Eduardo Kohn’s guide to forest thinking

Author(s): Riin Magnus / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

In its essence, Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human (2013) is a semiotic guide to thinking with the forest. By exploring the variety of semiotic activity in the Amazonian forests and villages and mediating a culture’s coexistence with different semiotic actors, the book reveals what happens to thinking if it is opened up to thinking with those with whom one does not share a common language. By peeling off the symbolic cover of language, layers of human communication are exposed which are shared with non-human beings. Although the book is an anthropological monograph, it takes the reader along to thinking with the characters of the book as if it were a piece of fiction. Yet it relies on the disciplines and theoretical underpinnings of anthropology and semiotics to discuss the formation and transformation of human and non-human selves.

Semiotic management of communicative situations:New people(s) and old methods

Author(s): Anti Randviir / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

How to explain the existence of totalitarian communities in the light of hegemonic ideologies that have been oftentimes, and also quite recently, condemned (Nazism, communism, Stalinism, religious radicalism)? How, in the globalizing world, do information islands emerge where people live in isolated semiotic realities? How is it possible to manipulate the masses, proceeding from denounced reasoning and policies? Why can people be subject to regimes typologically similar to those that destroyed their physical and semiotic past? These are issues the article approaches, trying to see logic in the management of semiotic realities through communicative situations, specifically as to how different types of objects in the latter are constructed. Metaneeds used in the construction of semiotic realities indicate the value-based structure of macrosignifieds as elementary units in culture cores. The use of macrosignifieds and skilful manipulation with metaneeds make it possible to create novel semiotic species in closed sociocultural systems that are based on unilateral semiotization of the surroundings and function by autocommunicative feedback loops. The examples given are derived from one of the most elaborate experiments in the creation of New Man and closed semiotic realities – from the territory of the former Soviet Union and the contemporary Putinized Russia.

Schemata as the primary modelling system of culture:Prospects for the study of nonverbal communication

Author(s): Jui-Pi Chien / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

The problem of the “shift” in Lotmanian thought in his last period (the so-called Lotmanian explosion) still remains a subject of controversy for those who are interested in the scholarly heritage of Lotman. Besides explanations pointing out the “circumstantial” factors (for example, the historical context or influence from other thinkers) which brought about changes in Lotman’s views, it is important to identify a dimension of substantial “internal” changes which took place in the theoretical system itself. Regarding the essential changes relating to the concept of explosion as a movement from a ‘spatial’, more specifically ‘centre-periphery’ model to a ‘temporal’, namely ‘dislocated time’ model, the present article will focus on revealing the theoretical implication of this movement. The concept of explosion as an exceptional moment of ‘time out of joint’ was an active alternative to a theoretical breakthrough which was introduced in the process of overcoming the limitations of a previous ‘spatial’ model.

Meaning and meaning fields:A non-dualist approach by Martin Staude

Author(s): Peter Tinitis / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

The recent book by Martin Staude (2012), Meaning in Communication, Cognition, and Reality, which he also defended as a doctoral dissertation in November 2009 at the Free University of Berlin,2 proposes a theoretical framework by which meaningrelated phenomena could be described and investigated in psychic and communicative systems. Staude takes an approach to theory-building by which initially the most fundamental, abstract and general elements and properties of the theory are chosen and discussed. Only after the solid frame is set, are additional layers of complexity included by more concrete methodological decisions which remain faithful to the foundations.

Editorial

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English Issue: 2-3/2013

Editorial

The ideological aspect of intersemiotic translation and montage

Author(s): Peeter Torop / Language(s): English Issue: 2-3/2013

The Estonian film The Last Relic offers an interesting case of ideological intersemiotic translation. At the same time, it is an innovative film from the point of view of text composition as well as combination of traditional montage with intersemiotic montage in which the speech of the heroes, the messages of the songs and repetition of visual and musical motifs are juxtaposed to create historical and ideological ambiguity. The specificity of this film is very close to later tendencies in using montage: the movement from a temporal understanding of montage to spatial montage in contemporary new media and 3D-movies. A new understanding of montage is also fruitful for the new interpretation of the chronotopical structure of narrative texts. The traditional theory of montage is rooted in classical literature, while new media experience opens up new possibilities for understanding mechanisms of montage. On a very general level, contemporary tendencies of montage can be analysed as chronotopical montage.

On the dynamics of culture

Author(s): Yuri M. Lotman / Language(s): English Issue: 2-3/2013

First published as Лотман, Ю. М. 1992. О динамике культуры. Труды по знаковым системам (Sign Systems Studies) 25: 5–22.

Canonical art as informational paradox

Author(s): Yuri M. Lotman / Language(s): English Issue: 2-3/2013

Originally published as Лотман, Ю. М. 1973. Каноническое искусство как информа цион- ный парадокс. In: Муриан, Инна Федоровна (ed.), Проблема канона в древнем и средневековом искусстве Азии и Африки. Москва: Наука, 16–22.

Approaching a semiotics of exaptation: At the intersection between biological evolution and technological development

Author(s): Davide Weible / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

Th is paper recognizes a specifi c correspondence between biological evolution and technological development and on this basis tries to set up a semiotic approach to the evolutionary phenomenon of exaptation. To do this, the existence of a historical-structural and pragmatic analogy between organs and tools is shown, which in turn implies on a communicative ground the dissolution of some of their traditional distinctive att ributes. Finally, a philosophical-analytical approach to natural and cultural functions is applied to defi ne three types of exaptations.

Lotman’s tradition: Semiotics of culture from a Latin American perspective

Author(s): Ariel Gómez Ponce / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

Based on the theory of semiotics of culture developed by Juri Lotman, the Grupo de Estudios de Retórica at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Córdoba, Argentina) has been working intensely for the past thirteen years in a fi eld that seeks to expand rhetoric, extending its boundaries beyond its traditional conceptualization and enabling description of cultural semiosis. Our research team has taken up Lotman’s semiotics in order to support a theory of rhetoric that studies the tropical operation that samples the multiple textualities in diff erent orders of Latin American culture, including art, science, myth and daily life.

Mixing signs and bones: John Deely’s case for global semiosis

Author(s): Petre Petrov / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

The article develops a critique of John Deely’s ontological realism, specifically in its relevance for the project of global semiotics. Deely, whose theorizations rely heavily on the pre-modern philosophical systems of Thomas Aquinas and the Latin scholastics, has made the most sustained attempt to give philosophical grounding to Charles Peirce’s famous intuition that “all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs”. The critique develops along two main lines. Firstly, I contend that Deely’s account of onto logical relations is unsatisfactory, for it assumes the very fact it promises to demonstrate: the identity between patterns of physical events, on one hand, and patterns of thought, on the other. As it is never adequately explained what it means for the former to be identical with the latter, the mediating term – “ontological relation” – remains highly problematic. Secondly, I argue that even if this ontological paradigm is allowed to stand as proposed, it still fails to bridge the gap between the so-called “natural” signs and human-specifi c, language-based signification; for, as it posits a unity between the stipulable and the non-stipulable sign, the argument falls into a performative contradiction.

Peircean semiotics in the context of design praxis: Abduction and perception in dialogue

Author(s): Renira Rampazzo Gambarato / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

Th is paper discusses design process as a creative activity along with conceptual correlations of the semiotics developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. Th e central aim of this paper is to examine one of the most important concepts in Peirce’s theory related to design praxis: the concept of abduction. Abduction is the driving force behind creation and a way of producing new ideas. Peirce’s original concept is fundamental in order to maintain constant commitment to innovation required by design. To transmit messages in a creative way it is more effi cient to intensely work with associations by similarity in order to obtain signs rich in information and analogies. Design communicates by all its constituent elements: shape, function, colour, material, technique, technology, etc. Th erefore, signs of design share peculiar values of artistic signs as well as those of communicative ones. Th e associated information is as much aesthetic (shape) as it is semantic (content). Th e appropriation of Peircean concepts contributes to the understanding of the creative process, which in turn is crucial for understanding new possibilities by means of design.

Semiotics and interdisciplinarity: Lotman’s legacy

Author(s): Laura Gherlone / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

A particular aspect of Juri Lotman’s semiotic theory is, without a doubt, the acknowledgment of the impossibility of adopting a single scientifi c language for the comprehension of processes underlying cultural dynamics. In his last work, Unpredictable Mechanisms of Culture, Lotman underscores that natural sciences and humanities have to search for the unity of the incompatible through a profound meta-linguistic dialogue. Th is can happen only considering the reality in its antinomies, or as informed by a plurality of languages reciprocally aimed to express the real movement of objects – a hetero geneous and contradictory movement: hence, Lotman’s suggestion (which is also his ethical legacy) that the Aristotelian polyhedral unity of science be returned to. Th e aim of this paper is to retrace Lotman’s relationship with the ideas of science, scientifi city and interdisciplinary method, stressing his last refl ections concerning the urgency of returning to the Aristotelian unifi ed structure of knowledge, or a form of knowledge in which diff erent and never completely mutually translatable scientifi c languages coexist autonomously, while being in a dialogue.

Qualitative evaluation of semiotic-based intercultural training

Author(s): Roger Parent,Stanley Varnhagen / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Th is second of a two-part series of articles on applied semiotics and intercultural training provides a qualitative evaluation of the research initiative Tools for Cultural Development. Th e discussion will fi rstly centre on several theoretical and methodological challenges inherent to the qualitative research paradigm and then relate these shift ing concerns to convergent fi ndings in poststructuralist (and postcolonial) semiotics, especially with respect to pheno menology and pragmatics. Analysis of four focus group interviews in France and Australia will examine and evaluate the 2007 training experience in light of the culture-specific contexts and stakeholder groups involved. Of particular concern will be the capacity of qualitative evaluative processes to account for the “local meanings” and “voices” within the trainee narratives so as to highlight their perceptions as to the use of semiotics for designing culturally signifi cant practices in education and praxis.

Uexküll’s Kompositionslehre and Leopold’s “land ethic” in dialogue. On the concept of meaning

Author(s): Jean-Claude Gens / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Uexküll’s famous umwelt theory, which is simultaneously a theory of meaning, remains almost unknown in American environmental thought. Th e purpose of this article is to create a dialogue between the umwelt theory – a source of inspiration for biosemiotics – and one of the major fi gures of the environmental thought, namely Aldo Leopold. Th e interest of this dialogue lies in the fact that the environmental thought has much to gain by relying on Uexküll’s theory of meaning and, conversely, that Leopold’s land ethic is likely to extend Uexküll’s thought in terms of ethics.

Cognitive and linguistic underpinnings of deixis am phantasma: Bühler’s and Peirce’s semiotic

Author(s): Donna E. West / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Th is inquiry outlines Karl Bühler’s three kinds of deixis, focusing particularly on his most advanced use – deixis am phantasma (deictics to refer to absent referents). Th is use is of primary import to the semiosis of index, given the centrality of the object and the interpretant in changing the function of the indexical sign in ontogeny. Employing deictic signs to refer to absent objects (some of which are mental) constitutes a catalyst from more social, conventional, uses to more internal, imaginative, ones. Bühler’s analogy of mental objects as a “mimesis” serves as the genesis for the claim that static and more dynamic memories, fuelled by aff ect, drive deictics to refer to more dynamic objects and more dynamic interpretants, into more constructed realities. Peirce’s two types of objects and three types of interpretants complete Bühler’s deictic framework; they determine advances in deictic semiosis undeveloped by Bühler, and off er rationale for how it is that deictic use extends the semiosis of index.

Modelling, dialogism and the functional cycle: biosemiotic and philosophical insights

Author(s): Augusto Ponzio,Susan Petrilli / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Charles Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin and Th omas Sebeok all develop original research itineraries around the sign and, despite terminological diff erences, can be related with reference to the concept of dialogism and modelling. Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiosic “functional cycle”, a model for semiosic processes, is also implied in the relation between dialogue and communication. Biological models which describe communication as a self-referential, autopoietic and semiotically closed system (e.g., the models proposed by Maturana, Varela, and Th ure von Uexküll) contrast with both the linear (Shannon and Weaver) and the circular (Saussure) paradigms. Th e theory of autopoietic systems is only incompatible with dialogism if reference is to a linear causal model which describes communication as developing from source to destination, or to the conversation model governed by the turning around together rule. Dialogism understood in biosemiotic terms overlaps with the concepts of interconnectivity, interrelation, intercorporeity and presupposes the otherness relation. As Uexküll says, the relation with the umwelt in nonhuman living beings is stable and concerns the species; on the contrary, in human beings it is, changeable and concerns the single individual, which is at once an advantage and a disadvantage. Th anks to “syntactics”, human beings can construct, deconstruct and reconstruct an infi nite number of worlds from a fi nite number of elements. Th is distinguishes human beings from other animals and determines their capacity for pos

Reviews and notes

Author(s): Timo Maran / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Timo Maran - Enchantment of the past and semiocide. Remembering Ivar Puura ................. 146 Ivar Puura - Nature in our memory ................................................................. 150 Yair Neuman - Technology is becoming a Hypercortext ................................. 154

Contents

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Issue: 4/2013

TOC Volume 4/2013

Content

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Issue: 1/2013