Volume 20, Issue 2 - Cultural Signs and Sign Theories

In both Chinese and Western literary theory, there are several fundamental perspectives on the exploration of “the source of textual meaning,” which can be categorized into ontological, entitative, and generative types. Future research must integrate the “source” perspective with the “trigger” perspective, while overcoming the postmodern cultural pluralist limitations of “multiple symbiosis.” This article adopts the perspective of a “multi-source symbiosis” of textual meaning and maintains that textual meaning possesses characteristics of multiple sources, co-generation, and dynamic transformation. The “multi-source symbiosis” of textual meaning does not emphasize “differences,” but rather strives for “consensus.” The objectivity of the source of textual meaning and the regularity of textual understanding and interpretation are the prerequisites for agreement on textual meaning. The trigger mechanism for the symbiosis of textual meanings lies in three aspects: disclosing textual meanings in reading behavior, proliferating textual meanings in critical activities, and multi-source triggering of textual meanings in literary events. “Multi-source symbiosis” creates a heteroglossic state of textual meaning, with the ultimate goal of establishing a common understanding of textual meaning.

Encouraging biologists to factor semiotics into their research is likely to fall on deaf ears because they already factor it in through an accepted life science methodological standard here called Abstract Parallel Engineering (APE). Biosemiotics’ most significant contribution to biology – a contribution that biologists would come to depend upon – would be a more rigorous alternative methodology to APE through a proof-of-concept explanation for how semiotics – here defined as beings making functional interpretive effort – can emerge within nothing but physical phenomena. It would explain organisms’ most basic agency – their struggle for existence – ergodynamically (i.e., an emergent change in likely physical work) that results in work (effort) that works (functions) to keep a chemical system working (a being) in semiotic response to their workspace (interpretation).

In recent years, semiotics has put “life” at the center of the subject of study. There is the desire to be successful in the lifestyle and the desire to convey the right knowledge to the recipient or the correct use of practices in life. A semiotic theory developed by Jacques Fontanille recently showed that strategy can also be used in semiotic analysis. So, the way of life that Fontanille talks about is not just strategy. The process we call “lifestyle” has an order from small to large: There are basic signs, texts, objects, actants, practices, action phases, strategies, and finally lifestyle. In this study, we question the function of strategy, but generally of productive pursuit, in the analysis of political discourses. In our study, we reveal the approach of semiotics to political discourses that concern the whole world and discuss whether they are valid in every society. We emphasize political semiotics, which is used to understand the general structure of political discourses, and show the general functioning of political discourses with Greimas’ Actantial Model. We conclude that politicians can influence target audiences by using various methods and discourse strategies.

This study undertakes an investigation into the linguistic landscape of tourism in the tourist areas of Chungking Mansions and its surrounding environs in Hong Kong and intends to reveal similarities and differences in the linguistic signs in the two areas by employing a statistical analysis of a comprehensive database of public signs. The results show that official signs in the two areas prioritize the use of Chinese and English, and Chinese has a marginally higher representation in the surrounding areas. In contrast, private signs in Chungking Mansions exhibit a distinctive linguistic diversity, with over 20 languages represented, and English occupying dominant position, followed by Arabic, Hindi, and other languages. In the surrounding areas, private signs are displayed in eight languages, with Chinese being the predominant code, followed by English, Japanese, Korean, and other languages. It is found that the linguistic landscape of tourism in Hong Kong is diversified, contextualized by historical, political, cultural, and economic factors, and characterized by indexical ordering and ideological implications, and English plays a crucial role in distinguishing Hong Kong from other Chinese cities. In addition, the study offers insights into the complexity and importance of linguistic diversity in the context of tourism and urban development.

In the globalized internet age, informal learning is gaining prominence in China as mobile technology and social networking sites (SNSs) become widely accessible and virtually ubiquitously popular in Chinese society. An important informal learning platform is made up by the specialized public accounts on WeChat, the most popular SNSs in China. This study is based on three popular WeChat public accounts on parenting and education, especially on English learning, run by diasporic Chinese elites, with a special focus on the semiotic resources they have mobilized and brought across the national and real/virtual boundaries to attract novice parents in China. Drawing on Blommaert’s conception of scaled resources, this study uncovers the patterns of semiotic resources on the local, national, and global scales the public accounts holders have deployed to invoke indexical meanings to attract knowledge-seeking parents in China. The indexicality process reflects an ordered nature deeply embedded in the inequal power relations within the stratified world system and social structures. The value acquisition of local resources in globalized, webified mobility also embodies Barthes’ mythical signification.

The article explores the poetry of Abai Qunanbaiuly, a renowned philosopher and a founder of modern Kazakh literature, through the semiotic perspective of Umberto Eco. The study is a part of a broader research project in cultural studies titled “Semiotic Interpretation of Culture by Umberto Eco.” Specifically, the poem under analysis is “Allanyn özi de ras, sözi de ras” (“Allah is truth, His word is truth”), written in 1902. While Abai’s works initially garnered great enthusiasm, they now provoke heated discussions within Kazakh society. By applying a semiotic approach, this study offers a fresh perspective on Abai’s poetry, enabling new insights and interpretations.

Although published only two years after Eliot’s famous modernist poem “The Waste Land” (1922), Miyazawa Kenji’s 52-line “ Haru to Shura ” (1924) is already very nearly as modern. The two poems, examined here using my expanded version of Riffaterre’s semiotic theory, have analogous propositional structure. One proposition concerns the faithless majority of mankind; the other involves a heavenly personage of potentially rehabilitating power. In Miyazawa’s case, the former is represented by Japanese peasants; the latter is the “Shura” – normally an unruly member of the lowest rank of Buddhist demigods. Miyazawa’s modernist message reverses the roles of these two personae: the Shura only wants to be recognized by the peasant he spies below his abode in the clouds. The peasant comes off as the lesser of the two beings because of his obdurate fixation on the soil. Miyazawa enhances the contrast of roles by painting the spring landscape – normally a season of burgeoning nature – in somber colors. This is a spring ( haru ) in which no birds sing, and the ranks of cypress trees are black. Commentaries by Japanese critics, plus one by one of my students, are examined: none can distance themselves from common sociolectic concepts of the seasons and the peasant population. Miyazawa, a devout Buddhist, is thus expressing a novel view of the people’s attitude to religion which they themselves are culpably unaware of. Their attitude is thus very close to that of the various personages in Eliot’s poem.

In this study, we apply the methodology of semiotic or interpretive grammar, based on the Peircean ontological Categories and developed in previous work with respect to Mandarin Chinese, to Vedic Sanskrit, a language whose grammar we have previously shown to be constrained by Peircean Thirdness or [+3]. We show the Peircean Category of Thirdness, with all of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic configurations implied thereby, to be richly exemplified throughout Sanskrit grammar, at the morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological levels. In particular, the Peircean Triad implied by [+3] is found to permeate the syntagmatic structuring not only of clauses, but also of the morphology within both nouns and finite verbs, and even the ordering of phonemes. We also describe the operation of the constraint [+3] paradigmatically in noun declension, verb conjugation, lexical variation, and consonant classification. We conclude that, while “interpretive grammar,” as with all other forms of grammatical description, can never be framed in a way that excludes all exceptions and “messiness,” a semiotic approach to a systematic description has a significant advantage over conventional “descriptive” grammars in furnishing a unified account of different levels of language, from morphosyntax all the way down to phonology, and of both syntagmatic and paradigmatic structures.