Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
2022 •
The article introduces some basic questions and concepts related to the semiotic study of culture and cultures. The first question “Is Semiotics necessary to life?” lead to analyze the very role of Semiotics and semioticness for human beings. The article suggests a double necessity of semiotics, intended at the same time as a quality proper to humankind and as a scientific knowledge necessary to reflect and become aware of our unperceived “cultural nature”. The second question is related to a basic yet forgotten claim of Semiotics. That is to say the idea of considering semiotic analysis not only as a form of intellectual knowledge but also as an action that aims to transform reality. This lead to define semiotician as a political subject and to reflect to the general status of subject and subjectivity from a semiotic point of view. The third question aims to face the paradox of a cultural space that is always singular and plural at the same time. The article propose some theoretical and methodological tools – e.g. the circular intellectual movement represented by analysis and catalisys – in order to manage the complex relations between parts and whole, micro and macro, order and chaos, sense and nonsense. The second part of the article propose three key concept for contemporary and future semiotics of culture(s): semiosphere, formation, translation. Starting from the structural paradoxes of the idea of semiosphere, developed in the '80s by Juri Lotman, the article proposes a dynamic and glocal idea of culture(s) based on a relationalist approach. The idea of formation allow to map the different types of semiotic relation involved in the study of culture. At the same time the concept of formation encapsulates the one of sign, text, discourse, language. The latter will be central to describe the various modes of translation and to understand the implications of translation on the constitution or transformation of common sense and reality. The article propose to consider translation as key concept that allows to articulate different semiotic visions and schools as well as to describe some of the most interesting and thorny dynamics and devices of actual cultural life. Index 1. Is Semiotics necessary to life? 2. Which Subject? 3. Culture or Cultures? 4. Semiosphere(s) 5. Formation(s) 6. Translation(s) Published in Peter P. Trifonas (ed.), International Handbook of Semiotics, Berlin, Springer, 2015.
Abstract: The key element that redefines the community in the present intercultural context is the one that actually reshapes the intercultural context itself – globalization. Globalization already represents the big picture which integrates every intercultural context, it is the global text which encompasses every partial context, local and regional. Yet, globalization is not a new concept: universalist tendencies, urges and visions can be traced down even on the eve of human civilization. From the civilizing expeditions, more or less mythical, born from the human spirit of knowledge and/or adventure, to the theoretical reflections of the first thinkers who posed the problem of universal, the human being has been concerned about more and more comprehensive wholes. What is now new with globalization is that it is really happening, that it is a reality more and more tangible, pregnant and obvious: it is a fact. But globalization is not only a physical reality - economic, financial, military and so on - it is also a (new) mental reality, a (new) semantic frame and a (new) cultural unity, as Umberto Eco defines it. And this reality, too – and all that belongs to it –, as all realities that populate the individual and collective mental, is conveyed by signs. Given these premises, this work seeks to address globalization from a semiotic perspective, which would comprise a componential (or semic) analysis and on the other hand a symbology, a symbol analysis of the imagery that globalization raises. Keywords: globalization, semiotics, culture, imagery, symbol
This paper studies the opposition of social construction and cultural universals in the field of space and spatial metalanguage in social and cultural research. In more detail I focus on the notion of ‘boundary’ and its object, asking how can an understanding of semiotic and spatial nature of boundaries help social and cultural research? I argue that ‘boundaries’ should be considered being by definition of semiotic and spatial character. This leads to the understanding that boundaries (as far as there is a reason to consider them namely boundaries and not for example, mediatiation, translation, explosion, etc.) are, first, depending on recognition and distinction by some subject and, second, enforcing spatialization of the distinction. Thus, bounding is a practice of semiotization that dynamically interrelates levels of conceptualisation and levels of spatiality. The latter is based on the semiotic understanding of space as being grounded in relations of co-existence and their recognition by at least an indexical umwelt. While boundaries are semiotic and often descriptive social constructions, there are also aspects of boundaries that can be approached as cultural or even semiotic universals, most notably so-called boundary mechanisms and basic semiotic nature of space and spatial distinctions. The paper concludes with exploring the applicability of the theoretical argumentation for a semiotic approach in archaelogy. In what sense can we talk about cultural boundaries in research, as social constructions or cultural universals, as parts of object level world image or parts of researcher’s models, as material objects or as structural relations? How can we find boundaries in fields like archaeology and how can we improve our knowledge by considering these boundaries?
"Semiotica" Journal of the International Association of Semiotics
Multilingualism and sameness versus otherness in a semiotic contextMany countries throughout the globe function in a system that allows the usage of more than one language. Such a multilingual social reality's construction , especially in societies like the one in which I am living, is perceived in many different ways: attempting thus to provide for the process of differentiating identity's oneness and sameness into various cultural subcategories, which already represent new realities (and/or otherness in terms of identity's conceptua-lization). Due to newly created social realities, semiotics naturally discusses the differences and/or oppositions that can contribute to various cultures' mutual exclusivity or inclusivity, in terms of various heterogeneous " transformations, " which would thus overcome dualities, and be viewed as single acts of signs, or as a result of a process of singularization of their constituent components. I shall also attempt using a semiotic style that may enact a semiotics of action, grounded on the semiotics of passions, through a way of producing semantic taxonomies as pride versus humiliation, hegemony versus subordination, etc., obtainable due to disjunctive and/or conjunctive semiotic relations such as contextualization versus de-contextualization.
AN ASSESMENT OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF SAVINGS AND CREDIT COOPERATIVES IN MALAWI
AN ASSESMENT OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING THE GROWTH OF SAVINGS AND CREDIT COOPERATIVES IN MALAWI2014 •
2019 •
Financial Services Review
Conversions of mutual savings institutions: Do initial returns from these IPOS provide investors with windfall profits?1997 •
Frontiers of Economics in China
Short-Term and Long-Term Margins of International Trade: Evidence from the Canada-Chile Free Trade Agreement2018 •
The Journal of Infectious Diseases
Pericardial Adipose Tissue Volume Is Independently Associated With Human Immunodeficiency Virus Status and Prior Use of Stavudine, Didanosine, or Indinavir2020 •
Wireless Personal Communications
A Reflectarray with Octagonal Unit Cells for 5-G Applications2017 •