Volume 2, Issue 1

This article purports to unfold the structural rules and functional mechanism governing mythical discourse from a semiotic perspective. With insights from three semiotic pioneers, the author attempts to interpret myth within a framework of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic dimensions. Just in this vein, the article strongly advocates that mythical sign ought to be structurally divided Into components, which have semantic significations to correspond, and are governed by a set of rules as well.

Icon has long been used to express isolated concrete concepts such as the signs of parking. In this article, we extend its usage in two aspects. First, we define a set of icons to represent abstract concepts such as conjunctions. Second, we present a unified format to construct icons into structural language. This Icon Language has the potential to become the common language for all people in different nations, because it can be learned in one day. It is based on the principles of semiotics, artificial intelligence, system theory, and computer language. This article is an abbreviation of the book Global Icon Language for International Travel, in which a detailed introduction and explanation of motivations of Icon Language are presented along with extensive examples.

Global communication today is strictly connected to the dominant social reproduction system which is regulated by dominant ideology and official discourse. These are grounded in the logic of identity, therefore the logic of roles with their limited responsibilities and alibis, ultimately the logic of self-interest. Human behaviour is sign behaviour and ideological behaviour, in other words, it is never neutral, but, on the contrary, is permeated with values and regulated by social programs. Global semiotics and semioethics contribute towards a critical understanding of communication today, of semiosis, in a globalized world. Dialogism and listening are the condition for a new form of humanism based on the logic of otherness rather than on the logic of identity.

The paper studies semiotic phenomena as modeling process, and discusses the forms of representation of modeling actions in all life forms and cross-life forms, and based on Sebeok and Danesi's Modeling Systems Theory which includes three modeling systems, i.e., Primary modeling, Secondary modeling and Tertiary modeling, analyzes them in detail with Chinese examples

Global communication today is strictly connected to the dominant social reproduction system which is regulated by dominant ideology and official discourse. These are grounded in the logic of identity, therefore the logic of roles with their limited responsibilities and alibis, ultimately the logic of self-interest. Human behaviour is sign behaviour and ideological behaviour, in other words, it is never neutral, but, on the contrary, is permeated with values and regulated by social programs. Global semiotics and semioethics contribute towards a critical understanding of communication today, of semiosis, in a globalized world. Dialogism and listening are the condition for a new form of humanism based on the logic of otherness rather than on the logic of identity.

The author of this paper gives a detailed semiotic analysis to the dynamic change of individualism and collectivism, the main cultural concepts shared by Westerners and Easterners respectively. The author believes that the rise of memetics has contributed immensely to dynamic semiotics and dynamic semiotic analysis, in turn, is made more applicable to many branches of learning in general and to intercultural communication in particular. The author ventures that individualism and collectivism seem opposed to each other, they can be unified and fused as a result of memetic movement including memetic spreading, selection and memetic quality variation. Intercultural communicators can possess at the same time both desirable individualistic and collectivistic concepts in the process of intercultural communication as a result of semiotic production. Such tendency is justified by the existence of androgyny in human character. The author, in the meantime, gives a semiotic analysis to intercultural communicators' cultural structure. The author concludes that interculture is the nature of the cultural structure of intercultural communicators, a semiotic mixture which is different from their home culture or the target culture.

Meme, in line with the concept gene in the study of biological evolution, was born as a semiotic concept for the study of culture evolution. Like many other new concepts, meme has experienced both compliments and criticisms from many researchers in different fields since its birth in 1976. Through years of development, it has been established into Memetics-a new branch of study accompanied by specialized journals and a number of research findings. This paper first clarifies the concept of "meme" and then surveys both the compliments and criticisms that memetics has received worldwide through explaining the relations between memetics and social evolution and eco-semiotics, the differentiation between the "meme" and "sign", as well as the different comments on The Meme Machine. Finally, an introduction to the related studies of memetics in China is presented.

Unlike many other cultures, the Russian culture encourages loud laughter (xoxot) and more often than not discourages smiles ( ulybki). The paper presents linguistic evidence for such attitude: etymology ( ulybat'sja “smile” from the word for scull with allusion to bared teeth), the use of the words for laughter and smile in the present-day Russian discourse, the role of laughter and smile in the Russian linguistic model of the world, etc. It is consistent with the strong emphasis that the Russian culture places on sincerity and open expression of emotions. In addition, it is consistent with the whole system of the Russian non-verbal etiquette (e. g., it is not good to meet a stranger's eyes with your eyes; if it has happened by chance, you should turn off your eyes rather than smile). This attitude often leads to cross-cultural miscommunication (a typical American smile may seem non-natural and false to many Russians while foreigners who are involved in communication with Russians sometimes find them rude, impolite, ill-mannered).

Discreteness, one of the design features of language, along with arbitrariness, etc., makes language much more flexible, productive and precise than other communicative systems. Although it mainly applies to the description of the secondary level of language structure, discreteness can also explain meaningful units, such as morphemes or words, at the primary level. Due to its discreteness, language is regarded, in semiotics, as "digital", in contrast with "analogical". Partially owing to the discreteness or discontinuity, language enables humankind to conceptualize and perceive the world and themselves with a kind of precision. However, this does not mean that language can mirror the world. Actually many things ( especially intangible things) in the world are not so discrete but rather gradable or continuous. Therefore, linguistic signs or words used to deal with them do not match them absolutely. There are gaps between words and what they refer to. To deal with this gap, sense and reference, two aspects of meaning, are employed in this paper, though with certain modification. While the sense of a word (or its dictionary meaning) is explicitly definable, its referential meaning may not. Some emotive and evaluative words may have certain variation of references continuously on a scale though their senses are discrete. Some common nouns' extensions or their referential meanings are also continuous. Words of this kind are found vague or fuzzy though they are clearly definable and in contrast in their senses. It is a worthwhile effort to probe into the nature of discreteness in both linguistic and semiotic contexts. To do this job presupposes reconsidering the classification of meaning, especially when taking into account the dichotomy between precision and vagueness of linguistic signs.

The subject matter of the following paper constitutes the inquiry into the essence of meaning realized in the behavior and products of cultural subjects as participants of intersubjective communication. Accordingly, several philosophical and linguistic approaches to the object-related concepts of sign and meaning will be juxtaposed with the subject-related concepts of meaning-creation-and-utilization occurring in the realm of man as a living organism. A special attention will be paid, in the first case, to the instrumental functions of task-oriented meaning-bearers and, in the second, to the utilitarian values of need-oriented practices of meaning-creators and meaning-utilizers being engaged in changeable processes of solipsistic interpretation and collective understanding.

Intertextual phenomenon exists in both fields of literature and art, and of science. However, intertextuality in literature is a positive one that produces new meaning and forms dialogue, therefore, occupies a decisive position, while intertextuality in science is a negative one that accurately transmits the others' thought. Since science's view of the past is completely different from literature, it values little intertextuality. As a kind of function relationship in which meanings transform and come into being, three elements are necessarily required· for the formation of intertextuality·. text a, text b, and intertextual relationship.

The mariners of the 20th century, travelling around the world and working in multinational and multicultural environments, have been the vehicles'of a particular ideal of globalization. Their experiences and rare knowledge, which constitute-and expressed through-forms of life composed of similar language games (social discourse, argot and maritime terms) are registered in different literary traditions and collective imaginaries. The semiotic systems, where significations of maritime everyday life are embodied, are the product of procedures of condensation and expansion of meanings, which are to be found in maritime literature. This paper aims at examining on the one hand the intertextuality in Alvaro Mutis' Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships, the Colombian novelist who lived in several countries of the world and in Nikos Kawadias' poetry, the Greek poet who travelled all over the world, and on the other hand the semiotic modalities that construct the maritime semiosphere in different literatures. Methodological tools to be used are Wittgenstein's philosophy of language on forms of life, Fontanille's and Zilberberg's comments on this theory and on Lotman's semiosphere and Aristotle's Poetics. The universality of maritime semiotic systems in the literature to be presented is going to prove that social and professional groups develop common practices and idioms independently of national contexts and represent a very fine example of globalization-and of course-before our post-modem era.

When beginning his adventure in linguistic studies, Bakhtin took a sociological path, trying to explore the vast rich land ignored by Saussure. In contrast to Saussure's structural linguistics, which regards the abstract language system (i. e. langue) as the only legitimate object of linguistic studies, Bakhtin proposed his translinguistic theory, which selects living discourse as the real object of linguistic studies. Bakhtin's translinguistic ideas, however, are based on his socio-semiotic understanding of language, the most important sign in social interactions; his translinguistics is the logical necessity entailed in his socio-semiotic view on language.

This paper aims to propose a third generation semiotic method for analyzing inter-linguistic translations. The paper concentrates on translation issues related to the literary genres related to "genre" literature such as science fiction or fantasy, aiming to provide a semiotic method with which to interpret the texts as holistic entities and to isolate the specific elements that create the textual world. The translation method is based on semiotic tools and theories by Lotman, Eco and Tarasti among others, and is built around the basis of an earlier model by the same author (Loponen, 2006). To help isolate and interpret textual elements that create the genre specific texts as holistic entities, the paper introduces the concept of irrealia into semiotic translation studies.

Saussure (1980) gave an incisive exposition on the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign in Course in General Linguistics. During the recent years, however, many scholars have aired challenging viewpoints concerning the principle of arbitrariness from the perspective of motivation or iconicity and have even made attempts to negate the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. Taking the basic concepts of sign, signifier, signified, etc. as the point of departure, the present study clarifies what Saussure means by arbitrariness, analyses the relationship between arbitrariness and value system, expatiates the distinction between absolute arbitrariness and relative arbitrariness, and constructs a model of language production in order to expound and further confirm arbitrariness, the principle of the linguistic sign.

Henri Michaux's artistic production possesses a double and, one might say, contrary and/or complementary nature. It draws on the forms of expression in two different media, notably verbal and visual. His work's ambivalent nature reflects Michaux's intention to brake the mold of traditional sclerotic signifying systems, and to form new paradigms. It seemed to be a very difficult proposition for the artist to create new forms of expressions without having new frames of reference that would allow the spectator/reader to follow the work's progress. Michaux, however, succeeded in overcoming this obstacle by combining elements from both media in his texts and drawings. His method of going back and forth between the written and visual forms, where text and pictorial figures intermix sometimes on the same page, is typical of Michaux's creative process throughout his entire career. In order to develop his own art Michaux traveled around the world and studied Chinese, Indian and Japanese artists' works. He also read European Mystics of the Middle Ages, such as the German Master Eckhart and the Dutch Ruysbroek the Admirable, and also the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu and Hindu religious texts. In the sixties, he undertook hallucinogenic trips with mescaline, psilocybin, LSD in order to explore his mental functioning. These experiences found their way into his writings and paintings/drawings enriching them with extraordinary insights. The combination of all these sources and their end results make Michaux's variegated works such a great challenge. It has to be emphasized that the transformational process has less to do with transforming Nature, a traditional Western way of artistic creation, and more to do with signifying Nature involving the artist's total physical and mental being. The latter one is closer to the Chinese concept of creation, according to Billeter's remarkable book L'ART CHINOIS DE L'ECRITURE, and also Michaux's own admission in PASSAGES, and EMERGENCES-RESURGENCES. I intend to show how during the transformational process the two systems of signs, linguistic and pictorial, complement and/or cancel out meaning in Michaux's works

In the first part of this paper, we will discuss the problem of cinematographic enunciation (the shooting). In the second part, our approach will be more analytical. We will touch upon expressive close-ups and also the aesthetic point of view. We will make use of images (frames, close-ups, sequences). We will show at which point our relationship with the pictures and films changes if the interpretation is no longer uniquely from the film, from the textual analysis of the enunciated but also from "the experience of filming". The films I have chosen are: Rer Window by A. Hitchcock (1954), Tess by R. Polanski (1979), The Sacrifice by A. Tarkovski (1986), Le Fils by the brothers Dardenne (2002) and Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola (2003 ). These films, together with the shooting documents are good examples of the way of proceeding in our analysis. In artistic matters we are not dealing with simple communication but more importantly with creation. In the specific case of film: creation of time travelled through the film.

This paper presents a semiotic study of characters in French novels. It consists of two parts. Part I considers two types of characters: narration characters and action characters, divided according to their different functions in novels. Part II analyzes the elements of semiotic representation of characters: name, person, discourse and so on. We can make use of semiotic studies of characters in France to shed some light on our own researches on characters and promote the development of researches on novel characters.

This paper studies Charles Peirce's theory of esthetics from the point of view of his pragmaticism and the theory of signs. Esthetics is shown to be a theory of habits of feeling, which requires the notion of an esthetic interpretant. An argument is presented which establishes that, beginning with Peirce's theory of signs, pragmaticism supplies esthetic meaning to the works of art.

American Beauty is a movie depicting two American middle class dysfunctional families. In this paper three key characters are analyzed. Carolyn, wife of Lester Bumham, is pursuing material success, the American Dream; Lester Bumham is going through his mid-life crisis in a world of fantasy; Colonel Fitts is a homophobia, repressing hard his inner desire.

Abstract The paper investigates new textual forms of autobiographical writing in the contemporary world, and in particular the striking growth of traumatic memories from recent and less recent conflicts. The category of testimony is suggested in order to better describe what appears to be a pervasive phenomenon; from a semiotic point of view one of the main features of testimony literature is its effect of hybridisation across the boundaries of different textual genres. The paper investigates a transversal feature of contemporaiy testimony, i. e. the use of a multimodal language composed of both linguistic and visual material, in particular photographs, and analyses contrastively the meaning effects of such use in traditional autobiographical texts and in new hybrid forms of testimony.