Semiotics of Cultural Heritages
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Director: Eero Tarasti
co-directors: Jean-Marie Jacono, Dario Martinelli, Reza Hamid Shairi, Pirjo Kukkonen
Cultural heritage can be whatsoever semiotic entity , behaviour, tradition, myth, art, performance etc which represents society’s phase of archaic, sociosemiotic or technosemiotic nature. It is normally something evaluated worth preserving, remembering, restoring and renewing. However, many of them live under constant threat of vanishing. One can approach such heritages in four manners: as corporeal activity, body; as habit and identity of a subject; as a social practice like genre, topics etc.; or as value, norm or idea. We may ask whether semiotics were able to provide us tools for scrutinizing and participating creatively to the life of heritages and traditions.
Participants:
1) Eila Tarasti
Signs of Nation in Music ... Jean Sibelius as a Finnish and Universal Cultural Heritage
2) Ali ABBASSI, Maître de conférences, Université Shahid Béhéchti, Iran, Ali_Abasi2001@yahoo.com
L'intersection et fusion des niveaux énonciatif, narratif et interprétatif dans Naghâli, l'art dramatique et local de l'Iran
Naggâli, représenter et raconter un récit en même temps, fait partie des arts dramatiques, traditionnels et originaires de l'Iran. L’origine du Naggâli remonte à la période préislamique en Iran. Au début, la présentation du Naggâli avait été accompagnée de la musique ; mais après l’avènement de l’Islam, il en perdit l’accompagnement. Et Naggâl, le narrateur, ne racontait que les événements. Pour compenser le manque, les Naggâls essayèrent de mélanger l’art de raconter des événements avec l'interprétation de divers rôles. Naggâl, lui-même, est l’un des éléments le plus important de cet art dramatique et il fait partie des acteurs le plus habile de cet art dramatique en Iran. Il assume, à la fois les trois rôles nécessaires pour la réalisation de Naghali : i) il est d'abord le narrateur qui raconte les événements passés; ii) il devient ensuite l'acteur qui interprète ces mêmes événement avec beaucoup de talent; iii) et il s'avère enfin comme un énonciateur qui nous fait part de son propre style ainsi que de sa prise de position. Le Naghal nous met donc en présence d'une représentation théâtrale qui procède à une intersection des niveaux narratif, énonciatif et pragmatique. Des arrêts et des silences dans les expressions, les changements du rythme au cours du discours, l'accommodation du corps à tous les niveaux discursifs, l'adaptation de la voix à diverses situations dramatiques, la création d'une attente angoissée et du suspens sont autant de moyens auxquels les Naggâls font appel afin de réaliser le Naghali comme une énonciation-narration-interprétation. En sus de tout cela, ayant le talent d'interpréter les personnages et leur manière de faire, par la voix, le corps et le dire, les Naggâls font exister un récit sous nos yeux.
Cet article a pour but de répondre à cette question principale : en quoi une fusion énociativo-narrativo-interprétative permet-elle au Naghal de créer un lieu tensif où nous nous trouvons devant des êtres et des choses mêmes ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous étudierons l'intersection et la fusion entre tous les niveaux de la représentation Naghali : énonciation, narration, interprétation se réalisant depuis un même corps-drame.
Mots clés : Naggâli, Fusion, énonciation, narration, interprétation
3) Reza Rezaei, Doctorant en Théories linguistiques, Université Tarbiat Modares (rezarezaei93@yahoo.com), Iran
Etude sémio-culturelle de la danse Qashghaei pratiquée en Iran
La danse constitue l’un des rites le plus important des ethnies Iraniennes. Cette tradition culturelle et rituelle en tant que l’héritage nationale du peuple iranien bénéficie de nombreux aspects qu’on peut analyser de différents points de vue. Face à cette activité socioculturelle qui témoigne d'une présence mythique, le danseur et la danseuse présentent un parcours historico-culturel relatif au vécu, aux mythes, aux croyances et aux principes rituels et ethniques. En effet l’ethnie Qachghaei, située au sud de l’Iran, profite de la danse pour donner un caractère esthético-affectif aux pratiques dures de la vie quotidienne. Ainsi, cette danse s'attribue une fonction discursive qui réconcilie le faire et l'être. Comme objet culturel, la danse contribue à la production d’un métalangage qui redistribue les tensions mise en place lors des pratiques journalières à partir d’une énonciation pluridimensionnelle : ce qui donne lieu à une synesthésie du sens. Tout en prenant source dans des motifs divers, la danse Qachghaei nous met devant un univers figuratif à travers le corps et le geste. Elle devient alors la source de la signification à travers des pratiques de la vie quotidienne comme les rites, la tonte des moutons, les activités agricoles, l’équitation, les combats et la résistance face à des tributs envahisseurs. Une telle danse a donc la capacité de s’offrir des propriétés existentielles comme autant de possibilités de sens.
Dans cet essai, notre objectif consistera à rendre compte du caractère perceptivo-somatique du discours de la danse Qashghaei en tant que l'espace de la transformation des tensions quotidiennes en interaction trans-narrative. Nous nous intéresserons ainsi à examiner le caractère sémio-culturel de la danse Qachghaei afin de nous rendre compte du passage des pratiques quotidiennes au discours méta-narratif comme un héritage culturel.
Mots clés: la danse Qachghaei, le faire et l'être, le corps, la trans-narrativité, héritage culturel
4) Hamid Reza Sahiri, Université Tarbiat Modares, Iran
Le tapis persan : figure, matière, pratique disposés à faire sens
Les tapis persans sont des objets sémiotiques dont la signification dépend de leur capacité de la discursivité. En effet, en tant qu'objets économiques, ils s'approprient une valeur d'investissement et se prêtent à des scènes de marchandage et de négociation qui sont régulatrices des relations jonctives. Comme objets du design, ils participent à organiser notre espace et à remédier notre rapport au monde. Comme objets domestique, ils s'inscrivent dans la loi de la transitivité et s'apprêtent à rendre souple la connexion entres tous les objets de la vie quotidienne. Comme objets d'art, ils prennent leur distance par rapport à l'observateur, s'imposent de loin, nous envahissent, font autorité sur nous, mais ils n'hésitent pas en même temps, à provoquer notre admiration. Comme objets culturels, ils contribuent à la production des sémiosphères qui témoignent de la propriété culturelle des uns et des autres ; ce qui se justifie par rapport à l'intégration de soi par soi dans le discours de tapis afin de dialoguer avec l'autre et de s'initier dans son espace. Et enfin comme objets socio-éthiques, les tapis deviennent le lieu de la mise en place des rapports de force. Il s'agit d'une tension entre la souffrance et l'opulence. A une certaine exploitation des hommes et des enfants dans des ateliers de tissage correspond un luxe sans borne. Mais aussi, le tapis révèle une façon d'adaptabilité, d'accommodation et d'ajustement à l'autre.
Ainsi, relevant d'un caractère tridimensionnel, les tapis persans constituent un univers de sens très compliqué et partagé entre la figure, la matière et la pratique. Ornementés et décorés de motifs raffinés, ils nous mettent en présence d'un niveau figuratif qui renvoie à des formes de l'expression riches et itératives; ce qui participe à la création des valeurs esthétiques. Contenant pour certains des textures très fines et pour d'autres des textures moins fines et même épaisses, les tapis font sens à partir de leur matière en soie, en coton ou en laine. Or, la substance est responsable d'une partie de la signification. Et enfin, se prêtant à des pratiques diverses selon les cultures, les manières de vivre et les expériences perceptivo-affectives des consommateurs-esthètes, les tapis deviennent source de significations en acte et tendent à s'offrir des propriétés existentielles comme autant de possibilité de sens. Notre objectif consiste donc dans cet essai à nous rendre compte du caractère multidimensionnel du discours de tapis afin d'examiner et de voir il affecte notre rapport à nous-mêmes et au monde.
Mots clés : tapis, figure, matière, pratique, sens culturel
5) Prof. Dr. Ricardo Nogueira de Castro Monteiro , Universidade Anhembi Morumbi (castromonteiro@anhembimorumbi.edu.br)
SEMIOTICS OF CULTURAL HERITAGES: the representations of identity and alterity and their structural role in the Iberian and Latin American semiospheres
The historic transition from the Arabic-Andalusian to the Christian Iberian Peninsula represented much more than a power shift – or even a religious and cultural transition. It represented also a semiotic catastrophe – borrowing here the famous René Thom’s conception of catastrophe as a small perturbation leading to the disappearance of a stable macroform and giving place to a new one designed by the subsequent balance of structural forces (Poston & Stewart, 1978). In the above-mentioned case of a semiotic catastrophe, the macroform would be conceived as the semiosphere and its inner relations, and the catastrophe as what Iuri Lotman expressed as an overall change in the cultural structures – in this specific situation, passing from a ternary to a binary system. Lotman presents the ternary cultural structure as the one where explosive processes in certain cultural spheres coexist with gradual changes in others, whereas its binary counterpart would be marked by the perception (or misperception) of a thorough destruction of the previous order followed by an apocalyptical appearance of the new one (Lotman, 2004). The present paper aims to illustrate this catastrophe analyzing two opposing constructions of alterity: the Arabic-Andalusian representation of Christians before the Reconquista in the works of authors such as Ibn Al-Haddad (c.1030-c.1087) and al-Rundi (1204-1285) and the Christian representation of the Moors after it in such works as the masterpiece of the Portuguese poet Luís de Camões (c.1524-1580), Os lusíadas. The analyses frontally challenge contemporary mass media stereotypes, displaying a surprisingly modern conception of harmonic coexistence in diversity by the Muslim authors, and an openly biased and manichaeist representation of alterity polarizing Christians against non-Christians in Western writers – with little or no concern at all to the distinctions that separate Muslims from Jews or monotheists from pagan polytheists. A thorough comprehension of this semiotic catastrophe represents a key concept not only to the understanding of Iberian Culture. Its trend to binarism was widely spread both by Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadors, digging deep roots into the soil of the New World. Thus, when Fernando Baez denounces in the title of his famous 2009 book the cultural looting of America (Baez, 2009), the description of the construction of large cathedrals upon the ashes of the once majestic Inca and Aztec temples, pointed by Baez as a token of racist despise for the Native cultures, could be regarded as the mere continuation of a common practice of the Reconquistadors with respect to the formerly imposing Iberian mosques and synagogues. Another interesting phenomenon is the specific way by which Brazil has developed its unique approach to this heritage, combining some ternary aspects that helped it to define its own identity as the friendly “melting pot” defended by authors such as Gilberto Freyre (1933) and Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda (1936) in the beginning of the 20th century with the binary elimination, by persecution and/or oblivion, of most of the huge non-Christian legacy that was deeply rooted not only in its Native American and African populations, but also in its Iberian colonizers.
Key-words: semiotics; national identity; history; cultural studies; anthropology; sociosemiotics
Prof. Dr. Ricardo Nogueira de Castro Monteiro serves as professor at Universidade Anhembi Morumbi in São Paulo, Brazil. His wide range of professional activities include his academic career, various works as a composer, playwright and music director for theater productions, besides a consulting portfolio on applied semiotics including major brands such as Johnson&Johnson, ABN-Amro, Citibank, GE, Credicard, Banco Itaú and Nokia. Recent international publications include: "Nier le miroir", in the book Les Âges de la Vie (2008), by Jacques Fontanille and Ivan Darrault-Harris; and “A syncretic approach to the analysis of international songs”, in Before and After Music (2010), by Lina Navickaite-Martinelli, and “Chopin's Ballade in G minor Op.23 in the Ballet Kameliendame, by John Neumeier: Intertextual and Intersemiotic Relations and their Role in the Process of the Generation of Meaning”, in the book Music: Function and Value, organized by Teresa Malecka & Malgorzata Pawlowska (2013). His artistic activities have recently attracted the interest of international newspapers such as The Daily Mail, and his name and photo were already quoted in newspapers covering more than 30 countries throughout the 5 continents.
6) Prof. Dr. Dario Martinelli, International Semiotics Institute, Kaunas University of Technology (dario.martinelli@ktu.lt, dariomartinelli.eu)
The Lithuanian Singing Revolution as cultural heritage and source of soft power
The present paper aims to look at the phenomenon known as Singing Revolution, in Lithuania, mostly within the frameworks of semiotics, cultural and political studies. After a short socio-historical introduction to the topic, the paper will focus on the way Lithuania has contextualized and handled the Singing Revolution at cultural and institutional level, particularly in the perspective of what, after Joseph Nye (1990 and, more specifically, 2004), has been called Soft Power. Indeed, despite the absolute centrality of the Singing Revolution in the Lithuanian struggle for independence (a centrality that becomes even more relevant when we think that, unlike the other Baltic States, several Lithuanian intellectuals and opinion-leaders were in fact musicians or musicologists), the Lithuanian academic and political institutions have devoted only a minor effort to analyse these phenomena and repertoires. Moreover, very timid were the attempts to academically promote them at international level, often resulting in international ignorance and misunderstandings (e.g., the Canadian documentary “Cultures in conflict” presents the Singing Revolution as an Estonian-only phenomenon, disowning Lithuania –and Latvia – of their historical roles).
What is the role of the Singing Revolution in the current Lithuanian intellectual and institutional discourses? Could the phenomenon become an important tool for cultural and diplomatic promotion of Lithuania abroad? Is Lithuania missing an important opportunity to reinforce its soft power?
This paper is part of the project “Music and Politics: An Analysis of Protest Songs and Lithuanian Singing Revolution”, funded by a grant (No. MIP-14172) from the Research Council of Lithuania.
Key-words: semiotics; national identity; history; cultural studies; anthropology; sociosemiotics
Prof. Dr. Dario Martinelli (1974) is Director of the International Semiotics Institute, Professor at Kaunas University of Technology, and Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Helsinki and of Lapland. He published 7 monographs and more than a hundred among edited collections, studies and scientific articles. His most recent monographs include: Lights, Camera, Bark! - Representation, semiotics and ideology of non human animals in cinema (Technologija, 2014), Authenticity, Performance and Other Double-Edged Words (Acta Semiotica Fennica, 2011), A Critical Companion to Zoosemiotics (Springer, 2010), Of Birds, Whales and Other Musicians (University of Scranton Press, 2009).
In 2006, he was knighted by the Italian Republic for his contribution to Italian culture. He is also the youngest winner of the Oscar Parland Prize for Prominent Semioticians, awarded by Helsinki University (2004).
7) Tuomas Kuronen, PhD, tuomas.kuronen@hanken.fi
Strong m en, strong state: The body and radical change
The purpose of this research is to show how Nationalist-Romanticist Weltanschauung, as well as the view of the strong man – in flesh and spirit – contributed to the entrepreneurship and statesman abilities of the founders of Helsinki Athletes’ Club. From the viewpoint of the greater society, their main contributions were founding and managing several important industrial companies, as well as serving in various key positions during the 1917-18 struggle for independence and civil war, helping the fragile new nation to secure her existence. As a ‘side’ product of their physical abilities, world-views and dutiful practice they achieved numerous Olympic medals and laid the foundations of ‘heavy athletics’ in Finland. The immediate, theoretical problem of this research is: how bodily aesthetics influences how people are willing to exist and perform their lives in the economic and social spheres of life. In other words; how physical and mental strength shape the willingness of individuals to do what they do and how this all manifests in the fields of entrepreneurship and political life. This is a study of the will to be strong and how it shows in the later lives of individuals.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the tide of intellectual history in Central Europe had moved to embrace Romanticism and Nationalism – ideological systems emphasising heroism and (national) teleology. At the level of the individual, this meant a personal duty to develop one’s physical and mental strength and ability. In 1894, French educator and historian, Baron Pierre de Coubertin proposed the revitalisation of the Olympic movement, realising as the first modern Olympic Games to be organised in 1896.
Founded in 1891, Helsinki Athletes’ Club (Helsingin Atleettiklubi in Finnish) is the oldest ‘heavy athletic’ club in Finland. Throughout its history, the club’s focus has been on sports developing strength of the individual, such as boxing, wrestling and weightlifting. Its members have achieved 13 Olympic medals, among them the first Finnish Olympic gold medal. Many of the founders had lived in Central Europe (most often in Germany), either studying or working. During this time, the men were introduced to Schwerathletik (‘heavy athletics’) – sports that involved training with weights and human opponents. Upon his return to Finland, Emil Karlson
8) Jean-Marie Jacono, Université d’Aix-Marseille, France (jean-marie.jacono@univ-amu.fr)
Situation postcoloniale, héritage culturel et sémiotique existentielle : les productions “algériennes” en France
Cinquante ans après l'indépendance de l'Algérie (1962), de nombreuses dimensions culturelles algériennes sont présentes dans la société française. Elles sont apparues dès la période coloniale (1830-1962). Elles concernent le mode de vie (cuisine, vêtements) et les expressions artistiques. Le développement de l’immigration algérienne après 1962, les crises économiques et sociales, puis l’échec du modèle d’intégration français ont favorisé la création de nouvelles productions artistiques, en relation avec l’Algérie, le monde arabe et l’islam. De jeunes artistes issus de l’immigration algérienne, souvent nés en France, manifestent leur identité, notamment dans le domaine musical. Ces productions ne sont pourtant pas “algériennes”. Elles sont le résultat d’une situation postcoloniale et des effets de la globalisation culturelle. On peut se demander s’il s’agit de productions hybrides, définies par Homi K. Bhabba dans The Location of culture. La diversité des créations musicales montre de toutes façons la complexité des relations à l’Algérie et à son passé.
Au delà de l’expression d’une identité collective, toute production musicale donne lieu à l’expression d’un ou de plusieurs sujets. La dimension existentielle peut alors être déterminante. Il s’agit d’établir si la sémiotique existentielle, et notamment le modèle Z défini par Eero Tarasti (Semiotics of classical music) permet de bien analyser ce type de productions fondées sur l’expression du “moi” mais aussi du “soi”, Autrement dit, il s’agit de reconsidérer les créations postcoloniales du point de vue de l’expression des sujets, dans des contextes culturels et sociaux précis. Plusieurs œuvres issues de la musique contemporaine mais aussi de la musique du monde (world music), de la chanson et du rap permettront de cerner les enjeux de ces créations et de leurs interprétations.
This paper will be given in French with slides in two languages (English and French)
Mots clés : postcolonialisme, globalisation, sémiotique existentielle, cultures émergentes, musiques populaires modernes, musiques du monde.
Jean-Marie JACONO (1955) est maître de conférences en musicologie à l'université d'Aix-Marseille à Aix-en-Provence (France) (laboratoire d’études en sciences des arts, LESA). Ses principaux travaux concernent l'opéra russe du XIXe siècle et les musiques populaires modernes. Ils se situent dans le cadre de la sociologie de la musique mais aussi de la sémiotique existentielle. Il est associé à la direction de programmes de recherches internationaux (Marius Petipa (1818-1910) et le ballet russe).
9) Professor Pirjo Kukkonen, University of Helsinki, Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies (pirjo.kukkonen@helsinki.fi)
Movements in Translation: Translation between Tradition and Innovation
In the publication Translatability (2011), we can read the following words: “Our world is enmeshed in translation. We translate different languages, between images and words, between different types of signs, between different cultural spheres, between geographical places, between thought and action, […].” This lead us to a complexity of definitions of what kinds of translation we deal with today in our textualized world, a world of various texts around us with various forms, contents, and functions in a world of various signs with various semiotic resources of texts, intertexts, and interplays between various multimodes of texts. Today, translation is a huge cultural palimpsest, an intertext of various genres, originals and their translations, and variations. In my presentation I will discuss translation as cultural phenomenon, and the cultural heritages of translation in Scandinavia and in the Nordic countries (cf. The Nordic Languages. An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, vol. 1–2, 2002, 2005). What is the tradition, and what is translation today in Scandinavia? What has been transferred and how by translation in Nordic countries? Generally, we can say, that translation as phenomenon has developed from a philological study of historical texts, that is, from an activity to trying to understand, that is, from a hermeneutic study of old texts on palimpsests (new texts written on the old and in this way, the texts formed a huge palimpsest, where a very old document on which the original writing has been erased and replaced with new writing), or stones (cf. the Rosetta stone with different languages and text functions). The very exact study of historical texts, the philological study of their form (syntactic structures), content (semantic information), and usage and text functions (pragmatic information, genres, styles, texts, etc.) are central. This means that we can talk about the study of all the semiotic resources these historical texts have; in the old texts already the multimodality of texts appeared. In analogy to translation, we can say that translation in history is an enormous architectural palimpsest of interwoven texts with explicit and implicit traces, for instance, with linguistic, textual, cultural, societal, and ideological information. Hence, the very first turn of translation, that is, the old knowledge of translation is the philological knowledge of texts. The following is the comparative, and contrastive reading of texts in applied linguistics. In the 1970s, it was suggested that the research around translation should be empirical, target-oriented, and descriptive, that is, to break the idea of studying translation only as source-oriented activity and from a normative perspective. In 1976, a historical conference was held in Leuven in Belgium, where researchers from Netherlands, Belgium and Israel put forward that the crucial idea in translation is not how the target text is equivalent in relation to the source text, but what the function of the translation is in the literary culture where it exists. This was the beginning of the new direction called the manipulative school, where translated literature was seen as a part of a literature system. This meant that translated literature causes a potential change of the literature system of the target culture. This turn meant that translation now had a wider view; to see it in relation to various systems; the complex idea of translation did not only deal with the text between source and target, but those two together acting in a dialogic relation between literary systems, and systems of cultures So, one central movement was actually built on the old hermeneutic one; the knowledge lies on old grounds; in philology, and text philology. Later on, translation exists in a new philosophical context, that is, in George Steiner’s idea in After Babel (1975) reflecting the hermeneutic tradition with Friedrich Schleiermacher (1813) and Walter Benjamin (1923). Now, the translating subject, comes into focus, that is, that there is a reading subject; reading is translation, and translation is reading, and translation is interpretation, which means that translation studies calls for an inherent interdisciplinary approach on translation and translating.
We can define the concept of translation as an existential state in time and space having its spatial and temporal aspects as event (the sociology of translation, the cultural and socio-semiotics of translation, etc.), and as an activity, a process where the translator stays in between two entities: the source and the target; the translator build the bridge over troubled water; the translator is the translating subject connecting people in order to increase cultural, societal and ideological understanding between people. The linguistic turn turned to a pragmatic turn in the 1980s and changed the concept of translation into a clear functional direction (cf. Bühler from the 1930s and Jakobson from the 1950s). But, translating and interpreting, however, are very old as hermeneutic activities; translation is a systematic study built around the translator’s acts and the translating event, actually, around the subject’s activity, the translator’s modalities of being and doing (knowing how to translate). When emphasizing the translator as a subject, an (hermeneutic) interpreter, (s)he is actually a homo interpres and a homo significans, dealing with the dialogue between the source and the target text operating in a time-space (cf. the Bakhtinian term chronotopos), a space that Yuri M. Lotman (1922–1993) calls semiosphere, the place where signification is manifested: “The structure of the semiosphere is asymmetrical. Asymmetry finds expression in the currents of internal translations with which the whole density of the semiosphere is permeated. Translation is a primary mechanism of consciousness. To express something in another language is a way of understanding it.” Due to this asymmetry in the cultural space, we deal with boundaries of various kinds. In semiosphere, translation is connecting language pairs, (inter)texts, cultures, dialogues, and communication, in order to become culturally significant. The text as process of movement is a meaning-generating mechanism. “Semiotic systems are in a state of constant flux. Semiosphere is subject to change both in its inner structure and as a whole.” For Lotman, translation is semiotizing; “translation is the elementary act of thinking, and the elementary mechanism of translating is dialogue, and a dialogue presupposes asymmetry”, as he writes in Universe of Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture (1990). In discussing translation, it is also important to recall Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism and polyphony, but also heteroglossia (the conflict, the resistance), and his term logosphere, the word in dialogue, a crucial aspect on translation, language and culture in discourse. In our globalized world, translation is a movement of transferring knowledge and “cultivating humanity” (Martha C. Nussbaum), and a question of transferring cultural heritages.
Key-words: translation history, semiotizing, semiosphere, boundary, logosphere, dialogism, polyphony
Pirjo Kukkonen is Professor of Swedish Translation Studies at Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include several studies in language, literature, translation studies, and semiotics. Recent publications include, e.g., ‘The singing I. Translating emotion and soul. The lyric collection Kanteletar in Swedish interpretations 1830–1989’ (2009); The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby’s concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool (2013). She is a national representative of IASS Excecutive Committee 2009–2014; Vice-president of Semiotic Society of Finland; member of the board of ISI International Semiotics Institute at Imatra, Finland (2003–2013); member of the scientific board of ISI International Semiotics Institute at Kaunas, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania (2014–); editorial board of the Journal Synteesi, for research of interrelations among the art (2007–); editorial board of Punctum published by the Hellenic Semiotic Society 2013–; editor-in-chief of Acta Translatologica Helsingiensia (ATH), https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/17462. She is conducting research projects, e.g. Semiotics and Translation, Polysystems and the Nordic Dimension, Fiction and Non-fiction: Finland’s Swedish Translation History; Multimodality and Translation. Winner of the Oscar Parland Prize for Prominent Semioticians, awarded by Semiotic Studies at the University of Helsinki, and Finnish Semiotic Society (2006). Cf. Research Database, University of Helsinki, https://tuhat.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/en/persons/pirjo-kukkonen