Volume 14, Issue 4

The awakening or crisis of individual self-consciousness has been frequently included in the study of online selfie culture, while the reinforcement of public self-consciousness, the strengthening of civil confidence, and even the resurgence of national confidence can be detected from its popularity when studied with the application of Lotman’s cultural semiotics, especially the unique dialogic mechanism as well as Lotman’s viewpoint on the space–time structure of the semiosphere. With dialogue situation created and meaning generated, textual dialogues help the construction of self-consciousness through the “I–I” and “I–s/he” system; cultural dialogues make it ultimately welcomed by mainstream culture, which embodies the enhancement of mass self-consciousness. In the semiosphere, selfies reconstruct our self-consciousness in the time–space structure of cultures. The shift of self-consciousness from low-profile to high-profile represents the booming confidence of the Chinese. As a work of art is a finite model of an infinite universe, a “picture of the world,” selfies are also the pictures of growing national confidence.

The attention to semiotic research in Japan and exchanges concerning this within China's academic circles have demonstrated different characteristics at different stages of the development of this field. In the 1980s and 1990s, academic articles relevant to this research mainly focused on the review of Japanese semiotic studies, with frequent exchanges in the academic circles of both countries. However, since the beginning of the new millennium, Chinese scholars of semiotics have begun to apply semiotic theories to Japanese Studies and have obtained a series of concrete and solid academic achievements, shedding new light on Japanese Studies in China.

Literati landscape painting was the mainstream of Chinese art in the Yuan dynasty; its keynote is the idea of yi , literally, escaping for freedom, which is represented by the notion of reclusiveness at the conceptual level and the notion of spontaneity at the formal level. Based on an analytical interpretation of the development of Yuan literati landscape painting at the two levels, this essay intends to make a point that, under the Mongol rule, reclusiveness and spontaneity became the artistic pursuit of Chinese artists in the period from late 13th to late 14th century. Employing Yuri Lotman’s theory of “semiosphere” in this study, I argue that the blueprint for the solitary world is designed by the early Yuan literati artist Zhao Mengfu, and this world is constructed by the later Yuan literati artists Huang Gongwang and Ni Zan, among others. I further describe the structure of this world as having two levels and three concentric circles, with reclusiveness as the signified central idea and spontaneous brushwork as its signifier. I then conclude that the interaction of the reclusive idea and spontaneous style semioticizes the structure, and completes the construction of the unique artistic world of Yuan literati landscape painting.

In this paper, the idea of constructing a new society in George Orwell’s 1984 is analyzed in the context of the Paris School’s semiotics trajectory. Saussurean legacy, which heavily sheds light on the semiotic conception of the school proposed by Greimas, asserts the significance of dichotomies for signs to gain their meaning. Accordingly, the study is grounded on the desired and non-desired contrariety to make the analysis with the semiotic square meaningful. It is possible to encounter the traces of the proposed idea pertaining to the struggle of forming an ideal society at all levels of meaning, predominantly at the deep level as the proposed idea represents the elementary meaning of the narrative, throughout the text. Considering the approach, desired society gains its meaning in the face of the non-desired one relativistically. Regarding the opposition theory of Saussure, what is good for the Party is not supposed to be good for the Opponents. For this reason, the idea of creating society is on the battleground, as there is an uphill fight between the ruling Party and the Opponents. The formation of desired society is revealed thanks to the semiotic square by focusing on both positive and negative transition processes. The really interesting aspect that we encountered is the vicious unended cycle and the war that will never end between the stated groups within the framework of the ideology/axiology perspective.

As one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature, The Journey to the West narrates a legendary Buddhist pilgrimage. Until now, the religious conversion in the novel remains much less explored by academia. We propose an innovative approach to addressing this shortfall by conducting a corpus-based investigation into the characterization of the protagonist “Great Sage.” We use the corpus tools BFSU PowerConc 1.0 and LancsBox v.2.0.1 to calculate and visualize the collocation networks of Great Sage: for one thing, to contextualize the complex interactions between him and the external environment; for another, to define and compare different phases of the character’s evolution. The collocational networks are derived by means of a quantitative approach, i.e. a mutual information (MI) score with collocation cutoff values. This lays an objective foundation for a subsequent qualitative interpretation of how the protagonist’s identity is forged in his conversion. Further, some associated literary and theological scholarships are woven into our text-based analysis.

Yiheng Zhao is an eminent scholar of narratology and semiotics and a distinguished professor at Sichuan University. In this interview, Professor Zhao describes how semio-narratology is rising in China. He talks about his lifelong studies of form, including narratology, semiotics, and the theory of meaning, which can be called his “meaning trilogy,” corresponding to his three books, A general narratology , Semiotics , and Philosophical semiotics: The coming into being of the world of meaning . Zhao especially introduces his insightful ideas on the development of narratology and social semiotics and how he applies semiotic theory to narratology to build the interdisciplinary discipline of a general narratology, aka semio-narratology. Meanwhile Professor Zhao also shares his research methods and experience. He believes that scholars have to keep making breakthroughs and innovations and each make their own way.