Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
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Soo Meng, Jude Chua
Jude Chua Soo Meng (b. 1973) is an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University 〈jude.chua@nie.edu.sg 〉. His research interests include ethics, philosophy of education, semiotics, and jurisprudence. His publications include “Saving the teachers' soul: Exorcising the terrors of performativity” (2009); “Donald Schon, Herbert A. Simon, and the sciences of the artificial” (2009); “The price is right” (2009); and “Taking pictures with negative contrast: Edward Schillebeeckx OP, critical remembrance, and policy analysis as practical reason” (2010).
Abstract
“Language is ‘made for man’ and not man for language: he ought not to be its slave.” Thus writes Lady Victoria Welby. In this essay, I wish to explore in what sense that might be the case and why it is important that we take charge of the sign systems that would otherwise dictate our thinking. Drawing on Gunther Kress's distinction between the use and the Design of signs, I suggest that Welby's theory of significs and her emphasis on translating significantly gives us reasons to appreciate the need to Design signs that translate into meanings that have ethical import, are useful for engaging society, and are practiced critically. I compare her theory with John Finnis' quest for focal meanings, and argue in conclusion that professional education stands to benefit from adopting their method of clarifying and translating for the significant sense(s) of central terms in educational discourse.
About the author
Jude Chua Soo Meng (b. 1973) is an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University 〈jude.chua@nie.edu.sg〉. His research interests include ethics, philosophy of education, semiotics, and jurisprudence. His publications include “Saving the teachers' soul: Exorcising the terrors of performativity” (2009); “Donald Schon, Herbert A. Simon, and the sciences of the artificial” (2009); “The price is right” (2009); and “Taking pictures with negative contrast: Edward Schillebeeckx OP, critical remembrance, and policy analysis as practical reason” (2010).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
