Band 2025, Heft 266

The Peircean doctrine of signs is incomplete. This paper rethinks the standard model of sign action to provide a common framework for analyzing all the different kinds of semiotic processes, including the workings of thinking creatures, sentient beings, single cell organisms, social systems, and sciences. Through a detailed theoretical analysis, the paper shows how we can separate mediation (featuring the steps: source, mediator, and outcome) from representation (featuring the conventional sign correlates: object, sign, and interpretant) in Peircean semiotics and combine the two to establish a general model of sign action. This leads to the fundamental and, in a Peircean context, somewhat controversial ideas that there are not two but three dynamical sign correlates and, notably, that there is not one direction of mediation in the sign triad, but six directions, which constitute six fundamental types of sign action: perceiving , acting , interpreting , expressing , sensing , and reacting . The sixfold model of sign action is a step toward a general theory of semiosis, it promises to reconcile the split in biosemiotics, and it provides a coherent semiotic foundation for a general theory of observation in science. Chiefly, it offers a workable framework for semiotics.

In their landmark 1969 study, Berlin and Kay challenged the longstanding assumption that each language had its own distinct color terminology. Instead, they posited that a core set of eleven basic color terms (or a subset thereof) are consistently recognized across languages globally. Although these basic color terms have largely endured over time, the underlying reason for this specific set of terms has remained elusive. This paper proposes an explanation grounded in the logical interconnections between C. S. Peirce’s Universal Categories, the geometric algebra of S 3 symmetry transformations, and the spectral and saturation characteristics of color. It posits that this methodological framework, through a rigorous logical progression, accounts for the generation of each of the eleven basic color terms identified by Berlin and Kay, offering a systematic explanation for the universality observed in color naming through time and space.

By means of Peirce’s categorial method, this paper explores the selfhood identified in sign activity from two dimensions of semiotic agency: the practical and the theoretical. The paper considers the intelligibility of aesthetic value co-existing with Thirdness and the ethical implications of narrativity in selfhood. Peirce’s phenomenological category of Firstness, as a poetics of possibility, interplays with Secondness, of actuality, in the experience of the sense of other and the self in narrative. Then Thirdness mediates the sense of other with the sense of the self, seeking generality of feeling. As a vital matter in the conduct of moral life, the survival value of not solely enhancing survival which characterizes aesthetic behavior in the human animal, the role of sentiment in morality, and the poetics of the will with its moral capacity in narrative semiosis, are investigated in the paper. Thus, a pragmatic inquiry into the self, along with a developmental approach, will illustrate three phases of the self: aesthetic behavior in the biosemiotic self; value-driven dynamics in the agentive self; and ethical implications in the narrative self. The analysis will take the Korean science fiction film, Jung-E , as a case study to illustrate the two dimensions of semiotic agency.

This paper examines the evolution of written communication from ancient hieroglyphs to modern digital forms. It explores how social media, texting, and other digitally mediated communications have transformed traditional modes of human interaction, emphasizing the shift from spoken to written vernaculars. The study highlights that digital communication, characterized by a visual and multimodal nature, diverges significantly from the conventional and linear nature of traditional spoken and written languages. From a cognitive perspective, and using the framework of conceptual blending theory (CBT) and its embodied applications inspired by Jamin Pelkey’s work, the paper explores how technological advancements are reshaping the “language organ,” emphasizing the evolutionary importance of upright posture and free hands over articulatory organs in symbolic usage. The Digital Writing project at the International Semiotics Institute serves as a focal point for this research, analyzing the cognitive implications of various writing systems from pictographs to phonological alphabets and digital communication. This suggests a continuity in human communication systems, advocating for a spiral-evolution model influenced by the theories of Terrence Deacon and Vinicius Romanini.

The article proposes an analytical model that places the material dimension of texts at the center of mediatization processes. The model, based on identifying “solid,” “liquid,” and “gaseous” mediatizations, can be used to understand a wide range of mediatization processes from a material perspective. It is also a very useful tool for classifying these processes and verifying their mutations over time as well as their coexistence in the same historical period. To exemplify the model, the article presents a series of historical cases of war mediatization, from the mediatization of World War II in newspapers, the Gulf War on TV, and the current mediatization of the invasion of Ukraine in social media like TikTok. Beyond applying the model, the article introduces a series of considerations on the different states of mediatization and the intermedia relationships between them, both from a space and temporal perspective. A final reflection the material dimension of those processes concludes the article.

In the summer of 2020, the reality television show “Sisters Who Make Waves” became a sensation across China. Featuring a cast of 30 sisters over the age of 30, the show aimed to challenge ageist stereotypes and promote female empowerment. It initiated a “Sister Wave” and reconfigured the connotation of the Chinese term jiejie (‘elder sister’). Moreover, it brought jiexue (‘elder sister studies’) to public attention, a term coined by Internet users to celebrate the allure and charisma of older women. This paper adopts Kobus Marais’s semiotic theory of translation to analyze the process by which jiejie is semiotically translated into the online female counterculture jiexue . By extending the notion of translation beyond linguistic boundaries to explore the emergence of jiexue as a manifestation of Chinese digital feminism, this paper argues that Marais’s semiotic theorization of translation proves particularly valuable in developing a transdisciplinary approach that can unlock the potential of translation across the humanities.

The article proposes estrangement as a theoretical semiotic tool to explore the relation between subjectivity, the affective dimension, and the ways in which genres model our culture. By revisiting Julia Kristeva’s concept of inquiétante étrangeté , it examines the idea that certain genres employ estrangement as a semiotic operation, not only to challenge processes of social and cultural normalization, but also as a highly effective defense mechanism against the emergence of signs that dislocate subjectivity. However, in an era where the supernatural and terror have lost their capacity for surprise, and following a global pandemic that unsettled the world, it could be worth questioning which signs are capable of revealing something as strange. Some answers will emerge through the study of WandaVision , a TV series that explores a specific sense of strangeness through a creative interplay of trauma, nostalgia for suburban utopia, and a problematization of long-standing conventions of television genres. Through a semiology of strangeness, it will be possible to elucidate how the TV series addresses various epochal symptoms of the pandemic era by capturing a subjectivity tethered to the fragility of its conception of normalcy.

This paper presents a multimodal framework to the analysis of meaning-making in theatrical performances, conceptualizing them as multimodal discourses. It posits that the adoption of a discourse-oriented approach to theatrical performances addresses the limitations inherent in traditional syntax-oriented semiotics, thereby facilitating a more nuanced examination of performance interpretation. The central argument of the paper is that the underlying mechanisms of discourse semantics can better explain the meaning-making in theater by elucidating the intermodal and intramodal interactions among diverse theatrical semiotic resources. To demonstrate the practical applicability of this framework, the study conducts a detailed analysis of several instances from two English and Persian performances of the play A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, showcasing its effectiveness in revealing the intricate interplay of various semiotic resources involved in constructing a coherent theatrical discourse. The findings underscore that embracing a discursive perspective in the examination of theater and conceptualizing it as a multimodal discourse substantially enhances the comprehension of its meaning-making mechanisms.