Showing papers in "Semiotica in 2011"

Rethinking gesture phases: Articulatory features of gestural movement?

Abstract: This paper presents a proposal for the description of gesture phases derived from articulatory characteristics observable in their execution. Based on the results of an explorative study examining the execution of gesture phases of ten German speakers, the paper presents two sets of articulatory features, i.e., distinctive and additional features by which gesture phases are characterized from a context-independent and context-sensitive point of view. It will be shown that gesture phases show a particular distribution of the features, thus distinguishing one phase from another. Furthermore, changes in the execution of phases in linear successions can be described by means of features. Contrary to other accounts, whose focus on gesture phases is primarily in relation to speech and/or adjacent phases, this proposal concentrates on the visible physical characteristics of gesture phases.

An inconvenient truth? Can a film really affect psychological mood and our explicit attitudes towards climate change?

Abstract: Previous research has claimed that providing people with information about global warming may have a negative (and unanticipated) effect on their explicit attitudes towards climate change. One study found that more informed respondents felt less personally responsible for global warming and also showed less concern for the problem as a whole. This earlier study was, however, correlational in design and did not allow for firm conclusions regarding the direction of causality. For this reason, in our study we used an experimental approach — highly informative (and emotional) clips from An Inconvenient Truth were played to sets of participants and their mood states were measured as well as their explicit social attitudes/social cognitions on five critical scales (message acceptance/motivation to do something about climate change/empowerment/shifting responsibility for climate change/fatalism). Our study found that the clips did affect emotion, and in particular, they decreased the happiness and calmness levels of our participants, but they also felt more motivated to do something about climate change, more able to do something about climate change and, in addition, they were significantly less likely to think that they had no control over the whole climate change process. These were much more optimistic conclusions than the previous study had allowed, and they remind us of the power of strong informative and emotional messages on explicit attitude change and social cognition generally.

Crime and punishment: An analysis of university plagiarism policies

Abstract: Over decades, plagiarism in academic writing has been viewed as a serious issue of academic integrity within educational institutions. Universities are increasingly investing time and capital in raising plagiarism awareness and investigating measures to detect and deter plagiarism. Many tertiary institutions appear to adopt legal and quasi-legal interpretations of criminal law in their plagiarism management practices and policies (Sutherland-Smith 2005, 2008). In this paper, semiotic analysis of discourse (Danesi and Perron 1999; Danesi 2004, 2007) is used to explore notions of fairness and justice in the language of university plagiarism policies. Through examination of the plagiarism policies of twenty “top” universities across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, I argue that, in some cases, approaches to plagiarism management do not appear consistent with outward appearances of justice and fairness. In fact, policies and processes bear closer resemblance to punitive legal outcomes than the broader ethical approaches usually associated with concepts of justice and fairness. Rethinking plagiarism management in terms of ethically responsible relationships within institutional processes and policies is closer to societal notions of justice and a more educationally sustainable practice, which should be reflected in the discourse of university plagiarism policies and processes.

Cognitive conditions of diagrammatic reasoning

Abstract: In the first part of this paper, I delineate Peirce’s general concept of diagrammatic reasoning from other usages of the term that focus either on diagrammatic systems as developed in logic and AI or on reasoning with mental models. The main function of Peirce’s form of diagrammatic reasoning is to facilitate individual or social thinking processes in situations that are too complex to be coped with exclusively by internal cognitive means. I provide a diagrammatic definition of diagrammatic reasoning that emphasizes the construction of, and experimentation with, external representations based on the rules and conventions of a chosen representation system. The second part starts with a summary of empirical research regarding cognitive effects of working with diagrams and a critique of approaches that use ‘mental models’ to explain those effects. The main focus of this section is, however, to elaborate the idea that diagrammatic reasoning should be conceptualized as a case of ‘distributed cognition.’ Using the mathematics lesson described by Plato in his Meno, I analyze those cognitive conditions of diagrammatic reasoning that are relevant in this case.

On operational and optimal iconicity in Peirce's diagrammatology

Abstract: Abstract Two different concepts of iconicity compete in Peirce's diagrammatical logic. One is articulated in his general reflections on the role of diagrams in thought, in what could be termed his diagrammatology — the other is articulated in his construction of Existential Graphs as an iconic system for representing logic. One is operational and defines iconicity in terms of which information may be derived from a given diagram or diagram system — the other has stronger demands on iconicity, adding to the operational criterion a demand for as high a degree of similarity as possible and may be termed optimal iconicity. Peirce himself does not clearly distinguish these two iconicity notions, a fact that has caused some confusion. By isolating them, we get a clearer and more refined conceptual apparatus for analyzing iconic signs, from pictures to logic. This paper investigates the two iconicity notions and addresses some of the problems they involve.

An exploration of the other side of semantic communication: How the spontaneous movements of the human hand add crucial meaning to narrative

Abstract: Past research has suggested that those spontaneous movements of the human hand made during talk convey significant semantic information over and above the speech, at least when the unit of speech analyzed is the individual clause. However, no previous research has tested whether this information is represented linguistically elsewhere in the narrative (or is directly inferable from the rest of the narrative). The first study, reported here, uses an experimental procedure to identify which specific imagistic gestures add semantic information to the speech. The second study analyzes whether the specific gestures still do this when respondents hear the whole narrative. It was found that two thirds of the semantic information, thought to be carried by the gestures, is, in fact, represented in the linguistic discourse, or is inferable from it. However, one third of the additional semantic information contained in the gestures is not represented linguistically in the narrative nor is it inferable from it. In other words, a proportion of the imagistic gestures that accompany speech are absolutely critical to semantic communication.

Blending in mathematics

Abstract: Abstract Mathematics is one of the richest, if more abstruse, areas of higher human cognition. It is a formal system, founded on a minimum of primitive concepts, but involving cognitive mechanisms, such as blending and framing, in an iterative manner, which lead to the rich structure of “higher” mathematics. The use of such cognitive mechanisms is done in a very controlled way, so as to maintain the rigor of the discipline. It is suggested that blending and other such mechanisms are incorporated into the formal structure of the discipline. This thesis is examined via a number of examples. This has the effect that blends are easy to make in mathematics. On the other hand, before blends and other processes were incorporated into mathematics, some blends that are obvious, even necessary, in hindsight, have taken a long time — sometimes centuries — to be realized. We hypothesis there is a cognitive cost to actualizing blends, which must be overcome. This phenomenon is investigated via the historical record.

Peirce's tutorial on existential graphs

Abstract: Abstract In his formal papers on existential graphs (EGs), Peirce tended to obscure the simplicity of EGs with distracting digressions. In MS 514, however, he presented his simplest introduction to the EG syntax, semantics, and rules of inference. This article reproduces Peirce's original words and diagrams with further commentary, explanations, and examples. Unlike the syntax-based approach of most current textbooks, Peirce's method addresses the semantic issues of logic in a way that can be transferred to any notation. The concluding section shows that his rules of inference can clarify the foundations of proof theory and relate diverse methods, such as resolution and natural deduction. To relate EGs to other notations for logic, this article uses the Existential Graph Interchange Format (EGIF), which is a subset of the CGIF dialect of Common Logic. EGIF is a linear notation that can be mapped to and from the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma variants of EGs. It can also be translated to or from other formalisms, algebraic or geometrical.

Moving pictures of thought II: Graphs, games, and pragmaticism's proof

Abstract: Abstract Peirce believed that his pragmaticism can be conclusively proven. Beginning in 1903, he drafted several attempts, ending by 1908 with a semeiotic proof. Around 1905, he exposes the proof using the theory of Existential Graphs (EGs). This paper modernizes the semantics Peirce proposed for EGs in terms of game-theoretic semantics (GTS). Peirce's 1905 proof is then reconstructed in three parts, by (1) relating pragmaticism to the GTS conception of meaning, (2) showing that Peirce's proof is an argument for a relational structure of the meaning of intellectual signs that our interpretative and strategic practices give rise to, and (3) bringing out the key links between EGs and pragmaticism.

The materiality of discourses and the semiotics of materials: A social perspective on the meaning potentials of written texts and furniture

Abstract: Based on two studies of different meaning-making phenomena, post-it notes and furniture, this paper highlights the role of materiality in everyday semiosis. A perspective on the semiotics of materi ...

Meaning and interpretation: the semiotic similarities and differences between cognitive grammar and European structural linguistics

Abstract: The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the cognitive paradigm have traditionally been discussed against the background of generative grammar, its immediate predecessor. A significantly less researched yet no less interesting relationship is the one between the cognitive and structuralist paradigm. This article focuses on the in part converging, in part diverging semiotic assumptions underlying European structural linguistics and Cognitive Grammar. A comparison of important concepts of both theories (isomorphism, the sign concept, compositionality, and case marking) shows that, although Cognitive Grammar arrives at a more realistic understanding of how language works in discourse, the theory fails to offer a coherent theory of the linguistic sign.

Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of semiotic studies about advertising, beginning with the early work done in the 1960s. Advertising communication plays a particular role in semiotic studies in the second half of the twentieth century. Pioneering studies of advertising messages, in particular those of Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, date to the 1960s and were carried out for the most part using the tools of classical rhetoric. Following a period in which semiotics displayed a relative lack of interest in advertisements, in the 1980s advertising texts were used as examples in applied narratological analysis by Jean-Marie Floch and others. This occurred at the same time as the so-called "passion turn of semiotics, " which stressed that the passions and emotions present in texts are crucial issues in textual semiotics, and it also seemed to offer fresh perspectives for the analysis of advertising communication. The passion turn took account of the evolution of advertising itself, since modern advertising is more and more interested in conveying passions and emotions. The effectiveness of an advert tends to be closely bound up with the presentation of sensations associated with a given product or brand. Recently, semioticians have begun to study more general features of advertising and marketing discourse.

A sociosemiotic interpretation of linguistic modality in legal settings

Abstract: While a much investigated concept because of its importance in shaping human discourse, modality has still not been given an agreed understanding. Using authentic Chinese court judgments in Hong Kong, this paper aims to unravel the complexity of modality as exemplified in its usage in the legal domain. It examines formal, semantic, and functional approaches to modality, showing their weaknesses in identifying and explaining modality in legal discourse. It proposes a socio-semiotic approach as an alternative for giving us a better understanding of modality in respect of its meaning and function in our language as a sign system.

Diagrams, iconicity, and abductive discovery

Abstract: Abstract In this article, the role of abductive reasoning within Peirce's diagrammatic reasoning is discussed. Both abduction and diagrammatic reasoning bring in elements of discovery but it is not clear if abduction should be a part of a fully developed diagrammatic system or not for Peirce. This relates to Peirce's way of interpreting abduction in his later writings. Iconicity and perceptual elements as a basis for discoveries are analyzed, both in deductive and abductive reasoning. At the end, the role of modern ideas of distributed cognition applied to the Peircean scheme is shortly delineated.

Post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-semiotics? Sign theory at the fin de siècle

Abstract: The contribution describes the differences between modernism and post-modernism as historical periods of the twentieth century and establishes comparable differences between structuralism and post-structuralism as semiotic approaches. Like modernism, structuralism rejects traditional modes of thought, attempts to reconstruct academic disciplines on the basis of a few fundamental principles and strives to work with reconstructed terminologies and axioms. Like post-modernism, post-structuralism is characterized by the necessity of finding ways to continue research based on the fragmentary results left by structuralist projects. In the beginning of the twentieth century, structuralism itself had responded to materialism, atomism, historicism, and naturalism by introducing its own methodology built around the dichotomies of signified and signifier, paradigm and syntagm, synchrony and diachrony, langue and parole. Rather than rejecting this apparatus, post-structuralism explicated the paradoxes behind these dichotomies and tried to overcome them by undermining the first concept of each pair. This change of perspective foregrounded the material, processual, and intertextual character of signs as well as the sense-producing function of interpretation. Rejecting rigidly fixed methods as well as general theories, and waiving the distinction between object-signs and meta-signs in favor of their joint reflection, post-structuralist semiotics became an alternative to conventional practices of academic sign analysis and now approaches the status of an art.

Tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity

Abstract: This paper lists and discusses the fundamental characteristics of tourism, suggesting it is essentially a semiotic activity. In this respect, it deals with works such as Dean MacCannell's The Tourist and Roland Barthes's Empire of Signs. Considering the relationship between tourism and postmodern theory, it contrasts the everyday and the exotic, discusses Baudrillard's theories on simulations and hyperreality as they relate to tourism, and compares modernist and postmodernist perspectives on tourism, critiquing the widely held notion that tourists always seek authenticity and situating tourism within consumer culture.

Language and brain: Recasting meaning in the definition of human language

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to articulate the central issues and controversies that currently dominate the study of the relationship between language and brain and, as a result, we will attempt to fundamentally redefine the way language is viewed by the neurosciences by recasting traditional linguistic definitions of human language. In order to achieve these goals, we will take into account (1) important aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neuro-functionality, (2) the role of imaging technologies (especially PET and fMRI) in formulating specific questions for testing hypotheses about language and the brain, including what these technologies can and cannot do, and (3) a discussion of the myths about the neurological representations of human language. Our conclusions will take into account evidence on aphasias and medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage that directly affects the way we understand the relationship between language, brain, and memory.

The rod and the crocodile. Temporal relations in textual hermeneutics: An application of Petri nets to semantics

Abstract: We use a graphic formalism to make explicit differences in the interpretation of temporal relations in natural-language text. Out of the panoply of computational representation methods for time or tense, we select Petri nets, and discuss why. We illustrate their potential for semantics and for sign theorists, by analyzing how some late antique and medieval exegeses understood the narrative of Moses and Pharaoh's magicians, and the former's rod swallowing up the rods of the other ones, once these rods had been turned into crocodiles or snakes. We extend the treatment to another situation concerning the semantics of eating and being eaten.

Postmodernity as the unmasking of objectivity: Identifying the positive essence of postmodernity as a distinct new era in the history of philosophy

Abstract: The aim of this article is to show clearly what the terms "object" and "objectivity" as used over the centuries of modern philosophy — from the time of Descartes down to the time of Wittgenstein and Husserl, i.e., from early modern Rationalism and Empiricism to late modern Phenomenology and Analytic philosophy — have obscured. Objectivity, far from being "the ability to consider or represent facts, information, etc., without being influenced by personal feelings or opinions; impartiality; detachment, " as the OED would have it, is fundamentally the condition of occupying the position of the significate in a triadic relation the foreground element of which is a sign vehicle conveying that significate to or for some third. Simply put, an "object" is a significate, a fact that common usage has come to obscure by sedimenting the influence of modern philosophy's reversal of the meaning of the terms "subjective" and "objective, " where the former has come to signify "private opinion" in contrast to "the way things are. " But this sedimentation to the level of common usage of modern solipsistic epistemology is precisely a usage that semiotic analysis of the linguistic sign overcomes, showing that in the expression "object signified" the qualification "signified" is redundant, for an object is nothing other than something signified! Thus "significate," a term that modern dictionary makers resist, says clearly what the term "object" says obscurely; and a great deal of mischief in philosophy over the centuries after Descartes has been the result of this distinctively modern obscurantism in philosophy.

Reading movies as interactive messages: A proposal for a new method of analysis

Abstract: Abstract This article proposes a method to analyze movies at a sequence level in dynamic terms based on the functional framework of analysis derived from systemic functional linguistics and developed by multimodal discourse analysis, and which focuses on the use of locative Circumstances as affordances implicitly selecting changes of perspective. The two perspectives that will be taken into consideration have been elaborated through the study of how human presence is construed in hyper-environments and how this construal affects the web user's degree of involvement. A parallel between the creation of hyper-environments and the creation of a movie is therefore also proposed.

Images, diagrams, and narratives: Charles S. Peirce's epistemological theory of mental diagrams

Abstract: Charles S. Peirce's epistemological theory of mental diagrams forms the theo- retical basis of his attempt to analyze diagrammatic reasoning. Two examples, one from science and another from art, are examined to test the scope of this theory. While the first example shows how scientific diagrams form part of translation processes, similar processes are demonstrated in how paintings are received. The article attempts to connect Peirce and A. J. Greimas's theory of narrative. Relating the two proves useful in allowing Peirce's theory of the connection between the three normative sciences (Logic, Ethics, and Esthetics) to be discussed on a new basis.

Nigerian dress as a symbolic language

Abstract: Before someone opens her mouth to speak, her clothes are available for interpretation This means that the way a person dresses provides the first information that we are presented with about her This paper discusses the many ways in which people create and exchange meanings in communication through dress In this case, dress serves both instrumental and communication functions In addition to protecting the body from the elements, it also conveys socially relevant information via cultural categories, cultural processes, and individual meaning All of these are discussed using the Nigerian setting as a case study

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: the strange destiny of a singing mystic. When music travels . . .

Abstract: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Faisalabad, 1948―London, 1997) was a foremost singer of qawwâli This Muslim devotional music, which is prominent in South Asia, has been developed since the fourteenth century by the Sufi circles of the Chishti brotherhood in order to preach and communicate the teachings of the saints. Inspired by mystic spirituality, Nusrat's music travelled through the East and the West, absorbing some of the features of the musical cultures with which it came in contact. It also travelled through time, transforming the traditional style of the ancient chanted poetry into new forms of musical expression. Nusrat's life and his artistic vicissitudes show the postmodern destiny of qawwâli as a religious kind of music that apparently went through a process of desacralization and profanation as a result of multiple interpretations by different audiences. In order to discern the conditions of significance, semiotics reconstructs the relation between text and context of interpretation on the ground of structural pertinences. In this way, semiotics offers an analytical standpoint alternative to the postmodernist approach to postmodern cultural phenomena. By surveying the forms of listening that are structurally provided by the textual discourse, semiotics investigates the destiny of the musical and religious meanings of qawwâli in relation to the process of intercultural translation.

Socio-semiotics and the new mega spaces of tourism: Some comments on Las Vegas and Dubai

Abstract: "Mega" tourist spaces are named as such because of both their physical scale, which encompasses many square miles of land, and their economic scale of billion dollar investments and profit-making. The paper examines two of the most prominent examples — Las Vegas, Nevada, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Tourist locations seek to differentiate themselves using signs that distinguish one place from another through the symbolic mechanism of theming. This constant differentiation creates a sense of place for locations that, otherwise, offer essentially the same product such as opulent leisure activities and, in the case of Las Vegas, casino gambling. The semiotic process of differentiation through theming facades and decor has become the major tool of marketing to tourists who can always choose from among many alternative destinations. This socio-semiotic perspective stands in contrast to the thesis, often associated with Michel Auge, of uniform homogenization as the aesthetic imperative of contemporary global architectural practice. Examining the distinctive elements of the sign systems in Dubai and Las Vegas, the paper argues that Dubai is organized under the sign of excess, while Las Vegas's semiotic is more complex.

An excess of signification: Or, what is an event?

Abstract: This article offers a comparative analysis of the concept of the event in the philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion and Alain Badiou. Phenomenological and psychoanalytic approaches are brought together to describe how the event poses a limit problem to signifying mediation. A case study of visibility in painting is offered to illustrate how an event cannot be shown, but must show itself in e xcess of symbolizing practices. The article concludes by evaluating the analytic importance of this concept for critical research across the arts, media, and communication studies.

Film as specific signifying practice: A rational reconstruction of Stephen Heath's “On screen, in frame: Film and ideology”

Abstract: Abstract This essay presents a commentary on and rational reconstruction of Stephen Heath's influential and groundbreaking essay from 1976: “On screen, in frame: Film and ideology.” As a commentary, it attempts to make explicit the implicit assumptions behind Heath's dense and challenging essay; rewrite and clarify his inexact formulations; and develop a microanalysis of the essay's language. As a rational reconstruction, this essay follows Rudolf Botha's philosophical study into the conduct of inquiry to analyze Heath's formulation of conceptual and empirical problems and the strategies he uses to deproblematize them. This rational reconstruction rearranges the parts of Heath's essay according to the four central activities Botha identifies in the formulation of theoretical problems: 1) identifying the problematic state of affairs; 2) describing the problematic state of affairs; 3) constructing problems; and 4) evaluating problems according to well-formedness and significance. The result is a close reading of Heath's essay that reveals in minute detail his reasoning strategies, and highlights how he revolutionized film theory by attempting to integrate Lacanian psychoanalysis and Althusserian Marxism into continental semiotics, under the influence of Kristeva's theories of the signifying practice and the subject-in-process.

Introduction: Diagrammatical reasoning and Peircean logic representations*

Abstract: Along with Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and David Hilbert, Charles S. Peirce is considered one of the founders of modern logic (Lukasiewicz 1970 [1961]: 111; Barwise and Etchemendy 1996: 211; Quine 1995: 23; Hintikka and Hilpinen 1997: ix). Independently of Frege, he developed the concepts of quantification and quantifying logic (Hintikka and Hilpinen 1997: ix; Quine 1995: 31; Putnam 1982: 297). He was author of the term and concept of “FirstOrder Logic” (Putnam 1988: 28), and “Trivalent Logic” (Fisch and Turquette 1966; Lane 2001), besides his anticipating Henry Sheffer’s “Stroke Function” by more than thirty years (W 4: 218–221; Houser 1997: 3), and he was working with the computational correspondence between truth functions and electrical circuitry that was later independently developed by Claude Shannon (W 5: 421– 422; Gardner 1982). He insisted on the relevance of logic in both metaphysics and epistemology and, thus, is a founding father of what Jaakko Hintikka has called the tradition of “logic as calculus” as a current competing with the major modern tradition of “logic as a universal language” (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, etc.). His algebraical logical notation developed in the 1880s was the first draft of a modern formal logic and developed, through Schröder and Peano, into the standard formalism used today. Later, he also developed an alternative logical notation using topological forms (existential graphs) that anticipated hybrid systems of notation — heterogeneous logic — based on graphs, diagrams, maps, networks, and frames (Roberts 1973; Shin 1994; Barwise and Etchemendy 1995; Allwein and Barwise 1996). Peirce’s system of existential graphs (EGs) is a geometric-topological logic notation. According to Gardner (1982 [1951]: 55–56), the existential graph (EG) is the most ambitious diagrammatical system ever built, and the most understandable and versatile system of geometrical logic ever constructed. Developed in different periods, starting in 1882 (Roberts 1973: 18) this revolutionary system (Shin 1994: 11) or group of systems (Alfa, Beta, and Gamma Graphs), not only overcomes several limitations of Euler and Venn diagrams (CP 4.356), but also allows for the beginning of the diagrammatization of modal logic (Houser 1997: 3). To Peirce, the merit of EGs is double: first, they 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

The fine structure of Peircean ligatures and lines of identity

Abstract: Abstract Lines of identity in Peirce's existential graphs (beta) are logically complex structures that comprise both identity and existential quantification. Yet geometrically they are simple: linear continua that cannot have “furcations” or cross “cuts.” By contrast Peirce's “ligatures” are geometrically complex: they can both have furcations and cross cuts. Logically they involve not only identity and existential quantification but also negation. Moreover, Peirce makes clear that ligatures are composed of lines of identity by virtue of the fact that such lines can be “connected” with one another and can “abut upon” one another at a cut. This paper shows in logical detail how ligatures are composed and how they relate to identity, existential quantification, and negation. In so doing, it makes use of Peirce's non-standard account of the linear continuum, according to which, when a linear continuum is separated into two parts, (1) the parts are symmetric rather than (as the standard account of Dedekind holds) asymmetric, and (2) the one point at which separation occurs actually becomes two points, each of which is a Doppelgänger of the other.

Can Saussure's orangery manuscripts shed new light on biosemiotics?

Abstract: In the field of biosemiotics in our time, Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of semiology has been dismissed for its glottocentric, anthropocentric, and dyadic characteristics and as such unsuitable for the said field. Such accusation is symptomatic of an extremely narrow view of Saussure, which ignores the efforts he made in tackling problems concerning the unification of biology (natural sciences) and semiotics (human sciences). A broader view of Saussure, emerging from the newly-discovered orangery manuscripts along with his thought-provoking course lectures, reveals that his epistemology is actually grounded in evolutionary differences and the concept of uniformitarianism. In order to demonstrate the value of his ideas, this paper proceeds through five sections. (1) To begin with, the understandings and misunderstandings of key terms are summarized while seeking to reconcile arbitrary and relatively arbitrary (analogical) modes of consciousness within the network of differences that Saussure proposes in his manuscripts. (2) My study points out how such a network blurs disciplinary or systematic boundaries between language and non-verbal systems and how it might serve as a framework for appreciating true analogies between natural sciences and the science of language. (3) The paradox of analogy, torn between the synchronic and diachronic schemes of time, is discussed. This unravels several strings that have made the functioning of analogy into such a delicate point in Saussure's theory of evolution. (4) The concept of etat de langue is made comprehensive in relation to appropriations of Darwinian model and Neo-Darwinian ideas. Saussure's model of evolution explicates the phenomenon of symbiogenesis, which is non-linear, non-adaptive, non-restrictive as regards localities, yet claims certain truths about nature and culture. (5) Finally, my study draws attention to the implications of conceptualizing non-linear evolution within and across systems. There are indeed disparities between Saussure's epistemology and that of biosemiotics: nineteenth-century confused epistemology reoccurred within biosemiotics in its early phase.

Qualitative-quantitative analysis of narrative structures: The narrative roles of immigrants in Spanish television series

Abstract: This paper presents a qualitative-quantitative method of analysis for semiotic narrative, applied to a case study of the image projected by immigrants in Spanish television series. The results contain five narrative prototypes in which immigrant characters tend to appear in Spanish television series. We consider the possible effects of recurring narrative settings on the construction of a public image of immigration in Spain.