Teaching Guide: Semiotics
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Encoding/Decoding, the Transmission Model and a Court of Law
Final Revision: Title: Encoding/Decoding, the Transmission Model and a Court of Law Keyan G. Tomaselli Abstract: Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model is discussed in terms of CS Peirce’s theory of the interpreter and interpretant. This historical semiotic window frames an example to which the Hall model was applied in South Africa to oppose a military dirty tricks campaign that involved a Supreme Court case brought against the Minister of Defence by the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) requiring him to cease his disinformation against the ECC. The Minister’s own expert had proposed a transmission model of communication that was defeated by the Peirce-Hall combination. The author argues that the model can be massively strengthened when combined with Peirceian semiotics. Keywords: Stuart Hall, encoding/decoding, CS Peirce, Phaneroscopy, semiotics, reception Media-society relations are best studied within the broader conceptual environment facilitated by the circuit of culture model (Du Gay et al., 1997) that mimics Karl Marx’s circle of capitalist production, distribution and exchange. The model implicitly incorporated Stuart Hall’s (1981) ground-breaking encoding-decoding relationship. My argument will be that Charles Sanders Peirce’s (Hartshorne and Weiss, 1931-5) idea of the ‘interpretant’ – the idea to which the sign gives rise - was a crucial, if unspoken, progenitor of Hall’s model. Working at the same time as Hall, Umberto Eco (1972) had proposed “aberrant decoding” on which Hall must have drawn, as his chapter refers to a semiological article on encoding. The early Stencilled Occasional Paper and Hutchinson book series’ that mapped out the early Birmingham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) project under Stuart Hall’s leadership identified the following semiological/semiotic sources also: Roland Barthes, Jonathan Culler and V.I. -
Understanding Poststructuralism Understanding Movements in Modern Thought Series Editor: Jack Reynolds
understanding poststructuralism Understanding Movements in Modern Thought Series Editor: Jack Reynolds Th is series provides short, accessible and lively introductions to the major schools, movements and traditions in philosophy and the history of ideas since the beginning of the Enlightenment. All books in the series are written for undergraduates meeting the subject for the fi rst time. Published Understanding Existentialism Understanding Virtue Ethics Jack Reynolds Stan van Hooft Understanding Poststructuralism James Williams Forthcoming titles include Understanding Empiricism Understanding Hermeneutics Robert Meyers Lawrence Schmidt Understanding Ethics Understanding Naturalism Tim Chappell Jack Ritchie Understanding Feminism Understanding Phenomenology Peta Bowden and Jane Mummery David Cerbone Understanding German Idealism Understanding Rationalism Will Dudley Charlie Heunemann Understanding Hegelianism Understanding Utilitarianism Robert Sinnerbrink Tim Mulgan understanding poststructuralism James Williams For Richard and Olive It is always about who you learn from. © James Williams, 2005 Th is book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. First published in 2005 by Acumen Acumen Publishing Limited 15a Lewins Yard East Street Chesham Bucks HP5 1HQ www.acumenpublishing.co.uk ISBN 1-84465-032-4 (hardcover) ISBN 1-84465-033-2 (paperback) Work on Chapter 3 was supported by British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British -
A Diagrammatic Approach to Peirce's Classifications of Signs
A diagrammatic approach to Peirce’s classifications of signs1 Priscila Farias Graduate Program in Design (SENAC-SP & UFPE) [email protected] João Queiroz Graduate Studies Program on History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching (UFBA/UEFS) Dept. of Computer Engineering and Industrial Automation (DCA/FEEC/UNICAMP) [email protected] © This paper is not for reproduction without permission of the author(s). ABSTRACT Starting from an analysis of two diagrams for 10 classes of signs designed by Peirce in 1903 and 1908 (CP 2.264 and 8.376), this paper sets forth the basis for a diagrammatic understanding of all kinds of classifications based on his triadic model of a sign. Our main argument is that it is possible to observe a common pattern in the arrangement of Peirce’s diagrams of 3-trichotomic classes, and that this pattern should be extended for the design of diagrams for any n-trichotomic classification of signs. Once this is done, it is possible to diagrammatically compare the conflicting claims done by Peircean scholars re- garding the divisions of signs into 28, and specially into 66 classes. We believe that the most important aspect of this research is the proposal of a consolidated tool for the analysis of any kind of sign structure within the context of Peirce’s classifications of signs. Keywords: Peircean semiotics, classifications of signs, diagrammatic reasoning. 1. PEIRCE’S DIAGRAMS FOR 10 CLASSES OF SIGNS In a draft of a letter to Lady Welby composed by the end of December 1908 (dated 24-28 December, L463:132-146, CP 8.342-76, EP2:483-491; we will be referring to this diagram 1. -
The Commutation Test and Chris Bacon's Score for Source Code As
The Commutation Test and Chris Bacon’s Score for Source Code as a Framework for Film Music Pedagogy Aaron Ziegel, Towson University he cinema, whether experienced at the neighborhood multiplex or streamed at home, is arguably the medium through which today’s col- lege-age Americans are most likely to encounter newly composed sym- Tphonic music. Given the ubiquity of the film-viewing experience, students are often eager to learn the tools and methodologies that can equip them to criti- cally assess and more fully comprehend the function of music in movies. The filmSource Code (2011), directed by Duncan Jones and scored by Chris Bacon, provides a particularly effective starting point through which this process can begin.1 This article will discuss the pedagogical potential found in the film’s main titles and the impact of applying a commutation test to this sequence. Although here I address one specific example, the methodology of the commu- tation test is easily adaptable to other circumstances, as the theoretical foun- dation will make clear. While variations on the commutation test are a regular occurrence in many film music classrooms, this essay aims to present an intro- ductory primer that may be of use to instructors interested in an entry point for incorporating film music studies into their teaching. With that in mind, the appendix presents one suggestion for how to create film clips for classroom use. The value of this classroom activity extends beyond providing students with an engaging and memorable learning experience. By situating this analysis I wish to express my gratitude to the many students at Towson University whose feedback and enthusiastic classroom participation, along with suggestions from the anonymous reviewers, helped me to refine the pedagogical approach described in this essay. -
Review: Marcello Barbieri (Ed) (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. the New Biological Synthesis
tripleC 5(3): 104-109, 2007 ISSN 1726-670X http://tripleC.uti.at Review: Marcello Barbieri (Ed) (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. The new biological synthesis. Dordrecht: Springer Günther Witzany telos – Philosophische Praxis Vogelsangstr. 18c A-5111-Buermoos/Salzburg Austria E-mail: [email protected] 1 Thematic background without utterances we act as non-uttering indi- viduals being dependent on the discourse de- Maybe it is no chance that the discovery of the rived meaning processes of a linguistic (e.g. sci- genetic code occurred during the hot phase of entific) community. philosophy of science discourse about the role of This position marks the primary difference to language in generating models of scientific ex- the subject of knowledge of Kantian knowledge planation. The code-metaphor was introduced theories wherein one subject alone in principle parallel to other linguistic terms to denote lan- could be able to generate sentences in which it guage like features of the nucleic acid sequence generates knowledge. This abstractive fallacy molecules such as “code without commas” was ruled out in the early 50s of the last century (Francis Crick). At the same time the 30 years of being replaced by the “community of investiga- trying to establish an exact scientific language to tors” (Peirce) represented by the scientific com- delimit objective sentences from non-objective munity in which every single scientist is able the ones derived one of his peaks in the linguistic place his utterance looking for being integrated turn. in the discourse community in which his utter- ances will be proven whether they are good ar- 1.1 Changing subjects of knowledge guments or not. -
Relational Categories
Gentner, D., & Kurtz, K. (2005). Learning and using relational categories. In W. K. Ahn, R. L. Goldstone, B. C. Love, A. B. Markman & P. W. Wolff (Eds.), Categorization inside and outside the laboratory. Washington, DC: APA. Relational Categories Dedre Gentner and Kenneth J Kurtz Relational Categories This chapter is concerned with the acquisition and use of relational categories. By relational category, we mean a category whose membership is determined by a common relational structure rather than by common properties. For instance, for X to be a bridge, X must connect two other entities or points; for X to be a carnivore, X must eat animals. Relational categories contrast with entity categories such as tulip or camel, whose members share many intrinsic properties. Relational categories cohere on the basis of a core relationship ful- filled by all members. This relation may be situation-specific (e.g., passenger or accident) or enduring (e.g., carnivore or ratio). Relational categories abound in ordinary language. Some are restricted in their arguments: For example, car- nivores are animals who eat other animals. But for many relational catego- ries, the arguments can range widely: for example, a bridge can connect two concrete locations, or two generations, or two abstract ideas. As with bridge, the instances of a relational category can have few or no intrinsic properties in common with one another. Research on categories has mostly ignored relational categories, focusing instead on entity categories-categories that can be characterized in terms of intrinsic similarity among members, like those shown in Figure 9.1. Further, as Moos and Sloutsky (2004) point out, theories of categorization have often oper- ated under the assumption that all concepts are fundamentally alike. -
Sociosemiotics and Metalanguage: the Case of Translanguaging Linguistic Frontiers
Linguistic Frontiers • 3(2) • 57—65 • 2020 DOI: 10.2478/lf-2020-0015 Linguistic Frontiers Sociosemiotics and Metalanguage: The Case of Translanguaging Original Study Anti Randviir Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Received: July 2020 ; Accepted: September 2020 Abstract: The age of transdiscipinarity has brought along the fading of boundaries between disciplines. This has engaged both the fusion of metalanguages that are used for the description of cultures and sign-proce- sses, and the launch of novel proposals for metalinguistic vocabularies. In the case of the study of culture, communication and sign-processes, it is natural that all such developments are connected with the paradigm of semiotics. At times the relevant metalinguistic and methodological proposals challenge traditional semiotic vocabulary, methods and methodological truths. This has brought along the need to recall the semiotic roots of the study of semiosis and communication, and to review transdisciplinary metalanguage in order to avoid possible misinterpretations or unnecessary repetitions of the established agreements in the paradigm of se- miotics as a possible ground for transdisciplinary study of human interaction and cultural processes. Howe- ver, besides occasional theoretical confusion, the spread of the semiotic methodology and vocabulary across applied scholarship has enriched semiotics in its faculties of field studies. Keywords : sociosemiotics, metalanguage, transdisciplinarity, modality, multimodality, mediality, coding, semiosis, modelling, translanguaging. Contemporary scholarship has, both in the domain of studies were founded. Secondly, it is useful to recall the humanities and social sciences, as also in the so-called proximity of interdisciplinary studies and interdisciplinary hard sciences, passed a fairly clear transition from mono- education as proposed by American pragmatism. -
MEANING, SEMIOTECHNOLOGIES and PARTICIPATORY MEDIA Ganaele Langlois
CULTURE MACHINE VOL 12 • 2011 MEANING, SEMIOTECHNOLOGIES AND PARTICIPATORY MEDIA Ganaele Langlois Summary What is the critical purpose of studying meaning in a digital environment which is characterized by the proliferation of meanings? In particular, online participatory media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter offer a constant stream of user-produced meanings. In this new context of seemingly infinite ‘semiotic democracy’ (Fiske, 1987), where anybody can say anything and have a chance to be heard, it seems that the main task is to find ways to deal with and analyze an ever-expanding field of signification. This article offers a different perspective on the question of meaning by arguing that if we are to study meaning to understand the cultural logic of digital environments, we should not focus on the content of what users are saying online, but rather on the conditions within which such a thing as user expression is possible in the first place. That is, this article argues that we should focus less on signification, and more on the question of regimes of the production and circulation of meaning. By expanding the question of meaning and using it to explore commercial participatory media platforms, this article offers a new framework for looking at online communication: one that decentres human subjects from the production of meaning and that acknowledges the technocultural dimension of meaning as constituted by a range of heterogeneous representational and informational technologies, cultural practices and linguistic values. Online participatory media platforms offer an exemplar of the new conditions of the production and circulation of meaning beyond the human level: they offer rich environments where user input is constantly augmented, ranked, classified and linked with other types of content. -
Definite Article of the English Language 6HQLRU7KHVLV 'HSDUWPHQWRI/LQJXLVWLFV 6ZDUWKPRUH&ROOHJH 'HFHPEHU 1
%HQMDPLQ5*HRUJH the Definite Article of the English Language 6HQLRU7KHVLV 'HSDUWPHQWRI/LQJXLVWLFV 6ZDUWKPRUH&ROOHJH 'HFHPEHU 1. Overview 1.1 Introduction The goal of this paper is to identify a viable analysis of the for use in semantic theories in ∗ the tradition of Montague (1974a,b). I shall argue that the sentiment expressed by Lewis (1983), and developed in more formal detail by von Heusinger (1997), is essentially correct, and that, when an analysis is placed in a suitable formal context, it is capable of accounting for a much greater range of phenomena than Lewis and von Heusinger consider. The basic claim is that the expression “the N” denotes the uniquely most salient N, when such an entity exists. I shall begin by enumerating every credible semantic effect attributed to “the” when used in connection with count nouns that I have encountered in the literature or noticed in the course of personal reflection on the subject. Sometimes several conflicting views on the same basic phenomenon will be condensed into one entry in the interests of compactness, and sometimes well known effects will be omitted altogether on the grounds that they seem not to be semantic at all, but to be of an entirely pragmatic, psychological, or metaphysical nature1. The decision to restrict my attention to count nouns is motivated by a desire to pick out a problem of reasonable size, and to avoid discussion of the difficult but tangential subject of the semantics of mass nouns. ∗ I would like to thank Rebecca Kuipers and David January for giving earlier drafts of this paper far more attentive readings than they were entitled to, J. -
Semiosphere As a Model of Human Cognition
494 Aleksei Semenenko Sign Systems Studies 44(4), 2016, 494–510 Homo polyglottus: Semiosphere as a model of human cognition Aleksei Semenenko Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages Stockholm University 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Th e semiosphere is arguably the most infl uential concept developed by Juri Lotman, which has been reinterpreted in a variety of ways. Th is paper returns to Lotman’s original “anthropocentric” understanding of semiosphere as a collective intellect/consciousness and revisits the main arguments of Lotman’s discussion of human vs. nonhuman semiosis in order to position it in the modern context of cognitive semiotics and the question of human uniqueness in particular. In contrast to the majority of works that focus on symbolic consciousness and multimodal communication as specifi cally human traits, Lotman accentuates polyglottism and dialogicity as the unique features of human culture. Formulated in this manner, the concept of semiosphere is used as a conceptual framework for the study of human cognition as well as human cognitive evolution. Keywords: semiosphere; cognition; polyglottism; dialogue; multimodality; Juri Lotman Th e concept of semiosphere is arguably the most infl uential concept developed by the semiotician and literary scholar Juri Lotman (1922–1993), a leader of the Tartu- Moscow School of Semiotics and a founder of semiotics of culture. In a way, it was the pinnacle of Lotman’s lifelong study of culture as an intrinsic component of human individual -
Welby's Influence on Russell's Turn To
WELBY’S INFLUENCE ON RUSSELL’S TURN TO USE? SCOTT METZGER, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY [email protected] “Two really important works on logic are these [Welby’s What is Meaning? and Russell’s Principles of Mathematics]… Yet it is almost grotesque to name them together, so utterly disparate are their characters.” –Charles Sanders Peirce, Review in The Nation, CP 8.171 A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE CORE PROBLEM: MY MOTIVATION • Welby and Russell correspond about meaning and denotation in 1905. • Russell dismisses Welby, claiming that she misunderstands the scope of his project. The early Russell was not interested in meaning. • Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen: “In 1908 Russell confessed privately to Jourdain how he had “in the past been very rude to Welby, in refusing to go there” because he found it “quite impossible to be sincere” if he saw her. He no longer wanted “to be a party to” those philosophers encouraging Welby’s work, which in his opinion was “very wrong.”” (157) AND YET… • In his later review of Ogden & Richard’s The Meaning of Meaning, Russell writes that: “When in youth, I learned what was called “philosophy”…no one ever mentioned to me the question of “Meaning.” Later, I became acquainted with Lady Welby’s work on the subject, but failed to take it seriously. […] I have now come to believe that the order of words in time or space is an ineradicable part of much of their significance—in fact, that the reason they can express space time occurrences is that they are space-time occurrences, so that a logic independent of the accidental nature of space- time becomes an idle dream.” (Russell 109) • Also, Misak writes that, in My Philosophical Development, Russell “cites Welby and Schiller as those who sparked his interest in the topic [of meaning], although at the time they had pressed him on the point, he resisted” (Misak 143). -
Biological Roots of Musical Epistemology: Functional Cycles, Umwelt, and Enactive Listening
This is a post-print (author’s final draft) of an article in “Semiotica” (2001), 134, 1/4, pp. 599-633. Walter de Gruyter. [Original page numbers between square brackets]. Details of the definitive version are available at http://www.reference-global.com/toc/semi/2001/134 Biological roots of musical epistemology: Functional cycles, Umwelt, and enactive listening MARK REYBROUCK Introduction [599] This article is about musical epistemology. Rather than stating that music, as an artefact, is `out there', ready to be discovered, I claim that music knowledge must be generated, as a product of development, and that music cognition is not a path towards a true understanding of the music as an ontological category, but a tool for adaptation to the sonic world. The concept of adaptation is a biological concept, but it is possible to transpose it to the realm of cognition, as did Piaget: My central aim has always been the search for the mechanisms of biological adaptation and the analysis and epistemological interpretation of that higher form of adaptation which manifests itself as scientific thought. (Piaget 1977: xi) An organism that is `adapted' has found a way of coping with the world in which it lives. Knowledge as an instrument of adaptation is not concerned with the representation of a `real world' but is a tool in the pursuit of equilibrium and to steer clear of external perturbations and internal contradictions. This purely biological way of thinking led Piaget to a theory of knowledge that formulates the conceptual structure of knowledge as the product of active knowers who shape their thinking to fit the constraints they experience.