Veröffentlicht von De Gruyter Mouton

Semiotics, Communication and Cognition [SCC]

Herausgegeben von: Paul Cobley und Kalevi Kull

ISSN: 1867-0873

Übersicht
Bände

The series focuses on the state of contemporary semiotics and its current applications. It is intended to produce a number of concise interventions in semiotics, by which is meant studies of discrete areas of nature and culture that are interrogated using sign theory (in particular, as derived from the example of Peirce, Saussure, Sebeok, Lotman, von Uexküll, Greimas, Eco). Semiotics has undergone exciting sea changes in recent years. It has also been supplemented and reinvigorated by developments in media and theory and new areas of application.

The series is designed to present developments in contemporary semiotics by focusing primarily on specific areas of its application. In addition to their specific focus, the books in this series give a rounded picture of current semiotics. Their emphasis is on current theory and the possibilities offered by the implementation of such theory.

Each volume in the series places its topic within a general understanding of today's semiotics, a disciplinary field which comprises not just the study of culture but also the study of nature. Given the interdisciplinary character of this field and the spread of the target audience, the books are accessibly written and communicate with an academic readership that is not overspecialized.

SCC is a peer-reviewed series of international scope.

Fachgebiete

Buch 2023

Volume 2

Alin Olteanu, Paul Cobley

Teil des mehrbändigen Werks Semiotics and its Masters

Band 36 in dieser Reihe

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Semiotics has ever-changing vistas in consonance with changes in the ever-increasing complexity of life on Planet Earth.

This book presents cutting-edge work in semiotics, projecting developments in the future of the field. Authored by leading semioticians, Semiotics and its Masters, Volume 2 contains essays on learning, transdisciplinarity, science, scaffolding, narrative, selfhood, ecosemiotics, agency, cybersemiotics, pornography, nostalgia, language and money. The volume presents a panorama of semiotics as it will develop in the third decade of the 21st century.

This book will furnish the reader with an overview of the challenges that face explorers in the contemporary world of signs.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110857801
ISBN:: 9783110857801
ISBN:: 9783110799910
ISBN:: 9783110900002
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Linguistische Beschreibungsebenen
Fachgebiet:: Gespräch, Diskurs
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2023

Transcending Signs

Essays in Existential Semiotics

Eero Tarasti

Band 35 in dieser Reihe

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Existential semiotics is a new paradigm which combines classical semiotics with continental philosophy. It does not mean a return to existentialism, albeit philosophers from Hegel and Kierkegaard to Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre are its sources of inspiration. It introduces completely new sign categories and concepts to the field, recasting the whole of semiotics, communication and signification as integral to a transcendental art. The volume contains essays on music, the voice, silence, calligraphy, metaphysics, myth, aesthetics, entropy, cultural heritage, film, the Bible, among other subjects.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110789164
ISBN:: 9783110789164
ISBN:: 9783110789041
ISBN:: 9783110789201
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kulturelle Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Fachgebiet:: Soziale Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2021

On the Corposphere

Anthroposemiotics of the Body

José Enrique Finol

Band 33 in dieser Reihe

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The book presents and analyzes some of the most important issues related to the body seen as a rich and complex anthropological and semiotic object, capable of playing a decisive role in the meaning making processes of cultural and social life. The analysis presented in this book opens a whole set of new venues for the study of body performances and representations, and shows how the embodiment of social and cultural life shape our world. In all of its relationships and in itself, our body works in a sort of corposphere, which is, in turn, part of the semiosphere, defined by Lotman as a continuum occupied by different types of semiotic formations. It is from/in/by the body that all semiosis begins and ends; it is in its presence and absence, in its being and in its presentation amidst the lived situational life where we might discover and shape the senses of the world. Many different academic fields will find in this book deep insights about how the body is at the center of cultural and social processes.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110696899
ISBN:: 9783110696899
ISBN:: 9783110696851
ISBN:: 9783110696936
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kulturelle Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Theorien und Fachgebiete
Fachgebiet:: Diskursanalyse
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2021

Introduction to the Semiotics of the Text

Gianfranco Marrone

Band 31 in dieser Reihe

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This books aims to demonstrate how semiotic models of textual analysis can be used to study any social reality or cultural process. In addition, it shows how semiotic models work by using examples from everyday life and social praxis, communicative processes and modes of consumption, online interactions and cross-media procedures, political experiences and scientific universes.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110688986
ISBN:: 9783110688986
ISBN:: 9783110688887
ISBN:: 9783110689037
ISBN:: 9783111259420
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2021

Differences, Similarities and Meanings

Semiotic Investigations of Contemporary Communication Phenomena

Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan

Band 30 in dieser Reihe

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In a world of global communication, where each one’s life depends increasingly on signs, language and communication, understanding how we relate and opening ourselves to otherness, to differences in all their forms and aspects is becoming more and more relevant. Today, we often understand the differences in terms of adversity or opposition and forget the value of the similarities.
Semiotic approaches can provide a critical point of view and a more general reflection that can redefine some aspects of the discussion about the nature of these semiotic categories, differences and similarities. The dichotomy differences – similarities is fundamental to understanding the meaning-making mechanisms in language (De Saussure, 1966; Deleuze, 1995), as well as in other sign systems (Ponzio, 1995; Sebeok & Danesi, 2000). Meaning always appears in the “play of differences” (Derrida, 1978) and similarities. Therefore, the phenomena of similarities and differences must be considered complementary (Marcus, 2011).
This book addresses and offers new perspectives for analyzing and understanding sensitive topics in the world of global communication (humanities education, responsive understanding of otherness, digital culture and new media power).

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110662900
ISBN:: 9783110662900
ISBN:: 9783110658828
ISBN:: 9783110659238
ISBN:: 9783111257877
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2022

The Natural History of the Sign

Peirce, Vygotsky and the Hegelian Model of Concept Formation

Chris Barnham

Band 29 in dieser Reihe

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Our understanding of CS Peirce, and his semiotics, is largely influenced by a twentieth century perspective that prioritizes the sign as a cultural artifact, or as one that that 'distorts', in some way, our understanding of the empirical world. Such a perspective will always undermine appreciation of Peirce as a philosopher who viewed signs as the very mechanisms that enable us to understand reality through concept formation.

The key to this repositioning of Peirce is to place his work in the broad frame of Hegelian philosophy. This book evaluates, in detail, the parallels that exist between Peircean and Hegelian thought, highlighting their convergences and also the points at which Peirce departs from Hegel's position. It also considers the work of Vygotsky on concept formation showing that both are, in fact, working within the same Hegelian template.

This book, therefore, contributes to our broader understanding of Peircean semiotics. But by drawing in Vygotsky, under the same theoretical auspices, it demonstrates that Peirce has much to offer contemporary educational learning theory.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695854
ISBN:: 9783110695854
ISBN:: 9783110695922
ISBN:: 9783110695717
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Wichtige Linguisten
Fachgebiet:: Linguisten, andere
Fachgebiet:: Philosophie
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Philosophen
Fachgebiet:: Hegel
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2020

Theory and Methodology of Semiotics

The Tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure

Alexandros Ph. Lagopoulos, Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou

Band 28 in dieser Reihe

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The book is an in-depth presentation of the European branch of semiotic theory, originating in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. It has four parts: a historical introduction, the analysis of langue, narrative theory and communication theory.

Part I briefly presents all the semiotic schools and their main points of reference. Although this material is accessible in many other Anglophone publications, the presentation is marked by specific choices aiming to display similarities and differences.

The analysis of langue in Part II is also available in Anglophone bibliography, but the book presents Saussurean theory according to a new theoretical rationale and enriched with later developments. In addition, it is orientated so as to offer the foundation for the part that follows.

Part III is a presentation of Greimasian narrative theory, well documented in Francophone bibliography but poorly represented in Anglophone publications. The presentation extends the theory in both a qualitative and a new quantitative direction, and includes a great number of examples and two extended textual analyses to help the reader understand and apply it.

Part IV, communication theory, combines an extension of Greimasian sociosemiotics with other schools of thought. This original theoretical section discusses fourteen consecutive communication models, the synthesis of which results in a holistic, social semiotic theory of communication.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618808
ISBN:: 9783110618808
ISBN:: 9783110616231
ISBN:: 9783110991581
ISBN:: 9783110616309
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2022

Semiotics and City Poetics

Jakobson’s Theory and Praxis

Mary Coghill

Band 25 in dieser Reihe

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Roman Jakobson stands alone in his semiotic theory of poetic analysis which combines semiotics, linguistics and structuralist poetics. This groundbreaking book proposes methods for developing Jakobson’s theories of communication and poetic function. It provides an extensive range of examples of the kinds of Formalist praxis that have been neglected in recent years, developing them for the analysis of all poetry but, especially, the poetry of our urban future. Throughout the book the parameters of a city poetic genre are proposed and established; the book also develops the theory of the function of shifters and deixis with special reference to women as narrators. It also instantiates an experimental poetic praxis based on the work of one of Jakobson’s great influences, Charles Sanders Peirce. Steadfastly adhering to the text in itself, this volume reveals the often surprising, hitherto unconsidered structural and semiotic patterns within poems as a whole.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617399
ISBN:: 9783110617399
ISBN:: 9783110614800
ISBN:: 9783110614503
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Wichtige Linguisten
Fachgebiet:: Jakobson
Fachgebiet:: Literaturwissenschaft
Fachgebiet:: Gattungen und Medien
Fachgebiet:: Lyrik
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2021

The Meanings of the Built Environment

A Semiotic and Geographical Approach to Monuments in the Post-Soviet Era

Federico Bellentani

Band 24 in dieser Reihe

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This volume analyses the interpretation of the built environment by connecting analytical frames developed in the fields of semiotics and geography. It focuses on specific components of the built environment: monuments and memorials, as it is easily recognisable that they are erected to promote specific meanings in the public space.

The volume concentrates on monuments and memorials in post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, with a focus on Estonia. Elites in post-Soviet countries have often used monuments to shape meanings reflecting the needs of post-Soviet culture and society. However, individuals can interpret monuments in ways that are different from those envisioned by their designers. In Estonia, the relocation and removal of Soviet monuments and the erection of new ones has often created political divisions and resulted in civil disorder.

This book examines the potential gap between the designers’ expectations and the users’ interpretations of monuments and memorials. The main argument is that connecting semiotics and geography can provide an innovative framework to understand how monuments convey meanings and how these are variously interpreted at societal levels.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617276
ISBN:: 9783110617276
ISBN:: 9783110614459
ISBN:: 9783110614817
Fachgebiet:: Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Ausgewählte Themen in den Kulturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Gedächtnis, Erinnerung
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kulturelle Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2020

Charles S. Peirce. Selected Writings on Semiotics, 1894–1912

Francesco Bellucci

Band 21 in dieser Reihe

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Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) is widely recognized as America’s greatest philosopher, the originator of pragmatism, and one of the founders of modern mathematical logic. He was also a pioneer in the field of "semiotics," the general theory of signs, and many have regarded him as the father of the contemporary form of the discipline.

The volume is a specialized selection of unpublished writings spanning almost twenty years (1894–1913) that are essential to understand Peirce’s views about signs, their classification, and the relations between semiotics and logical inquiry. It comprises twenty-two selections, a historico-critical introduction, and an apparatus of editorial annotations. The selections are prepared following the methods of scholarly editing of philosophical texts.

The book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in areas such as Peirce studies, the history of American philosophy and pragmatism, logic and history of logic, the history of analytic philosophy, philosophy of language, semiotics, and language sciences.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110607390
ISBN:: 9783110607390
ISBN:: 9783110604351
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kulturelle Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2019

The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology

Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue

Brian Kemple

Band 20 in dieser Reihe

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Many contemporary explanations of conscious human experience, relying either upon neuroscience or appealing to a spiritual soul, fail to provide a complete and coherent theory. These explanations, the author argues, fall short because the underlying explanatory constituent for all experience are not entities, such as the brain or a spiritual soul, but rather relation and the unique way in which human beings form relations. This alternative frontier is developed through examining the phenomenological method of Martin Heidegger and the semiotic theory of Charles S. Peirce. While both of these thinkers independently provide great insight into the difficulty of accounting for human experience, this volume brings these insights into a new complementary synthesis. This synthesis opens new doors for understanding all aspects of conscious human experience, not just those that can be quantified, and without appealing to a mysterious spiritual principle.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501505171
ISBN:: 9781501505171
ISBN:: 9781501505072
ISBN:: 9781501514333
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kognitive Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Philosophie
Fachgebiet:: Einzelne philosophische Strömungen
Fachgebiet:: Phänomenologie
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2017

Umberto Eco in His Own Words

Torkild Thellefsen, Bent Sørensen

Band 19 in dieser Reihe

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Hitherto, there has been no book that attempted to sum up the breadth of Umberto Eco’s work and it importance for the study of semiotics, communication and cognition. There have been anthologies and overviews of Eco’s work within Eco Studies; sometimes, works in semiotics have used aspects of Eco’s work. Yet, thus far, there has been no overview of the work of Eco in the breadth of semiotics. This volume is a contribution to both semiotics and Eco studies. The 40 scholars who participate in the volume come from a variety of disciplines but have all chosen to work with a favorite quotation from Eco that they find particularly illustrative of the issues that his work raises. Some of the scholars have worked exegetically placing the quotation within a tradition, others have determined the (epistemic) value of the quotation and offered a critique, while still others have seen the quotation as a starting point for conceptual developments within a field of application. However, each article within this volume points toward the relevance of Eco -- for contemporary studies concerning semiotics, communication and cognition.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501507144
ISBN:: 9781501507144
ISBN:: 9781501515675
ISBN:: 9781501507021
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kulturelle Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2017

Volume 1

Kristian Bankov, Paul Cobley

Teil des mehrbändigen Werks Semiotics and its Masters

Band 18 in dieser Reihe

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This volume presents a broad range of topics and current frontline research by leading semioticians. The contributions are representative of the most cutting-edge work in semiotics, but project as well the developments in the near future of the field.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501503825
ISBN:: 9781501503825
ISBN:: 9781501511752
ISBN:: 9781501503740
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2016

Thinking with Diagrams

The Semiotic Basis of Human Cognition

Sybille Krämer, Christina Ljungberg

Band 17 in dieser Reihe

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Diagrammatic reasoning is crucial for human cognition. It is hard to think of any forms of science or knowledge without the "intermediary world" of diagrams and diagrammatic representation in thought experiments and/or processes, manifested in forms as divers as notes, tables, schemata, graphs, drawings and maps. Despite their phenomenological and structural-functional differences, these forms of representation share a number of important attributes and epistemic functions. Combining aspects of linguistic and pictorial symbolism, diagrams go beyond the traditional distinction between language and image. They do not only represent, yet intervene in what is represented. Their spatiality, materiality and operativity establish a dynamic tool to exteriorize thinking, thus contributing to the idea of the extended mind. They foster imagination and problem solving, facilitate orientation in knowledge spaces and the discovery of unsuspected relationships.

How can the diagrammatic nature of cognitive and knowledge practices be theorized historically as well as systematically? This is what this volume explores by investigating the semiotic dimension of diagrams as to knowledge, information and reasoning, e.g., the 'thing-ness' of diagrams in the history of art, the range of diagrammatic reasoning in logic, mathematics, philosophy and the sciences in general, including the knowledge function of maps.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501503757
ISBN:: 9781501503757
ISBN:: 9781501503689
ISBN:: 9781501511691
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kognitive Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2015

Heroizability

An Anthroposemiotic Theory of Literary Characters

Ibrahim Taha

Band 16 in dieser Reihe

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It is commonly believed that some approaches of structural semiotics, narratology and cognitive science have not yet succeeded in constructing a complete and coherent theory of literary character. The author argues that the primary explanation of the failure is the artificial separation between characters and their actions. One of the chief implications of such separation is treating characters in terms of structures, agents, actants, functions, roles, and signs, which obviously mean that actions can hardly be explained as intended, motivated, performed and experienced. Survival, as a motivation-based concept, is one of the key concepts making the separation between character and action something impossible. Humans in literary narratives search for survival as an aware process of knowing and meaning making. Meaning in literary narratives can be produced by heroizability, which treats literary characters as living anthroposemiotic entities aware of their natural motivation to achieve in order to survive and produce meanings of their survival. As such, characters in literary narratives have active cognitions, and their cognitive activities remain meaningless without a process of semiosis. Applying Anthroposemiotic theory with Modeling System Theory, heroizability provides methodical tools to explain how the narrative text is represented and, thus, how it is to be interpreted properly by the reader not only to find, but also to make meaning in narrative world.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501502651
ISBN:: 978-1-5015-1081-6
ISBN:: 978-1-5015-0265-1
ISBN:: 9781501502675
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kognitive Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2015

Signs, Meaning and Experience

Integrational Approaches to Linguistics and Semiotics

Adrian Pablé, Christopher Hutton

Band 15 in dieser Reihe

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Integrationism offers a radically contextual approach to the sign and represents a direct challenge to academic linguistics. This book sets out for the general reader its key claims and insights and explores criticisms offered of its approach, as well as the paradoxes that arise from its attack on the notion of linguistic expertise. For the first time integrationism is subjected to an extended contrastive analysis with semiotics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501502286
ISBN:: 978-1-5015-1069-4
ISBN:: 978-1-5015-0228-6
ISBN:: 9781501502316
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotische Theorien
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2014

Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words

100 Years of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition

Torkild Thellefsen, Bent Sorensen

Band 14 in dieser Reihe

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In 2014, Peirce will have been dead for one hundred years. The book will celebrate this extraordinary, prolific thinker and the relevance of his idea for semiotics, communication, and cognitive studies. More importantly, however, it will provide a major statement of the current status of Peirce's work within semiotics. The volume will be a contribution to both semiotics and Peirce studies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614516415
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-753-5
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-641-5
ISBN:: 9781501510342
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Zoosemiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2014

Sign Studies and Semioethics

Communication, Translation and Values

Susan Petrilli

Band 13 in dieser Reihe

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This book examines the issues surrounding the problematic perpetuation of dominant sign systems through the framework of ‘semioethics’. Semioethics is concerned with using semiotics as a powerful tool to critique the status quo and move beyond the reproduction of the dominant order of communication. The aim is to present semioethics as a method to engage semiotics in an active rethink of our ability as humans to affect change.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614515227
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-719-1
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-522-7
ISBN:: 9781614519126
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2014

Structure and the Whole

East, West and Non-Darwinian Biology in the Origins of Structural Linguistics

Patrick Sériot

Band 12 in dieser Reihe

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DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614515296
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-730-6
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-529-6
ISBN:: 9781614518273
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2013

Semiotics and Documentary Film

The Living Sign in the Cinema

Hing Tsang

Band 11 in dieser Reihe

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Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema engages with very vital problems posed by Peirce's philosophy in an innovative and inter-disciplinary fashion by examining how documentary film practice can engage with the question of emergent human agency within a wider biosphere shared by human animals and non-human animals alike.
The book is in many ways a celebration of human inquiry, taking liberally from Peirce's semeiotic and parallel ideas within recent visual anthropology. Through an analysis of the work of three renowned filmmakers - Jon Jost, Johan Van der Keuken, and Rithy Panh - Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema reasserts human agency within a global age, dominated by philosophical scepticism and an unquestioning subservience to mechanistic military techno-culture.
The author argues that an approach to documentary inquiry, broadly derived from Peirce's sign theory, phenomenology, and overall philosophical outlook, has strong advantages over atemporal formal approaches derived from Saussurean semiology.
Nevertheless, this project is also both critical and self-critical. It also bears direct testament to the many tumultuous and life-destroying events of the late 20th century and reminds us of the moral and philosophical problems which we are still grappling with in the early 21st century. Hence - the Living Sign.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614514114
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-572-2
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-411-4
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Kulturelle Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Sozialwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Kommunikationswissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Interkulturelle Kommunikation
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2012

Semiotics of Classical Music

How Mozart, Brahms and Wagner Talk to Us

Eero Tarasti

Band 10 in dieser Reihe

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Musical semiotics is a new discipline and paradigm of both semiotics and musicology. In its tradition, the current volume constitutes a radically new solution to the theoretical problem of how musical meanings emerge and how they are transmitted by musical signs even in most "absolute" and abstract musical works of Western classical heritage. Works from symphonies, lied, chamber music to opera are approached and studied here with methods of semiotic inspiration. Its analyses stem from systematic methods in the author's previous work, yet totally new analytic concepts are also launched in order to elucidate profound musical significations verbally.

The book reflects the new phase in the author's semiotic approach, the one characterized by the so-called "existential semiotics" elaborated on the basis of philosophers from Kant , Hegel and Kierkegaard to Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre and Marcel. The key notions like musical subject, Schein, becoming, temporality, modalities, Dasein, transcendence put musical facts in a completely new light and perspectives of interpretation.

The volume attempts to make explicit what is implicit in every musical interpretation, intuition and understanding: to explain how compositions and composers "talk" to us. Its analyses are accessible due to the book's universal approach. Music is experienced as a language, communicating from one subject to another.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614511410
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-154-0
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-141-0
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Zoosemiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Musik
Fachgebiet:: Musik, allgemein
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2012

Wittgenstein in Translation

Exploring Semiotic Signatures

Dinda L. Gorlée

Band 9 in dieser Reihe

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Apart from the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did not write whole manuscripts, but composed short fragments. The current volume reveals the depths of Wittgenstein's soul-searching writings - his "new" philosophy - by concentrating on ordinary language and using few technical terms. In so doing, Wittgenstein is finally given the accolade of a neglected figure in the history of semiotics. The volume applies Wittgenstein's methodological tools to the study of multilingual dialogue in philosophy, linguistics, theology, anthropology and literature. Translation shows how the translator's signatures are in conflict with personal or stylistic choices in linguistic form, but also in cultural content. This volume undertakes the "impossible task" of uncovering the reasoning of Wittgenstein's translated texts in order to construct, rather than paraphrase, the ideal of a terminological coherence.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614511137
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-144-1
ISBN:: 978-1-61451-113-7
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Linguistische Beschreibungsebenen
Fachgebiet:: Pragmatik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2011

Readings in Zoosemiotics

Timo Maran, Dario Martinelli, Aleksei Turovski

Band 8 in dieser Reihe

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The book is the first annotated reader to focus specifically on the discipline of zoosemiotics. Zoosemiotics can be defined today as the study of signification, communication and representation within and across animal species. The name for the field was proposed in 1963 by the American semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok. He also established the framework for the paradigm by finding and tightening connections to predecessors, describing terminology, developing methodology and setting directions for possible future studies.
The volume includes a wide selection of original texts accompanied by editorial introductions. An extensive opening introduction discusses the place of zoosemiotics among other sciences as well as its inner dimensions; the understanding of the concept of communication in zoosemiotics, the heritage of biologist Jakob v. Uexküll; contemporary developments in zoosemiotics and other issues. Chapter introductions discuss the background of the authors and selected texts, as well as other relevant texts.
The selected texts cover a wide range of topics, such as semiotic constitution of nature, cognitive capabilities of animals, typology of animal expression and many other issues. The roots of zoosemiotics can be traced back to the works of David Hume and John Locke. Great emphasis is placed on the heritage of Thomas A. Sebeok, and a total of four of his essays are included. The Reader also includes influential studies in animal communication (honey bee dance language, vervet monkey alarm calls) as well as theory elaborations by Gregory Bateson and others. The reader concludes with a section dedicated to contemporary research. Readings in Zoosemiotics is intended as a primary source of information about zoosemiotics, and also provides additional readings for students of cognitive ethology and animal communication studies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110253436
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025320-7
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025343-6
ISBN:: 9783110253429
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2011

Semiotics Continues to Astonish

Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs

Paul Cobley, John Deely, Kalevi Kull, Susan Petrilli

Band 7 in dieser Reihe

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Peirce's (1906) proposal that the universe as a whole, even if it does not consist exclusively of signs, is yet everywhere perfused with signs, is a thesis that better than any other sums up the life and work of Thomas A. Sebeok, "inventor" of semiotics as we know it today.

Semiotics - the doctrine of signs - has a long and intriguing history that extends back well beyond the last century, two and a half millennia to Hippocrates of Cos. It ranges through the teachings of Augustine, Scholastic philosophy, the work of Peirce and Saussure. Yet a fully-fledged doctrine of signs, with many horizons for the future, was the result of Sebeok's work in the twentieth century. The massive influence of this work, as well as Sebeok's convening of semiotic projects and encouragement of a huge number of researchers globally, which, in turn, set in train countless research projects, is difficult to document and has not been assessed until now. This volume, using the testimonies of key witnesses and participants in the semiotic project, offers a picture of how Sebeok, through his development of knowledge of endosemiotics, phytosemiotics, biosemiotics and sociosemiotics, enabled semiotics in general to redraw the boundaries of science and the humanities as well as nature and culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110254389
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025319-1
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025438-9
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Zoosemiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Theorien und Fachgebiete
Fachgebiet:: Sprachphilosophie
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2011

Linguistic Supertypes

A Cognitive-Semiotic Theory of Human Communication

Per Durst-Andersen

Band 6 in dieser Reihe

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The book offers a completely new view of language and of languages such as Russian, Chinese, Bulgarian, Georgian, Danish and English by dividing them into three supertypes on the basis of a step-by-step examination of their relationship to perception and cognition, their representation of situations and their use in oral and written discourse. The dynamic processing of visual stimuli involves three stages: input (experience), intake (understanding) and outcome (a combination). The very choice among three modalities of existence gives a language a certain voice -- either the voice of reality based on situations, the speaker's voice involving experiences or the hearer's voice grounded on information. This makes grammar a prime index: all symbols are static and impotent and need a vehicle, i.e. grammar, which can bring them to the proper point of reference. Language is shown to be a living organism with a determinant category, aspect, mood or tense, which conquers territory from other potential competitors trying to create harmony between verbal and nominal categories. It is demonstrated that the communication processes are different in the three supertypes, although in all three cases the speaker must choose between a public and a private voice before the grammar is put into use.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110253153
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025313-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025315-3
ISBN:: 9783110253146
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Linguistische Beschreibungsebenen
Fachgebiet:: Pragmatik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Theorien und Fachgebiete
Fachgebiet:: Linguistische Typologie
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2010

Entangling Forms

Within Semiosic Processes

Floyd Merrell

Band 5 in dieser Reihe

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The volume draws from Charles S. Peirce's pragmatic philosophy, as well as from diverse areas in contemporary arts and sciences, and certain facets of Buddhist philosophy – especially regarding notions of interconnectedness, self-organization, and co-participation of the knowing subject with her inner world, her socio-cultural world, and her physical environment. Contradictory, complementary, and coalescence are also fundamental watchwords, in addition to entanglement. 'Contradictory', since conflicts, clashes and inconsistencies there will always be, in spite attempts to resolve them. 'Complementarity', since poles of opposition can at least provisionally be resolved by mediation and moderation, however vaguely and ambiguously, such that consonance might emerge from dissonance, balance from imbalance, and accord from discord. And 'coalescence', since the union of disparities is an ongoing, and always incomplete, process; it is never fixed product. These concepts, along with the key word, entanglement, place Peirce in a new light, giving rise to new questions and possible responses from readers who are searching for alternate means of understanding in our increasingly complex, rapidly globalizing world.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110245585
ISBN:: 978-3-11-024557-8
ISBN:: 978-3-11-024558-5
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Zoosemiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Theorien und Fachgebiete
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2009

Purely Objective Reality

John Deely

Band 4 in dieser Reihe

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In his 'Letter on Humanism' of 1947, Heidegger declared that the subject/object opposition and the terminology that accrues to it had still not been properly addressed in the history of philosophy, and he awaited a proper disquisition that resolved the problem. To date, that has not been provided. This volume explains and solves the prevailing problems in the subjectivity/objectivity couplet, in the process making an indispensable contribution both to semiotics and to philosophy. This book shows that what is thought to be 'objective' in the commonplace use of the term is demonstrably different from what objectivity entails when it is revealed by semiotic analysis. It demonstrates in its exegesis of the 'objective' that human existence is frequently governed by examples of a 'purely objective reality' – a fiction which nevertheless perfuses, is perfused by, and guides experience. The ontology of the sign can be mind-dependent or mind-independent, just as the status of relation can be as legitimate on its own terms whether it is found in ens rationis or in ens reale. The difference in the awareness of human animals consists in this very contextualization that Deely's writings in general have made so evident: the ability to identify signs as sign relations, and the ability to enact relations on a mind-dependent basis. Purely Objective Reality offers the first sustained and theoretically consistent interrogation of the means by which human understanding of 'reality' will be instrumental in the survival – or destruction – of planet Earth.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781934078099
ISBN:: 978-1-934078-07-5
ISBN:: 978-1-934078-09-9
ISBN:: 9781934078082
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2010

Semiotics at the Circus

Paul Bouissac

Band 3 in dieser Reihe

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Semiotics is long on theoretical, often obscure discourses, but short on applications that demonstrate with clarity the applicability of its methods. This book confronts a challenging object, the circus, and endeavors to describe its performances in ways that explain how circus acts produce meaning and cause a deep emotional involvement for their audiences. The approach is not top-down, such as would be a method that would dogmatically apply a particular theory to fully explain the phenomena in terms of this theory alone. Epistemologically, this book is an example of the bottom-up strategy, which consists of considering first the objects and heuristically calling upon methodological resources in a broad theoretical array to come to grips with the problems that are encountered. Any circus act is a complex event that has cognitive and emotional dimensions. It is also a part of a history and an institution, and cannot be abstracted from its cultural and sociological contexts. Thus the range of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches must include structural semiotics, biosemiotics, pragmatics, socio-semiotics, cultural anthropology, the cognitive sciences, the psychology and sociology of emotions, to name only the most important. But the ultimate focus of this book is to enable the readers to better understand the meaning of circus performances and to appreciate the skills and creativity of this traditional popular art, which constantly renews itself from generation to generation.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110218312
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021829-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021831-2
ISBN:: 9783110218305
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Linguistische Beschreibungsebenen
Fachgebiet:: Pragmatik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2009

Signifying and Understanding

Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement

Susan Petrilli

Band 2 in dieser Reihe

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The theory of signifying (significs), formulated and introduced by Victoria Welby for the first time in 1890s, is at the basis of much of twentieth-century linguistics, as well as in other language and communication sciences such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, translation theory and semiotics. Indirectly, the origins of approaches, methods and categories elaborated by analytical philosophy, Wittgenstein himself, Anglo-American speech act theory, and pragmatics are largely found with Victoria Lady Welby. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say, in addition, that Welby is the "founding mother" of semiotics. Some of Peirce's most innovative writings - for example, those on existential graphs - are effectively letters to Lady Welby. She was an esteemed correspondent of scholars such as Bertrand Russell, Charles K. Ogden, Herbert G. Wells, Ferdinand S. C. Schiller, Michel Bréal, André Lalande, the brothers Henry and William James, and Peirce, as well as Frederik van Eeden, Mary Everst Boole, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Giovanni Vailati. Her writings directly inspired the Signific Movement in the Netherlands, important for psycholinguistics, linguistics and semantics and inaugurated by van Eeden and developed by such authors as Gerrit Mannoury.

This volume, containing introductions and commentaries, presents a selection from Welby's published and unpublished writings delineating the whole course of her research through to developments with the Significs Movement in the Netherlands and still other ramifications, contemporary and subsequent to her. A selection of essays by first-generation significians contributing to the Signific Movement in the Netherlands completes the collection, testifying to the progress of significs after Welby and even independently from her. This volume contributes to the reconstruction on both the historical and theoretical levels of an important period in the history of ideas. The aim of the volume is to convey a sense of the theoretical topicality of significs and its developments, especially in semiotics, and in particular its thematization of the question of values and the connection with signs, meaning, and understanding, therefore with human verbal and nonverbal behavior, language and communication.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110218510
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021850-3
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021851-0
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Theorien und Fachgebiete
Fachgebiet:: Geschichte der Linguistik
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton

Buch 2009

Culture and Explosion

Juri Lotman, Marina Grishakova, Wilma Clark

Band 1 in dieser Reihe

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Culture and Explosion, now appearing in English for the very first time, is the final book written by the legendary semiotician Juri Lotman. Originally published in Russian in 1992, a year before Lotman's death, the volume puts forth a fundamental theory: the semiotics of culture. Proceeding from a model of communication, Lotman extends the work of the renowned Tartu-Moscow school that he founded, showing not only how culture can be observed and described, but also how it can be governed and guided. In fact, as Lotman demonstrates with copious examples, the modelling system of culture has an immeasurably strong influence on the way that humans experience "reality". As usual, Lotman's erudition is brought to bear on the theory of culture, and the book comprises a host of well-chosen illustrations from history, literature, art and right across the humanities.

The book is of interest to students and researchers in semiotics, cultural/literary studies and Russian studies, as well as anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary intellectual life.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110218473
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021845-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021847-3
ISBN:: 9783110218466
Fachgebiet:: Linguistik und Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik
Fachgebiet:: Zoosemiotik
Fachgebiet:: Semiotik, andere
Fachgebiet:: Sozialwissenschaften
Fachgebiet:: Soziologie
Fachgebiet:: Kultur
Verlag:: De Gruyter Mouton