Volume 2008, Issue 171

This is the fifth in a series of papers on an algebra, derived from mythology, that can model symbolic processes. The most significant difference from traditional mathematics is that multiplication is defined as association. Herein, the assumption of linear sequence in mathematics is examined, and found of limited necessity. Numerical counting is similarly examined, and a basis for numbers is proposed. Using mythic algebra, numbers are deconstructed into a partially non-additive prehistoric origin.

In this article, I draw on Robert Merton's notion of role set theory and his corollary concept of sociological ambivalence as the background for examining a discursive conflict between prosecuting attorney and expert witness in a criminal trial. I hope to demonstrate how the participants display an orientation to ambivalent norms and counternorms in the situated details of interactional and embodied practices. Although these practices certainly do not yield a factual order in the orthodox Durkheimian sense, they do perform a multimodal integration of verbal and bodily conduct in the sociocultural order as participants strive to articulate disturbances in the projected role set — as conflict in the discursive order is superimposed onto represented order. More specifically, rather than attack the expert's physiological theory, the prosecuting attorney attempts to impeach credibility on the grounds that he is an ‘academic’ rather than private physician. I examine not only how the prosecutor attacks the expert along the fault lines of this represented conflict but also how both participants contextualize legal identities and ground epistemological claims in the verbal and visual particulars of legal interaction.

This article examines how a semiotic model can show symbolic mediation between sign-event and life-event through symbol-mediated interpreting activity, introduces the Vygotskyan concept of symbol, and thus contributes to overcoming the demarcation between dyadic and triadic conception of symbol Three types of semiotic model are introduced: a representational semiotics, an indicative semiotics, and an activity-semiotics. The three systems are correlated in a triad and, in particular, activity semiotics is positioned as Peircean symbol in a Third, mediating representational structure with indicative structure. In relation to mediation and interpretation, a dialogic process of sign relations is discussed: icon, index, and symbol, through which indexical signs are emphasized, enabling the symbolic structure to be dynamic.

The production of meaning from visual messages has been largely uninvestigated in the Arab world, particularly in such visually intensive areas as advertising, even though the question is of tremendous importance to designers of advertising messages. The reason could be the difficulty of capturing visual meaning and the lack of structured research approaches to code and categorize information related to advertising. This article investigates the practices used in billboards and store banners, and how the meanings of the images and texts in these advertisements are interpreted by university students in Jordan. A population of one-hundred senior English major students at university level were involved in this study. The data for this study consists of a representative sample of three billboards and store banners out of a population of twenty advertisements collected from major cities in Jordan. Each of these represents one or more discursive practices. The analysis consists of three stages: description, interpretation, and explanation. Three main practices have been identified: metaphoric representation, code- mixing, and defamiliarization.

We propose to analyze identity, freedom, and answerability in a semiotic key; that is, from the perspective of the science of signs. Individual and community identity alike may be governed by a mono-logic or by a dia-logic. The difference is profound and pervasive. Global semiotics in particular (a trend that in modern times extends from Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Welby to Charles Morris and Thomas A. Sebeok) may contribute to a critique of monologism. However, the assumptions and implications of this new approach to semiotics are external to traditional philosophy. This leads to the need for a new philosophical founding of semiotics. From this point of view, a contribution may come from those contemporary French authors who have contributed to a critique of Western thought such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas. The focus of the present essay is on Levinas in relation to the semiotic perspective delineated with developments in the direction of the problem of identity, freedom, and answerability.

Returning to my monograph of 1996, Subjectivité et alterité dans la philosophie de Emmanuel Lévinas , I intend to illustrate an issue that is central in life and thought in today's world: the possibility that self has of justifying itself before the other. This possibility subtends the constitution of identity in relation to the individual, class, nation, and community. As regards Western thought, all its culture is a justification towards others. Peoples inhabiting the so-called developed world (15% of the world population) still succeed in justifying themselves in the face of peoples inhabiting the underdeveloped world (85% of the world population), with all necessary means. The reason of identity is reason against the other. But for how long can this situation last? At a certain point it will be necessary to answer to the other not only for self but also for the other him/herself.

This article deals with the problem of understanding semiosis and meaning in cognitive systems. Towards this aim, I argue for a cognitive approach, which is framed in terms of a non-standard two-factor account, and according to which both external and internal information are non-independent aspects of meaning, thus contributing as a whole in determining its nature. To overcome the difficulties stemming from standard approaches, I put forward a theoretical scheme that derives a cognitive level characterization of semiosis from the definition of a suitable representation space endowed with a set of transformations. In order to show the viability of this view, I discuss a computational implementation of such a theoretical scheme by a suitable neural network architecture. Numerical simulations show that similar representations are developed by different instances of the model as a consequence of facing a similar semantic task. This fact demonstrates the relevance of a cognitive level approach to the problem of the social construction of meaning and culture, thus allowing to model social and environmental influences and providing the building blocks of a socio-cognitive characterization of the notion of semiosphere.

If a photograph is considered an index in Peirce's sense, it makes reference to a single object (the one that was photographed) and provides some knowledge about it. Can this knowledge be extended to other similar objects which were not photographed? Is this extension limited, and how? It is argued that such an extension is possible and permissible only if the observed similarity is defined as belongingness to the same fuzzy set, where the word ‘fuzzy’ is intended in accordance with Zadeh's set theory. The relation between a photograph and its object may be called ‘indication’; the relation between the same photograph and other objects belonging to the same fuzzy set may be called ‘denotation.’

In this article I examine the science of the alien, or xenology for its contribution to semiotics. As a subfield of phenomenology, xenology emerged in the Husserlian theory of intersubjectivity when, in his late period, Husserl performed a transition from the other as an analogue of the self to the alien as a non-analogical structure. The transition came with singling out four alien modalities — children, animals, foreigners, and the insane — as the Limit-Subjects in possession of their own liminal worlds. Following the argument for the continuous relationship between phenomenology and semiotics, I examine the possibility of enriching the phenomenological theory of the alien through a semiotic intervention. I arrange for the latter with Gilles Deleuze who, owing to his association to both disciplines, helps me create a semiotic theory of the alien. In this model, the original alien modalities operate on the level of signification, thus building on the Husserlian investigations of how we experience alien-worlds with an elaboration of their signifying effects.

In this article, I demonstrate the phenomenal role that fashion, as a form of communication, plays within contemporary society specifically in television media. This paper makes use of semiotic and fashion theory in order to analyze the popular television show ‘ Sex and the City .’ Despite its reputation as an innovative program that allows women a distinct ‘voice’ within a male dominated society, ‘ Sex and the City ,’ reinforces gender-based stereotypes with the use of fashion. This article is divided into three sections. First, a brief history and definition of fashion is provided in order to establish a basis for analysis. Second, the significance of fashion and branding is outlined. Third, ‘ Sex and the City ’ is examined in detail. Notions about how fashion contributes to the overall character development are discussed in relation to how the show perpetuates gender-based and cultural stereotypes.

In recent years, the so-called ‘meme’ concept, originally introduced by Richard Dawkins and modelled analogously after the phenomenon of gene, has aroused much discussion. There have also been attempts to develop a systematic discipline of ‘memetics’ upon this notion, and suggestions that this opens up unforeseen possibilities for studying human culture in a new way, as compatible with biological evolution. This article argues that these attempts are misguided. The meme is a new word but not a new concept, it is only a new version of the traditional semiotic concept of sign. More pointedly, the meme is not merely an old idea in new clothing, it is in all important respects an inferior alternative to the semiotic sign. The consequence of this is that the suggested memetics would leave open the cleavage between the study of nature and culture that semiotics traditionally has attempted to close.

The pervasiveness of mass media and our dependence on it in contemporary life suggest that special skills are necessary in order to understand the nature of media and its effects on the interpretation of issues and events that happen outside the scope of an individual's experience. This essay explores the need to develop a semiotic method designed to promote media literacy. This method must be intuitive, use common language, and appeal to contemporary cultural values. The complexities of the language and concepts of semiotics engender resistance. The purpose of this project is to work toward a new taxonomy of semiotics by taking complex ideas from various theories that can be adapted into a simple yet practical method for media analysis.

There has been a wide range of semiotic analysis regarding literary texts. The present study, as far as literature is concerned, focuses on Umberto Eco's fourth novel Baudolino (2000), taking it as a typical example of multi-volume texts that seem to demand a careful approach. So, through this study, the analyst — in order to distinguish the preferred to the scientific reading — may use the common and rather traditional semiotic tool of isotopies, projecting it into Greimas' Generative Grammar, and on the way meaning is articulated in associative networks. Thus, it is examined whether this algorithmic confrontation leads to a multiscale analysis, with its bi-dimensionality verifying the concept of intertextuality, as conceived by Kristeva (1974, 1980). More specifically, the study methodologically passes through the theoretical concept of isotopies, as presented by various scholars, to carry on with the homogeneity traced with the associative networks. Next, the literary extracts from the original text show whether meaning can be anchored in phases, revealing how typology is related to topology (Lemke 2000).

This article begins by briefly examining the history of the comparative method underpinning historical linguistics. It then goes on to show how and why the laws grounding this method were formulated in egregiously unscientific ways, and why adhering to those laws has prevented scholars in many disciplines from recognizing the botanically related foot, leg, and other metaphors that existed in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) ancestor of Indo-European (IE) languages. Finally, the paper shows how the PIE lexicon can be reconstructed far more logically and parsimoniously by ignoring these alleged laws and using figurative associations to cognate the many words this lexicon yielded.

The article attempts to explain literary Décadence, a literary phenomenon of the mid- to late-nineteent century, by applying analytical categories to it that are derived from Umwelt theory. Having outlined the theoretical approach, which centres upon the concept of Lebenswelt, it is applied it to Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Ein Brief. I shall show that what is presented in this text is the collapse of the Lebenswelt as well as an attempt to rebuild it through conscious efforts. My claim that this is precisely what lies at the root of Décadence as a literary phenomenon will be put to a test in the subsequent attempt to explain essential features of Décadent writing.

The question of complex systems is relatively new for critics today. Analyzing complex systems in Renaissance texts shows that the Christian kabbalistical concept of harmonia mundi led to an aesthetical development, reflecting the worldview of harmonious parallel worlds. Failure to perceive the esoteric text uniting apparently contradicting themes has often led Renaissance scholars to elaborate a theory of the instability of atmospheres characterizing the English Baroque. This article gives an example of a complex system in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra revealing that the Christian kabbalistical Hercules unifies contradicting metaphors and intertexts of the play, and reintegrates this work in a form of semantic stability more in harmony with the aesthetics of its time. In the case of postmodern literature, contradictory intertexts appear as a device to deconstruct all values and logic previously established. With the study of a text structured by the optical questions around the refraction of light, this paper shows that in the case of Nabokov, the unifying system of apparently contradicting semantic systems is the underlying logic of scientific theory. In Nabokov's text, failing to perceive the fundamental intertext of scientific debate leads one to assimilate Nabokov's writing to a form of postmodern deconstruction. Both cases studied tend to show a continuity of a form of aesthetics through different epistemological eras.

Ideophony is a neglected aspect of investigations of world poetic traditions. This article looks at the use of ideophony in a variety of Navajo poetic genres. Examples are given from Navajo place-names, narratives, and songs. A final example involves the use of ideophony in contemporary written Navajo poetry. Using the work of Woodbury, Friedrich, and Becker it is argued that ideophones are an example of form-dependent expression, poetic indeterminacy, and the inherent exuberances and deficiencies of translation and thus strongly resists translation. This fact becomes more relevant when understood in light of the current language shift from Navajo to English.

This article offers a detailed exploration of four types of differentiations on which Hjelmslev's semiotic model of language, developed in his Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1963 [1943]), is built: content-expression, form-substance-purport, system-process, and paradigm-syntagm. Each of these distinctions is explored in turn, and in this exploration it becomes clear how Hjelmslev defines his most important distinctions, namely, content-expression and form-substance-purport, which form the corner-stones of his stratified model of language, on different levels of abstraction. It is only by carefully considering his most abstract level of description, that the interaction between the different dimensions, and the nature of the ‘sign,’ which is explained by Hjelmslev as lying at the center of cross-cutting dimensions of differentiations, can be fully understood. The specific nature of Hjelmslev's theory is further fleshed out by relating his distinctions to Saussure's theory of language; and by further contextualizing his model, historiographically, in the framework of (1) the earlier study of the phonic side of language in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and (2) Barthes's later reinterpretation of one of Hjelmslev's most innovative concepts, namely, the connotative semiotic.

This analysis deals mainly with the reception of the film within and beyond the culture within which it originated, along the lines of Hans Robert Jauss's ‘Aesthetics of Reception.’ On the one hand, this ‘Wu-xia’ genre film, which is very popular in Chinese culture, set off a national and nationalistic fever in Taiwan, all the while stirring up controversies in the Chinese-speaking world. On the other hand, this same film that was quite foreign to Western culture nonetheless had a commercial success without precedent in France, all the while also inciting equally vehement contradictory reactions, for reasons totally alien to movie audiences from Chinese culture. Our analysis, which is centered on what in Chinese is called ‘qing-gong’ or, in a more or less scientific language, ‘the art of weightlessness,’ will attempt to get to the crux of these two systems of reference on which Chinese and French viewers depend. An examination and comparison of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix will lead us to the problem of the fabrication of the image of the perfect, supreme or even divine Superior Being, in both the Chinese and Western cultures.