Volume 10, Issue 1

In 1904, Peirce described to Lady Welby a six-division typology composed of the sign, two objects, and a trio of interpretants for which he subsequently proposed numerous denominations. Of the three, the final interpretant was particularly problematic, and over the years Peirce experimented with at least eight different identifying terms such as “final,” “rational,” “normal,” “eventual,” etc. One group of interpretants is especially interesting as it only occurs in a single manuscript but has attracted considerable critical attention, namely the emotional, energetic, and logical interpretant series in a projected article of 1907. The paper examines the description of these, paying particular attention to the logical interpretant, and suggests how important aspects of the logic determining how Peirce defined them may have been neglected or ignored by researchers. It first shows how the group was presented, how the logical interpretant related to Peirce’s purpose in the article, how it related to a restricted conception of the dynamic object in the manuscript, and explains through an analysis of its logical complications why Peirce was led to abandon it. These considerations suggest that much of the critical attention that the logical interpretant in particular has generated might be incomplete or, more seriously, nonsense.

This paper explores the inter-semiotic analysis of the ideational meaning in images generated by the text-to-image AI tool, Bing Image Creator. It adopts Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design as its theoretical framework as the original grounding of the framework in systemic functional grammar (SFG) ensures a solid theoretical basis for undertaking analyses that involve the incorporation of textual and visual components. The integration of an AI generative model within the analytical framework enables a systematic connection between language and visual representations. This incorporation offers the potential to generate well-regulated pictorial representations that are systematically grounded in controlled textual prompts. This approach introduces a novel avenue for re-examining inter-semiotic processes, leveraging the power of AI technology. The paper argues that visual representations possess unique structural devices that surpass the limitations of verbal or written communication as they readily accommodate larger amounts of information in contrast to the limitations of the linear nature of alphabetic writing. Moreover, this paper extends its contribution by critically evaluating specific aspects of the Grammar of Visual Design.

In the field of philosophy of technology, the concept of mediation is central to understanding how technology shapes human experience and behavior. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to the understanding of technological mediation, in particular how and why it is possible. Technological mediation occurs within a mediation space between the technological realm and the user realm. In the technological realm, technology regularizes events and actions, while in the user realm, the user interprets the significative potential of the technology. This interpretation process is identical with use and involves the formation of user habits, which are constrained by technological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors. To provide a theoretical framework for our analysis, we propose the Semiotic Model of Technological Mediation (SMTM), which draws on Charles Peirceʼs semiotics. To illustrate our argument, we focus on assistive technology and provide a recurring example of the Medimi ® Smart, a digital, comprehensive system for medication handling.

The concept of post-truth has been on the world’s agenda since 2016. Perhaps this concept, which is frequently encountered in political life, provides the speaker with a freer speaking platform. Politicians, instead of presenting the reality to their constituents as it is, want to reshape this reality according to their own ideology and present it to the recipient. Politicians have certain objectives in creating such a virtual reality. These aims can be listed as keeping the voters, increasing the voting potential, and attracting undecided voters to their favor. The common result of all these aims is to gain political power or to remain in the existing power. Post-truth reality is constructed relatively more easily in social media environments. The construction of reality can be through beliefs or emotions. In such ways, the recipient is tried to be persuaded, and thus behavioral change is achieved. One of the most necessary subjects for this artificial reality atmosphere is the anti-subject. The idea that the anti-subject does not know the truth that we (you and I) know and believe and is trying to destroy it is the main theme of post-truth discourse. Politicians try to persuade the voters to believe in their own truth by expressing this idea to them. There are many examples of this around the world. In this study, firstly, the concept of post-truth is examined and its various definitions are discussed. The distinctions between the concepts of real and truth are analyzed and then it is explained how and for what purposes the concept of post-truth is used in politics. Following the comparison of post-truth and fake news, the concept is discussed within the framework of sender-receiver interaction in terms of communication. The concept is tried to be elucidated with the modalities such as /convincing/, /believing/, /being/, /appearing/. Besides, using the semiotic square, the study also tries to reveal the different purposes and forms of use of the concept of post-truth. As a result, it has been observed that the concept of post-truth is effective in many areas of contemporary societies, and rather than real information, expected and desired information has become more important.

The wide acceptability of Nigerian hip hop music, home and abroad, indicates increasing value of the inclusion of local popular languages in the composition and performance of the music. In the text of many of the award winning singles and albums are mixtures of different languages ranging from English, Pidgin English, Yoruba, Igbo and other local dialects. Drawing on Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of structuralism, this study examines meaning construction in hip hop music in Nigeria. By focusing on the Nigerian hip hop artists, who adopt different slangs embedded with codes considered absurd within the mainstream cultural milieu, the study closely investigates constructed meanings in the lyrics of four Nigerian award winning hip hop artists. All the artists adopted multilingual codes-switching from one language to another in presentation of their messages. The codes in the songs generally symbolise and present messages or meaning that appears out of the mainstream cultural meanings. Listeners and artistes meet at the level of interpretations. The article argues that Nigerian artists creatively present a sub-culture where they and their fans can relate through codes and words embedded with symbolic meanings shared by both artists and fans.

This paper explores the narratives of the Taiwanese woman novelist Shao-Lin Chu’s trilogy to see how the problem of female sexuality and resistance to parental wedlock tragedy becomes a traumatic experience. The traumatic symptoms in the narratives are taken as Peircean signs for tracing the negative influences of traumatic experiences on the formation of personal identity and the associated depressive disorder. The scenes portrayed in Chu’s traumatic narratives of female and male sexuality are implications and representations of how sexuality is conceptualized and confined by the traumatic events while backgrounded with regulations and restrictions of a traditional society. The stories of Chu’s female narrators reveal the persistent and resisting feminine power. This paper adopts the concept of feminist narrative to analyze the traumatic and sexual events in Chu’s trilogy. The decoding and re-encoding of resistance and sexuality in the traumatic narratives prove that the narratological textual analysis and semiotic reading strategy together offer a solid approach to the discovery of the persistent traumatic impacts of the secret veiled in the narratives and reveal the probable strength of compassion that has its roots derived from deplorable trauma but later transforms itself to stimulate a positive reconstruction of the traumatic survivors’ identity.

As one locus of extraordinary collocations, poeticized language features expressions that depart from the physical reality, involving the subjective transformation of objects in the mental space. Increasing subjectivity renders extraordinary collocations resistant to rational readings, resulting in two types of constructions: “innovative” collocations and “self-created” collocations. The meaning construction in the former is easier to achieve than in the latter; the former entails the “rational evaluation” and the latter the “speculative evaluation” processes in metalanguage. With its rule-breaking defiance caused by meaning obscurity compensated for by rich implied meaning and positive aesthetic feedback, the “self-created” collocations are regarded as poetic and re-accepted by the system. Therefore, the so-termed “poeticness” is derived from the positive feedback during the speculative evaluation process and constitutes the main substance of aesthetic interpretation.