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After some considerations which situate history and historic literature in their respective European and Pre-Columbian epistemic contexts, we realize an analytical approach to a pictographic narrative in different Nahua codices, but especially in the first eight plates of Codex Azcatitlan that relate the mythical tribulations of the Mexicas, in the early steps of their departure from Aztlan-Chicomoztoc. We essentially compare the narrative matter of the pictorial text in this document with the corresponding sequences in Codex Boturini, Codex Mexicanus, and Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. The intention is to show the diversity of visual paradigms, in terms of semiotics and narration, and the visual syntax of association that prevails and contributes to the production of sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to investigate what semiotic analysis can reveal about how welcoming and inclusive a science library space is for patrons. A space was examined in terms of its messaging to patrons of various genders, abilities, races, ethnicities, nationalities, and disciplines. Findings are presented about the space's messaging regarding the disciplines it serves, inclusion of patrons from minoritized demographics, and general expectations of visitors. Recommendations for library practice and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Instituto de Botánica Darwinion (CONICET and ANCEFyN) was founded by the end of 1910 in the San Martín district by Cristóbal María Hicken as his private botanical research laboratory. Its name honors Charles Darwin for his brilliant theory of biological evolution. In 1924, Cristóbal M. Hicken made public his desire to bequeath the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion to the National State, a fact that only materialized in 1934. But in the early '30s, he decided to move the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion to a new building located in the San Isidro district, built especially to contain the institute and also his retirement home. After 87 years of existence and five building extensions, the historic building of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro maintains its integrity and attracts the attention of both the public and architecture and design professionals. Based on the study of building characteristics and the thought of Cristóbal M. Hicken, the main objective of this work is to evaluate whether the external and internal structure of the historic Darwinion building in San Isidro, together with the ornamentation and distribution of original functions of each room, respond only to an aesthetic and functional design or if, in addition, they have a symbolic meaning, a vision of the world, a silent message for those who want (and know how) to understand. With this central purpose as a guide, we carried out a multidisciplinary investigation to reconstruct Cristóbal M. Hicken's vision in the design of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro. We started from the analysis of the original building in the San Martín district in search of any possible design background, to then focus the attention entirely on the building in San Isidro. Plans, public documents, correspondence, historical photographs, academic and dissemination articles of the time, pre-Hispanic South American ethnographic information, Argentine historical information between 1860 and 1930, and interviews with relatives and historians were studied. In short, the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion in San Isidro was created as a museum and a laboratory plus a home. The design of the museum agrees with the concept of "temple of Botany" manifested by Cristóbal M. Hicken himself, and whose first sign is observed in the etymology of the name of the institute. Its ornamentation is eclectic, since it combines symbols of Andean pre-Hispanic cultures with symbols of Western civilization, and it is structured according to each room (portal, front rooms, herbarium, library) and orientation (towards the street or towards the inner garden). This ornamentation works like a discourse in symbolic key with multiple messages for the visitor: it reflects an original, foundational, and ancient Argentine identity, which in turn communicates that the Darwinion is a place where a silent and fertile unveiling of the knowledge, of the secrets of evolution, takes place protected from evils and misfortunes by Nature itself. The design plan of the institute, the portal, the access terrace, and the internal garden convey desirable masonic values through the symbolic language, typical and traditional of Freemasonry. Likewise, we show evidence of Dr. Cristóbal M. Hicken's great interest in Andean pre-Hispanic cultures, of his refined knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology, his belonging to Argentine Freemasonry and consequent ability to symbolic language, and his knowledge of construction, cosmology, and analytic geometry. For these reasons, and considering his participation in the supervision of the building work declared by the newspapers of his time, the probable direct intervention of Cristóbal M. Hicken is proposed both in the design of the building of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro, as well as in the design of its ornamentation. In addition, evidence is provided of the possible intervention of Arturo Prins and Fernando de Estrada in the project of the building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article develops this line of thought using the concepts of collecting and hoarding as two configurations that undermine both the logic of the commodity and the opposition between materiality and semiotics. It mentions scope of French studies through a revision of the position of the object or thing in the works of François Bon, Lydia Flem and Georges Perec. It also mentions themes of memory and mourning through the practices of decluttering.

The article presents a summary of research in the field of semiotics published in 2022 in international semiotics journals "Sign Systems Studies" and "Semiotica" and highlights the main semiotic trends emerging from the research articles. Topics include literary historian Juri Lotman's centenary exploration of semiotic landscapes, the re-emergence of cognitive visual semiotics, and linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotic legacy for modern scholars.

A careful study of the writings of Algirdas Julien Greimas refutes many of Paul de Man's influential criticisms of semiotics. Greimassian narratology neither reduces rhetoric to grammar nor simply conflates grammar with logic. Instead of forming "a closed totality", the Greimas square is an open-ended analytical device; it is not the semiotic equivalent of the Schillerian chiasmus. Despite de Man's claims for the disruptive agency of rhetoric, the elementary structure of signification organizes the possibilities of de Man's own rhetoric. His essay "The rhetoric of temporality" is a narrative whose four major actants are symbol, allegory, irony, and mimesis. Though the discoursive level of de Man's essay represses mimesis, it is active in what Greimas would call the argument's surface grammar, which constrains, without completely determining, the narrative transformations the argument undergoes. While de Man's analysis regards symbol as epistemologically inferior to allegory and irony, the persistence of symbol helps make "The rhetoric of temporality" a fascinating literary text in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal object of this study is constituted by two epistemologically distinct models of Ferdinand de Saussure's depictions of the linguistic sign. The first model pertains to a bilateral conception of the sign as an inseparable unity of two sides that evoke each other in the mind of individuals during their speaking and understanding activities. The second model, termed here as 'unilateral conception', has been deduced from Saussure's understanding of parole, where an idea establishes itself in a sound and a sound becomes the sign for an idea. A survey of related terminological distinctions derived from logic and philosophy as well as linguistic semiotics seems indispensable for presenting the positions of these bilateral and unilateral sign concepts in a typological matrix which could embrace all sign models originating in the sciences of language. The additional purpose of this study is to put forward the idea of epistemological equivalence to be achieved in translational practice. This supplementary focus of interest in particular concentrates around the question of how the translations of sign-related terms, selected from Cours de linguistique générale, reflect the epistemological awareness of their English-speaking translators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses an issue in multimodal cultural studies - the inconsistent use of the notions 'mode' and 'modality'. As these notions are frequently employed interchangeably, making a clear distinction between them and positioning them in a coherent system will be helpful. To outline such a system, I envisage a two-layer framework where modes and modalities support each other. The central branch of multimodal semiotics (developing from Gunther Kress' sociosemiotics towards John Bateman's comprehensive approach) recognizes 'mode' as a pivotal research concept. While 'mode' as a semiotic resource is dependent on its materiality, culturally shaped practices and discourse semantics, the neurocognitive characteristics of sensory modalities are often seen as secondary to meaning-making. This article suggests that discussion of the semiotic potential of sensory modalities is complementary to the semiotic theory of multimodality. In order to illustrate this, I will construct an experimental typology of modality relations, which also takes modes into account. This typology distinguishes between supporting, modifying, conflicting, substituting and cross-activating relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the concept of artistic communication as a type of semiotic interaction in the discourses of art. Semiotic methodologies for modelling the sign and the communicative act, developed in the works of Gottlob Frege, Gustav Shpet, Jan Mukařovský, Roman Jakobson, Juri Lotman, Umberto Eco, Suren Zolyan, and some other semioticians, are discussed with a focus on the models of aesthetic sign and the corresponding models of semiosis in relation to artistic systems. The study focuses on the discourses of verbal art in its various manifestations (poetry, prose, drama, performance, spoken word, etc.) as material for a linguistic analysis of artistic communication. The paper specifically discusses the linguistic representations of artistic discourse within a model of aesthetic semiosis. The resulting model of artistic communication in verbal art is presented as a synthesis of Jakobson's scheme of communicative act and its important specification in Lotman's model of "literary communication". Based on the existing models of sign, semiosis, and communication (taking Jakobson's scheme as the main framework), a synthetic, linguo-aesthetic model of artistic communication is outlined, considering together the linguistic, semiotic, and aesthetic parameters of the artistic act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple symbols occupy a unique position within the semiosphere, constituting the symbolic core of culture with their ability to condense cultural memory into nimble, economic forms. This simplicity facilitates persistence, allowing these elementary symbols to recur diachronically, penetrating multiple layers of cultural strata to emerge and flourish in new contexts and variations. A novel example of a symbol which illustrates these attributes is Znak Polski Walczącej - the Fighting Poland symbol. Created in 1942 by the Polish Underground State as a propaganda tool, this straightforward monogram, consisting of interconnected letters P and W, became the official hallmark of Polish resistance and is now a controversial de facto national symbol. This article employs the symbol as a case study to explore two Lotmanian symbolic concepts: the vast semantic capacity of simple symbols, and their dual nature as invariable/variable entities. Born out of a utilitarian need for simplicity in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, the efficient form of the Fighting Poland symbol was a pragmatic matter of life or death. However, further examination of its simple design also reveals an underlying archaic depth. This article argues that the Fighting Poland symbol, metonymically known as the kotwica ('anchor') owing to its distinct shape, can also be viewed as an "emissary" from earlier cultural epochs, namely ante-Nicene Christianity, which made use of anchor symbology during an era of persecution and upheaval. Ultimately, this article provides a new semiotic perspective on a historically active yet understudied symbol with past and present relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text proposes the application of a theoretical concept of "translation", by the Russian scholar Yuri Lotman to a biblical passage. To do so, we will proceed as follows: first, we will briefly contextualize the work of the Russian intellectual then, we will explore the most important concepts present in the studied work; finally, we will apply them to a delimited excerpt from a religious gender discourse found in Mark 12.35-37. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translated sacred writings from various religious traditions often retain a few selected cultural terms borrowed from the incipient sign system, while other cultural dimensions are translated in ways that can broadly be construed as domestication. By contrast, many Bible translation agencies eschew translation strategies in which cultural terms are borrowed, advocating instead for wholesale domestication. In this article, we develop a theoretical framework for representing the alterity, but not the foreignness, of the Bible in translation. Alterity involves the incipient sign system, namely the biblical languages and their cultural contexts ranging from Iron Age Israel within the context of the Ancient Near East for the Old Testament to Roman Palestine in the first century for the New Testament. Examples from African contexts, including Afrikaans (South Africa), Lok (Nigeria) and Tira (Sudan), illustrate multiple approaches to representing alterity and provide an important corrective to current practice in many Bible translation projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Research Group Meetings (RGM) and other professional activities, sometimes positions are fluid, but stances illustrate international scholars' bilingual competence in an RGM in Microbiology. In stances, people index sociocultural values by evaluating discursive figures in talk, proffering epistemic/affective assessments, and positioning each other [Jaffe, A. 2009. "Introduction: The Sociolinguistics of Stance." In Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, edited by A. Jaffe, 3–28. New York, NY: Oxford University Press]. I show how international scholars troubleshoot and problem-solve with senior colleagues as they enact stances to maintain relationships. Competence entails language fluidity and diverse semiotic resources, or translingual practices [Canagarajah, S. 2013. Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. London, UK: Routledge], in stances. While existing stance models stress verbal resources [Du Bois, J. W. 2007. "The Stance Triangle." In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, edited by R. Englebretson, 139–182. Amstderdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company], they overlook the role of spatial repertoires. This micro-interactional analysis of RGMs demonstrates how diverse semiotic resources inform stances, and argues for stance methodologies and analyses which include multimodal, gestural, and semiotic repertoires. Findings indicate that power relations are managed through scholars' use of verbal and semiotic resources in interpersonal stances. I argue that bilingual competence should acknowledge the role translingual practices play in stance taking, and the management of professional relationships in such meetings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting in the 1880s, Portugal invested in constructing railways in its African colonies, Angola and Mozambique. The aim was both to solidify Portuguese presence in territories disputed by other imperial nations and to facilitate exploration of the resources that imperial policymakers assumed existed in the colonial hinterland. To promote the perception that Portugal was an imperial nation, hundreds of photographs recorded the construction, inauguration, and operation of these new railways. Using a semiotics approach, this article analyzes photographs from various sources in Portugal to show how they helped create a novel technological landscape, underscoring the domestication of the territory and the civilization of its inhabitants by European rule, thus promoting it as a land of opportunity for European settlers. This focus adds to the debate claiming that photography was a crucial tool of empire serving European colonialism and imperialism in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Édouard Levé's works are framed by a reading device that allows us to situate them in relation to the author's biography, to identify the main features of his poetics and to formulate genetic hypotheses. His works thus reveal themselves to be highly coherent, like so many variations on a series of gestures and questions that are both very simple and very radical. Inspired largely by Raymond Roussel's Process, Levé has based part of his work on a poetics of shifts that consists of blurring the relationship between words and images. This poetics is implemented in three series Homonyms, Anguish and America, produced by the same linguistic constraints and similar production protocols, but they respond to different attitudes and effects of these constraints and protocols. Anguish is about creating fiction, Homonyms is about interrogating the cultural pantheon and America is about offering a negative of the American dream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing that discourse semiotics is presented as a methodology, to a certain extent, that allows us to treat meaning as the result of individual enunciations, under any value system, without incurring preconceived analyses; we seek to reflect on how certain so-called hegemonic discourses are assimilated as unmarked, while non-hegemonic discourses are marked -- as "engaged", for example. Starting from the Greimasian proposal upon the fundamental differences between distinct cultural worlds we have chosen three journals, Estudos Semióticos, from USP; Cadernos de Semiótica Aplicada, from Unesp; and Actes Sémiotiques, from the University of Limoges, to observe if and how the themes of racism, sexism and feminism appear in articles in these journals. The text then aims to evaluate the current situation in discursive semiotics, especially in Brazil, and to explore considerations for its future as a discipline in the human and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his treatment of the aesthetics of music, Roger Scruton offers a relevant concept of the meaning of music, one which amounts to a philosophically tenable alternative to the semiotic theories of musical semantics. This study aims at surmounting the problematic status of Scruton's theory with its lack of a systematic, exhaustive approach to the subject of musical meaning, and through analysis of Scruton's musical-aesthetic texts draws up a definition of Scruton's approach to the meaning of music. To achieve this, the present text employs two methodological procedures making it possible to reveal the key characteristics of Scruton's approach. The first of these consists in a reconstruction of Scruton's critique of the semiotics of music. There, the meaning of music emerges as a metaphorical phenomenon which is perceived by the listener in a work of music per se. The second characteristic relates to Scruton's approach to musical experience. This is understood to be a specific case of aesthetic experience, which delineates the field of the listener's musical understanding of a performed work of music. Here, the meaning of music is presented as the object of the listener's musical understanding, whose constitution is based on the metaphoric and intentional processuality of the aesthetic experience of music. These observations lead the author to the conclusion that the meaning of music is a quality of metaphorical expression by which the listener gets a non-conceptual reminder, at the moment of their aesthetic contact with a work of music, of crucial aspects of their own existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tullio De Mauro played a significant but often underestimated role in the development of Semiology (or Semiotics) in Italian culture in the 1960s-1970s. Drawing on the lesson of Ferdinand de Saussure, he elaborated a theoretical apparatus not limited to verbal language, but applicable, through the adoption of certain design features, to the entirety of semiotic codes. Of particular interest is the attention De Mauro paid to the world of animal communication, which other authors (such as Eco) placed below the so-called semiotic threshold. Further remarks are devoted to the comparison of De Mauro’s positions with those of two other protagonists of the theoretical debate, Luis Prieto and Emilio Garroni, concerning the notion of communication and the concept of semantic indeterminacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper reviews research developments in semiosis (sign activity) as theorized by Peirce, Eco and Sebeok, focusing specifically on the current study of "semiotic threshold zones," which range from the origins of life through various nonhuman life forms to artificial life forms, including those symbolic thresholds most familiar to library and information science (LIS) researchers. The intent is to illustrate potential opportunities for LIS research beyond its present boundaries. Design/methodology/approach: The paper provides a framework that describes six semiotic threshold zones (presemiotic, protosemiotic, phytosemiotic, zoosemiotic, symbolic and polysemiotic) and notable work being done by researchers in each. Findings: While semiotic researchers are still defining the continuum of semiotic thresholds, this focus on thresholds can provide a unifying framework for significance as human and nonhuman interpretations of a wide variety of signs accompanied by a better understanding of their relationships becomes more urgent in a rapidly changing global environment. Originality/value: Though a variety of semiotic-related topics have appeared in the LIS literature, semiotic thresholds and their potential relationships to LIS research have not been previously discussed there. LIS has traditionally tasked itself with the recording, dissemination and preservation of knowledge, and in a world that faces unprecedented environmental and global challenges for all species, the importance of these thresholds may well be considered as part of our professional obligations in potentially documenting and archiving the critical differences in semiosis that extend beyond purely human knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the construction and validation of a formal conceptual model, or domain ontology, useful for the formal representation and analysis of conversations on heritage, memory and identity (HMI) on social network sites (SNS), of interviews with participants in such conversations, and of scholarly works engaging with such phenomena. The ontology provides for the first time a conceptual framework for HM interactions on SNS addressing the semiotic and discursive nature of such interactions in the context of cultural-historical activity theory and semiosphere theory. Part of the Connective Digital Memory in the Borderlands research project, it is developed using an evidence-based knowledge elicitation and domain modeling approach. The study presents the three components of the ontology: an event-centric core conceptual model, an inductively derived concept taxonomy, and a meta-theoretical conceptual scheme, based on a combination of conceptual analysis and lexical analysis of relevant scholarly literature. To validate the ontology, it then provides an example of how it can be used to represent an actual HMI-related SNS conversation and scholarly intervention using knowledge graphs, a quantitative analysis of the occurrence of taxonomy terms in different subfields of HMI on SNS studies, a qualitative analysis of concepts used in studies on non-professional, archeological, and institutional heritage communication on SNS, and a meta-theoretical account of studies of HMI on SNS. The ontology can be used as a framework for theorization and for the development of data models, questionnaire protocols, thematic analysis vocabularies, and analysis queries relevant to HMI on SNS research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although education research in critical thinking is a rapidly emerging field, how teachers can facilitate, monitor, and support critical thinking in primary science remains a challenge. This paper builds on recent semiotics mediated scientific reasoning research to present a fresh perspective of critical thinking in primary science. Analysis of student and teacher interactions in an innovated semiotics grounded learning design and pedagogy demonstrates a recursive process of collaborative construction, reviewing and refinement of representational systems and models. The multimodal epistemic practices of the discipline, involving the generation, evaluation and refinement of the semiotic systems that frame scientific ideas and practices are presented to both stimulate and support generative critical thinking. How semiotic systems in primary science can provide a focus, stimulus, and tool, for not only students' generative critical thinking but also teacher monitoring and support is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the reasons why it is impossible for wild animals in Andean oral histories to establish a marriage alliance with humans. It is an atrocious alliance, despite the fact that those are beings linked to the tutelary deities, and are charged with their energies, which makes them capable of looking like admired lords. Inimitable for that, it is not conceivable that they join with humans to form bloodlines. Humans and wild animals, despite attracting each other, are beings destined to a distant coexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines twenty years of data about Vladimir Putin's ritualized encounters with icons as a form of symbolic political discourse on the "sacred" that ultimately devolved into Russia's violent escalation of the Russo-Ukraine War in February 2022. Theories of semiotics, the sacred, and studies on iconography reveal patterns of carefully curated engagement with the sacred images that draw on historical relationships among religiosity, power, and violence in Russia. The analysis shows how semiotic signalling through iconographical forms allow Putin to sacralize and strengthen his leadership within the sphere of domestic politics. It demonstrates how Putin's interaction with icons during annual visits to regional Christmas services re-sacralized Russian territory and reinforced national security priorities to a domestic audience. Turning to the international stage, this essay shows how Putin's "icon diplomacy" establishes "sacred" space beyond Russia's national borders. The metaphor of the iconographical image is realized in Ukraine, as both sides struggle to control the narrative of the sacred. The study demonstrates the relationship between violence and the sacred as it pertains to Putin's political lexicon and the importance of understanding this relationship in order to fathom his language of icons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a reflection on a practice-based computational art project titled Programmoire that explores the presence of computation within the medieval Arabic tradition of magic squares in both its mathematical origins and its magical mutation. The research speculates on an alternative history for technology rooted in the history of magic. Through examining the shared use of symbolic logic and active syntax between coding languages and symbolic magic, the project asks what technology can look like if used as a magical tool and how artistic practice can guide this exploration. [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]

Through a case study of images generated by Swedish artist Steph Maj Swanson using an AI text-to-image (T2I) model, this article explores the strategy of negative weight prompting in T2I models as a phenomenon of apophasis. Apophasis is a linguistic strategy commonly deployed in texts of mystical theology to express the ineffability of God through negative concepts. In this article, a comparison of apophatic strategies in mystical texts and T2I models is engaged to highlight the mutual benefit of theorising AI with the help of religious theory and concepts. With this, the article builds on previous work on the New Visibility of Religion, enchantment, and post-secularism—especially the research of Beth Singler on religious continuities in representations of AI. Recent work on AI prompt engineering, computational linguistics, and computational geometry is invoked to explain the linguistic processes of T2I models. Poststructuralist semiotics is then employed to theorise the search for the Transcendental Signified in apophatic theology. The article concludes that linguistic theology can help to elucidate technological use cases, subsequently arguing for further dialogue between scholars in artificial intelligence and religious studies, and for a revaluation of religion in the technological sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cashmere provides an ideal material for examining how humans co‐opt tangible and intangible qualities into their ascription of value. The fiber's relative worth lies at the intersection of its tangible qualities (e.g., softness, lightness, strength) and intangible qualities (e.g., rarity, history, authenticity, sustainability). Mediating the relationship between those qualities are actors with very different stakes: the families of Mongolian herders who comb goats together each spring, the brokers and buyers who weigh it and feel it to adjudicate it for fashion houses, and the advertisers and marketers who decide what is desirable in global markets of end consumers. This article examines three nodes in the production and circulation of Mongolian cashmere to show how different forms of value—economic, social, linguistic, moral—accrue to material goods and travel, or not, from one context to another. I focus on interactions as moments of qualic evaluation. Here embodied, tactile experiences of qualia—which might seem to be immune to perceptual difference and "outside culture"—in fact differ. The example shows how valuation in a transnational commodity chain depends on both exploiting semiotic gaps in the chain and nonetheless meeting a threshold of commensurability, neither of which is divorceable from physicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between individual feelings of aversion, fear, and disgust of city spaces and broader systems of cognitive urban zoning. We analyze interviews conducted in four distinct urban areas of Ottawa, Canada, working with an open-ended method to learn about how urban individuals understand the concept of “risk.” We identify fear of crime as a central risk perceived by the respondents and observe how they construct boundaries between themselves and perceived “risky” zones, occurrences, and bodies. Drawing from Kristeva’s theory of abjection, we trace a semiotic system of Othering in the respondents’ narratives, examining the symbolic cleansing that occurs when respondents attempt to differentiate themselves from what they perceive as encroaching Otherness. With focus on claims about four distinct neighbourhoods, we argue that risk in the city is configured through physical and imaginative mobilities, through which inhabitants construct boundaries and attempts to cleanse or purify “risky” spaces. We conclude that the sense of abjection and/or the experience of aversion is a way that fear is mapped onto cities. This research shows how city spaces are zoned through fear-based semiotic systems. We also raise questions about the relationship between these semiotic systems and actual tangible threats in these spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the digital propaganda campaigns carried out by the Chinese Communist Party in Inner Mongolia following Mongols' protest against the bilingual education reform in 2020. It analyses texts and images posted on WeChat official accounts of the Inner Mongolia Daily and Inner Mongolia Education Department. Through a detailed discourse and semiotic analyses of propaganda texts we reveal that the national unity and development discourses are replete with Han-centric assimilationist ideology. In our analysis, by drawing on a Bakhtinian chronotope, we foreground how the past, present and future are turned into a unified folkloric-cum-colonial space–time. This study also elucidates how the drastic policy shift and the re-articulation of national form in China is reflected in publicly circulated words and images in Inner Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that the legend, which is one of the oral narrative types, has been frequently told among people from past to present. It is extremely important that the legends are told frequently and that they exist in every age by changing and transforming. Because the legend clearly shows the continuity of folkloric products as well as contributing to the collective memory. However, another reason why legends are frequently told is that the element of belief is prominent in the narratives. With the belief element coming to the fore, the legends focus on the relationship between humans and the extraordinary. The narrator and the listener of the legend come together through this element of belief and the human-extraordinary relationship. This situation helps the legend to become one of the frequently told oral narrative types. It is known that the Giresun legends, which have become the object of study, are classified as follows in the light of the element of belief and the human-extraordinary relationship: Religious legends, legends about rocks, legends about place names, legends about animals, legends about extraordinary creatures, legends about natural events, legends about trees, historical legends, legends about treasures, and love legends. As can be seen from the classification, the objects themselves are highlighted in the context of the belief element and the human-extraordinary relationship in the legends. However, among the compiled legends, religious legends draw attention both in terms of quality and quantity. It is possible to classify the legends in question in the context of themes as follows: Travel, war and freedom, treasure hunting, health, need for food, fulfillment of religious duties, owning land, and fulfilling the wishes of the saints. However, it is necessary to analyze and make sense of the belief element and the human-extraordinary relationship, which is at the base of the legend, from a metalinguistic point of view. Because the state of being universal, which is one of the features of folkloric products, expresses the structural repetition of the narrative. In that case, narrative analysis to be carried out from a structuralist perspective can also explain the structure of folkloric products in detail. In this context, the religious legends of Giresun were analyzed in the light of two concepts: Actants model and narrative program. These two concepts allow the analysis of the syntax of a narrative. Through the actants model, the relationship between the actants and the actants in a narrative is determined. The narrative program, on the other hand, basically provides the expression of what stages the subject has passed through within the narrative. The concepts of sender, object, receiver, helper, subject, and opponent in the actants model were determined by Greimas as the agents in the syntax of the narrative. These actants are decisive in the adventure of the subject with the roles they play in the functioning of the narrative. The narrative program, on the other hand, shows the stages that the subject goes through in the light of the following concepts: Manipulation, competence, performance, and sanction. The concepts in question allow the explanation of the stages that the subject goes through in the narrative. In this study, the syntax of Giresun legends is analyzed through these concepts. First, religious legends were classified in the context of themes, and it was expressed how the themes were operated according to the actants model. Then, the stages that the subject goes through are expressed in terms of the concepts of the narrative program, and the religious Giresun legends are analyzed from a structuralist point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper assesses the significance for media and cultural studies of the collaborative interdisciplinary project initiated by John Hartley in the mid 2000s under the rubric of 'cultural science'. It suggests that, in the case at least of Hartley's own work, the project could be understood as an attempt to pivot cultural studies from an engagement with centre-periphery conceptual schemas associated with print and broadcast media to an idea of distributed systems. The way it does so is very revealing as to prospects of the concept of culture in the wake of half a century of neoliberal institutional reform. The paper finds the claim to scientificity confused and misleading, inhibiting engagement from what Hartley now calls 'old' cultural studies. However, the lines of argument can be pushed further than cultural science has itself been prepared to do, opening new possibilities for cultural studies and new possibilities for how we might imagine our collective future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an in-depth analysis of the concept of translation in Bruno Latour's oeuvre – an ambiguous and constantly morphing term. It considers the various conceptual reformulations of translation throughout his writing, concentrating on its fundamental importance for the operation of his modes of existence. A special emphasis is put on the influence of A. J. Greimas's semiotics on Latour's theoretical framework. The aim here is to trace how translation is different from transformation, and why it remains a core concept in Latour's work, despite the fact that he strays far beyond the confines of linguistics alone in his theorisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Taiwan, mask-wearing emerged as a semiotic register in health communication. Focusing on enregisterment (Agha 2007), I analyze interactional recordings of press conferences by the Taiwanese government, Chinese language lessons offered to international students, and conversations at a convenience store between an Australian student and her Taiwanese friend. The analysis reveals information production and reception on three social scales: public health policies, institutionalized health instruction, and interpersonal-care practices. On each scale, masking is enregistered as a semiotic sign associated with particular social actions, actors, and relations. This enregisterment transpires through an orchestration of verbal and non-verbal resources, conveying ideologies about invisible viruses in everyday life. While inconsistencies exist across scales, masking is consistently overlaid with civic solidarity and moral responsibility. In times of crisis, mask-wearing is an issue of public health and a process of typifying behaviors, identities, and relationships. (COVID-19, enregisterment, scale) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book "Emotions and Storms" issued in Baghdad in 1952, the Iraqi poet Sheikh Ali al-Sharqi 1894-1964 distinguishes himself from his peers among the poets of his time, and from the poets who followed him in dealing with emotional states in their subject matter and style. The poet tries to deal with human concerns, portraying his troubled, persecuted self, who found himself imprisoned in a prison, until he became a nightmare suspended in a cage, and seemed to suffer from the theft of happiness, and live in confusion and loss. Thus, the poet continues to reveal various emotional states. In this research, an attempt is made to apply the various mechanisms and procedures adopted by the semiotics of the passions of Grimas and Fontane in their book (The Semiotics of the Passions from the States of Things to the States of the Soul, 1991). This research also benefits from the readings of J. K. Cookie in his book (The Pursuit of Meaning, 1997), and is interested in the views of Dennis Bert Arn in his book (Literary Semiotics, 2000). This research reveals the connotations carried by the passions in the poems of Al-Sharqi, showing the mechanisms of action of emotions and how to produce their meanings, as well as monitoring the extent of the influence of these emotions in the formation of different connotations. This research pays attention to emotions, ways of achieving them, and clarifying their ability to generate hidden tendencies, which constitute an entry point for identifying emotional states that the self shows before the significance is formed in the cognitive and deliberative dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging in the wake of the broad paradigm of semiotics in discourses in the human sciences in France in the 1960s, and from other developments and emergent tendencies in philosophy and critical theory, a cluster of works in French thought of the 1970s, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jean-François Lyotard, and Roland Barthes, investigate the liminal spaces and dynamic relations between sense, sound, and noise. Depending on the angle adopted, these investigations bear upon the relations between articulated sound and noise; language and sound, the formed and the unformed, the coded and the non-coded, sound and music, sound and silence, and other formulations of acoustic liminality. This article brings to light how noise is an operative concept across this material; I argue for its pertinence to the question of the "mental state of noise" as elaborated by Steven Sands and John Ratey in their seminal piece "The Concept of Noise," and then critically assessed by Cécile Malaspina in The Epistemology of Noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much attention has been paid to the introduction of a culturally responsive curriculum in early childhood education in our increasingly globalized society to support young children of diverse cultural and linguistic (CLD) backgrounds. With the rise of twenty-first century concepts of what literacy means in the digital age, traditional literacy practices that have relied primarily on print-based texts have been also challenged. To response to these imperatives, this qualitative case study presents a lived story of a grade one teacher who implemented multiliteracies pedagogy in her classroom for young culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children. Our findings show that applying multiliteracies pedagogy not only motivated the teacher to value her CLD students' diverse semiotic resources as available designs but also transformed the way the teacher integrated technology in literacy teaching. We end this paper with the discussion of implications of integration of multiliteracies pedagogy to technology-enhanced literacy teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is twofold. It first aims at clarifying and developing an important tension within enactivism concerning the relations between intentionality and content, once representationalism has been abandoned. In which sense(s) do enactivists (still) say that intentionality is contentful and not contentful? Secondly, it puts this tension in perspective with two paradigmatic ways of defining the relations between intentional states and their objects: Husserl’s theory of intentionality in the Logical Investigations, and Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic semiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The area concept may appear in a wide range of problem situations. The representations used (geometrical, numerical and algebraic) in such situations entail particular practices that condition the partial area meanings. Thus, this study aims to characterize the partial area meanings mobilized in the resolution of area tasks. Each of the area partial meanings is characterized by a configuration of mathematical objects, which compromised the resolution process through semiotic functions. A top-down / bottom-up approach is implemented to identify these mathematical objects and the relationship between them. First, an analysis of the specialized literature on learning area concept is carried out in order to make an initial characterization of the partial area meanings. Subsequently, an analysis of resolutions of students aged 13–14 years old of a set of area tasks allows the first partial area meanings to be refined. The results showed three partial area meanings, which emerge from a detailed analysis of the mathematical practices involved in the students' resolutions. The relationships between the partial area meanings allow a better understanding of the global area meaning in a task-solving context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several contributors to the collected volume, Interactive World, Interactive God, by Carol Albright, et al., examine emergence as a type of interaction from scientific and theological perspectives. In reviewing, two extensions are proposed. Systems theory can organize those investigations, and the phenomena they study, into a multilevel architecture built upon distinctions between weak emergence (as explaining and constraining) and strong emergence (as introducing new types of causation). Pragmatic philosophy (and semiotics) can further nuance the investigation of the human mind into behaviors, language, and abstract ideas to clarify characterizations of self and soul with respect to symbolic language and spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to analyze the different forms that nontextual narrative takes related to the fundamental dimensions that characterize the video game medium, namely interactivity and game design. After providing a general definition of narrative and clarifying how its role is discussed within the scientific debate it will be proposed a semiotic model of analysis for each component and how narrative organizes each of them. Finally, two works will be analyzed where it is evident how the relationship between narrative and game design/interaction, taking into consideration the proposed models for analyzing the medium, defines not only the work itself but also the relationship with the user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a short overview of the newly published four-volume anthology edited by Jamin Pelkey et al. titled Bloomsbury Semiotics, with a critical reflection upon the disciplinary status of general semiotics today. The paper proposes methods and principles for future semiotic research and observes the overall trajectory of semiotics during the age of the business model of university life and the marginalization of the humanities. The paper supports the major position of Bloomsbury Semiotics, which is to conceive of semiotics as the most effective platform for revitalizing the humanities in cooperation with hard science, and the reintegration of Peirce and Saussure as the theoretical bedrock of general semiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages the question of the extended mind hypothesis, specifically in terms of memory and mnemonics. I use the case of an external object which is set to trigger a memory internally, but is not the memory, to explore the idea of extension versus distribution. I use the example of tzitzit, which is a garment worn by observant Jewish men, where is states in scripture that seeing the tassels attached to the garment are supposed to trigger a specific memory. The point of the essay is that extension is merely a metaphysical commitment, and that this commitment leads to some ethical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While digital multimodal composing, underpinned by a critical literacies approach, provides opportunities for students to make informed semiotic choices and voice concerns about social issues, there is limited research exploring how digital multimodal composing is employed to interrogate and challenge the entanglements of language, immigration status and power. This article explores how 23 primary‐aged English as an Additional Language (EAL) students (Years 3–6) engaged in digital multimodal composing, in the context of an after‐school multiliteracies programme in one Australian school. Conceptualising critical literacies as a bridge to access and transform codes of power, the article explores how the participating students selected and used different semiotic resources for their digital texts while challenging and redefining dominant discourses based on their lived experiences and interests. The study found that both students and pre‐service teachers found value in students having access to digital technologies and experimenting with a range of multimodal and multilingual resources to create digital texts, which reflected cultural and linguistic identities. The findings illustrate how the creation of digital multimodal and multilingual texts allows for opportunities for students to reposition themselves as knowledgeable and active meaning‐makers with strategic support from teachers and peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This understanding of paralanguage contributes significantly to the conceptualization of paralanguage and provides researchers with a useful point of departure for analyzing paralanguage in relation to spoken language. Using SFL theory, the book describes meaning-making via paralanguage while considering the different types of meaning at play in sonovergent and semovergent paralanguages. Chapter 1 first introduces the objects of study and SFL theoretical parameters underpinning the description of paralanguage, and then briefly previews the model of paralanguage as contained in the book. [Extracted from the article]

Guan Mao (headgear) was one of the most complicated parts of the clothing system in the Qing Dynasty, and its wearing occasions, time, and matching clothing were strictly regulated in the Qing Dynasty. Generally speaking, Guan Mao in the Qing Dynasty were divided into formal one (for formal occasions) and Bian Mao (for informal occasions) according to different occassions, men’s Guan Mao and women’s Guan Mao according to gender, and winter hats (warm hats) and summer hats (cool hats) according to the season. It is documented that the Liang Chao Guan and Jia Chao Yi were usually used in spring, while the Nuan Chao Guan and Yuan Pi Chao Yi were used in autumn. Warm hats included winter Chao Fu Guan, winter Ji Fu Guan, winter Chang Fu Guan, and winter Xing Fu Guan. Because of their unique shape and gorgeous decoration, they became an important tool for Qing Dynasty officials to distinguish their status and rank in winter. In addition, they also had cultural connotations that symbolized the ruling ideology and national characteristics of the Manchu aristocratic class. At present, some studies on warm hats mainly focus on the cultural system and related aspects, but there are still some gaps in the systematic research on the shape and structure of different warm hats. According to the relevant theories from the semiotics perspective, we applied the double evidence method and the comparative research method herein. By observing some collectors’ physical collections, mainly including men’s and women’s warm hats in the Qing Dynasty, we conducted all-round information collection, measurement and drawing, and structural restoration research. On this basis, we used the method of cross-corroboration of images and documents and also conducted multi-dimensional analysis on the establishment of the system, specimens, and structural maps of warm hats in the Qing Dynasty. Through the research, three important conclusions are drawn. Firstly, by measuring and restoring the structure and workmanship of many different styles of warm hats, we find the cutting structure and craftsmanship of hats and helmets gradually changed: their early style was four pieces of the same (similar tile-shaped) fabric spliced into a whole, and later gradually evolved into two trapezoidal fabrics, and eight darts were folded on top of the two trapezoidal fabrics, which is the so-called “folded fabric becoming utensils”. Then, we drew the structure and process diagram of the hat and helmet. This change in the shape of warm hats implies the increase and decrease of multi-ethnic symbols, which reflects the changes in the ruling class in the Qing Dynasty, and provides some empirical evidence for the study of national concepts and changes in the customs of the times. Secondly, the shape of warm hats in the Qing Dynasty reflects the symbolic meaning of the different cultures of Manchu and Han. A complete symbol system was established, with three levels of national identity, national characteristics and identity calibration. By strengthening the national symbols in the warm hat, the national identity was established and the sense of ethnic identity was enhanced. Thirdly, from the perspective of material culture, this study is of crucial empirical significance for exploring the cultural phenomena in the clothing system of the Qing Dynasty reflected behind the warm hat system, and for exploring the cultural integration of multi-ethnic clothing in this period; from the perspective of cultural history, it is also of significant reference value for the study of the consciousness of the Chinese nation community and the study of Chinese traditional clothing culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In taking up the mantle of 'green,' criminologists concerned with environmental harm have succeeded in shifting criminology away from its anthropocentric focus on crime and harms committed to and by humans. While this framework has generated a large body of scholarship, it has also occluded important discussions about the significance of race and racial ideologies in the ongoing construction of crime, even—and especially—when depictions of crime do not explicitly reference humans. This article employs semiotic analysis of media images of eco-crime to demonstrate that the ways in which we see eco-crime—like ways of seeing crime more generally—construct images of race and contribute to the establishment of racialized relations. By placing eco-crime in a visual context and deconstructing the implicit and explicit racial imagery of eco-crime, I prompt criminologists to consider more critically issues of race and racialization in green criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. The author explains the notion of archival processes and material, showcases the catalogue of archival values, and deconstructs the relationship between archival material and act, history, identity, and other signifieds. The value of archival material directs the user's interpretation of various signifieds, creating chains of supplements and forming possibilities for usage, understanding, and accepting archival material. Approach/methodology/design. The author analyses the definition of archival material, appraisal, values of archival material, and related archival processing tasks. The author uses archival literature and dictionaries to analyse the appraisal, acquisition, arrangement, and description process. The author uses the literature of various disciplines and sciences, such as anthropology, archival science, deconstruction, linguistics, logic and semiotics, to analyse the notion of value and conduct deconstruction and semiotic analysis of archival material. Results. The author explains the archival appraisal process and the relationships with other processes in archives and defines and categorises the notion of the value of archival material. The paper also showcases the deconstruction of conceivable relationships of appraised archival material and its use and the mechanism of functioning of archival material as a semiotic sign. Originality/value. The originality of the paper consists of an additional reflection on archival terms related to appraisal, archival material and the interpretative potential that comes from its values for different uses and users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]