Volume 2007, Issue 167

Examining the rich naming systems associated with plants, this paper suggests how ethnobiological (specifically, ethnobotanical) inquiry can benefit from greater cooperation and synergy among fields concerned with naming practices, including onomastics, lexicography, cognitive anthropology, and cognitive linguistics. Our pilot-study focuses on the names of approximately one hundred heirloom vegetables culled from seed catalogues and other publications devoted to the preservation of seeds for varieties of vegetables passed down from generation to generation (e.g. Brown 1996; Bradshaw 2001; and Rakita 2003). We characterize these plant names as elements in a folk-taxonomic system, arguing that the study of such native nomencla-tural schemes can productively inform research on the mapping relationships among names or words, conceptual categories, and structures in the world. In turn, research in ethnosemiotics, defined broadly as the study of native understandings of sign-systems (Hoppál 1988; Voigt 1994), stands to gain from a more extensive integration of tools developed by theorists of verbal language and of the cognitive bases for cross-culturally attested naming patterns. Interdisciplinary work of this kind promises not only to advance ethnosemiotic research, but also to help separate out what is cognitively universal from what is culturally variable in semiotic and communicative processes in general.

This paper synthesizes and extends all previous accounts of filmic montage made within the broadly Metzian semiotic tradition in order to demonstrate that the semiotics of film and of verbal language share major features of their organization. Drawing on recent advances in formal and functional linguistic discourse semantics, the paper provides an analysis scheme that supports a film-as-discourse perspective along both the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of semiotic description. Previous approaches are shown to have been restricted to views of compositional semantics only appropriate for syntax. This has compromised their effectiveness for providing an appropriate empirical basis for investigating film.

This essay explores the historical development of Umwelt and its links with related terms, such as environment, milieu(x), ambiens-ambiance, and circonstances, the latter of which are used by Jakob von Uexküll's predecessors to different ends in France. To observe the conditions in which the concepts of Umwelt, milieu, and environment have crossed the borders, this essay offers a narrative for each word derived from dictionary entries and articles in the encyclopedia of semiotics, and relates these materials to four surveys by Spitzer, Canguilhem, Aarsleff, and Sutrop. The process will basically reveal the loaded value of a word within its national and disciplinary boundaries. However, it is argued that, in making sense out of a discipline like Umweltforschung, it is neither sufficient nor wise to stay within the German boundary. As the travelling of a word has been more purposeful than simply accidental, the history of its routes can reveal its conceptual equivalents hidden in other linguistic, scientific, and cultural constructs, which go beyond the word equivalents compiled in the dictionaries. From the hindsight of the positive receptions of the concept of Umwelt by the French philosophers during the 1930s and 1940s, the essay alleviates the charged hostility against Taine's concept of milieu in Germany and brings forward the sense of biological harmony and equilibrium shared between Uexkuuml;ll and his French predecessors.

The objective of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the functional specialization of languages. It offers a logical-functional perspective on the topic by establishing correspondences between the theories of three scholars: Peirce, Santaella, and Halliday. Through both an analysis of visual examples and a discussion of the literature, it proposes that the sonorous, the visual, and the verbal, in deep association with human senses, have evolved as specialized matrices mainly to fulfill interpersonal, ideational, and textual semiotic functions, respectively.

This article explores from a semiotic perspective the structural features of the ‘poetic logic’ that lies behind metonymy and metaphor. More specifi-cally, it treats metonymy and metaphor not as ‘abnormal’ uses of language but as the results of the same indexical and iconic ways of thinking that we see elsewhere in our lives. The paper also brings to bear on the topic of metaphor some important insights from the late Chinese scholar Qian Zhong-shu, whose ‘two handles and several sides’ theory of metaphor seems to complement contemporary Western ‘metaphorology’ very well.

In this paper, we examine the importance of hyperlinks in revealing the presence of the hypertext author and his decisive role in defining and controlling the dialogue with the user/reader through the hypertext. This is essential in order to adequately describe all the factors involved in hypertextual communication and how this communication takes place. In hypertexts and hypermedia, hyperlinks on the one hand define the possible directions of hypertextual communication and, on the other hand, their strategy of manifestation shapes the user's process of interpretation. Because of these two important ‘powers’ hyperlinks have, and on the basis of John Searle's distinction between constitutive and regulative rules, hyperlinks can be defined as constitutive rules of hypertextual communication, set by the author, needing to be activated by the reader, and determining different utterances in the interaction happening during the navigation between the author and the user/reader. In the paper, after having described the semiotic-communicative structure of hyperlinks and the process of interpretation they require, the character of constitutive rules of hyperlinks will be illustrated by analyzing different dialogues generated by different hyperlinks in two particular kinds of hypermedial applications: hypertextual transpositions of classic literary texts and hyperfiction.

This paper analyzes a televised political advertisement run by David Perryman against former Congressman J. C. Watts in the 1994 Fourth District Congressional race in Oklahoma. Relying on Roland Barthes' conception of the rhetoric of the image — what I refer to as critical semiotics — the paper investigates the four sign systems at work in the ad: photographs, written language, spoken language (narration), and moving images. The analysis demonstrates: how the sponsor of the ad uses the trope of the ‘Afro’ as the primary signifying image; that the ad argues against Watts' candidacy by implicitly appealing to audience members' (voters') negative associations of blackness with inferiority, criminality, and perceptions of black militancy associated with the black power movement.

A new understanding of communication processes is achieved when one considers the peculiarities of image making. The discussion of visuality in communication is particularly relevant for communication studies as it calls into question the presumably paradigmatic and conventionalist assumptions that have prevailed in this field of studies. This paper considers the anatomy of neurological functions of the visual brain as the key to the understanding of images and by extension all modes of communication, demonstrating that deductive logical inferences typify the production and the reception of images.

This article presents different semiotic perspectives on biological mimicry, which is considered to be a communicative system consisting of a mimic, a model, and a signal-receiver. Proceeding from the writings of Thomas A. Sebeok, the activity of the mimic and the relationship between mimicry and iconicity are analyzed. From the signal-receiver's perspective, mimicry is described as a probable mistake in recognition and it is characterized by the notion of ambivalent sign. Ambivalent sign is a stable sign structure fiuctuating between one and two signs. On the basis of Jakob von Uexküll's works, mimicry resemblance is described as taking place in animal Umwelten . From this semiotic viewpoint, various examples of abstract resemblance in nature are regarded as ‘resemblance with meaning’ and an alternative explanation to the concept of abstract mimicry is presented.

This article probes the essence of such phenomena as concept and symbol, considers the dialectic of their stability and variability, and traces the development of content in some of them. Archetypes, stereotypes, and conceptual values are identified as the entities that are responsible for the universality of concepts and symbols, and that provide the stable ‘kernels’ of their content, which resist changes happening in them over time. Finally, the article expands on the main factors bringing about these changes — intertextuality and deconstruction, and offers a case study of the deconstruction of the Soviet ideological model during the ‘Perestroika’ of the 1990s.

Resumé Dans Franceschi (2002), j'ai présenté une théorie basée sur les matrices de concepts qui se propose de constituer une alternative à la classification proposée par Greimas, dans le domaine de l'analyse paradigmatique. Je m'attache ici à appliquer les matrices de concepts à l'analyse d'un corpus constitué de proverbes corses. Je rappelle tout d'abord brièvement le cadre théorique des matrices de concepts. Je décris également la structure des thèses proverbiales, avant de présenter les résultats de l'analyse correspondante.

Communication scholars' early interest in the function of silence in human interactions produces different theorizations about the phenomenon. Contemporary interest is evidenced in a plethora of research exploring different domains of how silence is utilized in human interaction. Despite the sustained interest in the function of silence in human communication, there is a paucity of research examining how intimate partners use silence as a conflict-management strategy. Consequently, there is an impoverished understanding on how such couples manage their marital conflicts using silence. This study thus investigates how married couples use silence as a conflict management strategy in their relationships. Using a qualitative paradigm — specifically the semiotic phenomenological perspective — and analyzing the research data through Lanigan's three-step methodology, I discover participants' experiences with silence in conflict situations with their spouses. The analysis reveals four themes that describe the experiences of married couples using silence as conflict-management tactic. Discussion of the themes reveals important findings as to how participants use silence in three ways to manage the inevitable conflicts that arise within their relationships.

This paper focuses on Peirce's account of the categories. Its first aim is to work out a synoptic view of Peirce's categorial research. The second aim consists in stating and evaluating the conceptual changes that Peirce's conception entails regarding each of the three dimensions (ontological, semiotic, and cognitive) that are usually involved in such research. The third and major aim consists in stating that a kind of metaphysical foundation of pragmatics might be sought for in Peirce's ‘mature’ conception of the categories, insofar as pragmatic properties appear, to the greatest extent, to be grounded in the most fundamental level of the semiotic process itself. A tentative ‘Peircean pragmatics’ is outlined as a conclusion.

This article develops a model of narrative reference by showing that the organization of meaning in narrative is congruent with the structure of space and time. In making this connection, the article's principal methodological tool is mathematical catastrophe theory. Specifically, it is shown that narratives like Hesiod's Homeric Hymn to Demeter can be construed as hypersurfaces that permit a number of critical transformations between stable regions of thematic value. It is argued that this approach is superior to cognitivist theories of reference because it avoids the vicious circle of displacing the referential function of narrative on to psychic schemas that have themselves a narrative structure.

Based on fieldwork carried out between 1975 and 1979, it was discovered that most of the circus performers were living and performing as families and many had traced their origins to circus families. The traveling conditions and relative isolation account for this family basis, as do the circus' labor-intensive economy (only an entire family's labor can provide for its needs), as well as the reproduction of its labor as the main source of the parents' long term security. The public expects to see a ‘family’ in an esoteric traveling show and the performing family strengthens its bonds through building the act in its own image. The performing family is there as through its ‘family’ performance, and invoking the audience's nostalgia, it perpetuates itself as well as the condition of social (and ontological) isolation in which the family-based circus emerged. The family, embodying ‘family’ among the circus performers, is not only a mode of economic survival, but a mode of being out of social time and out of relations.

A model of interrelations between various types of mentation and semiotic systems is suggested. The relations of structures, forms, and signs in different mentation processes and their effect on semiotic systems are discussed. Major features of these systems are examined from the viewpoint of simulation of changes in physical objects and human environment. Most are multilateral and are clearly structures of various systems. Their organizing role in semiotic systemity are evinced through the analysis of architectural ensembles and separate architectural works (examples of Old Russian architecture and architecture of classicism).