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semiotics of culture

1. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Floyd Merrell

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This paper brings Lotman's semiotic space to bear on Peirce's categories of the universe's processes. Particular manifestations of cultural semiotic space within the semiosphere are qualified as inconsistent and/or incomplete, depending upon the cultural context. Inconsistency and incompleteness are of the nature of vagueness and generality respectively, that are themselves qualified in terms of overdetermination and underdetermination, the first being of the nature of the category of Firstness and the second of the nature Thirdness. The role of Secondness is unfolded by acts of distinguishing the possibilities of Firstness into this and that, here and there, there and then, and all the distinctions that follow. Secondness, then, with respect to cultural semiotic space, gives rise to hegemony, to dominance and subervience, superordination and subordination. Commensurate with this interpretation of Secondness, the realms of overdetermination and underdetermination are labeled homogeny and heterogeny respectively. These theoretical assumptions will then be used as a modeling device providing an interpretation for various key aspects of Latin American cultures.
2. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Floyd Merrell

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3. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Mihhail Lotman

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The semiotics of culture and the phenomenology of fear. In the paper fear is treated as semiotical phenomenon. The semiotical speciality of fear is that while being a strong semiotical factor, its semiotical nature is often overshadowed and fear is treated proceeding from the scheme of stimulus-reaction. In the paper fear is analysed in the context of both Peirce's semiotics and Saussure's semiology and it will be demonstrated that these approaches allow to open up different aspects of fear: while in Peircean perspective frightful evokes fear, then proceeding from the Saussure's approach we could say that fear creates the frightful, fear appears to be creative; we could even speak of fear as semiosis.
4. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Mihhail Lotman

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5. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Ivan Mladenov

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The article draws paralles between Bakhtin's literary theory and some of the Peirce's philosophical concepts. The comparisons with Bakhtin go beyond the theory of heteroglossia and reveal that related notions were implicitly originated by Dostoevsky. The elaboration of the concepts of dialogue, "self" and "other" continue into the ideas of consciousness, iconic effects in literature, and the semiotic aspect of thought. Especially important in this chapter is the aspect of Peirce's theory concerned with the endless growth of interpretation and sign building, or unlimited semiosis. Peirce's discussion of unlimited semiosis is not among the less elaborated ones. Quite on the contrary, it is one of the most important of his ideas of sign. As a semiotic notion it is widely exploited in many related areas. However, it is not often used as an analytical tool to examine literature or to other works of art. Here, we will employ this notion in conjunction with Bakhtin's doctrine of heteroglossia.
6. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Ivan Mladenov

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7. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Irene Machado

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Projection is a dialogical mechanism that concerns the relationship among things in the world or in various systems, both in nature and culture. Instead of isolating these systems, projection creates an ecosystem without borderline. Projection is a way to comprehend how different cultures can link, enrich and deveop one another by understanding the relationship among different culture traditions can be related to one another by considering the nature of their sign system. That is why it is that the object of semiotics of culture is not culture but its sign systems. That is why we understand the nature of relationship among sign system as projection. In this article, we are interested in a particular kind of projection: that one in which the formulations of semiotics of culture of Slavic tradition project themselves onto the Brazilian culture. The conceptual field of Russian semiotics - dialogism, carnivalization, hybridity, border, outsideness, heteroglossia, textuality and modelling semiotic sign system - projects itself on the equally defining aspects of the semiotic identity of the Brazilian culture. I will refer here to two sets of projections: the concept of textual history, as a possibility to reach internal displacement within the culture, and the notion of semiodiversity produced by the meeting of different sign systems.
8. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Irene Machado

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semiotics of text

9. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Paul Cobley

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There can be little doubt that human consciousness is now suffused with narrative. In the West, narrative is the focus of a number of lucrative industries and narratives proliferate as never before. The importance of popular genres in current narrative is an index of the demise of authorship in the face of new media and has necessitated the renewal of the term "genre" in narrative analysis over the last hundred years or so. However. this article attempts to make clear that the concept of genre and the notion of a textual formula in narrative are not the same thing. Genre, in contrast to formula, is concerned precisely with the issue of how audiences receive narrative conventions; however, much genre theory has treated genre as a purely textual entity. The current article argues that genre should properly be considered as an "idea" or an "expectation" barboured by readers and identifies in textual-based genre theory of the last two thousand years the perpetuation of ahistoricality and canonisation.
10. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Paul Cobley

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11. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Marina Grishakova

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The paper examines linguistic, cognitive, communicative approaches to metaphor and its functioning in the narrative text. Special attention is paid to the problem of iconicity and the Wingensteinian notion of "aspect seeing" as relevant to the metaphor srudies. It is shown that the extended understanding of metaphor as "trope" or "figure" in the post-structuralist literary theory allows to see metaphor as a textual "interpretation machine". In the process of interaction of narrative and figurative patterns, metaphor functions as a means of perspectivization, i.e. representation of consciousness. In the literary text, perspective changes permanently and the subsequent configurations have an impact on the previous ones: there occurs a permanent "feedback" and correlation.
12. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Marina Grishakova

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13. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Larissa Naiditch

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The paper deals with the general peculiarities of numerals. Cases where the sense of numeral cannot simply be explained by the idea of counting, of number, or of order are considered. Special types of texts folklore on the one band, propaganda on the other hand - are analyzed. For the latter the examples from two Soviet central official newspapers - Pravda and lzvestija of May 1986 have been chosen. These texts partially reflect common stylistic features of Soviet propagandistic discourse of the "period of stagnation"; their specificity is caused by the special situation, which obtained in the country in those days - the catastrophe in the atomic power station in Chemobyl. It is claimed that all the considered examples reflect several aspects of meaning of numerals contained in their general semantics. Thus, the development of the evaluative meaning is explained by the semantics of degree contained in the numerals. These data contribute to Frege's idea of relativity of number, but from another, purely linguistic, point of view.
14. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Larissa Naiditch

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15. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Maria-Kristiina Lotman

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The aim of the present study is to describe the prosodic systems of the Greek and Latin languages and to find out the versification systems which have been realized in the poetical practice. The Greek language belongs typologically among the mora-counting languages and thus provides possibilities for the emergence of purely quantitative verse, purely syllabic verse, quantitative-syllabic verse and syllabic-quantitative verse. There is no purely quantitative or purely syllabic verse in actual Greek poetry; however, the syllabic-quantitative versification systems (the Aeolian tradition) and quantitative-syllabic versification systems (the Aeolian tradition) were in use. The Latin language, on the other hand, has a number of features, which characterize it as a stress-counting language. Since at the same time there exists also the opposition of short and long syllables, there are preconditions for the syllabic, accentual and quantitative principle, as well as for the combinations of these. The Roman literary heritage shows examples of purely accentual, syllabic-quantitative, quantitative-syllabic, as well as of several other combinatory versification systems.
16. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Maria-Kristiina Lotman

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17. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Elin Sütiste

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The present paper focuses on the similarities and differences between the formal characteristics of the traditional Japanese haiku and the translated haiku. more specifically, on the relations between the 5-7-5 syllable pattern in the Japanese haiku, and the patterns of syllable arrangement employed in the translations. Due to the influence of the target culture context, there emerge certain conventions in rendering the haiku form. the appearance of which is observed in the body of 420 haiku translations, made by 7 translators. On the basis of the overall frequency of appearance, as well as in respect to individual translators, tentative characterisation is proposed as to which types of syllable arrangement patterns can be considered more form-oriented than others in the context of the translated haiku, i.e., an attempt is made to mark the boundary between the "haiku-like" patterns and the "unhaiku-like" patterns.
18. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Elin Sütiste

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sociosemiotics

19. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Rodney J. Clarke

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The workpractices associaied with the use of an information system can be described using semiotic theories in terms of patterns of human communication. A model of workpractices has been created called the systemic semiotic workpractice framework that employs two compatible but distinct semiotic theories in order to explain the complexity of information systems use in organisational contexts. One of these theories called social semiotics can be used to describe atypical workpractice realisations, where a user renegotiates one or more canonical sequences of activities typically associated with a specific system feature. In doing so the user may alter the staging of the workpractice, redefine the goal of the workpractice, or renegotiate the usual role they adopt within the workpractice. Central concepts in social semiotics are explained and applied to an actual atypical renegotiated workpractice associated with the loan of materials to students in a smalloperational level information system called ALABS.
20. Sign Systems Studies: Volume > 29 > Issue: 2
Rodney J. Clarke

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