Models, signs, values and dialogue
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Susan Petrilli, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy (susan.petrilli@gmail.com)
Augusto Ponzio, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy (augustoponzio@libero.it)
Giorgio Borrelli (giorgioborrelli83@yahoo.it)
From semiotics, to significs to semioethics describes a line of research intent on developing the inevitable conjunction between signs and values in a global semiotic framework. Though such a focus has been a constant characteristic of twentieth century sign studies as represented by such scholars as Peirce, Welby, Bakhtin, Morris, it has not been a mainstream interest. But today, in a globalized world, the focus on signs and values is ever more urgent. Semioethics is not intended as a discipline in its own right, but as an orientation in the study of signs. By 'semioethics' is understood the propensity in semiotics to recover its ancient vocation as 'semeiotics' (or symptomatology) with its interest in symptoms. A major issue for semioethics is 'care for life' in global perspective according to which semiosis and life converge as postulated by Thomas A. Sebeok. A global perspective is ever more necessary in the present day and age in the face of growing interference in planetary communication between the historical-social sphere and biological sphere, the cultural sphere and natural sphere, between the semiosphere and the biosphere.
Abstracts:
1) Raquel Ponte (raquelponte@gmail.com), Daniele Ellwanger, Lucy Niemeyer
Social Design and Ethics in Peirce´s Philosophy and Semiotics
Abstract: Social design, developed in the 1970s with a focus on social inclusion and environment preservation, has an ethical concern about its practices. Based on Peirce´s pragmatism and semiotics, this article discusses how the products of design necessarily entail practical consequences when they become existences in the world. It also investigates whether all design projects, and not only social design projects, have a social implication. Since semiotics is based on ethics as described in Peirce´s divisions of sciences and the products of design are signs, Peircean philosophy is an important theoretical background for designers´ awareness of their responsibility in the world.
Keywords: pragmatism, ethics, social design, semiotics, design.
2) Yunhee Lee, Research Professor, email: yunheelee333@gmail.com
A semiotics of creativity and symbolization in C. S. Peirce: a dialogical relation between expression and explanation
Two figures who were founding fathers in semiotics were a Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and an American philosopher C. S. Peirce. Notably, sign theories in Saussure and Peirce are different from each other in various respects. No matter whether they think of a sign in a dyadic or a triadic way, both agree that a sign as a composite whole requires an expression plane as in the concept of signifiant or of representamen, as we think of them as a sign in general terms.
This paper aims to examine the status and ontology of expression level of sign to propose the concept of creativity in connection with Peirce’s theory of symbol and particularly symbolization. I argue that the process of symbolization has a certain directionality from the ontological to the substantial domain of sign. Thus, the internal world of concept is connected to the external world of thing. In other words, a symbol as a cultural code with connotated meaning requires another dimension of a new creative expression. As a result, denotation on the expression level becomes extended. Based on this, symbols grow through symbolization with creative thinking. This process of symbolization is commensurate with explaining how two domains are connected. Consequently, the concept of creativity on the expression plane needs an explanation from a semiotic viewpoint as to how the ontological domain of concepts or ideas is connected to the substantial domain of expression or things based not on a psychological aspect but on a logical inference through metaphorical and analogical reasoning.
References
Liszka, James J. (1996). A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Peirce, Charles S. (1931-58). Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., ed. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
_____ (1998).The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 2. (1893-1913), ed. The Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Petrilli, Susan and Augusto Ponzio(2005). Semiotics Unbounded: Interpretive Routes through the Open Network of Signs. Toronto Buffalo London: University of Toronto Press.
Petrilli, Susan(2009). Signifying and Understanding: Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement.Vol 1. & 2. De Gruyter Mouton.
Sheriff, John K. (1989). The Fate of Meaning: Charles Peirce, Structuralism, and Literature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Yunhee Lee, Research Professor, email: yunheelee333@gmail.com
Affiliation: Semiosis Research Center at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea
Research interests: Peirce’s semiotics, narrative, media studies and literary semantics
3) Julieta Haidar, Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology, National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico.(jurucuyu@gmail.com)
Eduardo Chávez Herrera, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. (keemunyunnan@gmail.com)
The narcotraffic in the light of cultural semiotics and complexity theory
In this communication we begin from a complex issue related with the so-called narcoculture concept. This matter has entailed several works that not only accept this cultural production, but also stresses both their symbolic and aesthetic perspectives. Yet, all these works still neglect an ethical viewpoint.
In order to rethink the concept of narcoculture from different angles, we appeal to Juri Lotman’s proposals. On the one hand, we point out the possible tensions within the semiosphere, from the outer and inner boundaries. On the other hand, by means of linking Lotman’s approach with either the standpoint of complexity thinking and transdisciplinarity, we will discuss such topics as the narcotraffic and narcoculture from a deeper analysis that incorporates reflections from chaotic and unpredictable processes arisen to spread terror in the Mexican society.
In ethical terms, what is more disturbing is the fact that narcotraffic studies accept the concept of narcoculture without further inquiry, disregarding those exultant values that do not acknowledge the current devastation and bloodshed produced by the narcotraffickers, mobsters and the Mexican government’s militarized drug war strategy. During the last decades this narcoculture issue has inspired several everyday life features such as music, fashion, architecture, or traffickers’ social status –embodied as heroes and cherished as saviors in the legendary narcocorridos (Lara, 2003; Ramírez Pimienta, 2004). The concept narcoculture has gone far beyond, reaching the so-called narco-literature (Feben, 2010), and even worshipping the narco-saint Jesús Malverde.
In this paper we address the following questions: How can we approach these cultural issues from the point of view of complexity theory and transdiciplinarity? Is it possible to envisage them as cultural units? Are they cultural deviances in the sense of cultural barbarism (Lotman, 2011)? Is narcoculture a counterculture or an in-depth deviated anticulture?
Key words: Narcoculture, semiosphere, complexity thinking, transdisciplinarity.
Julieta Haidar, PhD, is full professor in the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology, at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), Mexico. She coordinates the Transdisciplinary Research Group in discourse analysis and cultural semiotics, as well as the homonymous seminar at this university.
Eduardo Chávez Herrera received a BA in linguistics in Mexico and holds an MA in Semiotics from the University of Tartu, Estonia. He’s a PhD student at the Complutense University of Madrid.
4) Genevieve Vaughan, Independent scholar and writer, Rome, Italy / Austin, Texas, USA
Recognizing giving and receiving as the maternal basis of language
I will be speaking about language in English but would be glad to hear from speakers of other languages about how they think gift giving can be or not be applied. However I am not talking about specific language uses but about the nature and structure of language itself. Many think that language is an inherited ability, and certainly we must have the genes and the physiology that allow it, but my contention is that mothering is not just the trigger for some innate processes but is the original and ongoing model for language.
5) Mihály Szivos, Senior researcher, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Cognitive and Linguistic Models of Sign and their Philosophical and Literary Background
The paper aims at examining the philosophical and semiotic roots of the cognitive sign model which became the basis of the Peircian sign conception. This sign model which stemmed from Carneades of Cyrene, the outstanding leader of the sceptic (New) Academy in the second century BC was the germ of the idea of triadic sign relationship. The Carneadean theory of the double relationship of the sense impression became the starting point of the trend of the cognitive sign model, which enabled a more general approach within theoretical semiotics, contrary to the language-based semiotics established first of all by some thinkers of Middle Ages. The second part of paper discusses some differences of philosophical background between the Peircian-cognitive sign model and the Saussurean one which is based on a theoretical linguistic conception inspired by the Kantian philosophy. It also highlights the link between the so-called language crisis which appeared in literature in the beginning of the 20th century and the easy spread of the Saussurean sign model. The papers ends with the summary of the main differences between these two sign models.
6) Dhonghui Lim, Pusan National University (dhlim003@gmail.com)
Are Existence and Possession (In)alienable?: A Baby-Mother Experience as the Proto-Gestalt of Possession
This paper aims to investigate the nature and origin of possession from a translatological perspective. By revisiting the notion of possession in such a way that the intrinsic nature of translation constitutes the major problematics for the inquiry on the relation of possession, it attempts to establish a transdisciplinarily effective theoretical account that can help achieve in-depth knowledge and multidimensional insight as to how and why the fundamental concept of possession is conceived and practiced almost universally in spite of the diverse linguistic realizations. For the investigation, this study focuses on the biologically explicable cognitive aspect(s), namely, cognitive embodiment in relation to the origin of possession—explaining why it is conceived in certain fundamental ways regardless of the vivid cultural and geopolitical boundaries translated into languages—and implements a transdisciplinary investigation into the relationship between the linguistic and cultural realizations of possession.
In its transdisciplinary investigation having (a) the human cognition and (b) the sign (e.g., an icon, a symbol, and an index) in a translative sense as two fundamental and significant factors, this paper proposes an abductively discovered hypothesis that what makes human beings perceive and conceive of as possession should be, in effect, the proto-gestalt (i.e., the preliminary state of an experiential gestalt) of their prenatally and postnatally made primordial encounters of the mother signs (e.g., the womb, her breasts, eyes, and face), which is almost universally experienced and established in the concomitant presence of the mother (thus, intrinsic relations unconsciously yet anthropo-universally embodied) and, consequently, characterized by the anthropo-semiotically universal yet individually unique baby-mother (and mother-baby) experiences.
Consequently, it is going to argue that, firstly, possession can and should be understood as a unique anthroposemiotically conditioned experiential gestalt that always involves semiotranslations (i.e., sign as transsigns following Peirce, Sebeok, and Petrilli) (cf. Gorlée’s semiotranslation) and, secondly and more importantly, that translation per se inevitably and practically (rather than theoretically) concerns global semioethics in zoë-life (Petrilli 2003, 2010, 2012).
7) Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio
Structure and Structuralism in Philosophy of Language and Semiotics
Structuralism covers a broad range of different tendencies in different disciplines over the entire twentieth century. The term structuralism is plurivocal: it is used for different trends from a variety of different scientific fields and may even diverge on the theoretical and methodological levels. This essay examines some of the main trends in structuralism not only in linguistics, but beyond in other areas of research on language and signs, including philosophy of language through to latest developments in semiotics, and most recently biosemiotics. A critical approach to structuralism is proposed for the development of critical structuralism involving such problematics as Marxian proto-structuralism; the intersemiotic transposition of semiotic approaches to linguistic and socio-cultural structures; ontological structuralism and methodological structuralism; the human being as a semiotic animal and a structuralist animal.
8) Ekaterina Velmezova (Lausanne University, Switzerland)
Interjections as a theoretical problem of structural linguistics: From structuralism to semiotics
In the 1930s-1960s, the success of several trends of structuralism all over the world inspired hopes of a total description of all elements in every language. However, there existed some serious obstacles to the structuralists’ goal of describing all language elements with their methods. In particular, some aspects of interjections flummoxed many linguists using structural methods of language descriptions. Studying interjections, they were forced to call into question their basic methods, mixing langage and parole, synchrony and diachrony, etc. Analyzing the works of Russian, Czech and Swiss structuralists, we shall distinguish three main reasons of theoretical problems posed by interjections in systemic language descriptions. They are: 1) terminological inconsistency; 2) varying “degrees of structuration” which language elements exhibit; 3) inconsistency of stuctural methods in linguistics as such. The last reason explains the fact that, for those studying interjections, semiotic approaches have finally become preferable to structural methods, even if the “semiotics of interjections” has contributed to the appearance of new unexpected problems in the study of these problematic language elements. In particular, the very definition of language as “a prerogative of the human” had to be reviewed.
Going back to the central question of “structuralism as a prerogative of the human”, we shall show that the “interjectional problems” and their analysis allow to propose a new vision of relationships between structuralism and semiotics, both at present and in the history of ideas.
9) Yunhee Lee, Research Professor, email: yunheelee333@gmail.com
Dialogical interaction and symbolic mediation: a quest for meaning and self-control
As has been fully recognized, Peirce’s theory of signs is distinguished from the structural theory of signs after Saussure’s linguistic sign. The concept of interpretant in Peirce makes a fundamental difference between the two, implying that the interpreting mind embodied in human agency makes a semiotic system dynamic with choice, not force, in the system. This aspect leads to the observation of dynamic relations in Peirce’s theory of sign, which he calls dialogic characters of sign. This expression rings true to the characteristics of thought-sign and allows us to observe the internal world as to how the mind works and interacts with others and the self.
This paper aims to look at the dialogical character of sign in Peirce in relation to Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, particularly with an emotional-volitional aspect of action sign to discern how human subjects act and control themselves by virtue of symbolic mediation, representing the dialogic relation of sign. I thus examine the concept of the Peircean symbol as thirdness, a mediator, and a genuine sign on three levels: expression, representation, interpretation.
First, symbol as representamen expresses a quality of dialogical relation between two qualities. Another name for the symbol is ‘abstract’ symbol or ‘metaphor’ with an attributed quality. Thus, this symbol has a dominant character as metaphoric representation of similarity. Second, symbol as representamen represents a dialogical relation between icon being endowed with an internal character and index being endowed with a relative character, so that the symbol, with an attributed character, represents the indexical relation of the two. Another name for this is ‘singular’ symbol. The representation of the dialogic can be divided in two: analogical representation with a parallelism and symbolical representation with an attributed character. Third, symbol as representamen interprets the dialogical relation, which has another name of ‘genuine’ symbol with a logical interpretant functioning as interpretative representation. In this way, symbolic mediation is incorporated with dialogic sign relations so as to attain a triadic meaning of action in self-control, thus leading to self-identity and truth.
10) Vladimir Feshchenko (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences)
Gustav Shpet between Peirce and Bakhtin: an Implicit Tradition of ‘Deep Semiotics’ in Russia
This paper examines the implicit tradition of ‘deep semiotics’ in Russia initiated by Gustav Shpet (1879-1937), a Russian philosopher of language. Shpet’s semiotic approach was developed synchronically with the major lines of European and American semiotics (Saussurian and Peirceian), but is now insufficiently known and studied. The recent publications of previously unknown papers by G. Shpet makes this Russian philosopher an advanced figure on the Russian semiotic scene. Shpet’s semiotic and linguistic ideas lay the foundations for ‘deep semiotics’. The concept of the “inner form” determines the direction of this tradition – the study of the creative person’s inner language and the inner system of its texts (an approach simultaneously developed by V. Voloshinov and M. Bakhtin). Whereas Russian structuralism influenced by Shpet’s ideas was formed into a major scholarly method, deep semiotics remains, as of yet, a ‘shimmering’ tradition, which is still to be reconstructed and actualized.
‘Deep semiotics’ envisages the extension of the theory of sign systems by way of the personological dimension of sign-making and sense-making. This kind of semiotic approach takes into account the truly human and personal self-determination. As the self and the mind of the self are the source, the means, and the result of producing sense, this dimension could be called personal, or self-referential. This approach allows shifting from the two-dimensional consideration of a sign system to the stereometrical, the one that gives semiosis a depth perspective, that is why the term deep semiotics is used.
Shpet’s most well known book Inner Form of the Word (1927) dwells upon the particular importance of inner forms in poetic semiosis. Inner forms, in his view, have direct relation to the subject of semiosis, the creator, or persona creans, as he puts it in Latin. Shpet brings us closer to understanding the semiotics of poetry, and semiotics of artistic creativity in general. Shpet was the first Russian scholar to mention the term semiotics, by which he meant a “general ontological study of signs”. It was as early as in 1916 that Shpet used this term in his work History as the Subject of Logic (1922). Shpet’s main semiotic writing, the book called Language and Sense (1920s), traces back the origins of semiotic thinking and lays the foundations for new semiotics, by which he means the science of understanding signs. It is here that Shpet speaks of the ontological study of a sign, calling this study semiotics, or else characterics, and raising the issue of the semiotic mind.
11) Cecília Contani Baraldo, Universidade Estadual de Londrina – Brasil
Esther Gomes de Oliveira, Universidade Estadual de Londrina – Brasil
THE ARGUMENTATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN QUEIROSIAN FICTION
This paper examines the argumentative features and semantic discourse potential found in Eca de Queirós’ The city and the mountains. The notion of speech is focused as a source of meaning and persuasion. The protagonist, Jacinto de Tormes, born in Paris, is of Portuguese descent and is the heir to a vast estate located in a village in Portugal. He never visited the place, but rental incomes from that family property allow him to afford his living in the metropolis. At a certain point in time, he started to become bored and disappointed with life among all sorts of appliances and devices available in modern urban life, plus the rush that was becoming typical. It was then that he received a letter from the estate manager, his best friend, José Fernandes, notifying him that for a decision to be made, his presence was required in the farmland. Fernandes travels to Paris to see Jacinto about the issue and to persuade him to come to Portugal – and so it happens. Upon this return to roots, with the contact with the country environment, Jacinto started reflecting about the sense of life with technology and of life without it. Fernandes takes part in the plot with more than his dialogues with Jacinto: he lends his voice as a narrator. A mix of speeches is produced as a result of this enriched story telling, a remarkable skill of the author to employ a multiplicity of voices as found in the Dostoevskyan model. The concept of polyphony discussed by Bakhtin (2013) in Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics is used to explain this operation and grasp the meanings found in the characters’ wide-ranging discussion. The presence of two voices at first distinct, but afterwards integrated into dialogues and narration is not simply opposition, but a divergence that shape the argument and provide contrasting and complementary meanings. Voices that overlap in the same context and merge into a third voice with argumentative power and ability to clarify the theme in the novel. The argument is further built, to a larger extent, by the use of adjectives, thus releasing statements that this study will point out as countermeanings, a notion inspired in the psychoanalytical concept of countertransference, to cover differences that are not purely oppositions, but disagreements and agreements that can be worked out.
Keywords: Argumentative resources; Countermeaning; Polyphony; Semiotics and literature
12) Zhang Bi
On the Estrangement of the Character in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
As a paradigm, the character of Zhu Geliang in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has been imitated and reproduced in the later novels on different extent. Refers to the function unit methodology of Structuralism, this paper aims to analyze the paradigm of Zhu Geliang from the dimension of semiotics and structuralism; to abstract the functional elements that shaping the paradigm; to reinterpret the connotation of the Character Zhu Geliang. This paper also takes the character of Xu Maogong in Romance Biography of the Tang Dynasty as an example to explore the derivative character of certain paradigm imitation of the paradigm Zhu Geliang
Key Words: Zhu Geliang, paradigm, derivation, semiotics, structuralism
13) Christopher M. Bingham Ph.D. Student University of Oklahoma
Money Talks: A Semiotic Exploration of Money as Communication
Money talks. While many have heard and even used this adage in their everyday communications, few have taken the premise of this statement at face value. In this paper I posit that money is itself a form of communication and that the examination of money as communication can broaden our understanding of the human experience. Additionally, this paper attempts to answer one of the central questions posed at the intersection of Semiotics and Marxism by suggesting that money is an appropriate object for study in this endeavor. One basic
premise of Marx’s social analysis is that the base determines the superstructure; that material (and economic) relations influence our thoughts and expectations about how society works. As the preferred form of capital, money - the medium through which our material relations are performed – structures our interactions and our perceptions thereof.
To clarify, I am less interested in symbolic work that plays out on the physical vessels of money (e.g., dollar bills) as these aspects have been explored by Shell and Tschachler. All forms of money - the bills, the coinage, the credit card swipes - are sign vehicles which point to abstract form of value – just as the word “hello” carries similar meanings whether it is traveling by vibrations in the air molecules or electrons moving down a copper wire toward one’s telephone. This paper is concerned with the communicative power of money itself, not the physical object that carries or references it.
For this endeavor I present a four-cell typology of money’s communicative processes. First, money speaks through positive movement, as can be seen at the instances of purchase and sale. Second, money speaks through visible inertia, or the times when an expected transfer does not occur. Examples of visible inertia are boycotts, budget cuts, and when someone is written out of a will. Third, money speaks through its presence. The way that money works as a universal legitimizer, conferring a general sense of credibility on the wealthy, while denying it to others despite relative levels of knowledge or expertise, illuminates the communicative power of money’s presence. Fourth, money speaks as a metaphor. Similar to Lakoff and Johnson’s description of orientational metaphors, our cognitive and affective experiences with money inform our understanding of the world in general, including aspects outside of the economic sphere.
In short, this paper represents an exploration into four distinct processes of semiosis whose antecedent is money. Pairing Marxism with the notion that money is communication opens new avenues for understanding the intersection of exchange value and lebenswelt.
14) Dr. Geane Carvalho Alzamora, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Dr. Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Peirce’s Model of Semiosis and Transmedia Dynamics
The goal of this presentation is to discuss the pragmatic relationship between semiosis and communication in order to characterize transmedia dynamics as a pragmatic offshoot of semiosis in media, a perspective that accounts for the incompleteness of the interpretant in its meditated actions. Peircean late pragmatism is an abductive matter and can be considered a regulatory principle of logic. This perspective permeates the normative sciences, in particular the three divisions of logic, although the scope of our discussion is more restricted. Peirce’s general theory of signs, and his distinctive conception of pragmatism, cannot be separated from one another. The theoretical approach is based on the communication perspective of the sign developed by Charles Sanders Peirce and his contemporary commentators, such as Parmentier (1985), Colapietro (1995, 2004), Santaella (1992, 1995, 2003, 2004), and Bergman (2000, 2003, 2007). In addition, transmedia dynamics are explored according to Jenkins (2001, 2006, 2013), Göran (2012), and Jansson (2013).
The pragmatic perspective of semiosis translates into a pragmatic approach to communication, since communication and cognition arise from the transformative action of the sign. We discuss the notion of media as sign mediation and transmedia dynamics as an improvement of semiosis, based on the pragmatic approach to the latter. The sign chain unfolds incompletely, but it is continuously enhanced by the mediated action of the interpretant. The idea of mediation in Peirce assumes transmission, update, and association of information. This perspective is particularly interesting in understanding contemporary communicational processes deeply marked by networked connections. The dynamics of association, which articulates other signs in a semiosis by collateral experience, is a dynamic network that updates, in some respects, what the object transmits to the sign by means of the action of interpretant in its various divisions.
Transmedia narratives refer to integrated media experiences that unfold across a variety of platforms, attracting audience engagement and offering new and pertinent content. In the transmediatic space both media industries and media users are not just able, but compelled, to collaborate and co-create, which includes the generation of signs/interpretants according to the interests and goals of the parties involved. In order to promote the richness of the productive incompleteness of interpretants, the creation of signs that are distant from their objects is preferred to the detriment of the signs that are (evidently) closer to their objects. The larger distance between sign and object will contribute to promoting the absence of conditioning and elimination of the obvious. Moreover, the productive incompleteness of the interpretant is taken as a conceptual parameter for understanding the way in which media consumption regulates habits and delineates the transmedia narrative in the sign process of network associations. In conclusion, we stress how the semiotic operation of representation, associating new signs and collateral experience, without losing the narrative reference (semiotic operation of determination), emerged in transmedia environments.
15) Dra. Elizabeth Parra Ortiz, Universidad de Concepción. Concepción. Chile
Dr. Jaime Otazo Hermosilla. Universidad de la Frontera. Temuco. Chile
Reflexiones sobre los ámbitos epistémicos y metodológicos de la semiótica en Chile
Este estudio surge del interés por realizar una revisión sistemática de los estudios de semiótica que se han producido en Chile desde la década de 1970 hasta el 2013 y organizarlos a través de una cartografía. La reflexión intenta revisar los bordes que sostienen al campo de estudio de la Semiótica en el país y responder sobre el lugar que le corresponde como campo disciplinario en el marco de la producción de conocimiento en sus dimensión teórica (epistémica) y metodológica.
Desde algunos años existe la preocupación en Latinoamérica por reinventar, por re - trazar la historia y las lógicas del desarrollo de la semiótica, ciencia que ha tenido en el mundo, una institucionalidad reconocida y diversa al mismo tiempo, pero que ha seguido desarrollándose de manera creciente (Escudero, 1998; Magariños de Moretin, 2004)).
Los escasos trabajos que se han propuesto revisar la historia y el dominio de la semiótica en Chile han sido insuficientes y parciales. No han logrado dar cuenta de manera sistemática del aporte de esta disciplina al desarrollo de las ciencias sociales, de las Humanidades, ni han propuesto una visión sistemática en torno al origen y desarrollo de sus aspectos teóricos y metodológicos. De manera parcial algunos investigadores mediados por las circunstancias históricas - políticas (Del Villar, 1996) y/o de áreas disciplinarias, (Gallardo y Sánchez, 1989; Jofré, 1997, y, más tardíamente, desde el cuerpo, Ponce, 2010) no se advierte a la fecha, que exista una visión integrada del campo de la semiótica en Chile. La imagen proyectada de la disciplina en los antecedentes mencionados, se muestra asociada a estudios desde la lingüística, desconociendo aquellas áreas no indagadas (artes, teatro, cuerpo, interculturalidad)y los periodos no considerados (2000-2013) dentro de los primeros intentos de abordar estudios sobre la disciplina. por tanto, la cartografía que se propuso en el marco de un proyecto de investigación asociado con universidades nacionales y de la región latinoamericana y financiado por la Universidad de Concepción, quiere dar cuenta, precisamente, de un trabajo acumulado de manera dispersa, fruto muchas veces de iniciativas personales que requieren ser atendidas, de manera integral, tal es el caso de la semiótica.
En este trabajo se dará cuenta de algunas reflexiones a partir de resultados preliminares de este proyecto de investigación. En particular, se intentará aportar un marco tentativo de clasificación de las investigaciones semióticas chilena en función de sus compromisos más o menos explícitos con determinadas corrientes epistemológicas y/o metodológicas.
Palabras claves: Epistemología, metodologías y paradigmas en investigaciones semióticas
Reflections on the epistemic and methodological areas of semiotics in Chile
This study arises from the interest in conducting a systematic review of studies of semiotics that have occurred in Chile since the 1970s until 2013 and organize them through a mapping. Reflection attempts to revise the edges that hold the field of study of semiotics in the country and answer about the rightful place as a disciplinary field in the context of the production of knowledge in their theoretical and methodological dimension (epistemic).
For some years there is a concern in Latin America to reinvent , to re-trace the history and the logics of the development of Semiotics, science that has achieved a worldwide renown and diverse institutionalism at the same time, but that has kept developing increasingly (Squire , 1998; Magariños of Moretin , 2004) )
The few studies that have been proposed to review the history and the domain of semiotics in Chile have been inadequate and partial. They have failed to account for the systematic contribution to the development of the discipline of the social sciences, the humanities, and have proposed a systematic view about the origin and development of its theoretical and methodological aspects. Partially some mid researchers by historical circumstances - policies (Del Villar, 1996) and / or disciplinary areas (Gallardo and Sánchez, 1989; Jofre, 1997, and later on, from the body, Ponce, 2010) no to date, there is an integrated view of the field of semiotics in Chile. The proposed discipline in the above background, associated image is displayed from linguistic studies, ignoring those not investigated areas (arts, theater, body, multiculturalism) and not considered periods (2000-2013) within the first study attempts addressing discipline. Therefore the mapping proposed in the framework of a research project associated with national universities in Latin America and funded by the University of Concepción, wants to account precisely a backlog dispersed manner, often the result personal initiatives that need to be addressed in an integrated manner, such is the case of semiotics.
This work will notice some reflections based on preliminary results of this research project. In particular, we will try to provide a tentative framework for the classification of Chilean semiotic research according to their more or less explicit commitments to certain current epistemological and / or methodological.
Keywords: epistemology and semiotic research paradigms
16) Professor Dr. TRAIAN D. STANCIULESCU, “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iassy, ROMANIA (tdstan@uaic.ro)
THE GENESIS OF THE LIGHT–SOUND LANGUAGE: UNCONVENTIONAL “TRANSLATIONS” OF BIOPHOTONICS
In memoriam,
ARITIA D. POENARU
Semiotically speaking, the intuition of a "Creative Word" could be “translated” as the "First Light-Sound" manifestation, as a Big-Bang explosion associated with: the primordial "musical frame" for which the 2,7 K reminiscent radiation is considered an objective sign, the determinative pattern which permitted the original substance to organize itself into different cosmic “light systems”, the genesis of the human being as an effect of the light-sounds fields (of the "divine matrix", able to organize the "cosmic dust"), the "cosmic language" which generated the human (non)verbal systems of signs.
Scientifically translated, all these aspects are connected through a mechanism of "Holographic Resonance”, involving light and sound too. This mechanism is able to transfer / reflect the properties of a certain system into the assembly of properties of another system (light into sound, for example). This mechanism could rationally explain the amazing intuition of the sufi semioticians: ”The word is both sound and light, because the light is the sense of the sound”. This affirmation could be proved only by using the unconventional hypotheses of biophotonics (science of the “living light”, of “biological lasers” theory / technology).
In this way, the technical terms of biophotonics argue that the human sensibility to light / sonorous vibrations is due to the optic activity of the "liquid crystal" structures, present in the cellular membranes and cytoplasm. At the level of human organism, these structures permit – by a piezoelectric effect – the translation of each vibrational stimulus into energetic signals (electrons) and bio-luminescent information (biophotons), having the ultra-weak properties of a (bio)laser system. In this frame, the logogenesis presupposed two complementary stages:
1) First, the natural fluxes of light-sounds emitted by the world’s referential were specifically “translated” by the system eye → ear → brain into coherent holograms, complexes of waves carrying the properties of the referential (meaning / signified) and being able to be transmitted from brain to brain, by a telepathic type of communication: the “Pre-Babel” language.
2) Second, the cerebral holograms became implicitly a complex of neural commands addressed to the human verbo-kynesthesic system, in order to control the mouth’s muscles, the vocal cords’ tension, the extension of larynx and pharynx etc. The synergetic result was a coherent emission of sounds, a “magically” motivated word namely, homeo-morphically “translating” the information of the light-waves (signified) on the sonorous energetic support (signifier).
This metamorphosis process, still ignored by scientists, is responsible for many “parapsychical” communicative phenomena such as telekinesy, synchronicity, distal therapy, but also for creative arts, such as music, painting, etc. By rationally controlling them, a humankind RAINBOW will be able to sustain and harmonize the human being resonance with his / her inside and outside (semantic) universe, by a “Post-Babel” language of light and love.
KEY WORDS: light-sound language, biophotonics, translation, logogenesis, harmonizing resonance.
17) George Cadar, Historique, ROASS, Roumanie (cadargeorge@yahoo.com)
La langue archétypale de l'Europe, la langue de vlacho-dacs: le décryptage étrusque de bague de Ezerovo et la stèle de Lemnos
Apres quarante ans d'études et en ayant la chance d'être original d'une région de la Roumanie ou on parle encore un idiome de la langue des dacs, le département de Maramures, j'ai réussi reconstruire a bonne partie la langue archétypale de l'Europe.
Cette langue c'est la même de quelle le grand linguiste Guillaume Rergmann affirme en XVIIIème siècle dans son œuvre célèbre "Les Gètes", que c'est l'ancienne langue qu'on parle encore en toute l'Europe de XIIIème siècle. Il affirme, pour la première fois, que cette langue est blonogramique / motivée et profondément palatalisée, que c'est la même que la langue des étrusques ou des traques et qu'elle est d'origine vlacho-pelasgiques. Dans la langue sainte, l'onomastique du nom "VALAHALLA" signifie "Les fils de Dieu". Si on corrobore l'œuvre de Rergmann avec celle de Charles Hure, "L'écriture Sainte de l'Europe OT", on peut facilement constater qu'on a à faire avec des mots en majorité vlacho-traques.
Personne n'a réussi, jusqu'à. présent, faire une traduction complète des écrits étrusques ou traques, parce qu'on n'as pas connu la prononciation exacte des mots en ces temps-là.
En ce que me concerne, j'ai réussi comprendre et étudier la prononciation diftongisée de la langue archétypale et j'ai réussi réaliser quelques traductions des écrits tracho-etrusques qui est la même langue que la langue vlacho-pelasgique.
Voilà ci-dessous quelques mots de racine archétypale européenne qu'on peut trouver encore dans les langues modernes et le décryptage de bague de Ezerovo, découverte en Bulgarie.
Mots de racine vlacho-pelasgiques:
IZ, IZA: en français, source, rivière, l'eau. En roumain: IZVOR, IAZ, IEZER – IALOMIZA. En hongrois: IZU, VIZ. En slave: EZEROVO. Des hydronymes qui porte le racine IZA: TISA, TAMISA, MORAVISA, ISER, IZA, ISTER.
IN, INA: en français, fleure. D'ici RACINE, JASMINE, PLANTAIN, L'IN qui ont était garder dans le JARDIN, GARDEN, GRADINA etc.
AR: en français, terre ou argile. AR représente la racine des mots: AREAL, TZAR, TZARAT, CESAR, KAISER, CEASAR, TERRA, TERRAIN, TARAN, en roumain.
IR, VAR, VIR – COURIRE, ECRIRE, VERSER, FIRE, FIR: signifiant cours, flux. La toponymie d’IRLANDE.
L’écriture étrusque de bague de Ezerovo:
"POLISTENEAS NERENEA TILTEAN HEKO APA ZEA DOMEAN TILEZYPTA MIH EPA ZHATA".
“JE SUIS, JE M'APPELLE ROLISTENE NE RENEA. TILTEAN – OLTEAN C'EST LE NOM DU TERRE QUE J'AI POSSEDE. LE TERRE DESSOUS TILEZUPTA C'EST MA VIE. ZHATA – ZEAŢA, VIAŢA, MA VIE, MIA VITA.
18) Mgr. Michal Karľa, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Electronic Culture and Semiotics
PhD. student and lecturer, IASS member, michal.karla@gmail.com
Peirce`s pre-1867 Semiotic and the Origins of His Theory of Interpretant
The aim of the proposed paper is twofold: (i) to present a case study of Peirce´s early (i.e. from the period before his 1867 publication of "On a New List of Categories") notion of interpretant and its origins, and (ii) to give an account of certain general features of Peirce's semiotic of the period and situating his thought about signs in the context of his metaphysical and logical writings. I would like to show how the conception of interpretant stems out of Peirce's introducing information as a property of terms / propositions / arguments. Information, according to Peirce, is a product of connotation (comprehension) and denotation (extension), and is represented by an interpretant-sign, being typically the conclusion of an argument, thus representing argument's premisses. I will then proceed in showing the exact role which interpretant together with the notion of information play in Peirce's early treatment of deduction, induction and hypothesis as different species of the argument-genus, concentrating mainly on his conceptions and arguments either absent in his later treatments of the same subject, or unintelligible without the knowledge of the earlier theory, e.g. the concept of symbolization and its employment in Peirce's proofs of the validity of the three species of argument.
In the second part of the paper I will focus on showing certain distinguishing features of Peirce's early semiotic, building on the concepts examined in the first part. Here I would like to present and argue for a view in which Peirce's semiotic can be seen as a product and synthesis of his earlier metaphysical and logical ideas. Since several of these connections have been already given account of, I will pay attention mainly to those having direct bearing upon the theory of interpretant and information examined. I consider these being the theory of the three worlds (and most importatnly the notion of a formal world), the metaphysical notions of truth, externality and innatenes from his Treatise on Metaphysics (W1: 57-84), and the very definition of metaphysics as "analysis of conceptions" (ibid.).
I will use Peirce's manuscripts of the given period (contained especially in the first volume of Writings) as my primary source. During the course of the paper, I will refer to existing studies more or less concerning the same topic (e.g. Murphey's The Development of Peirce's Philosophy, Esposito's Evolutionary Metaphysics) with some critical remarks.
19) Professor William D. Melaney, American University in Cairo
Hegel’s Semiotic Future: Beyond the End of Art
Hegel’s ambiguous attitude toward the development of art in the modern period complicates his contribution to aesthetics, which has been canonized as “classical” in the strong sense. My dispute with the canonical reading takes issue with both the retrospective approach to his understanding of art and received interpretations of the “end of art” thesis with which this position is identified. Without contesting the validity of dialectics to Hegel’s system, I plan to show how Hegel attempts to appropriate the decisive and irreversible aspects of Romantic ideology in four moves that indicate the “semiotic turn” that typifies his contribution to philosophical aesthetics.
The four moves that enable me to read Hegel as an early master of semiotics are grounded in a hermeneutical conception of how the work of art displaces the classical moment that is usually assumed to constitute the core of his aesthetic theory, which is often used to relegate his reflections on modern art to the periphery of his thought. These four moves can be connected in this manner: (i) Hegel radicalizes Kantian aesthetics on the basis of a textual approach to sublime experience that opens up the question of community as a philosophical one, thus moving the focus of aesthetics from the sphere nature to that of culture; (ii) without rejecting classical conceptions of art, Hegel privileges Romantic conceptions of art that demonstrate the ascendancy of sign over symbol, so that the fate of art in modern times is irrevocably bound to the semiotic potential of cultural objects; (iii) Hegel laments the fate of art in the triumph of Romantic subjectivism but also suggests how human communities can reconstitute themselves on the horizon of aesthetic dissolution, just as the work of art acquires meanings that are both “spiritual” and historical in unforeseen ways; and finally, (iv) art can be reconceived as a emancipatory adventure that redefines metaphysics through its historical transformation and testifies to the semiotic resources of the Absolute Sprit.
My conclusion is that Hegel’s profound ambiguity with regard to the classic is an indication that all was not well in his progressive historicism. But rather than simply argue that this ambiguity is a matter of inconsistency or a structural error, I argue that Hegel’s aesthetics can be read on its own, rather than in a totalizing context, as an early example of semiotic thinking that invites us to translate the ascendancy of sign over symbol as a displacement of intuitive fullness in favor of a more “conceptual” but also less controllable proliferation of cultural signs. At the same time, the coming proliferation of signs that characterizes the (post)modern age opens up a new way of defining metaphysics, not as a regime of presence but as a general semiotic is no longer bound to the requirements of onto-theology, which previously constituted the project of metaphysics itself.
20) Giorgio Borrelli, University of Bari
Programs, Messages, and Commodities in Rossi-Landi's Materialistic Semiotics
One of the main points advanced by the Marxian critique of political economy concerns what Marx called the “fetishism of commodities”: exchange does not occur among commodities but among human beings. Only by studying human communication relations is it possibile to understand the "language" of commodies. Therefore, the Marxian orientation is a specifically semiotic orientation. This is the orientation that needs to be developed today when focusing on the problem of the relation between "Semiotics and Marxism". Marxian semiotics is not a question of applying Marxism to semiotics, but rather of determining methods, fields and objects of scientific research as indicated by scholars like Adam Schaff, André Gorz, Jeff Bernard, Augusto Ponzio, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and Georg Klaus.
Starting from this standpoint, I will focus my attention on the Italian semiotician Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (1921-1985) who underlines how economic exchange could be understood as a form of human social communication. More specifically, communication is sign exchange: production of signs and messages, exchange of messages, consumption of messages and signs.
According to Rossi-Landi, commodities could be understood as messages which circulate in the economic sphere according to specific exchange-programs. From such a perspective, economics could be understood as a sector of semiotics, that is, as the study of commodity-messages. Particularly, in line with the Marxian theory of labour-value, Rossi-Landi proposes to analyse the entire trajectory of commodity-messages, focussing attention on the production-exchange-consumption programs which turn certain human artefacts – that is, a certain products of human linguistic work – into commodities. The meaning of commodity-messages will be constituted by the totality of these semiotic programs.
Only by studying human communication relations is it possible to understand the “language” of commodities. Therefore the Marxian orientation – as Rossi-Landi maintains – is a specifically semiotic orientation.