Volume 10, Issue 3

It took most of the 20 th century fully to establish semiotics as a thematic study of the role and action of signs not only in human culture and life but also in the whole environment that human animals share with all the other life forms that make up the biosphere of planet earth. In the early 20 th century investigators were inclined to restrict the action of signs to the realm of human culture and psychology, consistent with the ideas of modern philosophy that severely separates the world of humans from its surroundings supposed as “unknowable” in itself. This idealistic ne plus ultra was definitively transgressed and shattered by the collegial work of Thomas A. Sebeok, who not only established the framework for a “global semiotics” but also demonstrated unequivocally that the whole world of living things (the “biosphere”) cannot exist independently of the action of signs. As Sebeok put it, “semiosis is coextensive with life”. But there remains even so the further question: “Is life coextensive with semiosis?” For, from the demonstration that semiosis is essential for the existence of life, it does not follow that the existence of life is essential for there to be semiosis. It is this last proposition - wrongly taken by many (or most) proponents of biosemiotics today to be a logical consequent of the conclusion that life in its full extent depends upon semiosis - that I examine here: the probability that semiosis not only surrounds life but pre-existed living things, and indeed shaped the universe so as to make living things possible in the first place.

Intertextuality, an important concept in semiotics, refers to the property texts have of being full of snatches of other texts. This paper analyzes specific and generic intertextuality of Chinese courtroom discourse. In the analysis of specific intertextuality, it is found that 1) “specific and exact news source” and “implicit news source” are indicated in the trials, while “seemingly real news source” is not found in the data; 2) “direct reporting”, “indirect reporting”, and “narrative report of speech act” are used in the trials, while “free indirect reporting” is not indicated. The analysis of generic intertextuality shows that courtroom discourse, especially the subgenre “evidence-producing”, is not only a mixture of different genres but also of different styles.

The inevitable incursion of modernity and technology in post-colonial African Yoruba societies is rendering the nobility and royalty attached to drum poetry among the ancient Yoruba people irrelevant, as understanding the meaning of drum poetry marks the nobility and royal inclination of the decipherer. This article reviews previous studies on drum poetry/literature with participant observation/field investigation used in the collection of data. It taxonomizes drum poetry into sacred and secular. It also draws comparisons to and finds similarities with how humans and drums communicate. This paper arrives at the conclusion that tone and tonal marks within situational contexts are the hallmarks of the semantic interpretation of drum poetry

The present paper is an abridged version of another paper of mine titled “The Ethical Turn of Contemporary Western Philosophy, Semiotics, and Linguistics” delivered at the 11th World Congress of Semiotics in response to related essays by Augusto Ponzio, Susan Petrilli, John Deely, and others. A review of contemporary Western philosophy reveals a confluence and integration of scientism and humanism, a linguistic turn, and a formation of postmodernism (poststructuralism), all of which marks an ethical turn (or focus) in contemporary Western philosophy. As semiotics is based on philosophy, and linguistics is a branch of semiotics, this ethical turn in philosophy concurrently occurs in contemporary Western semiotics and linguistics.

This study explores Durkheim’s theory of the society and the symbol and its relation to structuralists such as Saussure and Levi-Strauss. Durkheim asserts that a society is a state of “solidarity”, which can only be grasped via symbolism. “Repressive laws”, such as criminal laws, symbolize the traditional society constituted by similarities among people; while “restitutory laws”, such as civil laws, symbolize the modern society constituted by differences. Durkheim traces the symbols back to religion, which divides the world into sacred and secular domains. Religion makes use of totems, as symbols, to exert force upon members of tribes. The dichotomies constructed by Saussure and Levi-Strauss respectively are influenced by Durkheim to a certain extent.

In this paper I formulate briefly the main principles of evolution of semiotic systems. The neo-Darwinian theory of evolution does not take into account the semiosic nature of the systems under study, therefore its applicability to languages and cultures (and also to biological species as communicative semiosic systems) should be rigorously questioned. The semiotic theory of evolution should include the implications from the dynamic features of semiosis and sign systems. The two major tendencies in the evolution of semiosic systems are diversification - or introduction of new mutually incompatible systems and categories - and standardization - or development of mutual compatibility. The inclusion of agency as based on semiosis provides a non-Darwinian model, yet includes the Darwinian one as a restricted special case.

I present a response to T. v. Uexküll’s attempt to complement J. v. Uexküll’s theories by incorporating concepts from structural linguistics. I more closely compare structural linguistics and J. v. Uexküll’s theories, noting significant differences unmentioned by T. v. Uexküll, leading to the claim that J. v. Uexküll’s theories need further development in relation to cognitive learning. I suggest that learning has a higher status and different conceptualization in a bio- or eco-semiotic approach than it does in structural linguistics. Bateson’s concepts of proto- and deutero-learning are found to be complementary to Jakob von Uexküll’s theory at the intra-specific level, while Hoffmeyer’s notions of semethic interaction and semiotic freedom are useful to describe interspecific relations and semiotic capacities of organisms.

This study explicates conditions of application of the terms ‘subject’ and ‘subjectivity’ in both contemporary biosemiotic discourse and the theory of umwelt by Uexkull. The article contrasts biosemiotics with the posthumanist attempt to bridge an ontological gap between human and animal by way of transforming the concept of subject. The limitations on the introduction of ‘subject’ and ‘subjectivity’ in biosemiotics are specified with reference to the biosemiotic project of Jesper Hoffmeyer. The imposition of metaphysical connotations of ‘subject’ are avoided here due to the self being regarded as a result of semiotic processes and the accent on the first-person perspective of experiential life in the notion of subjectivity. The theory of umwelt is examined in view of preconditions of a biosemiotic approach to self.

This article provides an overview of the 8th Tartu Semiotics Summer School (in the series of summer schools established in 1964 by Juri Lotman). The event took place at Kääriku, Estonia, August 18-23, 2013, and was dedicated to the publication of the collective manifesto (titled Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures) that in 1973 established the field of the semiotics of culture. The scientific focus of the discussions and presentations concerned, from a semiotic point of view, the processes of autocommunication