Yuri Lotman on metaphors and culture as self-referential semiospheres
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Winfried Nöth
Winfried Nöth (b. 1944). His research interests include general semiotics, Peirce's semiotics, semiotics of the media, semiotic linguistics, and pictorial semiotics. His recent publications include
Origins of Semiosis (1994);Semiotics of the Media (1997);Crisis of Representation (with C. Ljungberg, 2003);Imagen: Comunicación, semiótica y medios (with L. Santaella, 2003); andComunicação e semiótica (with L. Santaella, 2004). HisHandbook of Semiotics has been translated into Croatian, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and Bahasa Indonesian.
Abstract
Yuri Lotman describes metaphors and culture as semiospheres or ‘semiotic spaces.’ This account of metaphors is self-referential insofar as it is itself expressed in the form of a metaphor. Moreover, according to Lotman, cultures in general are self-referential systems insofar as they tend to define themselves and evince isomorphic semiotic spaces at mutually inclusive levels and metalevels. Lotman describes semiospheres on the basis of dualisms, levels, stratifications, and spatial opposites that exemplify the Tartu semiotician's theory of the duality of the discreteness of semiotic spaces and their verbal representations versus the continuity of physical space and of pictorial representation.
About the author
Winfried Nöth (b. 1944). His research interests include general semiotics, Peirce's semiotics, semiotics of the media, semiotic linguistics, and pictorial semiotics. His recent publications include Origins of Semiosis (1994); Semiotics of the Media (1997); Crisis of Representation (with C. Ljungberg, 2003); Imagen: Comunicación, semiótica y medios (with L. Santaella, 2003); and Comunicação e semiótica (with L. Santaella, 2004). His Handbook of Semiotics has been translated into Croatian, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and Bahasa Indonesian.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- The literal, the metaphorical, and the price of semiotics: An essay on philosophy of language and the doctrine of signs
- Meaning, metaphor, and interpretation: Modeling new worlds
- Creation: Algorithmic, organicist, or emergent metaphorical process?
- The stuff metaphor is made on
- The sense implication hypothesis and idealized cognitive models
- Metaphor, concept formation, and esthetic semeiosis in a Peircean perspective
- A review of prominent theories of metaphor and metaphorical reference revisited
- Metaphor and poetic logic in Vico
- Yuri Lotman on metaphors and culture as self-referential semiospheres
- Metaphors we teach by: An embodied cognitive analysis of No Child Left Behind
- Learning theories as metaphorical discourse: Reflections on second language learning and constructivist epistemology
- Basic kinds of iconic metaphor in the theatre and other iconic arts
- Approaches to metaphor: Structure, classifications, cognate phenomena
- Metaphors we die by
- Waterproof fire stations? Conceptual schemata and cognitive operations involved in compound constructions
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- The literal, the metaphorical, and the price of semiotics: An essay on philosophy of language and the doctrine of signs
- Meaning, metaphor, and interpretation: Modeling new worlds
- Creation: Algorithmic, organicist, or emergent metaphorical process?
- The stuff metaphor is made on
- The sense implication hypothesis and idealized cognitive models
- Metaphor, concept formation, and esthetic semeiosis in a Peircean perspective
- A review of prominent theories of metaphor and metaphorical reference revisited
- Metaphor and poetic logic in Vico
- Yuri Lotman on metaphors and culture as self-referential semiospheres
- Metaphors we teach by: An embodied cognitive analysis of No Child Left Behind
- Learning theories as metaphorical discourse: Reflections on second language learning and constructivist epistemology
- Basic kinds of iconic metaphor in the theatre and other iconic arts
- Approaches to metaphor: Structure, classifications, cognate phenomena
- Metaphors we die by
- Waterproof fire stations? Conceptual schemata and cognitive operations involved in compound constructions
