Volume 2016, Issue 208 -

John Poinsot (1589–1644), aka Joannes a Sancto Thoma, was the first of St Thomas’ followers among the Latins to demonstrate that the origins of animal knowledge in sensation is already – from the first – a matter of the action of signs. This action, “semiosis,” results in the formation of an irreducibly triadic relation apart from which there is no awareness at all on the part of animals. At the level of internal sense, and then again at the level of intellect (the two having in common dependency upon concept-formation in order to interpret the data provided by sensation), Poinsot shows how the concept serves to make objects known only by serving as the foundation for relations which, exactly as those in sensation, exhibit an irreducibly triadic character, with only this difference: that, whereas the triadic relations of sensation are directly founded upon or “provenate from” species impressa (stimulation of sense powers in bodily interaction with the surroundings) determining the external sense powers, the triadic relations of perceptual and intellectual awareness have as their immediate foundations or “sources of provenation” species expressae (“ideas” or concepts) actively formed by the cognitive powers of memory, imagination, estimation, and intellect. Being relations, all of these triadic relations exhibit no direct instantiation as signate matter, and it is this which makes them only indirectly knowable to sense powers. Intellect, by contrast, in being able to know relations precisely in their difference from related objects and things, manifests the species-specific distinctness of human animals in being able to construct and to know and to communicate about objects – beginning with relations – which admit of no direct sensory instantiation. The purpose of this paper is to show how the ability of the human mind to consider objects which admit of no direct instantiation in sense perception is what distinguishes the human being as “ semiotic animal ” from what the Latins identified as “brute animals,” not because brutes (the “alloanimals,” to use a term from late modern anthropology) are not “rational” in the modern sense of being able creatively to work through problems (indeed they are rational in this sense!), but because human animals are not confined to the consideration of objects as perceptually instantiable.

What is the relation between emotion, information, and knowledge? The aim of the paper is to focus on the meaning creation process, which involves emotion, information, and knowledge. The paper shows how the meaning creation process is an intricate relation between information and knowledge, how information is the catalyst for knowledge, and how knowledge can effect information, while emotion is the flavor of information and knowledge, respectively. The paper also presents a concept of information based on Peirce’s semeiotic.

This paper presents a crucial problem about the identity and function of general semiotics. The latter is not only defined in terms of interdisciplinary-directed theoretical practice in comparison to the philosophic-fundamental-directed one, but also further redefined as an operative-functional organizer that does not necessarily imply any fixed theoretical doctrines. General semiotics (GS) is described as a functional strategy for organizing all-round interdisciplinary-directed theoretical construction. In addition, the paper emphasizes that the interdisciplinary essence of semiotic theory is contrary to any philosophical fundamentalism and applied semiotics does not need any philosophical foundation either.

Wittgenstein surprised with the rhetorical inversion of his style of writing, often at the expense of thought. In his works, he skillfully constructed the fragmentary paragraphs to solve the “confusions” of language. The result of Wittgenstein’s conscious endeavor is the persuasive effect of new reasoning in the “ornamental” type of the philosophical writings about language. Wittgenstein’s verbal genres are the interplay of deduction, induction, and abduction, formed consciously and subconsciously, following the three categories of Peirce’s semio-logical reasoning. Wittgenstein’s rhetoric changed the first certainty of philosophy into the abductive uncertainty of his later works, keeping the story of Wittgenstein’s reasoning in suspense.

This project involves a socio-linguistic look at corporate discourse in the form of “mission statements.” The analysis is performed by utilizing the foundational document model (FDM) as a theoretical framework for performing ideological content analyses. The FDM is a semantic grammatical model consisting of five sociological categories (ethical norms, folklore narrative, utopian schemes, strategic planning, and role attribution). Stark contrasts are observed between manifestos produced by the two most successful companies in the soft beverage industry (Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.). The comparative analysis performed in this study shows great potential regarding a possible extension and application of the content-analytical framework for those primary texts used when mobilizing collective action.

This article considers the transformations of political rhetoric in Estonian public discourse from the eve of World War II to the retreat of German troops from Estonia in August 1944. Thus, the period under analysis contains the 1940 coup d’état in June, Estonia’s “accession” or “acceptance” to the Soviet Union, and the German occupation of Estonia. The article will analyze how the Estonians’ political and cultural public identity was shaped in political speeches. The analysis will concentrate on the texts that employed the signs important for previous regimes to the introduction and consolidation of new (Soviet and National Socialist) ideological discourses. Using the methods of semiotics and discourse theory, the article will shed light on the metaphorical and metonymical principles of text and meaning construction in the context of power relations. The material of analysis consists of the speeches of the political elite from the 1938, 1939, and 1940 issues of Päevaleht; 1940–1941 issues of Rahva Hääl, and the 1941–1944 issues of Eesti Sõna, and finally, of articles that have been coordinated by the state (published in 1934–1940) in order represent the identity of the Estonian.

In Item-and-Arrangement models of inflection, morphemes are associations of form and meaning stored in a mental lexicon. Saussure’s notion of the linguistic sign as a unit of an acoustic image (signifier) and a concept (signified) immediately suggests such a model. But close examination of the examples of inflectional morphology throughout the Cours brings Saussure’s ideas more in line with Process morphology, a model in which recurrent elements in word forms are exponents of content features, and realizational rules license a word form inferentially from the word’s content. The Saussurean sign allowed French structuralists to revolutionize the methods of modern social science, eschewing the motives and intentions of human actors to focus on the system of oppositions that make signification possible in each domain. Eventually, post-structuralism rejected the static nature of the linguistic sign, forcing linguistics into relative isolation (since it held on to sign-based models of language). The criticism of structuralist treatments of morphology in Process models of inflection, however, stands as an exception to this tendency. In retrospect, I argue, similar ideas can be found in Saussure’s view of the langue as a complex algebra.

This paper aims to examine the status and ontology of expression level of sign to propose the concept of creativity in connection with Peirce’s theory of symbol and particularly symbolization. I argue that the process of symbolization has a certain directionality from the ontological to the substantial domain of sign. Thus, the internal world of concept is connected to the external world of things. In other words, a symbol as a cultural code with connoted meaning requires another dimension of a new creative expression. As a result, denotation on the expression level becomes extended. Based on this, symbols grow through symbolization with creative thinking. This process of symbolization is commensurate with explaining how two domains are connected. Consequently, the concept of creativity on the expression plane needs an explanation from a semiotic viewpoint as to how the ontological domain of concepts or ideas is connected to the substantial domain of expression or things based not on a psychological aspect but on a logical inference through metaphorical and analogical reasoning.

This paper aims to look at the dialogical character of sign in Peirce, particularly with an emotional-volitional aspect of action-sign to discern how human subjects act and control themselves by virtue of symbolic mediation, representing the dialogic relation of sign. I thus examine the concept of the Peircean symbol as Thirdness, a mediator, and a genuine sign on three levels: expression, representation, interpretation. First, symbol expresses a Quality of dialogical relation between two qualities. Second, symbol represents a dialogical relation between icon being endowed with an internal character and index being endowed with a relative character, so that the symbol represents the indexical relation of the two. Third, symbol interprets the dialogical relation, which has another name of “genuine” symbol with a logical interpretant functioning as interpretative representation. In this way, symbolic mediation is incorporated with dialogic sign relation so as to attain a triadic meaning of action in self-control, thus leading to self-identity and truth. I attempt to show these characteristics of symbolic mediation by means of cinema image as metaphoric mediator, while discussing esthetic experience of the viewer.

This article engages with the widely used academic concept of discourse. The aim is threefold: first, to provide a comprehensive overview of how the notion of discourse is conceived based on (a) definitions in the academic literature, (b) dictionary definitions, and (c) corpus data; second, to define discourse as a set of related representations; and, third, to suggest a basis for a typology of discourses. Following Peirce, a representation is regarded as a relationship between a signifier, signified element, and interpretant. A basis for a typology is developed by considering various types of representations and ways they are related.

Defamation law is a long-standing research focus. Previous studies on defamation law have pointed out the importance of balancing two fundamental issues in law, namely, protection of reputation and freedom of speech. The present corpus-based legal study, using ConcGram 1.0 as the analytical tool, examined the phraseological profile of reported cases on defamation in Hong Kong in order to find out the types of defense and the approach to meaning in the defamation case law in Hong Kong. Regarding defenses to a defamation claim, the results show that fair comment, qualified privilege, and justification are the most prevalent types, that unintentional defamation is not used at all, and that there has been a noticeable shift from fair comment to honest comment. As for the approach to meaning, the ordinary and natural approach is found to be a pivotal means of solving the threshold problem in defamation cases, that is, whether the words involved are defamatory or not.

Literati paintings were drawn by Korean Confucian scholars from the end of the Koryeo period to the end of the Joseon period. As painting these works was considered a method for a scholar’s self-cultivation, literati paintings express plenty of in-depth metaphysical points of significance. Meanwhile, these paintings revealed changes that correspond with changes in cultural circumstances. The present study considers such transformation as a deconstructive process. This research analyzes three Korean orchid paintings to address the following three questions: (1) How are the literati’s thoughts represented in their forms of paintings in the East Asian tradition of poetry–calligraphy–painting in one? (2) How are the interrelations among the pictorial image, verbal message, and empty space revealed in individual literati paintings? (3) How are such interrelations deconstructed amid new cultural circumstances?

This paper examines an Anglophonic corpus of institutional holdup notes (n=29) recovered by robbery detectives in a single Canadian city over a twenty-year period. Moreover, it examines how the recurrence of specific lexical structures in written content reflects a given offender’s awareness of his social position relative to both his victim and the institution where a robbery is committed. By disaggregating holdup notes into three distinct categories based on written content, it is argued that these categories reflect the willingness of perpetrators to adjust the content of these notes through a process of linguistic code switching that both enables and expedites the completion of the offence. It is additionally argued that the perceived formality of the institution targeted by perpetrators has an unconscious but direct bearing on the formality and structure of their writing.

After giving a synthesis about a possible semiotics of the body and its conditions, we will deal with the question of the semiosis of the body in sexual literature in two periods of the arabo-muslim culture. The first period concerns the second century of hegira (the eightieth century), a decisive period of young and already powerful arabo-muslim society. Through Al Jahiz’s works, a very busy and prolific writer, we will study different discourses on the body, notably on homosexuality, heterosexuality and the opposition between black and white bodies. The second example constitutes an occasion for us to grasp the evolution of the semiosis of the body in a new period and with a specific writer who is Al Soyouté, a scholar of the sixteenth century. We will focus particularly on Al Soyouté’s new ideas on the body and his original references to the Greek corpus, but also to the traditions of Coran and Hadith.