Semiotics Of Culture

The semiotics of the face studies the meaning of the human face in contemporary visual cultures. There are two complementary research foci: widespread practices of face exhibition in social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder; and minority practices of occultation, including the mask in anti-establishment political activism (Anonymous) and the veil in religious dressing codes. The meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces are undergoing dramatic shifts. In the semiotics of the face, an interdisciplinary but focused approach combines visual history, semiotics, phenomenology, visual anthropology, but also face perception studies and collection and analysis of big data, so as to study the social and technological causes of these changes and their effects in terms of alterations in self-perception and communicative interaction. In the tension between, on the one hand, political and economic agencies pressing for increasing disclosure, detection, and marketing of the human face (for reasons of security and control, for commercial or bureaucratic purposes) and, on the other hand, the counter-trends of face occultation (parents ‘hiding’ their children from the Internet, political activists concealing their faces, religious or aesthetic veils, writers and artists like Bansky or Ferrante choosing not to reveal their identity), the visual syntax, the semantics, and the pragmatics of the human face are rapidly evolving. The semiotics of the face carries on a comprehensive survey of this socio-cultural phenomenon.

La musica si offre al nostro orecchio e al nostro esserne gli interpreti bilanciando sempre quelle che sembrano essere le sue due qualità distintive e contrapposte: l’ineffabilità e la capacità di comunicare sensazioni, atmosfere, storie in maniera chirurgica. La faccenda si complica ulteriormente quando abbiamo a che fare con la musica che ascoltiamo tutti i giorni, attraverso quelli che ci ostiniamo a chiamare dischi. È la musica che chiamiamo registrata e che, però, quasi mai è registrata e basta. La musica rappresenta un problema per la semiotica, che come tale l’ha sempre trattata. Al punto che è forse questo il suo campo di applicazione più trascurato. Il significato della musica è stratificato: ha a che fare tanto con i suoni che essa contiene, e che ci sottopone in presa diretta o in forma mediata, quanto con le parole e le pratiche che costruiamo attorno a questi suoni, e che finiscono per orientarne profondamente il senso. Questo libro si concentra su alcune questioni centrali per una semiotica della musica che voglia comprenderla come fatto comunicativo, proponendo alcuni modelli per provare ad attraversare questo campo con uno sguardo — un orecchio — nuovo: la mediazione e il linguaggio fonografico; l’enunciazione e le sue diverse configurazioni; la nozione di genere e i generi musicali intesi come sistema discorsivo, dove la musica si dà appieno nella sua dimensione sociale e al cui interno tradizione e innovazione finiscono per sciogliersi l’una nell’altra.

Ventriloquo è colui che parla col ventre, che simula uno slittamento della voce dalla bocca allo stomaco, da un’interiorità che si apre all’altro attraverso l’inter-faccia del volto, a un’intestinità che nega l’altro nella figura dell’in-volto, dell’in-viso, da una parola nutrimento a una parola escremento, e non quello della sua eiezione naturale ma quello di una parola-vomito, borborigma che parla a sé stesso, che inverte la traiettoria del bolo dal dentro al fuori. Ma ventriloquo è anche colui che parla al ventre, nel senso che non si rivolge al viso, alle orecchie, alla bocca, al volto dell’altro, ma spinge l’interlocutore a dismettere il proprio volto per farsi ventre, per rimanere nel chiuso del proprio io, nel rimuginare la parola ricevuta dal ventriloquo finché essa non diviene a sua volta sterco, e non viene eietta come natura vorrebbe ma vomitata verso il volto altrui, negandone la purezza fenomenologica, frustrandone la funzione di volto, oppure spingendolo a diventare anch’esso pancia, in una asemiosi illimitata che spegne il senso invece di accenderlo, che chiude l’esistenza nell’angolo buio dell’essere, che restituisce i corpi alla natura e li rende ferini, invisi gli uni agli altri, nemici, barbari.

Les sémioticiens des cultures marchent sur des œufs. Ils doivent établir le profil, et donc les limites, d’une civilisation ; déterminer et sélectionner des artefacts culturels en tant que textes d’une telle civilisation ; analyser ces textes afin de comprendre s’ils partagent un dénominateur commun en ce qui concerne un objet culturel particulier ; comprendre et décrire les traits structurels d’un tel dénominateur commun afin d’élaborer un schéma typologique qui pourrait ensuite être comparé avec ceux qui se référent à d’autres civilisations, leurs textes, et leurs conceptions et représentations du même objet culturel. En d’autres mots, ils doivent construire une comparaison typologique de déterminations culturelles. Par conséquent, ils courent constamment le risque de déterminer les limites des civilisations de façon arbitraire, en extraire des textes de façon idiosyncratique afin de confirmer les hypothèses initiales et les préjugés du sémioticien dans un cercle vicieux herméneutique et développer des typologies et des comparaisons qui forcent brutalement la complexité de l’histoire dans des schémas structuraux réductifs.
La sémiotique des cultures ne dispose pas encore d’une méthode souhaitable pour comparer des civilisations ; cette méthode doit être fabriquée par bricolage de trois traditions sémiotiques différentes : celle de Lotman (école de Moscou-Tartu) ; celle de Greimas (sémiotique structurale), et celle de Peirce (sémiotique interprétative).
Cette option théorique sera présentée en relation à un cas d’étude et de comparaison spécifique : la sémiotique de la vacuité dans les cultures spirituelles chrétienne, islamique, et tantrique. En comparant des textes visuels (des diagrammes) issus de l’iconographie de l’hésychasme byzantin, de la calligraphie shiite, et des yantras du tantrisme indien, l’intervention essayera de répondre à la question suivante : comment les différentes cultures spirituelles évoquent par l’image l’idée de vacuité ? Est-il possible de dresser, par le biais de la sémiotique, une paradoxale typologie du vide ? Par quelle méthode de comparaison ?

The article proposes a typology of meaninglessness based on the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce: meaningless as indecipherable; as incomprehensible; and as uncanny. Each type is exemplified with reference to anecdotic semiotic experience gained while riding Japanese buses. Meaninglessness, however, is not insignificance. Insignificance is a much more disquieting anthropological condition, which the article describes with reference to two symmetrical processes: on the one hand, the euphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage meant as the “birth of new meaning”; on the other hand, the dysphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage which coincides with the alienation of human existence. Through several examples take from present-day societies, the article advocates for an active role of semiotics in warning human communities against the “emergence of insignificance” and its potential of violence and exploitation.

Abstract: The Saussurian adagio according to which linguistics is "le patron général de la sémiologie" is well known. To a certain extent, the verbal and non-verbal may be subjected to a common, semiolinguistic scheme of investigation. For instance, a fundamental phenomenon in the history of cult(ure)s – the transition of collective expression patterns from sacer ludus to ludus aestheticus – may be described in a semiological metalanguage. Thus, we intend to illustrate, by resorting to a choreographic corpus, the relevance of certain semiological concepts, traditionally applied to verbal objects:
·        “desemantization”/ “resemantization”: a relevant opposition, in our opinion, for the transformation of the choreographic language along with other structures of society;
·        “mutability” and “immutability” of the sign: a paradoxical condition for the subsistence of not only verbal, but also choreographic language;
·        the Saussurean principle of “alteration through continuity”;

    Key-words: dance, desemantization, gesture, (im)mutability, language, resemantization, ritual, sign, Saussure, theatre.the Saussurean concept of “shifting” the semiotic relation; in our opinion, shifting the original relation (ritualistic, magic-religious) between the choreographic significant and signifier is a symptom of the gradual “aestheticization” or “theatricalization” of choreographic “language”.

Interview mit Algirdas Julien Greimas, realisiert im April 1983 in Paris. In diesem Interview werden folgende Themen diskutiert:
1) Präsentation der "Pariser Schule" der Semiotik durch Greimas.
2) Platz der Bedutungssemiotik innerhalb der verschiedenen semiotischen Forschungsrichtungen.
3) Die zentralen Modelle der Bedeutungssemiotik: narrative Syntax, modale Syntax, narratives Schema, Aussageweise (Enunziation) und Aussage; Diskurs.
4) Semiotik als transdisziplinäre Methodologie.

The amount of new semantic content circulated in a society is limited by implicit norms and explicit rules. Belonging to a community means knowing, mastering, and even interiorizing such restrictions. Some of them are imposed by economy, as in the case of copyright, some by moral, as with pornography, and some for political reasons. In times of international tension such restrictions are tightened, giving rise to state ideologies and rhetorics of taciturnity. The essay explores those that came about in Italy, German, and Japan during World War II but also those that were circulated in their democratic opposers, USA and UK. The study seeks to show the relevance of a semiotic analysis of this corpus of propaganda materials not only for the sake of historical knowledge but also so as to cast new light on urgent present-day issues concerning both private and public conversation.

Resumen:

En primer lugar, el fenómeno selfie consiste simplemente en volver del revés la sintaxis fotográfica con el fin de hacer coincidir en la misma instancia al fotógrafo y al objeto fotografiado. No obstante, más allá de esta operación, el selfie tiene que ver con el régimen escópico de la sociedad de comienzos del siglo XXI. El presente ensayo analiza un archivo de fotografías digitales tomadas y publicadas en Internet durante el año 2014, todas ellas compuestas de acuerdo con esta estructura enunciativa auto-consciente. En último término, se tratará de establecer una tipología cultural semiótica en torno a la estructura del ver y del ser visto a través de la web 2.0.

Abstract:

First of all, the selfie phenomena consists on turning inside the photoghraphic syntax, in order to concentrate into the same instance the photographer and the object of the photography. In addition to this, it has to deal with the visual structure of the society at the begining of the XXIst century. On that way, this essay may analyze some digital pictures which has been taken and published on the Internet during the year 2014 which have been composed according to this self conscient enunciation. At least we may be able to build a semiotic cultural typology about the structure of watching and being watched through the web 2.0.

Palabras clave:

selfie; sí mismo; cultura visual digital; fotografía digital; panopticon; semiótica.

Keywords:

Selfie; Self; Visual Digital Culture; Digital Photography; Panopticon; Semiotics.

Citar: Broullón-Lozano, M. A. (2015). “Por una semiótica del selfie en
la cultura visual digital”. Fotocinema. Revista científica de cine y fotografía,
11, pp. 215-234. Disponible: http://www.revistafotocinema.com/

Cette contribution se propose d’enquêter sur les relations entre technè et changement social issu d’une pratique qui modifie la réception des œuvres d’art, c'est-à-dire la reproduction numérique des œuvres et la possibilité à la fois de les observer avec un regard très rapproché et de les apprécier en tant qu’ensemble exposé. À ce propos, la création du Google Art Project a donné une impulsion à un processus déjà en cours en valorisant certains outils technologiques. Ce projet se présente comme le porteur d’une démocratisation de l’art, assurant à tous les intéressés l’accès aux plus importantes collections du monde. Le Google Art Project, comme nous le montrerons, revisite certaines des fonctions traditionnelles du musée, mais soulève ce faisant une série de problèmes liés aussi bien à l’aspect interactif de la visite qu’à la possibilité donnée à l’utilisateur d’acquérir des connaissances autour d’objets culturels particulièrement complexes

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is quickly becoming a cultural hub, and experiencing changes in patterns of culture and social behaviour. As a result, KSA is seeking to develop and expand its non-oil economy, transitioning into a destination more attractive for visitors and investors. In line with its “Saudi Vision 2030”, a strategic framework to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, recreation, and tourism (https://vision2030.gov.sa/), the country is developing different sectors, revalorising and revitalising its culture and foreseeing a form of modernisation based on a spirit of innovation. This chapter aims to explore how Saudi cultural identity is expressed and negotiated in different discourses regarding food heritage, and how hybridity generates an identity crisis between diversity and integration. In the light of upcoming transformations, how is Saudi cultural identity expressed, constructed, and negotiated in different discourses? Societal changes can occur either as progressive and linear transformations or as abrupt bursts of activity that could affect both the social environment and the country’s image. Change and transformation can be newly built from scratch, or can be a revitalisation of existing identity. Through an exploration of textual materials and methods such as observation and interviews, the research explores the meaning of food tradition and its representation through individual and collective memory.

El ensayo se concentra en el caso de estudio uruguayo, de excepcional interés a la vez histórico e semiótico, del retrato del rostro de José Gervasio Artigas. Como no existe un retrato al natural del héroe nacional que lo represente en su juventud o en su madurez, y como el único retrato existente fue dibujado por Alfred Demersay en Paraguay cuando Artigas ya era muy mayor y en condiciones físicas precarias, la imagen arquetípica de su rostro se debe a una reconstrucción (y rejuvenación) de Juan Manuel Blanes, autor de la celebre pintura Artigas en la puerta de la Ciudadela (1884).
El viento caprichoso de la historia sopla a veces impetuoso, a veces con ráfagas sutiles como suspiros, y soplando encuentra paisajes, arboles, flores, animales, pero sobre todo hombres y mujeres, reproduciendo generación tras generación el destino de nuestra especie, e insinuándose entre sus cuerpos a lo largo de los siglos este viento inefable moldea lenguas, dibuja culturas, pinta gestos y palabras, un momento separando y el momento siguiente uniendo vidas, emociones, sueños, haciendo y deshaciendo comunidades, empujando los unos contra los otros en batallas sangrientas e interminables, o al revés sugiriendo caminos de dialogo y de paz, trazando y borrando fronteras, enfatizando o matizando límites, en un juego que no parece tener fin ni finalidad. A veces hombres o mujeres moldeados por este viento se iluminan de una luz distinta, se destacan del fundo ciego de la historia, se vuelven siluetas doradas, estatuas vivientes: comunidades enteras se cierran alrededor de estos héroes y de estas heroínas, se reconocen en sus vidas, su hazañas, sus valores y sus muertes, a través de ellos y ellas participan vicariamente en una humanidad diferente, más resplendente, cercana de lo divino, casi inmortal. Surge la necesidad de una cara, la cara del héroe o de la heroína, que no sea como la cara de los demás, sino pueda resistir al viento de la historia y dar aliento con su mirada a un mundo frágil de vidas cotidianas, nacimientos, casamientos, funerales, comidas y festejos, esperanzas y miedos. Los héroes nacionales fundan las naciones pero al mismo tiempo estas fundan a sus héroes atribuyéndoles no simplemente la cara con la que vivieron sino la cara con la que sobrevivieron, y resistieron al viento de la historia.

In societies that uncritically embrace and endorse a digitalization not only of memory but of the same idea of memory, déjà-vus manifest themselves as the impossibility of subtracting culture from a disquieting feeling of recognition. Similarly, a hallucinating culture is one that is not able to distinguish any longer between its fears and its current state. It is a culture in which fake news proliferates because individuals have lost contact with the capacity for distinguishing what is present to perception from what is presentified to it. The article carries on a cultural diagnosis of the abnormalities of present-day cultural memory and proposes some antidotes to them.

ABSTRACT
This article investigates how Gabriele D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of
Death brings together Nietzsche’s ideas and Wagner’s music and
interweaves them with the motifs of literary Decadence and the
author’s own particular sexual politics. The novel is an experimental
text striving to be a Gesemtkunstswerk, an integrated work that
incorporates music, painting, poetry, regional folklore, and private
thoughts about personal and national power. I discuss the novel’s
themes of violent sexuality and the anxiety of powerlessness and
explore their implications for the fascist political aesthetics in which
D’Annunzio played a pioneering role.

This paper focuses on the urban graffiti painted with a political message by different
movements of the Italian political radicalism in the cities of Rome, Florence, Massa,
Carrara, Verona and Udine. For the purpose of this article, during the period from June
2011 to June 2012, a total of 165 graffiti have been photographed, of which 83 painted by
neo-fascist groups, 72 by extreme left groups and 10 by anarchist groups. These three
macro communities, made of different subgroups, emerged as the most active in expressing
their antagonism towards the parliamentary parties with their graffiti that combine semantic
(words) and semiotic (images) elements. An analysis of the collected graffiti’s language
form, meaning and context allows for the identification of the variety of styles of
communication adopted by the different political antagonisms and the different contents of
their communication through graffiti as well as the key elements of their political identities.
Key words: political radicalism, graffiti, linguistics

Semiótica del consumo es una publicación que propone estudiar las tendencias y los límites del consumo registrados a nivel de los signos. En la primera parte del libro, el autor explica cómo la semiótica se concentra en las mezclas horizontales entre el consumo local y la digitalidad acelerada del hiperconsumo global. En la segunda parte, los signos son expresados como procesos de marca sobre los cuerpos que permiten la construcción del personaje consumidor cuya acción, y deseo, es presentada de diversas formas en la narrativa publicitaria.

Semiótica del consumo proposes the study of these trends and limits of consumption registered at a sign level. The first two chapters present semiotics and its method oriented toward the study of the logic of consumption and its strains within a society. In this first part, semiotics focuses on the horizontal mixture between local consumption and the accelerated digitalism of global hyper consumerism. The three final chapters are based on this cartography made of signs to apply it to the study of color and logotypes in the market, the consumer and its representation in the advertising narrative. This second part of the book understands signs as brand processes on the elements that facilitate creating the consumer whose action and desire are presented in several ways in the advertising narrative.

https://repositorioacademico.upc.edu.pe/handle/10757/624166

O presente artigo, inserido no campo de estudos da Comunicação, buscou nos estudos da Semiótica da Cultura de origem russa, através das formulações teóricas de Yuri Lotman, subsídios teóricos para compreender o cinema, meio de comunicação de massa, como um texto cultural. Partindo deste recorte, procuramos apontar como Claúdio Assis, cineasta brasileiro e sua equipe construíram, através da articulação dos textos (sistemas de signos) característicos da linguagem cinematográfica a sequência de abertura da personagem Wellington Canibal, do filme Amarelo manga (2003, Brasil).
Abstract :
The present article, inserted in the field of studies of Social
Comunication, taking in the russian Cultural Semiotics studies, through the theorical formulation of Yuri Lotman, theorical subsidies for understanding cinema, in the mass media, as a cultural text. Of this framing, we tried to show how the brazilian filmmaker Claudio Assis and his crew have built, through the articulation of texts (sign systems) belonging of the cinematographic language, the opening sequence of the character Wellington Canibal, being this part of the feature film Amarelo Manga (2003).

Quello del disaster movie è un genere cinematografico oramai canonizzato, e in quanto tale soggetto a parodie, che si possono intendere come forme di spirito critico nei confronti di questa o quell’ideologia. La catastrofe come canone è in effetti il terreno di coltura perfetto per ideologemi, termine – oggi in disuso – che deriva dai formalisti russi (in primis Michail Bachtin) e che viene poi sviluppato lungamente da Julia Kristeva. Gli ideologemi si potrebbero pensare come delle tracce di ideologia nella grana del testo in quanto dispositivo intrinsecamente intertestuale, e per di più connesso a un determinato contesto socio-storico. Il compito di parodia, burla, satira, farsa, scimmiottatura, e così via, è proprio quello di disinnescare l’ideologema, paradossalmente massimizzandone la presenza fino alla sua degenerazione (una sorta di sistematica reductio ad absurdum). Tali esercizi pertanto si configurano come pratiche metatestuali, che individuano le zone che del testo sanciscono il genere per enfatizzarne il più possibile i meccanismi, allo scopo di renderli visibili. Si tratta, nella fattispecie, di individuare quella “tensione del desiderio” che per Žižek è il motivo ricorrente del piacere tratto dall’ideologia. Nell’era dunque della consacrazione della catastrofe come euristica imputata all’interpretazione di molti fatti del mondo, spesso in misura aberrante (si pensi ai cospirazionismi programmatici del web), è quanto mai utile indagare le forme della sua desacralizzazione. Ciò verrà fatto a partire dall’analisi di una serie di parodie della catastrofe cinematografica, con l’obiettivo di individuare nel tragicomico catastrofico, e nelle risate che ne derivano, la presa di coscienza del tessuto ideologico che soggiace al canone.

La presente contribución se inspira en dos textos de Iuri M. Lotman publicados recientemente: por un lado, el ensayo «Universidad, Ciencia, Cultura», que Lotman redactó en 1982 en ocasión de los 350 años de la fundación de la Universidad de Tartu (publicado en el volumen Lotman y Uspenski: Correspondencia 1964-1993); y, por otro lado, el escrito «Acerca de la semiótica de la vida y de la evolución», que contiene la entrevista hecha a Lotman por Kalevi Kull en junio de 1992. Estos dos textos introducirán la visión científica que subyace a la teoría semiótica y culturológica de Lotman, con particular énfasis en su última producción científica.

This contribution is inspired by two recently published texts: on the one hand, the speech «University, Science, Culture», written by Lotman in 1982 on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the Tartu University (published in Lotman & Uspensky: Correspondence 1964-1993), and, on the other hand, the writing «About the Semiotics of Life and Evolution» which contains the interview conducted by Kalevi Kull to Lotman in June 1992. These two texts will introduce us to the scientific vision that underlies Lotman’s semiotic and culturological theory, with particular attention to his late scientific production.

"Le trasformazioni del linguaggio della tv dalle origini all'epoca dell'intermedialità. Analisi delle tipologie di programmi intermediali più significativi e delle loro interazioni col pubblico.

The transformations of television language from the origins to the age of intermediality. Analysis of the most interesting categories of intermedial television programmes and of their interaction with the audience."

My second academic monograph (2018; the introduction gives a thorough overview of the argumentation of the book; its translation can be found at my Academia.edu account) explores some central aspects of “culture of faith” (worship and language of faith, gospel and reformation, theology and dialogue). The term “culture of faith” is a reflection on how culture is seen from the religious perspective, as well as on the way religion itself is a particular manifestation and “mechanism” of culture. The objective of the book is to focus on the logic of creation of meaning in religion and to improve the understanding of the grammar of religious reasoning. Thus, the book also attempts to broaden our understanding of the guiding power of faith. A semiotic understanding of culture as “semiosphere” (J. Lotman) constitutes the background and horizon of the book. On the one hand, the culture of faith is a thing (object) studied by theology. On the other hand, theology itself is a specific manifestation of the culture of faith.  Thus, theology – like semiotics or cultural theory – can be described as auto-communication or self-consciousness of the culture of faith. The book contains studies on the interpretation of the culture of faith (or on theological thought) and further developments in interpretation of the culture of faith (or in theological thought). I examine the past approaches to thinking about the culture of faith and about some of its core elements and dynamics (this represents the “thought history” dimension of the book), and I attempt to develop and shape culture-of-faith thinking in our present-day Estonian-speaking context (this is the theological-constructive dimension of the book). These two dimensions, historical and constructive, are distinguishable but they are inevitably and necessarily interlinked in a discussion of the culture of faith.

La creación publicitaria es una planificación discursiva que no solo construye una identidad en tanto valor de marca o desarrollo gráfico sino, como la disciplina semiótica lo sugiere, produce un nivel narrativo que compone el relato publicitario. El uso de los medios, la construcción de personajes, el storytelling, la organización del anuncio, son todas manifestaciones de este nivel narrativo que, a su vez, depende de cierto ‘contexto’ o proceso de enunciación desde el cual se construyen. El presente artículo pretende reconocer las diferentes formas de producción narrativa en relación con tres tipos de discurso publicitario específicos (discurso fase 1, fase 2 e hiperpublicidad), así como evaluar sus contrastes y manifestaciones en la comunicación publicitaria y en la sociedad de consumo.

Summary: Advertising design is a discursive planning that does not only
build an identity as brand value or graphic development, but also as Semiotics suggests, it produces a narrative level outlining the advertising story. The use of media, construction of characters, storytelling, organization of advertisement, are all expressions of this narrative level which in turn depends on a “context” or expression process from which they are built. This article aims to identify the different forms of narrative production in relation to three types of advertising discourse (Discourse Phase 1, Phase 2 and hyperadvertising) as well as evaluate its contrasts and expressions within the advertising communication and consumer society.

DESCRIPTION: Ce séminaire (de niveau M1) propose aux étudiants des langues enseignées à l'Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) une introduction générale à la communication interculturelle. Nous traitons les 7 sujets suivants:
1/ Le contexte historique qui a vu émergé la problématique dite interculturelle.
2/ La notion de « différence culturelle ».
3/ Le « sentiment », la « perception » de la différence culturelle.
4/ La communication interculturelle et la compétence interculturelle.
5/ La communication interculturelle et la communication stratégique et participative.
6/ Quelques domaines prioritaires de la communication interculturelle.
7/ Quelques types récurrents de programmes et projets de communication interculturelle.

The human as an "animal symbolicum" (by Ernst Cassirer) is a unique being included simultaneously in two semiospheres. One of them is the semiosphere of conventional signs and symbols created by himself in culture. The other semiosphere of natural signals and indexes is available to the human as an animal together with other living beings. Both these semiospheres described correspondingly by Y. Lotman and E. Hoffmeyer, are the subjects of anthroposemiotics and biosemiotics, semiotics of culture, and semiotics of nature. Their interaction is a subject of human ecosemiotics. Both external communicative processes among people and the internal mental activity of individuals contain together natural and cultural semiotic components that interact and counteract with each other. In these processes, the natural signal-indexical codes can be transformed and supplemented by cultural conventions (if, for example, natural expressive movements are subordinated to cultural norms of gesticulation) or modified from pure cognitive means to means of communication as the codes mediating transmission of perceptual images by depictions. Natural codes can compete with systems of cultural signs on the force of influence on people (as in various fashion systems) or in accordance with them participate in the creation of complex heterogeneous texts (as in arts).

Coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer to designate a pathological longing for distant homeland, the word “nostalgia” was soon rearticulated temporally, to refer to a lost epoch one yearns for as one’s home. Nostalgia is not a new topic for semiotics. Emotion essentially stemming from absence, it epitomizes the semiotic mechanism: semiosis is the ontological result of something staying for something else, but nostalgia is the emotional result of it. Essential figure in Greimas’s structural outlook on passion, umbrella-concept in Baudrillard’s mourning of reality behind the simulacra, key notion in Culler’s and Frow’s dissection of the semiotics of tourism, nostalgia has become a buzz word in both critical and marketing studies, the former trying to unveil beneath it the foundations of Heideggerian ontology or the contradictions of post-modern society; the latter, seeking to exploit nostalgia as the last Trojan horse into the agency of the consumer. On the basis of copious and manifold literature on nostalgia, the essay takes an unexplored direction: can one talk, today, of a nostalgic semiosphere in Europe? Where hipsters, vintage furniture, and retro TV channels are nothing but symptoms of an emerging mentality?

Esta es una lección publicada originalmente en el portal del INCOM de las UAB en 2006, y corresponde a un texto didáctico (Lección) para introducir al lector a los objetos y problemas de la semiótica de la imagen (SI).
Entendemos por SI el estudio del signo icónico y los procesos de sentido-significación a partir de la imagen. El estudio de la imagen y las comunicaciones visuales en realidad desborda lo estrictamente pictórico o visual, tal como pueden ser los análisis de colores, formas, iconos y composición, para dar paso a los elementos históricos y socio-antropológicos que forman parte de la SI.

Um die gotische Lorenz-Kirche in Nürnberg, die wohl bedeutendste Hallenkirche, ist Anfang 2021 eine Deutschland-weit und international geführte Kontroverse um geplante weitreichende profane Einbauten geführt worden, die ihren Charaker als initiatischem Sakral-Raum, aus dem Geist spätmittelalterlicher Mystik, und ihrer programmatischen architektonsichenund künstlerischen Ausgestaltung, weitgehnd zerstört hätte.  Die Pläne der Kirchengemeinde, die von der lutherischen Landeskirche - gegen namhafte innerkirchliche Bedenken - mitgetragen wurden, und die in er kirchlichen Presse begleitend propagiert wurden, sind durch entschiedenen Widerstand von Journalisten (Nürnberger Zeitung und Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) und Fachleuten aus den Bereichen des Denkmalschutzes, der Universitäten und Museen, sowie des kirchlichen Bereichs, vereitelt worden. In diesem Vortrag werden die Pläne dargestellt, und ihre bedeutung als profanierende Dekonstruktion analysiert. Dazu wird die spirituelle Semiotik der Lorenzkirche mit ihrem Programm der Mystik, als 'initiatischer Raum' dargestellt. Die Tragweite der geplanen baulichen Eingriffe, wird als  Ausdruck tiefgreifender Säkularisierung gedeutet, die auch in der Kirche manifest ist. Der erfolgreiche Widerstand, und die Kampagne, die zur Rücknahme dieser Pläne führten, wird hier dokumentiert. Die paradigmatische Bedeutung der Rücknahme dieser Pläne zu weitreichenden profanierenden Einbauten in die Lorenzkirche, wird mit Blick auf ähnliche Vorgänge unterstrichen. Die hier zutage getretene, semiotisch bestimmbare De-Signifikation, im Verständnis dieser Kirche, ist religionswissenschaftlich von systematischem Interesse.

Hay distintas maneras de escribir la historia del arte y de sus imágenes. En la tradición occidental, el relato de la pintura se origina en el siglo XVI como discurso que relaciona unas biografías de artistas con sus obras más importantes, juzgadas según el gusto personal del autor (Giorgio Vasari); a partir del siglo XIX, y sobre todo en consecuencia del enorme impacto de la teoria evolucionista de Charles Darwin sobre la cultura, teóricos como Alois Riegl, Gottfried Semper, o Aby Warburg empiezan a deshacer y reconstruir este relato de otra manera, como si las imágenes fueran organismos que encarnan en sus formas el paulatino pero inexorable cambio de la imaginación humana y de sus expresiones. En la segunda mitad del siglo XX, el aporte principal de la semiótica al estudio de las imágenes artísticas consiste en considerarlas como proyectos de comunicación en los que unas formas determinadas producen unos efectos especificos de sentido, según el contexto de recepción pero también a partir de un sentido visual común compartido por una “comunidad de interpretes” (Umberto Eco). Al mismo tiempo, la semiótica del arte se enfrenta con una dificultad mayor: no es posible reconstruir un código, y aún menos una gramatica, que formalize la manera en la que una cultura lee sus imágenes (Omar Calabrese). Las variables subjetivas y conceptuales son tan numerosas que todo proyecto de modelo universal es destinado a fracasar. Sin embargo, a partir de una intuición de Algirdas J. Greimas, desarrollada por Jean Marie Floch et Felix Thuerlemann, las imágenes del arte se pueden interpretar no solamente en su dimensión figurativa, o sea como conjuntos de formas que se refieren a la “macro-semiótica del mundo”, sino también en su dimensión plástica. Es esta la “vida secreta de las imágenes”, un hormigueo de lineas, formas, colores, y configuraciones espaciales que está debajo de las figuras y las anima. Analizar esta vida secreta permite sondear el nivel más profundo de las imágenes del arte, donde las culturas visuales expresan su contenido antropologico más universal y se manifiesta, por lo tanto, la posibilidad de una gramática transcultural, de una descripción general del funcionamiento plástico de las imágenes. Durante las tres conferencias, cada una dedicada a un aspecto distinto del nivel plástico de las imágenes, se intenterà comprobar esta hipótesis de trabajo semiótico con referencia a un corpus trans-cultural de imágenes provenientes de varias epoca históricas y areas geo-culturales.

The bibliography provides a list of all known English-language publications by Juri M. Lotman (including in co-authorship and reprints), in chronological order, described de visu. The first English translation of J. Lotman’s work appeared in 1973, altogether there is 109 entries in the list. The bibliography demonstrates that in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the translations were published in the context of slavistics, whereas after 2000 Lotman’s work starts to appear in the anthologies of general semiotics.

Traditional European fairy-tales as “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Snow White” or “The Snow Queen” are well known to the majority of people all over the world. These stories are often retold in different cultural and natural languages, reflect changing social discourses, cause various disputes, echo in texts of all possible genres. The main research question of our thesis is How are stories transformed in the general cultural dynamics? Fairy-tales exist in the contemporary culture in many variations, and it turns them into the promising material to investigate the nature of cultural retelling. The retelling phenomenon is akin to a sophisticated game in which different authors scrutinize texts for new potentials and hidden messages, try on new means of expression, or simply test the actuality of texts’ messages that are already familiar and “digested” by the broad audiences. Today “professional” authors replenish the web of interpretations alongside “amateur” authors (i.e. fans or transformative authors); there are retellings that are made as commercial productions and retellings that are created on the borders of participatory culture. The audiences’ creativity makes culture more heterogeneous, enriches it by provoking further artistic practices and dialogues, and consequently helps a researcher to build a more complete picture of a story’s existence in the changing cultural context. We consider retelling as a semiotic problem and model it as the chain of communications between humans, texts and cultures.We appeal not simply to concrete texts, but to what stands behind them — to the complex interplay of texts in different cultural languages that happens on the mental level of culture, is activated in the mind of a receiver/author, and may be denoted as transmedia communication. Our main research material is Russian fanfiction devoted to the classical fairy-tale plot “The Snow Queen”, originally written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1844. The work consists of an introductory section and five original articles written during five years of our PhD studies.

This lecture deals with the following 6 topics:
1) Presentation of the notion of “culture” and concrete examples.
2) Discussion of the notion of “cultural identity” is.
3) The scope of intercultural (or “cross-cultural”) communication.
4) Typical and recurrent obstacles that impede a successful intercultural communication.
5) (Negative or positive) impact of cultural (mis)communication
6) Possibilities to improve intercultural communication.