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Social semiotic discussions about the role played by representations in effective teaching and learning in areas such as physics have led to theoretical proposals that have a strong common thread: in order to acquire an appropriate understanding of a particular object of learning, access to the disciplinary relevance aspects in the representations used calls for the attainment of representational competence across a particular "critical constellation of systematically used semiotic resources (which are referred to as" modes, "see more on this later)." However, an affirming empirical investigation into the relationship between a particular object of learning and different representational formulations, particularly with large numbers of students, is missing in the literature, especially in the context of university-level physics education. To start to address, this research shortfall the positioning for this article is that such studies need to embrace the complexities of student thinking and application of knowledge. To achieve this, both factor and network analyses were used. Even though both approaches are grounded in different frameworks, for the task at hand, both approaches are useful for analyzing clustering dynamics within the responses of a large number of participants. Both also facilitate an exploration of how such clusters may relate to the semiotic resource formulation of a representation. The data were obtained from a questionnaire given to 1,368 students drawn from 12 universities across 7 countries. The questionnaire deals with the refraction of light in introductory-level physics and involves asking students to give their best prediction of the relative visual positioning of images and objects in different semiotically constituted situations. The results of both approaches revealed no one-to-one relationship between a particular representational formulation and a particular cluster of student responses. The factor analysis used correct answer responses to reveal clusters that brought to the fore three different complexity levels in relation to representation formulation. The network analysis used all responses (correct and incorrect) to reveal three structural patterns. What is evident from the results of both analyses is that they confirm two broad conclusions that have emerged from social semiotic explorations dealing with representations in relation to attempting to optimize teaching and learning. The first, which is linked to a facilitating-awareness perspective, is that any given disciplinary visual representation can be expected to evoke a dispersed set of knowledge structures, which is referred to as their "relevance structure." Thus, the network analysis results can be seen as presenting a unique starting point for studies aiming to identify such "relevance structure." The second broad conclusion is that disciplinary visual representation can and often does contain more "disciplinary-relevant aspects" than what may be directly visible in a given representation. These are referred to as the "appresent" aspects that need to become part of the total awareness needed by someone to constitute an intended meaning. The results of the factor analysis can then also be seen to be a way of capturing "all" the disciplinary-relevant aspects (both present and appresent). Educational implications are discussed.

Background: 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. Purpose: 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. Sample, design and methods: 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. Results: 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. Conclusion: 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.

This exploratory study focuses on changes in the accomplishment of requests by an adult English as an additional language speaker/ learner interacting on WhatsApp for nine months. The analysis follows a microanalytic approach to digital interaction informed by recent developments within longitudinal conversation analysis. It unpacks the array of semiotic and interactional resources that the focal learner employs to make class-related requests to the teacher. Longitudinal comparison of four request sequences over time suggests that the differences in how the requesting posts are designed and responded to index both increased interactional competence to accomplish requests in English on WhatsApp as well as evolving socio-interactional ties between the learner and the teacher. Despite the popularity of text chats, only a handful of studies have investigated how the practices employed by additional language learners to engage in text chat interaction change over time and this work has not focused on naturally occurring interactions. The present study thereby contributes new understandings to text chat interaction with additional language speakers and to longitudinal research on interactional competence development in online settings.

The objective of this article is to identify the meaning attributed to the didactics of mathematics and what are the criteria with which an improvement in the teaching and learning process of mathematics is based, future teachers of mathematics, belonging to universities in three different countries (Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador). The qualitative analysis indicates that the majority of future teachers consider that the didactics of mathematics is a technical discipline that consists of providing strategies, resources, and procedures for teaching mathematics; few consider it as an art to teaching and almost none consider it as a scientific discipline that is concerned with studying the processes of teaching and learning mathematics. In addition, the results show that the criteria used by them, on how teaching and learning in this discipline can be improved, are focus, above all, in the cognitive, ecological, and emotional aspects and, to a lesser extent, to the interactional, mediational and epistemic. Finally, it is concluded that the improvement in teaching and learning is directly related to an improvement in the training programs of future mathematics teachers.

Research on translingual repertoires has highlighted the diverse semiotic resources that individuals access in communication, but little research has considered how spatial factors permit or limit access to these resources. Furthermore, as translingual studies have predominantly focused on interactional analysis, there is a paucity of studies on how social networks shape the repertoires of users. To fill this gap, we examine the communicative practices of an international spouse temporarily living in the United States. Through interview data and mobility maps, we analyze the participant's subject positioning and its relation to his use of spatial resources in different spaces. Despite the participant's low English proficiency, he engaged in conversations in many spaces through strategic employment of semiotic resources, including multiple languages and material objects. He also adopted certain positionings that afforded him more opportunities to interact. Thus, we argue that the usefulness of semiotic resources is tied to the spaces in which they are employed and that access to these resources is shaped by subject positioning.

In this article we present a reflection about the meaning attribution to the mathematical object "exponential function" that emerges from two mathematical modeling activities. The theoretical framework of the text contemplates considerations on Mathematical Modeling and elements of semiotics as theorized by Charles Sanders Peirce. The empirical research refers to the development of two modeling activities carried out by different groups of students. We analyzed the interpretant signs produced by students working in groups on two activities. The analysis indicates that exponential function meaning in mathematical modeling activities is associated with the "familiarity" that the interpreter reveals to have in relation to the object; the interpreter's "intention" in signifying the object; the identification, by the interpreter, of the possibility to refer to the object in other circumstances or in future situations; and the "collateral experience" of the interpreter with the object. In addition, the significance of the exponential function in modeling activities is also associated with the specificities of the problem as well as with the pertinent systems of practices and contexts of use of this function.

Cosmopolitanism theory was mostly developed separately from the study of multilingualism: while language is central to cosmopolitanism as a practice, only a few scholars focusing on cosmopolitanism have taken a language-centred approach. We further theorise the relationship between cosmopolitanism and translingual practice with our focus on "morality" in relation to the use of the semiotic repertoire. The use of resources of the semiotic repertoire in translingual practice is infused with morality in that resources (such as languages, individual signs, mouthing, fingerspelling alphabets) are value laden and have particular associations or meanings in a given context. We explore and define deaf cosmopolitanism by offering examples from three international settings: deaf tourism in Bali, a sign language conference in Brazil, and a Bible translation centre in Kenya. Deaf people engaging in international mobilities align in communication by what they call 'calibrating'. In this process, mobile deaf people quickly adopt new semiotic resources by engaging in rapid, immersive and informal (sign) language learning, acquiring (bits of) new sign languages, mouthing, written words, and fingerspelling alphabets, and including them in their practice of calibrating. Our analysis centres language ideologies about these practices, demonstrating moral ideas about what strategies and semiotic resources are most appropriate in specific contexts and/or with/by whom.

This article aims to investigate the teaching of chance in the context of tactile models (TM) from the perspective of the Theory of Register of Semiotic Representations. In this qualitative research, we sought to identify the different types of semiotic registers and transformations (treatment and conversion), in the solutions of the tasks of the Jefferson's Random Walks Teaching Sequence of children in early childhood education (aged 5 years). We found the presence of different registers, most frequently mother tongue and figurative language, and of conversions. Finally, the TM proved versatile, particularly in addressing the concept of chance, for the mobilization of different semiotic registers and transformations, which can encourage teachers to use this material to work concepts in the school context.

The aim of this study is to better understand how teachers use various embodied semiotic modes -- speech, gestures, gaze, and proxemics -- when they present scientific content to the entire class. To analyse the multimodal practices of these teachers, we integrated the social semiotic theory of multimodality and the joint action theory in didactics. We use a case study methodology to analyse the video data and to describe the productions of two teachers from selected short episodes. The results show several similar elements of these teachers' practices. In particular, their use of several coordinated modes to make a coherent meaning to complex aspects of scientific knowledge such as three- dimensional representations of chemical structures or the relation between an experiment and its model of light diffraction. Both teachers create signs by taking everyday things from their environment to re-signify them in a scientific way. Simultaneously they maintain contact with their students through their gaze and their position. In this way, they create or strengthen the classroom habits related to the explanation of knowledge.

The relevancy of linear algebra (LA) in different areas and also the difficulties faced by undergraduate engineering students studying this content are well known. Grounded on this premise, we aimed at articulating papers related to the teaching and learning of LA in engineering undergraduate programs through a mapping of the main investigations on the teaching and learning of LA carried out since 2000, by the Work Group Mathematical Education in Higher Education, associated with the Brazilian Society of Mathematical Education (SBEM), together with work produced between 2007 and 2018 by other Latin American studies on this subject in Mathematical Education societies with a representation similar to that of SBEM. We focused specifically on the link between the content of LA and that studied in specific courses. Methodologically, we followed the principles of Content Analysis and, based on a body of eight papers, we noted the following: (1) examples of situations through which it is possible to establish links between LA and contexts of engineering; (2) the role played out by the Technologies of Information and Communication (TIC) in the implementation of these links; (3) the importance of the concepts of eigenvalue and eigenvector in the resolution of problems of engineering; (4) the need to facilitate the mobilization of students to use different registers of semiotic representation, while working with the concepts of LA; (5) the importance of reflecting upon the (initial and continued) training of teachers who teach LA in engineering and ultimately, (6) the use of links between LA and contexts of engineering as an element of motivation for students and for their recognition of when to use them.

This paper examines the implications and implementation of official language policy designed to support endangered Indigenous languages in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil. The policy, in place since late 2001, declared three of the region's many Indigenous languages (Nheengatú, Tukano, and Baniwa) to be "co-official" at the local level; the practical implementation of this policy, however, has remained limited. I specifically use the linguistic landscape of the city of São Gabriel as an entry point for considering the contested ideologies relating to the use of this official language policy as a strategy for language revitalization, and how some actors in the city have responded to the limited "top-down" implementation by creating space for the use of these languages in public and prestigious settings. I argue that the impact of the policy must be considered not simply in direct examination of the degree to which its articles have been implemented, but also in relation to the semiotic possibilities that it has created for Indigenous people and their allies in language activism. Signage in the official Indigenous languages reveals that the official language policy is embedded in a series of linguistic ideologies that make its implementation (or lack thereof) a complex question.

This paper focuses on Luan's race performances both on the web and in classroom interaction. Luan is a black young man, who identifies himself as gay. The study is part of a multi-sited ethnographic piece of research on a group of high-school students in the state sector, in the "periphery" of a town on the Rio de Janeiro State north coast, Brazil. The paper is guided by performance and entextualization theorizing. The analysis draws attention to the circulation of racial identity signs, intersected with gender/sexuality meanings, bringing to light what we call creative entextualizations, i.e., the gaps Luan finds to re-organize the meanings in the discursive practices in which he is engaged. The analyses point to positionings and innovative identity performances which come up in conjunction with essentialized views, always perceptible amidst struggles and disputes. Because it draws attention to mobile lives in the "periphery," this study may be said to explode the traditional boundaries between "center" and "periphery."

In this study, we applied an ecosocial semiotic theoretical framework to the analysis of graffiti literacies in the Vila Madalena neighborhood of Sao Paulo, Brazil, to inquire about the nature and processes of "conscientizacao" (critical awareness) for adult street dwellers who had no or little ability to read and write (as traditionally defined). An ecosocial semiotic framework suggests that people shape their environment through the use of signs, and these signs in turn shape them as part of the complex, dynamic, and nonlinear process in which the environment and its meanings are actively coproduced. We interviewed five adults in the neighborhood community regarding their thoughts about and experience of graffiti. We also interviewed two of Sao Paulo's renowned urban interventionists (a graffiti gallery owner and a graffiti artist) concerning how they perceived the social and political role of graffiti in the community. Findings indicate that certain ecosocial semiotic features of graffiti art are particularly helpful in providing opportunities for "conscientizacao" to take place for the participants we interviewed. The interventionists expressed a deliberate desire to influence the social and political consciousness of community members, which they also hoped would lead to social action. All participants suggested that graffiti has become an important resource in the community, helping members engage in critical perspectives of both the immediate and distal worlds around them. Overall, examining the nature of graffiti literacy in Sao Paulo, how it is constituted, and how it affects community members is revealing as a process of "conscientizacao" that may have important implications for broadening understandings of praxis. (Contains 1 table and 12 figures.)

If stimulus equivalence is a model of meaning, abstract stimuli should acquire the meaning of meaningful stimuli equivalent to them. In Experiment 1, college students matched faces expressing emotions to arbitrary pictures, forming three classes of equivalent stimuli, each comprising an emotional expression and three arbitrary pictures. Semantic differential judgments by students who formed equivalence classes were similar to evaluations of the faces, and this similarity increased when delayed matching was used in training. Experiment 2 found that pictures distant 1-node from the faces were judged as similar to them and pictures distant 3-nodes were not. Therefore, abstract stimuli acquired functions of meaningful stimuli equivalent to them, but this depended on experimental parameters such as delayed matching and nodal distance. (Contains 8 figures and 7 tables.)

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]

What does the incessant return of the Brazilian national team jersey between June 2013 and the government of Jair Bolsonaro mean? What is its role? What does football have to do with Brazil's public life in the early 21st century? Does its intervention in the recent political and social history of the country limit itself to the appearance of the national team jersey and its appropriation by extreme-right movements and parties? These are some of the questions that this article seeks to answer. To do so, the analysis mobilizes the theoretical-methodological framework of Greimas' discursive semiotics and Jurij Lotman's semiotics of culture, combining micro analyses of specific texts, practices, and discourses with macro analyses of broader and transversal sociocultural configurations, revealing the links between the semiospheres of football, politics, media, and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropological studies of tourism have theorized scale and scale-making in primarily spatialized forms. This article, however, applies linguistic anthropological theories to show that scale is a discursive framework that includes spatial as well as qualitative and quantitative dimensions, which people use to assess socioeconomic problems associated with tourism. By bridging tourism studies, "music touristics," and the semiotics of scale-making, the article analyzes how individuals' positionalities vis-à-vis tourism are embedded in local and global power relations. The narratives of an influential musical promoter in Recife, Brazil, show that he employs—and combines—spatial, quantitative, and qualitative scales to compare Recife with more successful musical tourism destinations, to make ideological claims, and to envision how to transform the city into a musical tourism destination. In examining these discourses, the article suggests that individuals narratively create and invoke scales to strategically situate themselves and others within the global tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines semiotic resignifications undertaken in 'peripheral' cultural production through an ethnographic analysis of the trajectory of the Amazonian artist, Jaloo. Jaloo occupies multiple positions of marginality in Brazilian society and artistic scenes, which he connects to other global peripheries in his performances, aesthetics, and self-narratives. Building on anthropological and sociolinguistic scholarship, we show how 'peripheral' status is managed by Jaloo in the context of a growing and politicised audience for outsider and alternative cultural production. We theorise Jaloo's negotiation of his relationship with audiences and the media as rescaling. Further, we argue that this rescaling entails the ordering of semiotic resources into a social imaginary that reconfigures peripheral territories and identities, which we consider in terms of a transperipheral chronotope. (Inequality, chronotopes, indexicality, race, coloniality, scales, periphery) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity is a key characteristic of Brazilian culture, greatly influenced by the heritage of African diaspora peoples in the fields of aesthetics and religion. Both contemporary Art and Candomblé reflect a vibrant Africa that asserts its unique identity and reclaims ancestral roots through chants, crossroads, and artworks. This study aims to create a diagram, a semiotics of “terreiro”, with art and Candomblé as privileged expressions of the symbolic crossroad that signifies the black heritage in Brazilian culture—a resilient force. Barthesian semiotics guide us to question signification and image, and Deleuzian philosophy provides theoretical support of a diagram to explore our constitutive ancestry, where Candomblé and Art serve as starting points on an open path, transcending texts and their meanings, encompassing the aesthetic experience of this works and reflecting it to the texts. This article is the outcome of a broader study investigating the concept of ancestrality in audiovisual media and aimed to define a cartography that could potentially diagram artworks created by Black individuals in Brazil. Within this framework, we present an analysis of Clébson Francisco's multimedia works, an artist from Ceará. Although the results are partial, they provide a glimpse of a semiotics of “terreiro”, emphasizing the aesthetics of ancestrality and Candomblé as foundational aspects in the symbolic field of African heritage within Brazilian culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a review of the book "Religious Discourse: Semiotics and Rhetoric" by Sueli Maria Ramos da Silva, a semiotician researcher who studies religious discourse in Brazil. The book categorizes different types of religious discourses, such as founding discourse, religious loyalty discourse, and religious promotion discourse. The third chapter is the most important, as it presents a specific typology of religious promotion discourse, discussing different types such as specialized, instructional, for social awareness, propagandist, and media-related. The author also conducts a semiotic analysis of the enunciative characteristics of each type of discourse and references other academic works on the subject. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand the individualism/collectivism and masculine/feminine cultural aspects presented in the endorsement content made and shared by digital influencers on Instagram. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a cross-cultural qualitative study, collecting endorsement posts published by six fitness mega-influencers from Brazil and the USA. A total of 147 posts were assessed through the semiotic analysis of still images. Findings: The authors identified that, in collectivist and feminine cultures, endorsements focus on the emotional competence of the digital influencer and the content aims at interaction, whereas in individualistic and masculine cultures, the posts highlight the informational competence of the influencer and the content focuses on the endorser's self-promotion. Research limitations/implications: This study examined only two of the Hofstede's six cultural dimensions, limiting its scope. However, this study established a model that shows that the appeal of content posted by the influencer depends on individualism–collectivism dimension and the post symbolism is a result of the masculinity–femininity dimension. This study also identified the spectrum of appeal in messages and the role of advertising in building the influencer's narrative. Practical implications: The authors identified cultural traits as an important criterion of congruence when choosing a brand endorser and as an element that impacts the marketing communication strategy in a social media environment. Therefore, this study suggests that organizations consider the influencer's culture as a criterion for choosing endorsers, which will guide the digital content strategy suited to the campaign's target audience. Social implications: This study emphasizes the illusory effectiveness of the internet in the search for convergence, establishing that the digital environment still requires socialization that brings feelings of cultural engagement, especially through new social actors arising from virtual media. Still on the social side, this study suggests the reflection of the economic characteristics of a country together with its cultural dimensions. Originality/value: This study fills a research gap from previous studies that provide empirical evidence on the impacts of cultural differences on social media behaviors. This research adds the impact of the influencer in this virtual environment to restructure the communication and information model, mold it according to the culture, acting as indicators of social transformation resulting from technological advances. This research still innovates by proposing a new methodological approach for semiotic analysis in digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how to model immersive virtual environments using Kalevi Kull's ecosemiotic model of four degrees of nature. Using this theoretical model allows for an investigation into the paradoxical nature of reality and hyperreality, which is a novel approach to understanding how a user co-develops with both their physical and immersive virtual environments. Analysis for the four degrees of nature within the virtual space reveals that an immersive virtual environment emerges from an imaginative void, contains milieu that users can recognize and interact with, offers the action-potentiality (affordances) for altering and changing materials within the virtual space, and the reproductive nature which converges the boundaries of reality and hyperreality during the meaning-making process for users. Additionally, this paper elaborates how technological household goods in the past century have integrated texts into the cultural construct of a home. The paper identifies how immersive virtual environments alter an inhabitant's perception and interactions within the home and explains how to model immersion, which is important for future research of user behaviour in the digital age of new media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper seeks to analyze, based on the decolonial perspective, how the epistemic and ontological elements of the coloniality of power that operates through the linguistic imperialism of English are made present in the hierarchies of knowledge in marketing. For this, we use the generative trajectory, a semiotic theoretical model of meaning, to analyze advertisements of a transnational online English language company operating in Brazil, which reinforces in its communications the importance of learning English as the only way to succeed in the business world and to overcome the backwardness of local culture and language. The semiotic analysis helped to analyze the manipulation path and strategies and the concretization of the narratives present in the communication made through the ads, unveiling epistemic and ontological elements that make up the coloniality of power and its association to English, which was, in turn, related to the hierarchies of knowledge in marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a democratized account of heterodoxy that draws attention to how heterodoxical discourses may implicitly arise through social interaction. The analysis is based on one rural Brazilian woman's claim that it tastes better to eat beans and rice by using one's fingers. Formerly common in Brazil prior to the 20th century—across identities, regions, and classes—the practice of "eating by hand" was gradually erased from public life, and reconstituted as a mark of non-whiteness, through what Norbert Elias described as a "civilizing process." The woman's claim registers as a heterodoxical response to hierarchized and racialized notions of taste arising from this process of historical erasure. The analysis draws on Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory to situate the woman's claim within a wider field of taste, while engaging with Hannah Arendt's suggestion that aesthetic judgments may implicitly disclose shared and more equal worlds. Whereas Bourdieu's famous account of heterodoxy focuses on leaders, experts, and spokespersons of the dominated skilled in the "work of making explicit," the contribution draws on scholarship in analytic philosophy to argue that critical historical awareness may emerge in what philosophers of language and linguistic anthropologists call pragmatic presuppositions. The heterodoxical pragmatic presuppositions implicit in the woman's claim conjure a notion of semiotic equality, which is disclosed as a defeasible presupposition of the ethnographic situation in which she makes her claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passing is the research of oneself by trying to look and to be seen as a member of a social group by assuming its features. Individuals performing this process are willing to undergo several physical and behavioural changes to achieve this aspiration. Passing generally occurs among members of minority groups suffering discrimination who want to diminish the psycho‐social discomfort of their experience. Examples of passing are the attempts by ethnic minorities to whiten their skin, or the efforts of transgender people to look as much as possible, in the eyes of others, like the gender with which they identify. This paper aims to discuss aspects related to trans people's pursuit of passing, taking the Theory of Performativity of Gender and the Cultural Semiotic Psychology as its theoretical basis. This is a theoretical‐reflexive study that will debate the topic based on studies of this topic in Brazilian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, packaging needs to communicate material and immaterial qualities of food, linked to the satisfaction of nutritional, psychological and cultural needs of consumers. For this, the design builds complex discourses, associating verbal and visual language. In Brazil, with the standardization of packaging formats and the growing variety of products, the importance of color in visual communication has expanded. This research aims to explain the system of color meanings in food packaging sold in Brazil, and demonstrate that the color of designs reflects ideological and cultural concepts of contemporary society. An empirical study was conducted, with a qualitative approach, in which the colors of 612 food packages were analyzed. The analysis tools come from semiology/semiotics. The results show that colors played three semiotic functions: (1) showing the color of the food (iconic function), (2) signaling objective characteristics of the products (indicative function), and (3) representing psychological and cultural qualities (symbolic function). It was found that the system of color meanings in the food packaging is organized based on color attributes (hue, lightness and chroma), through differences and oppositions. It is concluded that, in Brazil, the colors of food packaging reflect the heterogeneity of the consumption groups—such as white for the "healthy" people, black for the "refined", pink for "women", green for the "ecological"—and, in this sense, they work as identity markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Veredas: Revista Interdisciplinar de Ciências Humanas is the property of Obras Sociais e Educacionais de Luz and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Hegemony, according to Gramsci, is a struggle between embattling ideologies. The process in which masculinity ideology continuously wins this struggle is dubbed Hegemonic Masculinity. The hypothesis this article will aim to prove is that under President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil is going through a phase of strengthening of masculinity ideology, curbing the room for dissent in the hegemonic struggle. In order to substantiate this hypothesis, Bolsonaro's self-projected persona will be analysed through a semiotic interpretation of the pictures in his official Facebook account. As Bolsonaro is the head of the state and the government, the ideology behind his self-portrayal is indicative of the underlying ideology of his rule. The relevance of this study comes from presenting an innovative way to point out the presence of hegemonic masculinity in politics. This allows for the connection of institutionalised hegemonic masculinity with human security, bringing to light how the privileging of masculinity ideology leads to the silencing of dissenting voices and the neglect of nonhegemonic insecurities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aimed at analyzing the social function of the roman-feuilleton genre, in the pocketbook format, and its repercussions on representations and stereotypes about women, especially in the secretarial work. As an object, it exams the book The secretary, published in Brazil in 1968. The analysis was carried out in Semiotics perspective, in the relation among sign, object and meaning; and of Linguistics, in the fictional narrative expression. It was also considered the dialogue with the Cultural History presuppositions in a view of the analysis of the meanings incorporated and occasioned on the social world based on these readings. The examination of the roman-feuilleton indicates a constituent discourse of morigeration intentions for women's role in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista FAMECOS - Mídia, Cultura e Tecnologia is the property of EDIPUCRS - Editora Universitaria da PUCRS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper intends to analyze Amores Roubados, a TV miniseries (TV Globo, 2014) adapted from "A emparedada da Rua Nova" (1909) by Joaquim Maria Carneiro Vilela. The goal of this analysis is to present the meanings that emerge from the observation of dialogical relations between fiction, its audience and sociocultural ambience. In the process of adaptation, the changes are regarded according to the articulation of the concepts of 'text,' 'memory,' and 'culture' as understood by Lotman, and intertwined with the memory of the Brazilian fictional televised genre. This study indicates that the miniseries contributes to deconstruct machismo and for the democratization in gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of study of this research is how the Theory of Semiotics Representation Registers is evident in Brazilian scientific research therefore aims to reveal the level of coverage, mathematical object, methodological procedures and aspects of Duval most prevalent theory in these research. In this way, it is a bibliographical research design with state of the art. The results show the predominance of Basic Education; the variety of mathematical objects; the highlight of both sequences as Teaching of Mathematics activities as methodological procedures used and the treatment and conversion transformations as aspects of the more obvious Duval theory most evident in the mapped research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comunicação, Mídia e Consumo is the property of Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Comunicação, Mídia e Consumo is the property of Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study we have developed a state of the art, ie, an exposure level of knowledge and degree of development of dissertations and theses in the Postgraduate Studies Program in Mathematics Education PUC / SP, which addressed the concept of function in the light theory of Semiotics Records Representation. The focus of this research are the contributions that this theory brings to the teaching and learning of the function concept in basic education process. To do so, we systematized the production of information in two phases: a survey of all possible jobs and jobs that are tangent analysis of the Elementary and Secondary Education. In the analysis of 16 produced and defended between 2002 and 2011, we observed that the concern of researchers focused on mathematical object to be learned, ie, a sequence, a book or other courseware provides real knowledge from the point of view of registers of semiotic representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Au Brésil, les autobiographies intellectuelles sont écrites pour des concours à l'université. Il s'agit de textes qui racontent le parcours intellectuel et institutionnel du professeur-chercheur. Quelques oeuvres plus récentes, cependant, dépassent cette thématique et traitent aussi de la vie privée du candidat. La position réservée aux affects a aussi changé. Tout cela nous révéle que le genre n'est plus exactement le même. Ce travail fait une analyse de la façon dont la vie est observée et recréée par le langage dans ces autobiographies, en tenant en compte les notions d'événement et d'exercice (Zilberberg). Le but est d'examiner les tensions entre les contraintes du genre et l'observation du vécu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The offers the author's insights on the reception of the works of philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce in Brazil. Topics discussed include the use of Peirce's semiotics by poets Decio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos, Peirce's theory of signs and perception, and the promotion of the first Meeting on Pragmatism in 1998, which became annual in 2000 and called as the International Meeting on Pragmatism (EIP).

‘Methods’ and their devices have been conventionally viewed as the means through which the move from world to representation (and back again) might be reliably performed. An alternative view, perhaps most clearly exemplified by the post-ANT empirical programme of ‘material semiotics’, sees methods and devices as integral to the ways particular ‘realities’ are enacted in practices of inscription and intervention. Drawing upon this latter work, the present paper examines the role of satellite images, GIS and GPS data and devices in the methods utilized in the location, identification and classification of ‘illegal deforestation’ in Brazilian Amazonia. Here we witness how efforts to render ‘deforestation’ into a stable object of knowledge, singular and coordinated, are countered by attempts to render it multiple and irreconcilable as methods and devices become entangled in the conflicts and antagonisms of social life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This work investigates the relation established by journalism - through a reading contract - with its readers, specifically with the reader of the section Para o seu filho ler (For your child to read) in newspaper Zero Hora, from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil. For the analysis, we choose the guidance of third generation semiology (Verón, 2004), in which we have selected enunciations of the section from a corpus of 111 samples. It is conceived that the process of mediatization structure social practices and affects the logical operation of the other fields (Fausto Neto, 2007). The section enunciates to a specific reader and is also responsible for the prominence or the silencing of certain themes. Zero Hora establishes unique ways to tell parents and children what they should and can read [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and knowledge organization in Brazil has been historically influenced by theoretical linguistics. However, some aspects related to language theory and its interface with philosophy need to be further investigated, particularly the semiotic interpretation of information and knowledge organization processes. In order to advance a dialogue with the philosophy and semiotics of Charles Peirce (1839-1914), a theoretical and bibliographical study was carried out so as to understand and evaluate the contributions of the Peircean thought to information organization. It was found that several aspects of Peirce's work, viewed as a whole and not just semiotic concepts, suggest fundamental points to explain issues in information and knowledge organization. Basing on the analysis of Thellefsen's studies, this research presents some arguments aimed at reframing Peirce's pragmatism, which should no longer be mistakenly considered as a doctrine of practical results, but as a useful methodological approach for professionals dealing with knowledge organization in the field of Information Science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the way in which renowned São Paulo-based theatre company Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona deconstructs hegemonic historical narrative in their 2000–2007 25-hour-long production of Euclides da Cunha's seminal Brazilian novel Os sertões (“Rebellion in the Backlands”), an account of the War of Canudos (1896–1897), the first major act of State terrorism carried out by the nascent Brazilian Federal Government on the country's subaltern population. The Teat(r)o Oficina's epic adaptation fuses events from the colonial period, the military dictatorship and contemporary twenty-first-century São Paulo to relate the repetitive cycles of misappropriation, oppression and resistance that have characterized the history of Brazil and its people over the centuries. However, any fatalistic view of victimhood as an essential aspect of Brazilian subjectivity is radically challenged by the vibrant, rhythmic, material impact of the theatrical super-signs underpinning the performance text. Drawing on Julia Kristeva's notion of the semiotic – the pre-linguistic, illogical, rhythmical materialism of language intimately related to a primordial relationship with the abject mother – I shall suggest that it is the rhythmic, libidinal force of the performance and its extensive use of the cultural manifestations of Brazil's subaltern population that imbues Os Sertões with the silent presence-as-absence of the abject Brazilian (M)Other – the Black, Indigenous and Mestiza matriarchal line whose alternative discourse is often barred from hegemonic accounts of Brazilian historiography. Her silent heritage is embodied on stage by the members of the Oficina, who reclaim an alienating national heritage for themselves by transforming the often tragic tale of Brazil's past into a joyous celebration of tenacious vitality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we intend to show the roles of French Discursive Semiotics and the courses it took in South America, but mainly in Brazil, where it has had significant developments. We will mostly deal with Semiotics in Brazil, but we will try, whenever possible, to establish dialogues with semiotic studies in South America, especially in Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and Argentina, countries we have more contact. The article was organized in three parts: the first, with some very general considerations on the reception of the Semiotic Theory of Discourse in some countries in South Ameiica; the second, on the maintenance of the courses in theory and methodology and on the broadening of the effects and the objects of analysis in such Semiotics research centers; and the third, on the role of the Semiotic Studies and on the dialogues that Semiotics maintains with other subjects in the above mentioned countries. We indicate, in such a way, the dialogues with other language studies that mostly characterize Semiotics in Brazil and in South America, and the new objects it has been concerned with, always trying to contribute to the knowledge of the culture and society each country. The semiotic studies developed in South America are characterized: by the formal study of Semiotics which has been given to students in different areas; by the institutionalization of Discursive Semiotics as a university subject; by the search for theoretical and methodological developments that can give some answers to the challenges of a multilingual and pluricultural society, that is, of a society of "mixes", of a crossbred society; by the theoretical contribution that can be given to the International semiotics Community; and by the undeniable contributions that Discursive Semiotics has brought, in Brazil and in South America, to language studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how advertising has built the imaginary of pregnancy and motherhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It aims to map and analyze the advertising signs, such as images, sales appeals and cultural issues, used to represent, translate and sensitize pregnant women and contemporary mothers. It also discusses interpretations that result from field study in dialogue with the semiotic analysis of the advertisements.

In this study, we applied an ecosocial semiotic theoretical framework to the analysis of graffiti literacies in the Vila Madalena neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil, to inquire about the nature and processes of conscientização (critical awareness) for adult street dwellers who had no or little ability to read and write (as traditionally defined). An ecosocial semiotic framework suggests that people shape their environment through the use of signs, and these signs in turn shape them as part of the complex, dynamic, and nonlinear process in which the environment and its meanings are actively coproduced. We interviewed five adults in the neighborhood community regarding their thoughts about and experience of graffiti. We also interviewed two of São Paulo's renowned urban interventionists (a graffiti gallery owner and a graffiti artist) concerning how they perceived the social and political role of graffiti in the community. Findings indicate that certain ecosocial semiotic features of graffiti art are particularly helpful in providing opportunities for conscientização to take place for the participants we interviewed. The interventionists expressed a deliberate desire to influence the social and political consciousness of community members, which they also hoped would lead to social action. All participants suggested that graffiti has become an important resource in the community, helping members engage in critical perspectives of both the immediate and distal worlds around them. Overall, examining the nature of graffiti literacy in São Paulo, how it is constituted, and how it affects community members is revealing as a process of conscientização that may have important implications for broadening understandings of praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzed the history of children's clothing the 20th century, from child photographs in Globo magazine, which was published in the city of Porto Alegre/RS. To understand the significances of these imagetic representations, the history of childhood is also revisited starting from a bibliography review, which identified the main transformations that took place in the concept of childhood, and consequently in children's fashion. The images were analyzed through elementary concepts of Semiotics (sign, signified and signifier), through which it was possible to identify the probable meanings present in the children's clothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]