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This study examines Japanese complaint responses appearing in naturally occurring interaction and textbook dialogues. The comparative analysis highlights that complaint responses in textbooks differ from those in mundane conversation. The inevitable difficulty for textbooks to reflect temporal and multimodal features of interaction results in the designs of affiliative responses being minimal and disaffiliative responses being more explicit. In contrast, conversation data indicates that complaint response turns are more intricately designed with multimodal semiotic resources and are precisely positioned according to the sequential development of complaints. By conducting empirical analyses, the study identifies interactional repertoires that are not observed in textbooks but employed in actual conversations. In doing so, it aims to expand the variety of the analysis of textbook dialogues to help calibrate the input for Japanese language pedagogy, while presenting a reference point for Japanese language learners to better understand the interactional organization of complaint sequences in mundane conversations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore how raciolinguistic parody functions in a society that hegemonically denies racial divisions. Through an analysis of Puerto Rican comedian Natalia Lugo's YouTube portrayals of her character, Francheska the Yal 'welfare queen,' we argue that covert racialization operates through a semiotics of respectability, whereby disreputable forms of femininity, class expression, and nonstandard language are co‐indexical with the yal's failure to normatively "whiten" herself. We contend that US colonial narratives that scapegoat poor women of color for the island's poverty are reconstructed in Lugo's parodies by depicting the yal as provincial and excessive. Lugo's performative choices underscore the interplay of linguistic, material, and discursive elements that marginalize the yal, enabling parody without challenging structural inequalities. Our analysis sheds light on the ways in which semiotic practices reify such social hierarchies where they are systemically denied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of cognition in aneural cells is well‐establish in the literature. This paper extends the exploration of the mechanisms of cognition by considering whether or not aneural cells may be capable of irrational cognition, making associations based on coincidental similarities and circumstantial factors. If aneural cells do harness such semiosic qualities, as with higher‐level creativity, this might be how they are able to overcome old algorithms and invent tools for new situations. I will look at three examples of irrational learning in aneural systems in terms of semiotics: (1) generalisation in the immune system, based on viral molecular mimicry, whereby immune cells attack the self, which seems to be an overgeneralisation of an icon sign based on mere similarity, not identity, (2) the classical conditioning of pea plants to trope toward wind as a sign of light, which seems to be an association of an index sign based on mere temporal proximity, and (3) a pharmaceutical intervention to prevent pregnancy, using a conjugate to encrypt self with non‐self, which seems to be an example of symbol use. We identify irrational cognition easily when it leads to 'wrong' outcomes, but, if it occurs, it may also lead to favourable outcomes and 'creative' solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we address the problem of sentimentality in teaching and learning difficult histories in higher education. While sentimentality has been widely theorised, empirical research is scarce. Here we contribute an empirical investigation describing how university students in an Argentinian setting engaged with histories of loss, death, and suffering through specific pedagogical activities in ways that minimised the risks of 'empty sentimentality'. These tasks fostered students' use of linguistic and non-linguistic (artistic, semiotic) means of meaning-making in connection with difficult histories and enabled deeper emotional engagement. The study shows that the creation of critical affective spaces in the classroom cultivated students' responsibility for engaging in transformative action. We suggest that educators need to explicitly challenge the often moralising and self-indulgent character of teaching and learning difficult histories, as this character is constitutive of the very sentimentality with which pedagogical practice is so frequently charged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Les infections cutanées bactériennes sont fréquentes chez l'enfant et ne nécessitent pas toujours une antibiothérapie par voie générale notamment pour les formes superficielles. Le lavage (à l'eau et au savon) et le rinçage soigneux de la lésion sont alors les points clés du traitement. Une analyse sémiologique doit précéder toute décision thérapeutique pour évaluer la pertinence de l'antibiothérapie, la nécessité ou non d'un drainage qui peut être spontané ou chirurgical et l'existence éventuelle de signes toxiniques qui constituent toujours des signes de gravité. Les germes les plus fréquemment en cause chez l'enfant sont Staphylococcus aureus et Streptococcus pyogenes. En raison de la faible incidence des S. aureus résistants à la méthicilline en France (< 10 %), l'antibiothérapie de première intention est l'amoxicilline-acide clavulanique à laquelle on pourra ajouter un traitement anti-toxinique comme la clindamycine pour les patients présentant des signes toxiniques manifestes. Bacterial skin infections are common in children, and frequently do not require systemic antibiotic therapy, particularly for superficial forms. In these cases, washing (with soap and water) and careful rinsing of the lesion are the key points of treatment. A semiotic analysis must precede any therapeutic decision to assess the appropriateness of antibiotic therapy, need for drainage (which may be spontaneous or surgical) and possible existence of symptoms related to toxin production, which are frequent signs of severity. The bacterial species most frequently implicated in children are Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes. Given the low incidence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus in France (< 10%), the first-line antibiotic treatment is amoxicillin-clavulanate, to which an anti-toxin treatment such as clindamycin may be added for patients with overt toxin signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gestures are one of the ways in which mathematical cognition is embodied and have been elevated as a potentially important semiotic device in the teaching of mathematics. As such, a better understanding of gestures used during mathematics instruction (including frequency of use, types of gestures, how they are used, and the possible relationship between gestures and student performance) would inform mathematics education. We aim to understand teachers' gestures in the context of early algebra, particularly in the teaching of the equal sign. Our findings suggest that the equal sign is a relatively rich environment for gestures, which are used in a variety of ways. Participating teachers used gestures frequently to support their teaching about the equal sign. Furthermore, the use of gestures varied depending on the particular conception of the equal sign the instruction aimed to promote. Finally, teacher gesture use in this context is correlated with students' high performance on an early algebra assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests looking at veganism as a set of knowledge that produces and reproduces habitual food practices and changes in semiotic habits and the meanings attached to foods. A semiotic analysis of veganism as a system of knowledge suggests its being a translated text that recognizes scientific and medical knowledge and the non-vegan alimentary system. However, it reconfigures them by communicating a series of signs whose meanings reverse those suggested by omnivores. The identification of signs that constitute the vegan knowledge enables me to look at veganism as complex system, in which syntagmatic and associative relationships are not fully determined (Barthes [1984]. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang). Although contesting the essentiality of animal-based foods, vegan meals suggest two overlapping approaches to meals. In one, the plant-based protein serves as the centrepiece of the meal, imitating conventional meals. The other offers an alternative meal structure, in which syntagmatic relations are constructed as a sequence of daily meals, each consisting of an aggregation of simultaneously served dishes out of which diners construct their own repast, thus broadening the scope of associative relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sonesson’s vision of the diversity of meaning-generation coincides well with the purview of the cultural semiotics of Jingshen, in which semiotic inquiry is envisioned to improve mental capacity, the expansion of mental/cognitive space, and ultimately the liberation of human thinking. When embracing new epistemologies for cognitive semiotics, semiotic inquiry can work well as a form of art of thinking that has the potential to maintain “cognitive homeostasis”, the tendency towards a relatively stable equilibrium that can be maintained in the holistic flux of mind, vitality, and creativity. A plausible path to this equilibrium is through a balance between the left and right hemispheres, between analytical thinking and synthetic thinking. In this sense, what we are facing is essentially a problem of “ecology of cognition” or “ecological cognition”, that is, viewing cognition from an ecological perspective or considering cognition as a form of ecological activity. The focus of cognitive semiotics nowadays must transcend not only words or other external symbols, but even the traditional sense of “humanity” needs to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global citizenship education (GCE) encounters epistemic barriers in curriculum localisation, which, from a semiotic perspective, are related to educators’ subjectivation process. By choosing a Chinese case based on six secondary schools on the east coast of China, this paper builds on previous efforts to investigate how principals’ (n = 6) and teachers’ (n = 10) subjectivation process could influence their comprehension of the concept of GCE. The focus of this paper is on distinguishing the subjectivities in participants’ interviews that related to their perceptions and planning of the curriculum. The findings of the study included qualitative feedback, which was later categorised into three themes: the communitarian subjectivity, the hybrid subjectivity and the assimilated subjectivity. The three forms of subjectivity exposed the vulnerability inherent in participants’ efforts to localize GCE. This study demonstrated a specific epistemic condition that challenges the prevailing discourse, suggesting that defending traditional culture does not always serve the purpose of promoting cultural diversity on a global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011 the independent government of Timor‐Leste initiated a controversial oil and gas infrastructure project. To persuade Timorese citizens to embrace their vision of the future based on oil and gas, supporters of the project employed narrative strategies conventionally reserved for ritual authorities. Their scaling of ritual speech to the level of the nation hinged on establishing iconic links across different event‐worlds (chronotopes). "Fiat speech" was, like infrastructure, designed to bring named realities into being through anticipation. To analyze this process of prolepsis, the concept of "anticipatory transformation" allows us to understand how oil infrastructure became not just a symbol of modernity and development but an index thereof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have demonstrated that teaching a foreign language in settings outside of the classroom can improve the communicative use of the target language. However, many places remain inaccessible to learners due to physical limits of mobility and health, socioeconomic factors, or political or temporal restraints. Our previous studies have shown that telepresence robots are successful in immersing learners in remote places for learning a foreign language. The aim of this study is to analyze, through the theoretical lens of geosemiotics, how dialogic interaction between different semiotic systems emerges within the use of telepresence technology to understand how these systems shape discourse and meaning-making processes. It also considers what instructional strategies support such meaning-making with telepresence robotics, and what meaning-making principles can help improve the design of the robot. Initial findings show that properly planning the use of specific places provides ample opportunity for semiotic systems to shape the instructors' and students' meaning-making processes. Future research is needed to address some of the challenges to participants that are related to the design of the robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article drew on the recent dynamic, distributed view of translanguaging and flows and the New Materiality view of meaning making to explore content and language integrated learning (CLIL) activities in an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) secondary Science classroom. Fine-grained analysis of the multilingual and multimodal classroom interactions between a Cantonese-speaking Science teacher and her Urdu-speaking students exemplified how students and teacher engaged in dynamic translanguaging, trans-semiotizing and trans-registering. The analysis supports the dynamic, heteroglossic, trans/languaging view of language learning and sheds light on some of the current queries about translanguaging. 本文應用學者近年提出的動態分散性超語流動觀 和新唯物意義構建觀 兩種理論對以英語作爲教學語言(EMI)的中學科學課堂中内容與語言融合教學 (CLIL)的活動進行了探索, 透過精細地分析課堂上母語為廣東話的科學教師與其母語為烏都語的學生之間多語多模態的課堂互動, 為師生如何投入動態超語, 超符號及超語域的交流提供了示例。 數據分析支持動態的、話語混雜的、超語的語言學習觀, 並為目前有關超語的一些疑問提供了解釋。 This article explored the content and language integrated learning (CLIL) activities in an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) secondary Science classroom based on two recent theories of translanguaging and meaning making. The detailed analysis of classroom interactions between a Cantonese-speaking Science teacher and her Urdu-speaking students offered an example of how students and teacher engaged in multilingual and multimodal interactions during CLIL lessons. The findings of this research shed light on some of the current queries about translanguaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alchemical concepts of chemical symbolism, nomenclature, and affinity underwent fundamental changes between the 1770s and the 1820s, roughly simultaneously with the Chemical Revolution (ca. 1772–89), i. e. the replacement of the phlogiston theory with Lavoisier's New Chemistry. Using the old, alchemical symbols, Bergman devised a system of formulas to describe virtually all known inorganic chemistry, and he influenced Guiton de Morveau's Mémoire sur les Dénominations Chimiques, and the subsequent Méthode de nomenclature. Hassenfratz and Adet devised a new artificial sign language which, however, was too complicated and unintuitive to gain widespread acceptance. Bergman refined the concept of affinity, but his belief in phlogiston rapidly made the system obsolete. Wenzel realized that the dissolution of metals in acids is not just a question of affinity but rather of concentration, and he and Berthollet separately formulated early versions of the Law of Mass Action thereby making attempts to quantify affinity redundant. Richter formulated a principle that became known as the Law of Equivalent Proportions, describing acid‐base reactions and double decompositions of salts, but continuing to use Bergman‐style alchemical formulas. Only John Dalton's atomic theory with little globules denoting atoms and their combination into molecules made a definite break with the alchemical symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freedom of self-expression is essential for human development. Recent studies have investigated ICT’s role in bringing visibility to activist movements working to improve the lives of gender and sexual minorities. However, this literature often characterizes visibility based on gender or sexuality alone, with little regard for ethnic identity and gender traditions of Indigenous cultures. This paper conducts a semiotic analysis of images from Two-Spirit websites to examine how websites bring visibility to Two-Spirit people. Two-Spirit is a contemporary term used by Indigenous Peoples of North America that denotes the fluidity of gender identity through the coexistence of feminine and masculine qualities. The analysis shows how values of empowerment, supportiveness, and restoration in web images bring visibility to Two-Spirit people through cultural emancipation. This study contributes to the ICT for development literature by broadening our understanding of ICT’s role in bringing visibility to efforts for self-expression free of racism and homophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research discusses the influence of American culture in Japan on Haruichi Furudate's Haikyuu!! manga. The manga was published in 2012 and ended in 2020 with 45 volumes. In the context of American influence, more precisely in the field of sports, one of them is adopted as the theme of the Haikyuu!! manga, which is volleyball. This manga tells the journey and struggle of the main character, Hinata Shoyo, to become a professional volleyball athlete. But as it turns out, apart from the volleyball sport introduced by America, there are other aspects that are also American influences. By using Transnational American Studies, this research found the influence of American culture by the characters in the Haikyuu!! manga. The influence of American culture in this research is specific to the cultural aspect, fashion, which is then examined using the semiotics of Roland Barthes. From the analysis, it was found that there is some American fashion used by some characters in Haikyuu!! manga, leather jacket and denim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Al-Jazeera Palestinian journalist who was killed by the Israeli on 11 May 2022 while she was wearing a blue press vest and covering an army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli occupied West Bank. The funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh in Jerusalem in May 2022 saw Israeli police forcefully confiscating Palestinian flags. This act raises questions about the symbolism and implications of raising or removing flags. The following article explores the semiotic use of the Palestinian flag in Palestinian literature in Israel. I discuss the significance of the Palestinian flag in the narrative spaces created by Palestinians in Israel by examining various literary works, and the identity discourse presented by such works through the flag and its symbolic ability to deconstruct Israeli policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on examining the process of adapting André Maurois' "Thanatos Palace Hotel" into a short film and comparing it with the original literary work, particularly exploring how changes in audience expectations. Topics include the essence of artistic expression shared between literary and cinematic adaptations, the challenges of adapting works from different cultural and temporal contexts, and theoretical framework of semio-stylistics in analyzing aesthetic effects of adaptations.

The title of this essay is intended as ironic. The irony resides in the fact that while the agents of state‐run Jewish conversion in Israel are preoccupied with the sincerity of conversion candidates, they are also troubled by the sincerity of their own religious belief and conduct. This essay will explore ethnographically how these religiopolitical actors engage with semiotic and interactive strategies of self‐suasion in order to reconcile their Zionist and religious commitments with the moral toll that they pay for knowingly facilitating less‐than‐ideal conversions. The essay demonstrates that while these actors embody the Israeli state's national missionary impetus to convert newcomers, they rely on a variety of communicative practices that help them project the constructed sincerity of converts onto their own self‐suaded religious sincerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the concept of multispecies thought through a study of dog-walking in a public park in Lancaster, England. It draws on cybernetic ideas from Bateson, Peircean semiotics and von Uexküll's umwelten to explore how multispecies worlds come into being in the spaces of the park, and amongst humans, dogs, leads, toys and other things. It focuses on how an understanding of multispecies thought can be discerned that is not only specific to the situated relations in dog-walks, but also constituted through routines that foster new capacities between specific bodies. In this way, we come to understand multispecies worlds as located at the sites where specific, associated worlds are co-produced by dogs and humans yet reducible to neither. We use the examples of lead-walking and play with balls and frisbees to show how semiotic relations are co-produced across species. Building on previous work, we confront species-defined notions of capacity and thought and look instead at how the indexical relations of multispecies thinking offers liberatory potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Breadwinner film is one of the films that have elements related to gender in it. The approach of this research is a qualitative descriptive research type, with data analysis using the method of Miles and Huberman. The semiotic analysis used the Roland Barthes analysis model which divides the stages into three, namely denotation, connotation, and myth. The results of this study are that gender in this film has a denotative meaning where women have demands to behave and act according to their environment, a connotative meaning where people put a lot of emphasis on how women should behave through verbal utterances, and myths about culture taken from one interpretation of the verses of the Al-Quran regarding women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the following problem: why does Arveragus's abandonment of his wife to pursue honor go unquestioned by everyone in the Franklin's Tale, including the wife herself? Chaucer imagines a fictional past in which criticizing honor is impossible. Endeavoring to understand the impossibility, this article draws upon the work of the semiotician A. J. Greimas, which illuminates how the tale's structure forecloses anti-honor discourse. Greimas's theory of history explains how the poet could use foreclosure to simulate the distant past. But the consequences of Dorigen's response to the black rocks suggest how history can modulate from one foreclosure to another—something Greimas does not address. Unlike the tale's Brittany, late-fourteenth-century England was a realm where the negative aspects of honor were increasingly obvious. Chaucer's bracketing of anti-honor discourse might have procured some relief from contemporary anxieties, but his tale also reveals the instability of the historical closure it contrives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a semiotic framework to underpin a posthumanist philosophy of education, as contrasted to technological determinism. A recent approach to educational processes as semiotic phenomena lends itself as a philosophy to understand the current interplay between education and technology. This view is aligned with the transhumanist movement to defend techno-scientific progress as fundamental to human development. Particularly, we adopt a semiotic approach to education to tackle certain tensions in current debates on the human. Transhumanism scholars share the optimistic belief that there is no limit to how the ethical use of technology can help alleviate suffering and increase our health and wisdom. From this perspective, it appears possible to acquire capacities that require rethinking the notion of human altogether. For others, this undermining of essentialist concepts of humanity entails serious risks, especially related to ethical egalitarianism. We adopte the perspective of edusemiotics, a framework that brings together semiotics, educational theory and philosophy of education. As a theoretical-practical framework, edusemiotics affords a hermeneutic and semiotic method for our approach. Peirce's logic of signs is used to analyze socio- educational interactions as environmental. We observe two lines of thought. On the one hand, technological transhumanism enhances Cartesian mind–body dualism. On the other hand, philosophical posthumanism seeks to overcome this dichotomy. The former proposal construes human transformation as an artifactualization derived from techno-scientific enhancements. The latter position proposes an integrative posthumanism, capable not only to include edusemiotic theory but also to rethink the concept of learning as mutual to that of human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends the remit of Saussurean semiotics from design criticism to design theory. It does this by invoking concepts from the work of psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan. It begins by exploring the role of the signifier in Lacan's theory of language and connects it to concepts of subjectivity, desire, and surplus-enjoyment. This leads to the hypothesis that the essence of design is the production of surplus-enjoyment—a hypothesis at odds with the notion that design exists to meet human needs. The article concludes by showing how semiotic theory by way of Lacan can be used to explore the cultural, subjective, and social dimensions of the design artifact in new and productive ways. The work is intended to be accessible even to readers who are unfamiliar with Lacan's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context defined by the internationalisation of educational policies and the supranational nature of school programmes, we highlight the desirability of promoting local strategies for teaching environmental sustainability in order to contribute to the formation of global citizenship in children. Based on the experience of a horticultural curricular project in a school in northern Spain, the aim of this article is to reflect on the need for socio-educational communities to transform the objectives of environmental education into tools with which children can co-responsibly build connections to modify or enrich their everyday concepts of caring for the planet. To do this, semiotic analysis of different official school documents is used as a key methodology. Our findings invite consideration of the fact that pedagogies designed to train children in global citizenship competencies should not be limited to the classroom or to reproducing the proposals of institutional documents. Rather, they should be based on the prior knowledge and experiences of all members of the community, above all, of the children. From this perspective, the promotion of empirical learning situations is essential for the acquisition of meaningful and appropriate environmental contents, in the sense that they allow children, as future global citizens, to recognise the ethical repercussions of their own actions and decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay shares a series of intuitions about certain paradoxes that artificial intelligence reveals when confronted with the Turing test. Using chess as an example, we ask about the feasibility of distinguishing intelligent behaviour from the ability to simulate, or even the impossibility of discrimination by the average human. We offer sense-making and corporeity, as opposed to mere computations, as the central attribute of living beings. And in attempting to discern the limits of these simulations, we even consult ChatGPT's own opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the linguistic and semiotic resources that NGO coaches draw on to create safe spaces in their English language lessons for psycho-social support in refugee settings. We do so by applying the rapidly developing concept of translanguaging, using data from a multi-site linguistic ethnography study in an NGO in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Interviews and classroom observations of six coaches were conducted in four different centres of the NGO across Erbil city. Detailed fieldnotes were recorded during the field visits and intensive observations of the translanguaging practices were made with follow-up interviews to ask about these practices. We analyse four discourse topics which are discussed through examples from the interviews and the video-recordings from the lessons. We argue that translanguaging spaces do not only create safe spaces but also generate new practices, while also providing opportunities to ensure positive identity and meaningful interaction within the English language classrooms we observed. The new practices in our data are the translanguaging practices which emerge every time the coaches and beneficiaries draw from their semiotic and linguistic repertoires. However, these were the outcome of unplanned translanguaging practices which were more often controlled by the coaches rather than the beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of science education, adults often set up practical-based activities with the idea of stimulating children's reasoning and approaching science in a playful way. Although the potential role of objects in stimulating social practices has been considered in the literature, how teachers work on semiotic aspects of argumentation is still less explored. In this paper, the purpose is to identify how practice-based experiences settled up by teachers shape children's argumentation in science education. We analyzed argumentation in science tasks involving a total of 39 children (6–7 years old) and their three teachers, coming from two different classrooms of cycle 1 (Harmos, grades 3–4)1 recruited in the French speaking-part of Switzerland. The tasks were video-recorded and then transcribed. Through the lenses of the pragma-dialectical approach, we selected the argumentative discussions emerging during the experiences and we performed a qualitative analysis of these interactions, by looking at different semiotic resources: speech, gaze direction, deictic gestures, and position of physical objects. The findings show that teachers play a crucial role in sustaining children's argumentation by the integration of different semiotic resources during the activities. As argumentation in classroom evolves through the mobilization of various communicative tools, the present study can contribute to strengthen the interplay between different channels of interaction during science education at primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored the semiotic choices children in grades 1–6 made that nurtured embodied, dramatizing performances in science classes at urban public schools, serving predominantly students of color in a large US city. We studied how such choices in school and home settings (when instruction was remote during the COVID-19 pandemic) were implicated in the children's knowledge and identity construction and related to available resources and positionings. Multimodality and social semiotics, social practice theory, and positioning theory were the three theoretical anchors that guided the study, along with sociocultural and sociopolitical framings of science education. The study took place in the context of the multi-year collaboration STAGE (Science Theatre for Advancing Generative Engagement) among teachers and university educators designing and studying pedagogies of embodiment as part of students' engagement in school science. The ethnographic design of the larger research allowed us to engage over a school year with each class. The focus of this study is on classes of three teachers, who collaborated with a teaching artist, using data from video-recordings, fieldnotes, and conversations with students and teachers. The findings point to the generative nature of embodiments in terms of both the knowledge and identities that the children were constructing and the factors that shaped that generativity. These include (a) the resources available, (b) the children's own particular interests and sources of excitement, and (c) the simultaneous use of multiple semiotic tools that offer different affordances for meaning making. The findings affirm that multimodal embodied performances children design and create in school spaces (classrooms and settings for larger school gatherings, like auditoria) and at home provide opportunities to desettle expected axiological, ontological, and epistemological norms that often dominate science teaching. The power of dramatizing and of performing arts is facilitating the development of connections, solidarity, and feelings among peoples and materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science teaching and learning, as discursive practices, occur through the utilization of various semiotic modes. Gestures play a pivotal role as an embodied mode that acts in conjunction with speech in oral communication settings, such as classrooms. Previous research on gestures in chemistry and science education has illuminated how interactions involving different types of gestures can enhance learning opportunities for students. However, the investigation of recurrent gestures and their potential function as emblems in classroom discourse remains unexplored. The objective of this article is to illustrate how catchments or recurrent gestures were constructed, used, and, to some extent, evolved into emblems within the interaction between an organic chemistry teacher and her students throughout an entire semester. For the duration of an entire semester, we non-intrusively observed and recorded video footage of one class from an introductory organic chemistry course taught by an experienced university teacher. Our analysis to identify recurrent gestures involved a thorough examination of the lesson recordings. In addition, we scrutinized other semiotic modes that coincided with the recurrent gestures and assessed the metafunction of the words spoken during gesturing. During our observation, we noted the occurrence of 23 catchments, with four of them recurring more than 100 times throughout the semester. These four recurrent gestures were closely tied to fundamental concepts considered crucial in the realm of organic chemistry. Remarkably, three out of these four catchments were consistently associated with visual representations. Recurrent gestures serve as a means to embody and impart materiality to exceedingly abstract content. By employing such gestures, the teacher managed to associate unfamiliar and abstract domains with familiar and concrete domains. This process of materialization and embodiment aids in perceiving these concepts as tangible entities that can be manipulated in accordance with their own rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In learning astronomy, students need to shift between 3D and 2D representations involving complex interactions between the body and material environment. Little attention has been paid to the iconic nature of this astronomical diagramming. This research explored the value for students of diagramming to reveal the structural relationships of astronomical phenomena. The study aimed to 1) operationalise Charles Peirce's pragmatist semiotics to analyse students' bodily and material reasoning 2) identify the iconic nature of students' diagramming through Stjernfelt's activating of Peirce's iconicity. Two students (a pair) from a class of 30 Year 7 students (12 years old) and their teacher (1) from a government secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. A micro-ethnographic approach to the analysis of video/audio records and student artefacts was utilised in the context of three moments from a 1 hr lesson on astronomy. This data was analysed using Peirce's sign types of icon, index and symbol to construct a triadic account of the bodily and material nature of students' reasoning as diagramming. The two students determined, by revealing structural relationships with their bodies as well as a mini-whiteboard and a torch and globe, that the Sun is higher in the sky in Summer than Winter due to the Earth's rotational axis with a tilt (of 23.5 degrees) and its elliptical orbit around the Sun. For students to transduct between 3D and 2D astronomical representations, they need to coordinate space-based and Earth-based perspectives through bodily and material diagramming that makes apparent key structural relationships (i.e. iconicity). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread application of semiotic theory in sociolinguistics, the development of children's social-semiotic landscapes remains underexplored. This paper analyzes the spontaneous responses of 94 children to short American English speech samples, with emic coding of responses. Results support a view of children's social-semiotic landscapes as rich and expanding; children as young as 5 volunteer a wide range of social indexes, but substantive comments increase in developmental time. Children use personal and local information early and often. Developmental increases in comments relying on more public or evaluative social knowledge suggest a developmental process building outward from the personal to the public. Children offer a window into the vibrant scaffolding process that all language users utilize, connecting language to the social in a local and dialogic process. • The development of children's social-semiotic landscapes remains underexplored. • Children provided open-ended responses of their impressions of English voices. • We qualitatively coded responses based on what social information children used. • Results support a view of children's social-semiotic landscapes as rich and expanding. • Suggests a developmental process that builds outward from the personal to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surgical face masks have become commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, producing debates on mask practices. This paper explains the semiotic practices of the face mask among Koreans, who accepted the mask early and have simultaneously remained uneasy about it until late 2020. It aims to explain this paradox by discovering various meanings Koreans ascribe to the mask. A content analysis of reader responses to news articles finds that Koreans signify what the mask means for life in various voices (i.e., instrumental meanings) in which they concurrently reveal multiple and contradictory meanings of everyday life (i.e., existential meanings) during the pandemic. Eight themes--beneficence, futility, nuisance, routine, privacy, dominance, collective commitment, and intricacy--constitute what the mask and everyday life mean. This study also finds that contradictions among these meanings are resolved either incidentally by their being simultaneously harbored in one piece of the mask that stays and holds tight in most circumstances or semiotically by certain integrative meanings embracing multiple meanings at once. The study argues that the meanings of the mask reflect meanings of life that are often contradictory and yet held together during the pandemic. It demonstrates that mask sociology serves as a promising humanistic inquiry on how the Maussian totality of everyday life is concretely experienced in the context of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between remediations and participation in new media. By lending some transparency, the analysis hopes to contribute toward generating a critical optics aware of the potentials and pitfalls of emergent media. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology is visual semiotic analysis. The author make no claim for one, true interpretation or critical judgment about the images. Findings: In demonstrating some shortfalls of Instagram affordances, the analysis shows how social media sites can develop tools that encourage users to engage in civic consciousness and respectful political debate. The study makes clear that new media tools can hamper or aid participatory logics. Originality/value: To author's knowledge, no other study that has analyzed remediated images related to the controversial confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is also important to place these images in the contexts of "iconicity" in emergent media (a concept increasingly being eroded in new media environment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While semiotics is commonly used in the analysis of narratives such as novels and stories, it has not been widely employed in the analysis of poetry. This study aims to examine Tevfik Fikret's poem "Ukde-i Hayat" using the semiotic theory. After providing theoretical information about semiotic theory, a brief overview of Tevfik Fikret's poetic world will be presented. These general insights will be useful in understanding the poem. As a method, the analysis starts with a narrative level analysis, dividing the poem into sections. The indicators, contrasts, and similarities in these sections are examined based on the principles of semiotics. Subsequently, a semantic and logical level analysis is conducted at the discourse level, and finally, the poem is examined in a schematic way using the semiotic square. As a result of the study, the surface and deep meaning intricacies of the poem "Ukde-i Hayat" are revealed through the semiotic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the U.S.'s 20-year-old war in Afghanistan was followed by the mass evacuation and resettlement of Afghan allies. Reputed polls showed strong bipartisan support for resettlement on U.S. soil. Given the different reception of Afghans in U.S. public discourse (as opposed to other categories of forced migrants), the study examines visual coverage of evacuees in two major U.S. newspapers of record: the New York Times and the Washington Post. The main purposes of the study are to: (1) understand how relationships of power between the U.S. and Afghanistan are manifested in media coverage, and (2) study how visual themes are related to the pervasive "moral obligation" discourse regarding Afghan evacuees. The paper conducts a semiotic analysis of visuals of Afghan evacuees through themes derived from the literature review and the broader discourse surrounding the Afghan evacuation. Results indicate the wide influence of moral obligation in these themes. The study also suggests steps that can be producers to improve representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking a center‐periphery approach, this study is a rare attempt to present a multi‐sited empirical analysis comparing three physically adjacent and connected sites in a town in Hong Kong to explore the interconnectivity, subjectivity, and dynamicity of the landscape. While all three sites can be considered bilingual or even multilingual spaces with the omnipresence of English, there are noticeable differences in terms of how much English there is, the physical material and semiotic resources through which English is displayed, and in what forms such English exists. In other words, the three sites differ in the degree, texture and creativity of English through the ways in which physical geography, architectural setting and social actors interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of analyzing advertising discourse is to understand the methods of shaping the intended message to the recipient in order to influence and persuade. It also aims to uncover the mechanisms of persuasion as a distinctive speech process that combines both verbal and visual systems in its endeavor to influence and convince the recipient. It utilizes implicit and explicit persuasive techniques to attract and entice the audience to acquire the product through various advertising media and scenes. This can be applied to the promotional advertisement video for the new visual brand identity of Saudi Arabian Airlines, "Our New Logo," from a semiotic perspective. The analysis concluded that Saudi Airlines employed two dimensions in their verbal discourse: the congruent dimension and the suggestive dimension. The congruent discourse was evident, indicating a comprehensive development of Saudi Airlines' brand identity by offering services to travelers with a new approach. On the other hand, the suggestive discourse began with a headline that successfully captured attention by incorporating elements of attraction, attention, excitement, and intrigue, while posing questions to engage the recipient in watching the advertisement. The text itself fulfilled its suggestive function through the use of metaphors and deception, creating a collective socialist image in the recipient's mind by shaping it according to their imagination. The visual discourse contributed to reinforcing this collective socialist image in the recipient's mind through visual images and colors that served a non-verbal function, relying on their cultural reference and local identity to direct them towards the intended message. The analysis reveals that Saudi Airlines relied more on emotional appeals rather than rational appeals in their advertising discourse to promote their new visual brand identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, researchers have studied commemorative events primarily for their political role in the (re)construction of contested national collective memories and identities, but globalisation, social justice movements, multiculturalism and regionalism forces are further transforming commemorative practices in the 21st century. This study adopts the semiotic paradigm to deconstruct commemorative narratives communicated during major anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In doing so, this paper evidences how interwoven signs in these commemorative events construct multi-layered narratives of transnational collective memory and identity based on shared values that transcend the political boundaries of the nation. The study further showcases how shifting political contexts influence commemorative narratives, whilst at the same time commemorative events may increasingly be designed to appeal to a broader, global audience as leisure phenomena of transnational significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, artists and theorists have written of the 'performative' nature of comics with the panel as a 'stage,' and the design process itself as 'acting.' The approaches vary from passing analogies to book-length efforts. While 'acting' gets a great deal of attention, its substrate, the dramatic character, has gone chronically undertheorized. This article develops a dramaturgical methodology of characterisation based on the work of the late Earle Gister to analyse the function of character in graphic novels. The exercise reveals common and distinct conceptual modes or levels of function that may be understood in dramaturgical terms. The orchestration of these levels undergirds narrative complexity and may even expose the unresolved anxieties of the artist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation guideline for performance accountability (EGoPA) is a commonly used framework to assess the performance of public sector organizations. It is important to develop a comprehensive evaluation guideline that considers the legitimacy of these organizations and incorporates their distinct cultural and religious values. This study aims to reconstruct the EGoPA to internalize the actual state of Indonesia's philosophy by considering Notonagoro's hierarchical-pyramidal semiotics of Pancasila. This study utilized the critical paradigm to analyze and address structures or circumstances that impose oppression or present problematic practices within society. This study revealed components of EGoPA with Pancasila values as the basis of Indonesian philosophy that refers to Notonagoro's hierarchical-pyramidal semiotics. This guideline reflects every value in Pancasila, the entire line of Notonagoro’s public management, and employs the fundamental state of philosophy in a proper guideline of EGoPA on the components as whole concepts. In addition, the reconstruction developed a better and original accountability system in the Indonesian government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is currently part of the mission of art museums to actively involve children in learning experiences and empower them through a variety of programmes – including developing text panels specialized for children. To date, we have only a limited understanding of the semiotic resources in audience-sensitive exhibition text panels. Drawing upon Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper analyses and compares 56 text panels in an exhibition from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia. They are comprised of two versions of text panels for 28 artworks, targeting different groups of audiences, respectively (children and adults). It is found that the children's texts have been recontextualized to evoke interest in learning to paint, while the adults' texts focus on aesthetic appreciation. The comparative analysis shows that audience-sensitive text writing is interrelated with its social context in view of field, tenor, mode, and genre. This paper further explores how the production of audience-sensitive text panels contributes to the pedagogic, commercial, and community value of art museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Film is actually a text that presents social reality. The text contained in a film forms a meaning while reflecting a particular culture. The message conveyed in the film can be informative and as an educational medium for the audience, the message to introduce a culture, build a democratic society and the film can also unite differences and construct social realities that occur in society. The author in this study saw the difference in the meaning of pluralism in the film "Raya and The Last Dragon". That there is a fact that a film can carry out the function of improving people's lives with its storyline with the diversity that exists and the characteristics of the differences depicted in the film. This research aims to find out various meanings in terms of designation, implications and myths contained in the film "Raya and the Last Dragon". The writing in this study uses the constructivist paradigm to conduct semiotic analysis of Roland Barthes and this research uses qualitative research methods to understand various meanings in the film "Raya and the Last Dragon". Based on the results of research and discussion, it can be said that this film shows the meaning of pluralism that is understood democratically, equality of differences. The differences that are denotatively described have connotations associated with differences that are constructed into an equation. The film depicts togetherness and unity in a difference, so a myth arises that describes the shift in meaning from plurality, namely a strength and unity formed from a difference and diversity that exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue explores the evolving landscape of medical semiotics of conventional biomedicine. With expansion we refer to the range of phenomena considered signs or symptoms of underlying disease, but also the growing anthropological attention to the medical sign system in ways which reach beyond classic semiotic analysis. The articles testify to the expansion in terms of empirical foci and theoretical contributions. As part of the introduction, we discuss three modes of reading symptoms within medical anthropology: the hermeneutic, material, and critical readings, all highlighting the crucial role of medical anthropology in understanding the biosocial and cultural dimensions of medical semiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Signs of child maltreatment may be physical and detectable by clinical examination but may also arise as a feeling of strangeness that sparks uncertainty. Based on fieldwork in Danish general practice, and thinking along recent discussions around semiotics and affect, the article explores how feelings of "strangeness" arise in child consultations. It focuses on how subjective, embodied, and interpersonal reactions arise, how signs, however tactile and arbitrary, are felt and experienced, and how engaging with affective aspects when doing diagnosis, could expand the medical semiotics of child maltreatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do different medico-scientific understandings of autoimmune inflammation, whose carriers disobediently promote the therapeutic use of immunostimulants, have the potential to destabilize the hegemony of the standard palliative treatment based on immunosuppression? Here I explore whether and how medical paradigms in Brazil develop and expand around immunopathologies through practices of exclusion and inclusion in the context of global circulation of knowledges, therapies, and regulatory frameworks. While focusing on concurrent immunotherapeutic models within biomedicine, I discuss aspects of legal-epistemological frictions that animate controversies in which distinct ways of co-producing medical evidence affect and are affected by the biomedical establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Denmark, injunctions of "early" cancer diagnosis increasingly imply surveillance of small tissue changes, which may or may not develop into cancer. Based on fieldwork at diagnostic lung cancer clinics and with people in CT surveillance for tissue changes, I explore how detected tissue changes are ascribed meaning as signs of "nothing" or "something." Inspired by Peircean semiotics, I suggest that the semiotic indeterminacy of tissue changes points to how diagnostic socialities both expand medical semiotics and enable this expansion. The article, thereby, contributes to understandings of signs as diagnostic infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the interplays between logic and politics in the Polish School of Logic starting from 1914. The Polish School of Logic flourished between 1920 and 1939. Philosophically, it was influenced by Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938). For Twardowski logic is fundamental for every kind of human activity, professional and private and this means that every argument should be formulated and proceed by correct inferential rules. These rules involve semiotics, formal logic and methodology of science. The paper shows how this position was shared by Twardowski's students, including Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Tadeusz Kotrabiński, as well as by the next generation of logicians and philosophers and especially by Alfred Tarski. These authors considered logic, philosophy and science as completely neutral with respect to politics and ideology but they also considered logical skills as indispensable in political activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars often argue that Charles Sanders Peirce was responsible for Josiah Royce's semiotic turn in The Problem of Christianity of 1913. Thus scholars tend to assume that a Roycean approach to semiotics was a later development and derives almost entirely from Peirce's semiotics. Far from a later development, Royce probably read Peirce much earlier. Indeed, even before Royce had read Peirce, the kernel of a Rocyean approach to semiotics is found in the dissertation of 1878. Thus the present essay will prove that a Roycean approach to semiotics did not have a basis in Peirce's semiotics, whether early or later, but rather grew out of Royce's earliest writings. The first part will reconstruct the early pragmatism in the dissertation of 1878 and find that the kernal of a Roycean approach to semiotics was the idea of a mediating third. The second part will show how the disseration's pragmatism develops into a phenomenology of time that contains Royce's earliest semiosic insights. The third part will explain how the early pragmatism and phenomenology come together in the argument on the possibility of error from Royce's The Religious Aspect of Philosophy of 1885. The possibility of error is Royce's original argument for absolute idealism, so the essay will conclude that a Roycean approach to semiotics entails a semiotics of the absolute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political advertisements play a significant role in improving the relationships between political parties, candidates, and voters. Political advertisements serve as a platform for political entities to establish their identity, articulate their political narratives, secure the loyalty of their existing voter base, and influence the electoral inclinations of opposition supporters, the undecided and apathetic segments of the populace. Political advertising is a crucial method of political communication for political actors, and it is widely acknowledged that well-crafted political advertisements have an impact on election results. This study centers around commercial films with the slogan 'Let's go/do it' (Haydi), created for the Presidential candidates of the People's Alliance and the Nation Alliance during the 2023 Presidential and 28th Term Parliamentary General Election campaign process. In this study, the explicit and implicit meanings of visual and linguistic signals in political advertisements were determined and the presentation forms of the messages conveyed to the voters were analyzed by using the semiotic method. İt was observed that the AK Party utilized positive rhetoric in its advertisements to appeal to voters to preserve the status quo. Conversely, the CHP employed a strategy of negative discourse against the AK Party, aiming to disengage voters from their allegiance while simultaneously cultivating sympathy for its own candidate through positive rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]