Volume 2011, Issue 184

Before someone opens her mouth to speak, her clothes are available for interpretation. This means that the way a person dresses provides the first information that we are presented with about her. This paper discusses the many ways in which people create and exchange meanings in communication through dress. In this case, dress serves both instrumental and communication functions. In addition to protecting the body from the elements, it also conveys socially relevant information via cultural categories, cultural processes, and individual meaning. All of these are discussed using the Nigerian setting as a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to articulate the central issues and controversies that currently dominate the study of the relationship between language and brain and, as a result, we will attempt to fundamentally redefine the way language is viewed by the neurosciences by recasting traditional linguistic definitions of human language. In order to achieve these goals, we will take into account (1) important aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neurofunctionality, (2) the role of imaging technologies (especially PET and fMRI) in formulating specific questions for testing hypotheses about language and the brain, including what these technologies can and cannot do, and (3) a discussion of the myths about the neurological representations of human language. Our conclusions will take into account evidence on aphasias and medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage that directly affects the way we understand the relationship between language, brain, and memory.

Past research has suggested that those spontaneous movements of the human hand made during talk convey significant semantic information over and above the speech, at least when the unit of speech analyzed is the individual clause. However, no previous research has tested whether this information is represented linguistically elsewhere in the narrative (or is directly inferable from the rest of the narrative). The first study, reported here, uses an experimental procedure to identify which specific imagistic gestures add semantic information to the speech. The second study analyzes whether the specific gestures still do this when respondents hear the whole narrative. It was found that two thirds of the semantic information, thought to be carried by the gestures, is, in fact, represented in the linguistic discourse, or is inferable from it. However, one third of the additional semantic information contained in the gestures is not represented linguistically in the narrative nor is it inferable from it. In other words, a proportion of the imagistic gestures that accompany speech are absolutely critical to semantic communication.

This paper presents a proposal for the description of gesture phases derived from articulatory characteristics observable in their execution. Based on the results of an explorative study examining the execution of gesture phases of ten German speakers, the paper presents two sets of articulatory features, i.e., distinctive and additional features by which gesture phases are characterized from a context-independent and context-sensitive point of view. It will be shown that gesture phases show a particular distribution of the features, thus distinguishing one phase from another. Furthermore, changes in the execution of phases in linear successions can be described by means of features. Contrary to other accounts, whose focus on gesture phases is primarily in relation to speech and/or adjacent phases, this proposal concentrates on the visible physical characteristics of gesture phases.

From three simple Peircean semeiotic principles, the general formula is derived for the number of definable sign-types from the number of semeiotic trichotomies to be used in defining the sign-types. If k is the number of such trichotomies, then [(k + 1) (k + 2)]/2 is the number of sign-types definable by appealing to them. The significance of the derivation lies in its setting constraints on particular detailed theories of sign-types.

This paper presents a qualitative-quantitative method of analysis for semiotic narrative, applied to a case study of the image projected by immigrants in Spanish television series. The results contain five narrative prototypes in which immigrant characters tend to appear in Spanish television series. We consider the possible effects of recurring narrative settings on the construction of a public image of immigration in Spain.

The role and value of diagrams in advancing human knowledge throughout history is evident in the literature. However, persistent evidence from the research and practitioner communities from across a range of disciplines points to difficulties and problems with understanding and using diagrams. Whether it is at the application level or as an abstract definition, our existing frameworks for understanding diagrams reduce the full meaning of diagrams to a single perspective or emphasis. This paper advocates placing multi-aspectual human functioning in a central role in the development of an enriched meta-approach to understanding diagrams. Two such aspects, namely, the spatial and symbolic, are essential to the understanding of diagrams across applications. The philosophical underpinnings and practical contributions of this approach to dealing with long standing problems of diagrams are discussed.

Fromental Halévy was thirty-six when his masterpiece, La Juive , a grand opera in five acts, was triumphantly produced at the Opéra (February 23, 1835), and at once secured for its author a European reputation. The opera was presented with unprecedented scenic splendor, the stage-setting alone having cost, it was said, 150,000 francs. La Juive (1835), with Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (1836), marked the defining expression of French Grand Opera. Both operas used highly controversial and sensitive historical material as the very fabric of their artistic medium. The explosive themes of religious and racial bigotry, leading to execution and massacre, were devised and sustained impressively by the playwright and librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), whose fables of intolerance and death seized the public imagination. They presented parables for reflection on contemporary times and the dangers posed to humanity by politics and religion, woven into themes such as Orthodoxy and Purity, Justice and Mercy, the Fire of Truth. In terms of historical background, theological implication, and purely human tragedy, the scenario of La Juive provides a depth and richness of semiotic discourse, a sustained exploration of a complex and many-faceted subject, whose caveats on social intolerance become only ever more topical and pertinent.

We use a graphic formalism to make explicit differences in the interpretation of temporal relations in natural-language text. Out of the panoply of computational representation methods for time or tense, we select Petri nets, and discuss why. We illustrate their potential for semantics and for sign theorists, by analyzing how some late antique and medieval exegeses understood the narrative of Moses and Pharaoh's magicians, and the former's rod swallowing up the rods of the other ones, once these rods had been turned into crocodiles or snakes. We extend the treatment to another situation concerning the semantics of eating and being eaten.

The question of being in today's global communication-production system concerns all life forms over the planet . Global semiotics describes life and semiosis as converging and in this framework faces the question of ontology. Three contexts for a critical approach to the study of signs include the socio-economic, the phenomenological, and the ontological. These are closely interconnected and in this paper are considered from the perspective of global semiotics and semioethics. Politics, war, communication, and subjectivity are critiqued in terms of a dialogic approach to life, signs, and human relations, where dialogism is not only viewed as a cultural but also a biosemiosic phenomenon implying detotalization and otherness beyond the logic of short-sighted identity.

Discourse topic is an intractable and inherently subjective notion making analysis problematic. This paper overcomes some of the problems by treating topic as a fuzzy concept and views discourse topics as sets of topic keywords. The study examines the identification of topic boundaries and topic keywords by informants and by four methods of analyzing topics — topical structure analysis, given-new progression, lexical analysis, and topic-based analysis. Comparing the findings from these four methods against those from the informants, it was found that given-new progression is the most valid method for identifying topic boundaries, and topic-based analysis is the most valid for identifying topic keywords. There are also notable differences in the types of keywords identified and the bases for identifying keywords between the methods and the informants.

For almost the entire twentieth century, semiotics, as well as the general trend of formalism, was rarely welcomed with enthusiasm in China. Its fortune started to change around the end of 1970s, but the road it took to arrive in China was tortuous. In the last two decades, however, semiotics has been enjoying an impressive rapid flourishing in China, mostly because of the drastic (post-)modernization of Chinese culture. This paper describes the achievements made by Chinese scholars working in different parts of this field, and concludes that, since there have now emerged some favorable conditions, much more could be expected from the younger generations of Chinese semioticians.

In this definitive overview of Victoria Welby's (1837–1912) contributions to sign theory through the Significs Movement, Susan Petrilli utilizes her extraordinary interpretive abilities to provide the reader with an overview of Welby's research and her contribution to the study of signs. In order to bring this monumental work to fruition, Petrilli spent time at the Welby Collection of the York University Archives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the Lady Welby Library, University of London, and The British Library in London. In addition to Petrilli's insightful analysis and elucidation of Welby's original works, she also provides the reader with selections from Welby's published writings as well the a significant amount of previously unpublished material located in the Welby Collection at York University. Petrilli's careful editing and cross-referencing of these materials contributes to a logical and revealing account of Welby's influential and voluminous work and the Significs Movement.