Band 2008, Heft 170

This paper aims to briefly survey the epistemological debate about the connection between perception and cognition. Contemporary representationalists agree that both perception and cognition can represent how things are in our environment. They customarily separate two types of content. In the standard version, the content of paradigmatic perceptual processes is held to be nonconceptual. On the other hand, our typical conscious processes, such as thinking or remembering, operate with a representational content that might be called conceptual content. According to Peacocke this disctinction may be used to explain how we can gain a priori knowledge about the world. I argue in the final section that this claim poses a considerable problem, because the notion of the a priori seems to be incompatible with the representationalist's overall position. For this reason I present a new — emergentist — version of Peacocke's thesis.

Semiotic aspects of time are neglected by many semioticians; time is condemned to be the context, frame, or ‘dynamic component.’ We examine representation in terms of encoding processes, pointing out emerging modalities of Time: History on the one hand, Past on the other hand. In this respect, socially-constructed tacit knowledge is a key concept, and the hic et nunc semiotic encoding of it is called representation. Representation as emergence is a shift from denotation to connotation, a dissolution of the denotation, its submergence, based on conventions (past tense, evocatio , etc). History emerges in particular semantic and institutional contexts, such as school and textbook, cemetery and commemoration. Its emergence is preconditioned by the emergence of the Past; but, as soon as History emerges, Past submerges. Past tense, black-and-white, are the base. The History-sign — dating and proper names of persons who existed — appears as a split: a number among words, a well-known figure among typical extras, or the Eiffel-tower under construction in the background of a fin-de-siècle Parisian cityscape. Most often, the representation process leads to polyisotopy: the co-existence of the emerged, the referred, and the submerged, the union of their horizons of meaning.

This article analyzes how the concept of symbolic reference arises from Whitehead's theory of perception. Perception is also the emergence of a new product in experience, an element of the self-creation of man, an individual synthesis, an exemplification of freedom. For Whitehead, it is the relationship between symbol and meaning, bidirectional and dual. The function of words involves enhancing the relevance of a meaning-event and making it communicable. The novelty emerging in the course of perception introduces a new intensity of individual feeling that is emphasized even more by the forming of propositions and evaluating them before the background of alternatives. Language and philosophy face the same paradox in the emergent continuity: how to handle the contrast between many things and one world. For Whitehead, the final metaphysical principle of the emergence of novelty is universally valid, and human beings crave novelty and fear it at the same time, searching for novelty without loss. Creativity arises par excellence in the phenomenon of originality of life and is completed by the adventure of human discoveries.

This article argues in favor of the idea that works of art in Early German Romanticism, as conceived of by Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, were conceptually considered as an integrated whole, consisting of very different and diverging elements that determine each other in a dynamic process. In this respect, the aesthetic views of this literary movement can be related to some basic postulations about dynamic systems, chaos, order, and emergence. The assumptions of system theory as well as of chaos theory can lead to their application to postmodern works of art that can be described by the categories of nonlinearity, self-reflectivity, irreversibility, and self-organization. Moreover, it can be supposed that these categories apply also to Romantic works of art. The article demonstrates it through the analysis of some late narrative texts of E.T.A. Hoffmann, who could be considered a very modern or an avant la lettre postmodern author.

In this article, the emergence and evolution of poetic meaning in the literary text is examined in the theoretical problem context of a special semantic construct. Its peculiarity lies in offering a double reading based on the internal contradiction of activating two opposed sense-orientations. Due to this poetic feature, this kind of meaning-formation can easily assume the function of semantic mediation between two crucial meaning units. When poetically placed into interrelation with other levels of the text structure, the mediatory function of this formation is realized as a meaning shift. Thus, the mediatory semantic construct can be construed as a germ for the emergence and evolution of new meaning, and it plays a crucial role in ensuing text-connectedness. The illustrations of this special function are given through two case studies, the analysis of Hamlet's madness in Shakespeare's play and Raskolnikov's murder in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment . In both cases, it is the semantic intersection of different text-layers that provides the clue for the realization of the mediatory function. In Hamlet , the most intensive semantic activity of this kind of intersection can be grasped in the interference of the plot level and a special metaphoric sequence evolving in the play. In Crime and Punishment , it is the active interrelation of several semantic evaluations of the murder that serves as the basis for the meaning shift linked with the protagonist's figure, including his transformation.

The theme of this article is emergence in the field of the symbolic content of objects. The authors analyze the characteristics of symbolic thinking, then collect some aspects of emergence, making use of the example of the Coca-Cola bottle that plays an important role in the Jamie Uys film ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’. They distinguish emergence from innovation and recount different features and preconditions of emergence. Besides the symbolic elements of the Coca-Cola bottle, they present some typical changes in the culture of objects in the countries of Eastern Europe (after the system change of 1989–1990). They analyze the popularity of Asian objects (and their meaning), the changing role of television, and, finally, they present some results of their new research. In this research, they have looked for symbolic association in fields of objects, and they show some changes of these associations, for example the change of the meaning of ‘old,’ ‘young,’ or ‘adult.’ The article is about the symbolism of objects and about emergence of new elements in these symbols, but the conclusions attempts to summarize the general features of emergence.

This article sets out to link the philosophical interpretation of evolution to one of its basic corollaries: emergence. An emergent process is one characterized by the generation of a new quality. In languages, where word formation devices include compounding, grammatically analyzable structures are increasingly replaced with synthetic compounds that are insusceptible to paraphrase. Emergence arises and endures by means of cumulative cultural evolution and learning, collectively termed the ‘ratchet effect’ in Tomasello's theory. This article cites two nearly identical parables of cumulative cultural evolution: one by Tomasello and the other one by Leontev, adopted from Pieron. Subsequently, the article describes a concrete area of semiotic, specifically linguistic, research on emergence: language reform, with special regard to its successful implementation in nineteenth-century Hungary. By way of conclusion, two ideas are offered for further analysis: (a) emergence and cultural shifts (the potential change of semiotic systems), particularly in the twenty-first-century information society; (b) the social responsibility of applied linguists and, in general, scholars. While the ratchet effect is clearly still with us, the question arises whether there is any social momentum that forces it to stop or reverse.

The images of globalization one encounters in China today signify the anguished anxiety of the Chinese for modernity. This article proposes a four-level model of semiotic analysis for interpreting ubiquitous images of globalization in China. The author argues that every image of globalization encountered in China signifies to viewers at the following levels: first, transmission of the informational message; second, signaling of the desire of consumerism; third, pointing to the presence of TNC (transnational capital); fourth, speaking to the Chinese drive for modernity. While the first level is where one locates neutral, self-evident information, all of the other levels deal with ideology or ideological symbolism; hence, the terms for the following analysis: the informational, the consumerism-symbolic, the TNC-symbolic, and the CAM-symbolic (Chinese Anxiety for Modernity).

This article explores the semiotic thought of I Ching (Book of Changes). This Confucian canon and the subsequent commentaries on it constitute the origin and one of the most important legacies of traditional Chinese theories of the sign. A central notion of I Ching is xiang — variously translated as ‘sign,’ or ‘image.’ The author approaches the idea of the ‘sign’ in I Ching and the later exegetical tradition in four aspects: 1) definition of the sign; 2) typology of signs; 3) hermeneutics of signs; 4) epistemology of signs. The purpose is to outline an indigenous Chinese theory of signs that has flourished for over two thousand years. At the same time, this article aims at a comparative study of semiotic theories between East and West. The author brings in relevant ideas of Western scholars and theorists such as St. Augustine, Leibniz, Peirce, Needham, Sebeok, and Todorov.

Since cultural studies take narratives as one of the forms through which a culture understands itself and its past, this essay explores two Chinese novellas, ‘The True Story of Ah Q’ by Lu Xun and ‘Yang Zhi Sells His Knife’ by Tan Ge, and proposes that while the first-order narrative code (narrating) assumes to reflect and deflect history, the second-order narrative code (commenting) by the implied author ‘undercuts the fabric of fiction’ in unexpected ways. One of the important types of narrative comments is metalinguistic and meta-discursive, which linguistically technicalizes narratives as artistic accounts of true historical events. Although metalinguistic and meta-discursive comments carry personal and evaluative burdens, quite a large number of such ‘self-conscious narrations’ do not necessarily ‘go beyond narrating, describing, or identifying.’ While constituting a special register in narratives by conglomerating showing and telling on the implied authorial level, they both reflect and deflect history.

In this article, the author uses a narrative-semiotic approach to discuss the Eight Revolutionary Model Plays of China's Cultural Revolution, which left profound but sometimes negative influences on the lives of Chinese people. Because of the political upheavals of the time, the Eight Revolutionary Model Plays dominated the cultural stage during this special period of Chinese history. However, they have become popular again in recent years — an interesting cultural phenomenon that deserves academic observation Phelan's three narrative voices (mimetic, thematic, and synthetic) are used for narrative analysis and it is determined that these model plays primarily use the thematic voice. Jakobson's semiotic theory of six factors within the speech event is used for semiotic analysis and the result is that each of the six factors has polyphonic features. The conclusion is that although the plays were originally made for political purposes, with time as well as people's appreciation and consumption they have become part of Chinese culture. In this sense, one can say that art, like language, is also a kind of convention.

Initiated mainly by Ma Yuan, Ge Fei, Su Tong, and Mo Yan, the literary avant-garde has played a prominent role in contemporary Chinese literature since the mid-1980s. It advances some revolutionary concepts of narrative, language, and human existence, directing its poignant query into the very truth of life and attempting to exhaust the possible forms of literary expressions. As a kind of cultural force, the flowering of Chinese avant-garde writings helps perceptually and conceptually to transcend the age-old cultural tradition. As one of the representatives of this literary school, Mo Yan has great cultural and literary significance. Most of his writings are credited with a sense of history that is sensitive to the links between man and society but unsympathetic to the tradition of theoretical elaboration or political ideology. This essay will mainly discuss some of Mo Yan's most prominent narrative strategies, such as his conscious choice of cultural position as a writer — to write as one of the ordinary people, rather than to write for the ordinary people. The author believes that Mo Yan's cultural position in his writings is so important that it governs the dynamics of his plots, characters, and themes.

In order to address an inventory of semiotic research in Morocco, one must deal with the history of the introduction of this ‘science’ into Moroccan cultural studies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, interest in linguistics and semiotics blossomed in Morrocco. Roland Barthes (1985) preached a new approach to the signifying systems and to structural analyses of texts, an approach he later called a ‘semiotic adventure.’ The nature of semiotic research in Morocco and its representative domains will be demonstrated in two streams: first, purely academic research in semiotics, and second, contributions to other fields, such as literary criticism and cultural sociology.

Résumé Cet article tente de comprendre comment deux sémiotiques, celle de Barthes et celle d'Eco, nées et conçues à la même époque, disponibles de surcroît en français, n'ont pas eu la même réception au Maroc, du moins le même intérêt. Peut-on expliquer cela seulement par des motifs historiques et épistémologiques — dépendance de l'université marocaine d'alors vis-à-vis de l'université française, la mode du structuralisme comme exemples? Ou existe-t-il, en plus de ces motifs, d'autres, d'ordre culturel et idéologique ?

Résumé Il s'agit de mettre en place les jalons méthodologiques d'un parcours de lecture sémiotique, s'originant dans le dispositif théorique et heuristique de la sémiotique textuelle (modèle de l'action) et intégrant aussi bien les acquis de la sémantique interprétative (modèle de l'isotopie) que ceux de la coopération textuelle (modèle de la réception). L'objectif est de comprendre puis de rallier, dans le même mouvement, la circulation de la signification dans sa triple dimension d'émergence, de dissémination et de réception par l'instance de lecture.

Résumé Cette étude se focalisera sur deux aspects de la dimension interprétante dans la tradition musulmane à travers l'exemple précis d'Ibn Sirine et Ibn Chahine. Le premier aspect met l'accent sur les interprétants possibles, associés dans leur virtualité aux différents symboles oniriques. Le deuxième aspect de la dimension interprétante, qui touche au caractère interactif de la communication, peut être saisi à travers l'analyse de quelques rêves rapportés dans les traités d'Ibn Sirine et d'Ibn Chahine. L'objectif est d'étudier comment les différents types d'interprétants suscités par les rêves s'articulent avec les diverses fonctions du sujet (le scribe, le museur et l'interprète). L'autre dimension de l'interprétant qui sera analysée est l'interprétant final. Ce dernier se manifeste dans le processus sémiosique sous deux formes : explicitement, comme dans la partie introductive des textes d'Ibn Sirine, Avicenne et Ibn Chahine où est présenté le rituel de l'interprétation des rêves, et implicitement, dans les rêves-types qui instancient et valident les règles d'interprétation énoncées et assumées par l'énonciateur. Enfin, pour contextualiser notre analyse, nous nous arrêterons sur l'interprétant que détermine le temps de l'analyse. Si le texte d'Ibn Sirine relève d'une pratique onirocritique médiévale, et donc soumise à un mode de fonctionnement propre, sa lecture actuelle et son analyse subissent l'influence des différentes théories modernes sur le rêve. Nous nous arrêterons, donc en particulier, sur les interprétants que pourrait déterminer la confrontation du texte d'Ibn Sirine à L'interprétation des rêves de Freud (1967), le texte qui a le plus marqué les productions culturelles modernes.

This article aims at showing that African drama relies on semiotic foundations to create a meaning that could have been censored. Examples from five of Wole Soyinka's plays will constitute a springboard towards tackling the semiotic issues relating to ‘language,’ ‘referentiality,’ and ‘kinesic signification.’ The semiotic reading of these works reveals that African drama, embodied in one of its most prolific playwrights, has used semiotics to enrich the dramatic language of theatre and the experience of audiences that counted mainly on the spoken word to create meaning.