Volume 2022, Issue 246

Résumé Largement exploitée dans différents domaines d’étude et de pratique en sciences de l’information et de la communication et discutée dans les recherches liées au monde culturel (musées, bibliothèques et centres culturels), la notion de médiation n’a pas cessé de s’étendre, malgré la diversité conceptuelle, sur les autres sphères des sciences humaines et sociales. Considéré comme véhicule du processus de la sémiose, cette notion s’interpose au cœur de la réflexion sémiotique comme instance chargée de faire passer le sens. L’espace de la ville, ses composants et les pratiques qui s’y déroulent sont sollicités dans cette étude, comme point d’articulation de notre problématique qui consiste à savoir comment le pont en tant qu’élément architectural dans l’espace d’une ville, par son statut, les pratiques qui s’y passent et les valeurs qu’il porte, pourra fonctionner comme médiateur sémiotique. Nous tenterons de montrer à travers l’étude de notre corpus, le pont Khadjou à Ispahan, ville iranienne, comment ce rôle médiateur s’implante sur le niveau cognitif autant que passionnel des sujets qui le côtoient.

This study examines adults’ postings of photos of children on social media and offers a unique methodological approach to studying visual data. A major innovation of this study is first, to enact the concept and method of narrative inquiry to the digital photographs. Having applied this method, the study also offers findings about the diverse values that emerge across two specific digital parenting cultures organized via Instagram hashtags of #fashionkids and #letthekids. Values analysis of 500 photographs (250 photos from each hashtag culture) indicated that these hashtags constitute cultures defined by distinct values of ideal childhoods. While #fashionkids photos emphasized children’s attendance to the photo making activity with stress to their possessions, #letthekids photos expressed mixed values of freedom and domestic happenings with a strong emphasis on unawareness of the photographing and togetherness. While the qualities of childhood images collected in the same period hint at meaningful patterns, the way those qualities interact with each other in distinct cultures suggest that there is not one ideal image that could represent childhood in the best possible way and the photographers’ values very much influence the visual sense-making of what’s being portrayed in children’s photographs.

After giving some contextual information, we propose an analysis of music and meaning in the song “The Garden,” as performed by the rock group Einstürzende Neubauten in the official video from the 1996 release of the album Ende Neu . We present a semiotic blending model of the narrative content of the song and of its imagery, partly determined by the structure and character of the music. Finally, we add a view of the apocalyptic perspective of some comparable creations.

In this paper, we address the problematic of film narration and its narrator from a re-reading of Émile Benveniste’s theory of enunciation in open discussion with both the theories of film enunciation that have derived from it, and the cognitive theories that, by discarding it, have tried to take its place. This has led us to a differentiation between two dimensions of the problem of enunciation that are usually ignored: that which separates the act of enunciation and the subject who performs it from that of the textual subjects (the enunciator, the narrator …) who inscribe that act in the text. An erroneous understanding of the modes of enunciation of story and discourse has derived from their ignorance, which has led to reducing the former to a kind of form that derives from the latter, constituting no more than a form of discourse that would hide its basis. A precise enunciative definition of the lie is derived from their conscience. Certainly, there is always a subject of the act of enunciation whose traces can be recognized in the materiality of the statement. But there is a properly ontological distance that separates them – as material traces – from the enunciator, as a purely formal textual figure that, by being that, may or may not be present in the text. In this way, the Benveniste’s affirmation can be sustained according to which the story, the pure mode of the narrative, so to speak, is characterized by the absence – not the erasure, nor the invisibility – of any enunciator.

This article proposes a semio-rhetorical epistemology for visual documents, one capable of accounting for both their internal configuration, which we shall call the compositional dimension, and their persuasive force within public space, or their rhetorical dimension. The field of reference will be that of identity-related images on social networks, because compared to other kinds of images, such as artistic or professional ones, they adopt new compositional solutions and new dynamics of circulation. To test this theoretical framework, we will conduct an analysis which has never been carried out in semiotics and which, as far as we know, remains very rare even in the overall field of visual studies, that is, the analysis of the profile of an Instagram influencer’s visual production, that of Canadian artist Rupi Kaur. Taking into account the flow of images shared over time, we will focus primarily on the compositional dimension that articulates the specificity of the language of images. The most appropriate model for investigating social network photos seems to be that of the portrait, thanks to which we will identify a first series of regularities and deviations. Secondly, we will turn towards the rhetorical dimension – the persuasive strategies found within, through, and towards images – focusing on the analysis of a single photo: on the one hand, it is a shot which presents greater compositional richness than others; on the other hand, it has greatly impacted the notoriety of the influencer, due to the censorship incurred on Instagram, its abundant coverage by traditional media, and the heated debate it triggered on social media. We will thus propose a reinterpretation of Paul Ricœur’s theory of identity in order to balance the rhetorical and the compositional dimensions through a unitary theoretical hypothesis. Visual identity on social networks is always the result of a negotiation between two opposite tendencies: on the one hand, the experiential pressure expressed through images related to the body and everyday practices; on the other, the algorithmic pressure due to the delegation of the management of identity to software. The case of Rupi Kaur is a rare example of a critical mediation between these two pressures and helps us build a methodology for the examination of images belonging to other social domains.

This paper examines the color symbolic values in two different and unrelated languages, Arabic and English. It analyses the colors mentioned in the Qur’an semiotically and their translation based on Peirce’s semiotic model of sign interpretation, while considering the socio-cultural differences that influence the understanding and rendering of color signs, informed by corpus-based analysis. Although the Qur’an contains the most basic colors like other languages, the semiotic values of some colors are different. The study shows that colors in the Qur’an, and Arabic in general, are tightly linked to the environment and culture of the early Muslims who received the Qur’an first-hand from the Prophet. These colors as situated in their culture could appear positively or negatively to users in other languages in a way that is not intended in the source text. Therefore, the translator’s awareness of the socio-cultural signs could bridge the gap between the different systems of codification and recodification of signs.

The main objective of this study is to propose, from a theoretical approach, an alternative model of the communication process that includes intentionality, interest, identification, and exchange as part of the internal process of decoding the message experienced by the receiver. The proposal includes the subdivision of the responses offered by the receiver into two possible categories: one simple (short-term), which can mean the programmed response to a specific code; and another complex (long-term), which can mean a change and/or significant transformation in different aspects associated with the recipient. Through a qualitative methodology, with emphasis on documentary review, and inferential and deductive reasoning, the proposed theoretical model has been developed and explained, highlighting the added value that it could offer to the understanding of communication.

Semiotic studies in South Korea have a relatively short history; nevertheless, they enjoy a rapid development from a high starting point, so their research scale and insightful perspectives should not be underestimated. The introduction of “structuralist theory” in the late 1960s paved the way for Korean semiotics to enter the academic arena ideologically and theoretically. In the process of following the international trend of semiotic research, Korean semiotics has also formed its own characteristics. After over 40 years of development, it has become an important part of the world’s semiotic studies. It has experienced three historical stages, namely, the budding period (1974–1983), the steady development period (1984–1993), and the comprehensive advancement period (1994–present). The current Korean semiotics presents obvious new trends as follows: conducting cross-regional integration research, highlighting the national characteristic culture, and focusing on the current application of research. First, Korean scholars switched their focus to East Asia, and emphasized the presentness and application of related research while focusing on the combination of semiotics with traditional cultural classics and cultural heritage. Second, in terms of the field of study, Korean semiotics has expanded across multiple fields such as linguistics, literature, aesthetics, philosophy, communication and traditional culture, music, dance, film, architecture, design, and so forth. Finally, in terms of studying the application of semiotics, it has already reached a considerable scale and depth. Although semiotic research in Korea still needs continuous efforts in enhancing theoretical depth and rigor, it has created a wide development space and displayed unlimited potential in terms of innovation of research perspectives and novelty of ideas.

This study examines the entanglements of natural disasters and cultural changes from an ecosemiotic point of view. Taking the case of Mt. Merapi’s periodic eruptions and the locals’ interpretations of such constant natural hazards, it is based on empirical data gathered through longitudinal qualitative fieldworks on the local communities surrounding this volcano. In order to adapt to the constant natural hazards in their environment, disaster prone societies develop unique sign systems binding cultural and natural processes. This study shows that traditionally, unique sensorial-environmental sign systems have formed the basis of communication between human and environment, allowing the locals to perceive the eruption as a communication involving them and local environmental agencies. Recently, the eruptions have triggered the adoption of new livelihoods of local people, as well as the acceptance of new scientific signs for the interpretation of the activities of the volcano. The latter has been accompanied by significant cultural changes, including the adoption of the idea of progress and the transformation of the previous entanglements of local culture and its natural environment. The study concludes that natural disasters, entangled with ongoing social transformations, may play a fundamental role as triggers of semiotic change in a community. Such semiotic change can in turn modify the interpretation of the natural disaster itself, and in that way shift the way humans perceive and interact with their environment.

The semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce is irreducibly triadic, positing that a sign mediates between the object that determines it and the interpretant that it determines. He eventually holds that each sign has two objects and three interpretants, standardizing quickly on immediate and dynamical (or real) for the objects but experimenting with a variety of names for the interpretants. The two most prominent terminologies are immediate/dynamical/final and emotional/energetic/logical, and scholars have long debated how they are related to each other. This paper seeks to shed new light on the matter by reviewing the numerous manuscript drafts where Peirce develops the latter nomenclature while attempting to introduce his pragmatism to a general audience. It then goes on to examine an additional set of interpretants, intentional/effectual/communicational, and shows that the three different trichotomies can be understood as complementary, rather than redundant or conflicting.

Résumé Aux années soixante-dix, Roland Barthes désigne le Zen japonais par «  L’empire des signes », alors que la culture chinoise par la « fadeur des signes ». François Jullien reprend ultérieurement l’idée de la « fadeur » au niveau de son sens « non dualiste » dans le cadre de la philosophie comparée. Depuis les courants poststructuraliste et déconstructionniste, de plus en plus de recherches sémiotiques et philosophiques portent sur l’étude bouddhique, dont le point nodal se situe alors dans un parallélisme au bénéfice des échanges interculturels. En vue d’une déspécialisation du jargon propre à chaque domaine, il semble impératif de mettre en relation les concepts de base en commun. Pour mettre en évidence l’apport de l’étude terminologique et méthodologique, cet article commence par les travaux philologiques sur la « traduction » des textes bouddhiques. Ensuite, la discussion se concentre sur la « dualité » à partir de la « réception » de l’exégétique saussurienne. Il s’agit concrètement d’une étude embryonnaire sur le terme propre couple « signifiant/signifié »: l’exégétique saussurienne s’est répandue efficacement en Chine grâce aux emprunts à la terminologie bouddhique ( neng / suo ), ce qui offrirait une perspective positive vis-à-vis du dialogue interculturel. En même temps, il serait aussi possible de traduire les termes bouddhiques par le biais sémiotique en regard d’une osmose transdisciplinaire.

This paper uses van Leeuwen’s (2008. Discourse and practice: New tools from critical discourse analysis . Oxford: Oxford University Press) Authority Legitimation framework to examine government posters published in the 1950s–1980s in Hong Kong, which serve as a means of shaping public opinion and legitimate social action. Martin and White’s (2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in english . London: Palgrave Macmillan) Appraisal framework is also applied to provide the study with relevant analytical tools by which to construct evaluatively coherent authorial reading positions propagated by the government in the posters as well as aligning viewers with these desired positions. The government posters being studied are concerned with various aspects of social practices in the domain of public health communication. This paper argues that the representations of these social practices are realized as texts – both visual and verbal – in the posters, as part of a broader recontextualization process where legitimate ways of doing things as stipulated in the government guidelines are recontextualized in these posters and conveyed to members of the public. The aim is two-fold: (1) to provide a systematic analysis of how visual and verbal resources construe evaluation in the government posters and the consequent legitimation discourse as viewers are being persuaded to align with legitimate social practices; (2) to highlight various forms of legitimation, namely, role model authority legitimation, impersonal authority legitimation, and conformity authority legitimation, that are realized in these posters through visual-verbal articulation.