Volume 2009, Issue 177

The objective of this article is to reflect on the application of Semiotics to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and interface analysis. To accomplish the objective the article presents an example of semiotic analysis of a blog interface but the methodology proposed, conveniently adapted, may be applied to any kind of digital interactive environment. The analysis reconstructs the interface sense production device (including the surface of the page and the link architecture), identifies implied users and exchange scenes of the blog and concludes with some reflections on interface evolution and hybridation. Finally, the article proposes future trends for a Semiotics of HCI.

Peirce's concept of the sign can be qualified in terms of inter-dependence, inter-relatedness, and inter-action, from icons to indices to symbols, from Firstness to Secondness to Thirdness, and with respect to sign generacy and degeneracy. This entails a contradictory complementary coalescence of signs, within a temporal-spatial flux and flow wherein everything is always becoming something other than what it was becoming. In this vein, the present article suggests that (1) topological models, (2) certain facets of twentieth-century science up to the present, and (3) avant-garde art — specifically, Cubism and the work of Mavrits C. Escher — when qualified by (4) a non-Boolean, non-linear, context-dependent, contradictory complementary lattice, which reveals (5) sign convergence and blending, or signs becoming signs, can offer (6) a synthetic account of the general semiosic process.

Contrary to recent claims arguing that specific social categories for communication exist, terms from a variety of languages of Indian societies and Western terms are reviewed. Both major families of languages are discussed as sets of terms for communication along with the problem of interpreting absence of evidence of lexemes and multiple meanings of lexems. We will show that among the Indian cultures the concept of communication has developed a variety of expressions with fine nuances. A specific situation for communication in general and terminology derived from it have to be considered for India with its rural and urban areas and multicultural diversity. The concepts communication and rhetoric are not genuinely Indian, but the contributions from Indian cultures show similarities to European ones; in particular, the aspect of oral communication and spirituality has developed a rich local vocabulary, and recent technologies find their expressions in English terminology (Thussu, Journal of Communication 48: 164–169, 1998). Examining the local concepts of communication in India, we will argue that the communicative facilities of the country can be separated into different channels that are divided by the classical distinction between orality and literacy, but also by the different languages that incorporate diverse cultural and religious concepts.

This essay assesses the potentials and limitations of using Peirce's trichotomies of sign classes for social analysis, first, by examining selective applications of the model that rely primarily on the Icon-Index-Symbol division and, second, by exploring several extensions that move beyond a strict interpretation of Peirce. While process and complexity are shown to be not as productive as hoped, metasemiotic metaphors of replication are examined as the key to the creative power of indexicality

Two fluted panels in Rouffignac Cave, France, appear highly ordered as opposed to other panels that appear haphazardly made. Is it possible to objectively establish that an intention to communicate thoughts and ideas lay behind the fluting of the two “ordered” panels? To help answer this, we apply a concept from communications theory called Zipf's Law, which can establish whether data represent “efficient communication” or are random. Applying the law to the two panels (using the number of fingers in each fluted hand as the variable) shows that the two panels may constitute efficient communication. We conclude by discussing related matters, including the idea of Paleolithic notational markings.

In order to gain the highest grade of clarity of his concepts, the polyhistor Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) put forth a pragmatic maxim. Over the years, Peirce defined this maxim in many different ways. However, in the late definitions by the mature Peirce, we get a glimpse of a maxim, which has to serve the self-controlled scientific drive for growth in the concrete reasonableness; it follows that the maxim is endowed with a special normative function. In the following, we will try to understand this special normative function of the maxim in connection to Peirce's realistic teleological metaphysics and the idea of summum bonum.

This article uses general semantics and somatics to evaluate the age-appropriate use of violent first-person shooter computer games. The paper argues that the natural development sequence for children and teens is from physiologic language to natural language, and from somatic-emotional patterning to higher level cognitive abstractions. Reversing this natural sequence can create psychotic breaks in which semantics become separated from somatic reality. References are made to Alfred Korzybski's examples of semantic breakdowns in Science and sanity (1933) and to discussion of the role of mirror neurons in somatic-emotional development (Ramachandran and Oberman, Scientific American 295: 62–69, 2006). Seung-Hui Cho of the Virginia Tech shooting spree, who compulsively played computer games, is used as a case study.

This article presents a cross-cultural analysis of English and Chinese love poems. While the English poems are characteristically expository, topic-centered, direct, passionate, abstract, elaborate, infinite, philosophical, religious, reader-based, and repetitive, the Chinese poems are descriptive, correlative, indirect, subtle, concrete, simple, visual, metaphorical, non-religious, writer-based, and non-repetitive. The social and cultural factors accounting for the English poems include (a) a high value on individuality, self-expression, and imagination, (b) Aristotle's rhetorical principle: “State your case and prove it,” and (c) the role of Christianity in the life of western people. The Chinese poems find social and cultural explanations in (a) doctrines of Confucius that deny the importance of individuality and self expression, (b) the rhetorical principle Yi2(“use”) Jing3(“things”) Su2(“express”) Qing1(“feelings”) (i.e., “to express one's feelings in terms of natural things”), (c) the rhetorical tradition of being non-repetitive, and (d) the goal of a man's life that centers on the attainment of official rank rather than belief in religion.