Volume 22, Issue 1

This article argues that “knowing enough” ( zhizu ) and “mastering cessation” ( zhizhi ) are aligned with a Laozian view of the “natural,” understood as the broadest observable patterns of the world, but not with “self-emanation” ( ziran ). As such, the article questions the equation of Laozian ziran with the concept of “nature.” While Laozian ziran does signify a “self-emanation” free from human curtailment, from a Laozian perspective natural patterns also include acts of human restraint. “Knowing enough” and “mastering cessation” are aligned with the natural movement signified by Laozian concepts of reversal ( fan ) and return ( fugui ). This movement opposes and complements spontaneous self-emanation. What is “natural” in the Laozi (also known as the Daodejing ) thereby not only includes self-emanation but also timely cessation and return. By examining the functioning of ziran within the philosophy of the Laozi alongside its complementary moment of return and curtailment, this article also critiques the use of Laozian “naturalness” understood as purely emanative and spontaneous to support liberalist and laissez-faire readings of the Laozi .

This study tackles a key question in cultural semiotics: How does a natural entity become a core moral symbol? Focusing on pine–cypress symbolism in Chinese thanatological culture, we propose a novel four-tier semiotic encoding model – comprising material, logographic, institutional, and ethical dimensions – to theorize its millennia-long metamorphosis. Critically synthesizing Ye Shuxian’s N-level coding with Peircean–Saussurean semiotics and Foucauldian–Bourdieusian power analysis, we argue that this process is dialectical, not linear: each tier interacts with and transforms the others. Our analysis reveals that materiality (e.g., Sanxingdui bronze trees) provides the sensual foundation; the logographic (e.g., the mu radical) enables conceptual abstraction; institutions (e.g., Zhouli texts) discipline the symbol into a tool of social hierarchy; and finally, ethical praxis (e.g., Confucian analogical thinking) creatively appropriates it for moral interiority. Cross-cultural comparison with Roman and Nordic arboreal symbols highlights China’s unique trajectory, where state power, textual canonization, and literati agency fused material durability with ethical perpetuity. This study offers a robust, non-Eurocentric paradigm for analyzing how culture dynamically constructs meaning through the interplay of objects, texts, power, and human imagination.

There are many communication or language systems around us to convey messages or produce meaning. Every day, on our way to work, school, or some other destination, we encounter various elements such as billboards, public transportation station designs, traffic lights, and signs. Each of these elements, which are subsystems of a larger system, are signs that inform us about a new product or announcements in any field, tell us when to cross the street, and indicate changes in the neighborhood and the direction we should take. From the perspective of semiotics, which studies the processes of signification, cinema is also a kind of a communication system or an art language that features its own signs. Just as everyday signs have a place in our perception and the world of meaning, cinema also reflects differences by presenting contrasts with its own signs and can influence the interpretation of the other . In the film Dairy Philosopher (Mandıra Filozofu), which is examined within the scope of this study, the opposite characters of Mustafa Ali and Cavit constitute an important example in the context of otherness . Accordingly, with the help of a semiotic analysis based on Greimas’s semiotic analysis method, the aim and the importance of the study is to demonstrate the other within the confines of capitalism and its impositions and to showcase how an othered person can reconnect with his own essence, overcome otherness, and reach his true self, as illustrated within the context of the movie Dairy Philosopher .

Seac Pai Van Park is a large, multipurpose park in Macau that is rich in linguistic and semiotic meanings. The article delves into the linguistic landscapes of the park through a theoretical lens of language–spatial relationships, exploring the interplay of language, space, culture, politics, and commerce. Additionally, interdisciplinary perspectives such as multimodality and the commodification of language further enrich the analysis. The article uncovers the fluidity and adaptability of language choreographies and the long-term implications of these orchestration patterns for Macau more broadly, highlighting the fact that the identities represented by language are subject to a continuous negotiation with commodification under globalizing forces. The appearance of English, simplified Chinese characters, and other languages (e.g. Korean and Japanese) for tourists underscores the evolving nature of linguistic diversity and its implications for cultural heritage preservation and identity formation in Macau. In these ways, this study goes beyond the static paradigm of researching top-down linguistic landscapes, deepening the understanding of linguistic dynamics, and providing contemporary information about the complexities and opportunities of urban multilingualism to relevant research and policymakers.

Despite having an ethnic Chinese majority, Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, is a diverse society with migrants and temporary workers from various ethnic, sociolinguistic, and cultural backgrounds (e.g. Indians, Nepalis, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indonesians, Filipinos, and Thais) as a result of historical and economic factors. To date, most (socio)linguistic studies on the global city have focused on the two dominant languages, Chinese and English, whereas the multilingual practices associated with (minority) ethnic groups have received little scholarly attention. Of particular interest for this study are the parts of Kowloon city that constitute Hong Kong’s “Little Thailand” and represent the beating heart of the Thai community on Chinese soil. Drawing on authentic data, this study investigates the under-explored enclave of Little Thailand in Hong Kong from the perspective of linguistic and semiotic landscape research. It discusses several linguistic and translational features that emerge from the data, highlighting how various semiotic and multimodal elements (e.g. cultural and religious figures and symbols) are instrumental in meaning-making. The findings reveal an intricate interlacing and juxtaposition of various Buddhist, Hindu, Thai, and Chinese cultural and religious elements. The interplay of diverse linguistic and semiotic resources shapes the enclave’s distinct aura, image, and identity. This study contributes to the broader fields of translation, linguistic landscape research, and the sociolinguistic study of ethnic enclaves in the context of a globalized, dynamic, and (super)diverse twenty-first-century world.

Under globalization, city branding emerges as a strategic device to promote the dynamic development of cities in terms of economy, tourism, culture, and identity. Meanwhile, as multiple semiotics arise, a multimodal perspective adds a new dimension for city identity construction. This paper applies the multimodal identity construction framework to analyze Wuhan’s city identity based on a promotional video of Hubei Province officially released in 2021. An analysis of 117 linguistic clauses and 354 sections of film footage reveals the construction of a dual identity of Wuhan in the post-pandemic era: the “heroic city” and the “reenergized city.” The former identity is built through attributes including cooperation and solidarity, sacrifice and selflessness, openness and receptivity, and responsibility and capacity, whereas a “reenergized city” is realized by labeling Wuhan as both healthy and globalized. In addition, the contextual reasons why these identities were established for Wuhan are explained in terms of three aspects: a drive for urban recovery, transmission of national spirit, and confrontation of stigmatization.

The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) was a pivotal event in the formation of Mexican national identity, known as Mexicanidad . Utilizing Yuri Lotman’s theory of cultural semiotics and Jan Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, this study explores how literary texts function as mediums of remembrance and re-signification, shaping the cultural memory of the Revolution. Initially, early revolutionary novels began to mythologize the Revolution, integrating it into broader cultural narratives. In the mid-twentieth century, the Latin American Boom saw authors like Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo employ modernist techniques to reconfigure revolutionary memory, blending local and global symbolic systems. Finally, in the late twentieth century, female authors such as Ángeles Mastretta and Elena Poniatowska introduced gendered perspectives, re-inscribing revolutionary memory through domestic and affective narratives. This study argues that the cultural memory of the Mexican Revolution is not static but dynamic, continually reshaped through literary expression, reflecting the ongoing negotiation of Mexicanidad within a complex semiotic and sociopolitical landscape. By analyzing these literary works through the lenses of cultural semiotics and cultural memory, this study reveals how Mexicanidad is constructed as a fluid, plural identity shaped by the tensions between memory and forgetting, trauma and idealism, tradition and modernity.

Based on the classical and neo-Gricean theories of conversational implicature, this study explores the ways in which different types of conversational implicature achieve their poetic effects. Viewing literary communication as an interactive process between poets and readers, we take some poems by Seamus Heaney from his mid-career collection The Haw Lantern and his late-period publication Electric Light as examples. Based on Chen’s inferential mechanism for the conversational implicature of poetic metaphors and Hirschberg’s classification of scalar implicature, not only do we examine how metaphors in poetry and the connotations they express apparently violate the Maxim of Quality outlined in Grice’s Cooperative Principle, but we also explore the other types of implicature in poetry, such as conventional implicature and (non)entailment scalar implicature, and their role in deepening the theme of poetry. Research has found that poets violate the Maxim of Quality by using metaphors. Through shared knowledge, poets and readers establish connections, and readers understand the implicature that poets intend to convey. Moreover, Heaney’s poetry deepens the thematic meaning by using implicature triggers such as but , then , and so . In addition, the poetic effects of the non-entailment scalar implicature in Heaney’s poetry are mainly reflected in its thematic construction generated by logical connection, numerical order, and non-finite and finite words, and entailment scalar implicature mainly involves temporal implicature, spatial order, and type and subtype in colors, as well as part and whole. This study aims to shed light on the studies of conversational implicature in poetry.