand. Several issues will be discussed using examples from French verb morphology, based on the 6500 verbs from Le Petit Robert dictionary (2013). 1. Introduction A journalist commenting on French actress Juliette Binoche’s performance declared on the radio “elle est insupportable, elle ne joue pas elle binoche” (she is unbearable, she does not act, she “binoches”). Undoubtedly, any French native speaker can spontaneously produce the whole morphological paradigm of this brand new verb, and for instance add /ʁa/ to this Pr31 /binɔʃ/ in order to form Fut3 /binɔʃʁa/. But what is the status of this “rule”? In this article, I will mainly raise epistemological questions regarding the tension between scientific expectations while analyzing French verb inflectional morphological rules on the one hand and ordinary speakers’ possible inflectional production rules on the other. 1 Tenses are abbreviated as Pr(esent), Imp(erfect), Fut(ure), Inf(initive), P(assé) S(imple), P(ast) P(articiple). Persons follow the conventional I to they order from 1 to 6. Thus, Pr1-3 indicates Present singular.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 7 Linguistics As a Science of Structure Ryan M
    Chapter 7 Linguistics as a science of structure Ryan M. Nefdt University of the Western Cape Generative linguistics has rapidly changed during the course of a relatively short period. This has caused many to question its scientific status as a realist scientific theory (Stokhof & van Lambalgen 2011; Lappin et al. 2000). In this chapter, I argue against this conclusion. Specifically, I claim that the mathematical foundations of the science present a different story below the surface. I agree with critics that due to the major shifts in theory over the past 80 years, linguistics is indeed opened up to the problem of pessimistic meta-induction or radical theory change. However, I further argue that a structural realist approach (Ladyman 1998; French 2006) can save the field from this problem and at the same time capture its structural nature. I discuss particular historical instances of theory change in generative grammar as evidence for this interpretation and finally attempt to extend it beyond the gener- ative tradition to encompass previous frameworks in linguistics. 1 Introduction The generativist revolution in linguistics started in the mid-1950s, inspired in large part by insights from mathematical logic and in particular proof theory. Since then, generative linguistics has become a dominant paradigm, with many connections to both the formal and natural sciences. At the centre of the newly established discipline was the syntactic or formal engine, the structures of which were revealed through modelling grammatical form. The generativist paradigm in linguistics initially relied heavily upon the proof-theoretic techniques intro- duced by Emil Post and other formal logicians to model the form language takes (Tomalin 2006; Pullum 2011; 2013).1 Yet despite these aforementioned formal be- ginnings, the generative theory of linguistics has changed its commitments quite 1Here my focus will largely be on the formal history of generative syntax but I will make some comments on other aspects of linguistics along the way.
    [Show full text]
  • UK Linguistic Ethnography Discussion Paper
    UK linguistic ethnography: A discussion paper UK LINGUISTIC ETHNOGRAPHY: A DISCUSSION PAPER Coordinating Committee UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum 1 December 2004 Contents: 0. Preface 1. Linguistics & ethnography 1.1 Ethnography 1.2 Linguistics 1.3 Ethnography in tension with linguistics 1.4 The limits of ethnographic description 1.5 Ethnographies of discourse 2. Linguistic ethnography in the UK 2.1 Academic connections, influences and antecedents in the UK 2.2 Research trajectories and academic & political demeanours 2.3 Comparison with North American linguistic anthropology 3. Issues for the future 3.1 Generalisation & theory development 3.2 Building community and extending dialogue 0. PREFACE In recent years in the UK, a number of researchers have started to identify their work as ‘linguistic ethnography’, and 4 ½ years ago, a UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum (LEF) was established.. This work has strong links to Hymes’ ‘ethnography of communication’ (1972), but ‘the ethnography of communication’ isn’t really adequate as an umbrella characterisation because of substantial developments both in linguistic anthropology and elsewhere that have impacted on British work since the 1980s. More than that, the phrase ‘ethnography of communication’ blurs an important tension between linguistics and ethnography that contributes much to the methodological identity of linguistic ethnographic work. So what does the construct ‘linguistic ethnography’ actually imply, and what kind of cultural construction is the UK LEF? What are the links to other kinds of work, and what principles, practices, alignments and differentiations are involved UK LE’s self-constitution? These are very much genuine questions, and not just the rhetorical prelude to a proclamation of sub-disciplinary autonomy, and this paper tries to start formulating some of the answers.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas A. Sebeok and Biology: Building Biosemiotics
    Cybernetics And Human Knowing. Vol. 10, no. 1, pp. xx-xx Thomas A. Sebeok and biology: Building biosemiotics Kalevi Kull1 Abstract: The paper attempts to review the impact of Thomas A. Sebeok (1920–2001) on biosemiotics, or semiotic biology, including both his work as a theoretician in the field and his activity in organising, publishing, and communicating. The major points of his work in the field of biosemiotics concern the establishing of zoosemiotics, interpretation and development of Jakob v. Uexküll’s and Heini Hediger’s ideas, typological and comparative study of semiotic phenomena in living organisms, evolution of semiosis, the coincidence of semiosphere and biosphere, research on the history of biosemiotics. Keywords: semiotic biology, zoosemiotics, endosemiotics, biosemiotic paradigm, semiosphere, biocommunication, theoretical biology “Culture,” so-called, is implanted in nature; the environment, or Umwelt, is a model generated by the organism. Semiosis links them. T. A. Sebeok (2001c, p. vii) When an organic body is dead, it does not carry images any more. This is a general feature that distinguishes complex forms of life from non-life. The images of the organism and of its images, however, can be carried then by other, living bodies. The images are singular categories, which means that they are individual in principle. The identity of organic images cannot be of mathematical type, because it is based on the recognition of similar forms and not on the sameness. The organic identity is, therefore, again categorical, i.e., singular. Thus, in order to understand the nature of images, we need to know what life is, we need biology — a biology that can deal with phenomena of representation, recognition, categorisation, communication, and meaning.
    [Show full text]
  • Charles Sanders Peirce - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 9/2/10 4:55 PM
    Charles Sanders Peirce - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 9/2/10 4:55 PM Charles Sanders Peirce From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced /ˈpɜrs/ purse[1]) Charles Sanders Peirce (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Peirce was educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for 30 years. It is largely his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, and semiotics (and his founding of pragmatism) that are appreciated today. In 1934, the philosopher Paul Weiss called Peirce "the most original and versatile of American philosophers and America's greatest logician".[2] An innovator in many fields (including philosophy of science, epistemology, metaphysics, mathematics, statistics, research methodology, and the design of experiments in astronomy, geophysics, and psychology) Peirce considered himself a logician first and foremost. He made major contributions to logic, but logic for him encompassed much of that which is now called epistemology and philosophy of science. He saw logic as the Charles Sanders Peirce formal branch of semiotics, of which he is a founder. As early as 1886 he saw that logical operations could be carried out by Born September 10, 1839 electrical switching circuits, an idea used decades later to Cambridge, Massachusetts produce digital computers.[3] Died April 19, 1914 (aged 74) Milford, Pennsylvania Contents Nationality American 1 Life Fields Logic, Mathematics, 1.1 United States Coast Survey Statistics, Philosophy, 1.2 Johns Hopkins University Metrology, Chemistry 1.3 Poverty Religious Episcopal but 2 Reception 3 Works stance unconventional 4 Mathematics 4.1 Mathematics of logic C.
    [Show full text]
  • Etudes Transaréales
    Compass Rose of Concepts Foundations for a Poetics of Movement Thus more urgently than ever (and not only in the realm of literary studies, but far beyond) does the task of advancing a poetics of movement present itself to- day. 67 While the temporal, historically chronological foundations of our thought and of our processing of reality, so dominant in European modernism, have grown weaker in postmodern thought-configurations (which have already be- come historical), at the same time, spatial concepts and mindsets, and also pat- terns of perception and modes of experience were revalued and exponentially increased semantically. Most recently, in the second half of the eighties, spatial concepts were developed that are perhaps most convincingly reflected in the conceptual work of Edward W. Soja. 68 Before the backdrop of a relationship to space that, for traceable historical reasons, was problematic in Germany, the ex- traordinary German economic boom completed a turn to the spatial—as suc- cessfully publicized, for example, by the historian Karl Schlögel in his demand for “ein Spatial turn, endlich” 69 (“a spatial turn, finally”)—merely an adjustment that, in the new millennium, in light of developments in the realm of the most widely varying “turns,” 70 can certainly no longer be designated in an interna- tional context as being new. Certainly, the process only briefly sketched here is not one that, within a lo- gosphere shaped by postmodernism, would be uniformly directed and would have proceeded without contradiction. Yet the discussions of the eighties and nineties of the 20 th century—and this continues into the present—were marked quite substantially by geopolitical, geocultural, and geopoetic questions which in no way were limited to cyberspace, but instead generated territorializations, 67 I draw attention to this necessity at the conclusion of Ottmar Ette: “Wege des Wissens.
    [Show full text]