Ahead of Publication / Just Accepted

This article is a concise reconstruction of the notion of figure in Greimas’ work. The article begins by briefly discussing a couple of recent contributions to a general outlook on Greimasian figure and figurativity. It then proceeds with a more detailed reconstruction of the notion of figure in Greimas’ work, which has been lacking in English. Besides the attempt at reconstruction, the article presents a thesis that, in so-called standard Greimasian semiotics of text, figure has been reduced to an empty site for two kinds of indexicals, and thus deprived of its original textual-analytic potential. This textual-analytic potential concerns spanning the divide between text and percept, which reflects the interest of Greimas’ original notion of figure. With this in mind, the final chapter of the article presents a couple of brief attempts at a figurative textual-semiotic analysis.

Résumé Cette étude a pour objectif de déterminer la forme d’existence en tant que régime sémiotique. La forme d’existence est un agencement de propriétés, appartenant à divers modules d’analyse, dont l’entité renvoie à un code, se constituant ainsi en isotopie par rapport à elle. En particulier, l’étude examine le flagrant délit comme un modèle de forme d’existence dont les spécificités sont circonscrites par le code juridique. D’intenses interférences entre les formes d’existence et le code se produisent de manière à ce que l’espace sémiotique de celui-ci soit contraint à se modifier, s’intensifiant/relâchant ou s’élargissant/rétrécissant, afin que de nouvelles formes d’existence y soient prises en compte ou réfutées. En dernier ressort, nous constatons que de nouveaux modes de sémiotisation apparaissent, par séparation ou par bifurcation, et augmentent l’intensité de l’espace sémiotique du code ou repoussent ses limites. La forme d’existence en tant que régime sémiotique nous permet d’appréhender les différences entre divers environnements sémiotiques ainsi que d’évaluer les évolutions ou les régressions apparues dans le même environnement sémiotique au cours du temps. Elle se manifeste alors telle une expression des tensions, des accumulations et des interdits, des refoulements et des compromis qui tissent l’environnement sémiotique.

Résumé Pour traiter de la relation entre le langage et la réalité, les deux notions de référence et de référent sont souvent utilisées avec une ambiguïté qui fait rarement l’objet d’une réflexion critique. La présente étude propose une distinction entre la référence sémantique, la référence extra-verbale et la référence discursive, en vue de mieux dissiper quelques confusions courantes dans cette question. Tout message verbal a un sens a priori autonome vis-à-vis de la réalité extra-verbale, mais tout son référent possible ne peut être déterminé qu’à partir de ce sens. Comme la réalité verbale et la réalité extra-verbale restent a priori indépendantes l’une de l’autre, la détermination du sens d’un message n’égale pas celle de son référent, et la relation exacte entre ces deux exige un examen au cas par cas.

The aim of this study is to conduct a comprehensive stylistic and semiotic analysis of contemporary Chinese piano performance to identify its distinctive characteristics, cultural influences, and artistic significance. A total of 60 Chinese pianists – categorized according to their affiliation with the Beijing conservative school, the Shanghai modernist-synthetic school, the diaspora, and postmodern innovators – and 60 Western performers (German-Austrian tradition, n  = 20; Russian pedagogy, n  = 15; American eclecticism, n  = 15; specialists in Asian repertoire, n  = 10) participated in a ten-week intercultural pedagogical project. Performance recordings obtained before and after the intervention were evaluated by expert raters using a 10-point scale across five dimensions: technical proficiency, musicality, interpretative depth, emotional expressiveness, and stage presence. Interrater reliability exceeded the accepted threshold (ICC > 0.85). In addition, participants completed questionnaires developed using a mixed-methods approach, incorporating both Likert-scale items and open-ended questions. A survey of 60 Western pianists highlighted high evaluations of Chinese performers in intercultural exchange (4.10 out of 5), technical proficiency (4.05), and influence on competition culture (4.00). The study’s results indicate that Chinese pianists excel in technical proficiency (8.5 vs. 8.3) but lag behind in musicality (8.2 vs. 8.6), interpretation (7.9 vs. 8.4), and emotional expressiveness (7.7 vs. 8.5) compared to their Western counterparts. This research contributes significantly to understanding current trends in global piano artistry and outlines prospects for further study of the interaction between different performance schools.

The concept of Earthship is a type of contemporary living space that potentially functions as self-sustainable processes within a closed semi-natural ecosystem for its inhabitants through the integration of repurposed commodities and natural local resources. This approach of inhabitation offers a trajectory for co-development with the environment and a creative evolutionary process of Farouk Seif’s de-sign . The research identifies how the object(s) (Earthship and materials used), the subject(s) (creator and inhabitant) and the environment(s) (natural and built) are interrelated during the co-development process for a trajectory of semiosis. What we will see in this research is that the trajective process of an inhabitant aiming for self-sustainable off-the-grid living within an environment requires a competency and balance to resonate with the surrounding ecological system. Within this framework, the concept of de-sign serves as a means to examine how intentionality and deliberate acts within the creative process to live self-sustainably is oriented towards ecological and anthropocentric systems. The purpose of this research is to elaborate how the concept of Earthships as a self-sustainable living space may have a point of centrality focused on human inhabitation and can be further developed to evoke ecological awareness and sensitivity.

This study investigates how two interpreters mobilize different language resources when faced with a semiotically complex construction in Norwegian Sign Language (NTS): constructed dialogue. Drawing on a semiotic approach to languages and multimodal conversation analysis, I analyze four sequences of interpreted semi-naturalistic conversation. Applying a semiotic approach to languages, three main types of resources serve as analytical categories of source utterances and renditions: descriptions , depictions , and indications . Part of interpreters’ task entails either maintaining or changing the depictive character of the source utterance’s constructed dialogue sequences, but this is only one of many choices. Fine-grained analysis reveals that interpreters recruit from a semiotically diverse repertoire to reconfigure the semiotics of the source utterance. The interpreter’s task of situating the complex semiotics of source utterances is highlighted. When the interpreter renders another participant’s utterance, they reconfigure the semiotic resources to ensure the rendition fits appropriately within its target language ecology, thus assuring common ground between participants. This study contributes to existing knowledge of interpreting as a discourse process by analyzing the semiotics of signed-to-spoken interpreting.

Shangri-La Tibetan architecture is rich in artistic content and steeped in cultural heritage. However, during the rural transformation process, due to incomplete understanding of the traditional architectural culture and symbols with ethnic regional characteristics, many architectural cultural symbols have often been misused or confused. The Blank-sign, as a unique adjustable symbol system, is often overlooked in traditional architectural studies due to its “gaps.” Yet, studying it is crucial for addressing the misuse of architectural symbols. This study employs deconstructive analysis and dimensional analysis of Blank-signs, meticulously deconstructing the elements of Blank-sign in Shangri-La Tibetan architecture. The research reveals that the Blank-sign in Shangri-La Tibetan architecture not only constitutes a significant part of architectural aesthetics but also reflects profound cultural and religious concepts. By analyzing the external manifestations and internal cultural causes of architectural Blank-signs, the study elucidates their specific roles in expressing Tibetan views on space and time, nature worship, safety and territory, and cleanliness. Furthermore, architectural Blank-signs imbue buildings with dynamism, reinforce architectural levels, highlight architectural prominence, and create artistic ambiance, thus holding substantial artistic value.

The mainstream media, especially in the west, increasingly portrays girl performers as objectified sexual beings, from movies, TV programs, music videos, magazines, videogames, beauty pageants, and fashion shows, to social media platforms, such as Instagram and TikTok that amplify these depictions of girlhood, reaching millions of young people at any time of day and night. This article conducts a semiotic analysis of “sexualized social and dress codes,” i.e., codes promoted by the mainstream and social media that oversexualize and objectify girl child performers as commodities, foster unhealthy beauty ideals, and glorify the practices of online pornography and even prostitution involving girl and young women performers as “girl empowerment.” The article employs Victoria Welby’s Significs theory to explore the philosophical and sociological ramifications of these codes for both girl children and western society. For this purpose, it applies the Meaning Triad to examine the sense, meaning, and significance of sexualized social and dress codes. It analyses the sense of these codes, their ultimate significance, and questions the meaning-intention behind their widespread promotion on all platforms.

Interpretive captions play a crucial role in museum contexts by providing verbal information that complements and enhances visual artworks, thereby facilitating communication between visitors and the museum. However, despite their significance, there remains uncertainty about how these captions, generally perceived as secondary to the artworks, vary in their enhancing roles. In response to this gap, this study employs the multimodal corpus SemArt, taking a corpus-driven approach to explore the correlations between interpretive captions and classical European paintings. By applying the Latent Dirichlet Allocation method, themes and keywords were extracted from the interpretive captions and analyzed within a visual communication framework to uncover sub-genre variations and different text-image relations. The findings reveal seven sub-genres within interpretive captions and two types of text-image enhancement relations: content-enhanced and form-enhanced. This research highlights the benefits and challenges of using exploratory quantitative analysis to facilitate multimodal research, paving the way for broader applications of unsupervised machine-learning techniques in digital humanities.