Showing papers in "Sign Systems Studies in 2016"

Internet memes as internet signs: A semiotic view of digital culture

Abstract: This article argues for a clearer framework of internet-based “memes”. The science of memes, dubbed ‘memetics’, presumes that memes remain “copying units” following the popularisation of the concept in Richard Dawkins’ celebrated work, The Selfish Gene (1976). Yet Peircean semiotics and biosemiotics can challenge this doctrine of information transmission. While supporting a precise and discursive framework for internet memes, semiotic readings reconfigure contemporary formulations to the – now-established – conception of memes. Internet memes can and should be conceived, then, as habit-inducing sign systems incorporating processes involving asymmetrical variation. So, drawing on biosemiotics, Tartu-Moscow semiotics, and Peircean semiotic principles, and through a close reading of the celebrated 2011 Internet meme Rebecca Black’s Friday , this article proposes a working outline for the definition of internet memes and its applicability for the semiotic analysis of texts in new media communication.

The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics: A transnational perspective

Abstract: This paper seeks to situate the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics of the 1960– 1980s within the larger European intellectual-historical context from which it sprang, and in which it played a vital role. Analysing the school members’ engagement with their peers throughout Europe, we outline an “entangled history” ( histoire croisee ) of multi-directional scientific and philosophical influence. In this perspective, we discuss the most productive concepts and methods of Tartu-Moscow semiotics in the fields of general verse theory, intertextual theory and cultural theory.

Autocommunicative meaning-making in online communication of the Estonian extreme right

Abstract: This article analyses the online communication of the Estonian extreme right that appears to be characterized by an echo-chamber effect as well as enclosed and hermetic meaning-making. The discussion mainly relies on the theoretical frameworks offered by semiotics of culture. One of the aims of the article is to widen the scope of understanding of autocommunicative processes that are usually related to learning, insight and innovation. The article shows the conditions in which autocommunicative processes result in closed interactions, based on reproducing stereotypes and redundant content. We detect antithetical meaning-making, an orientation towards normative (“correct”) texts and the prevalence of phatic communication as the main dominants that guide closed autocommunication. Such communication leads to polarization of dissimilar views and hinders dialogue. Our case study focuses on the discussion that arose in the context of the European Refugee Crisis that started in spring 2015.

Multiplicity and Welt

Abstract: This article interprets Jakob von Uexkull’s understanding of different beings’ Innenwelt , Gegenwelt , and umwelt through Deleuzian insights of multiplicity, context, and particularity. This Deleuzian interpolation into Uexkull’s insights acknowledges the absence of a unitary ‘human’ view of nature, recognizing instead that plural viewpoints of cultures, subgroups and individuals understand and interpret natural signs variously not just because of ideology but because of physiology and contrastive fundamental ways of accessing the world. Recent formative research in comparative neurobiology suggests that universal anthropological claims of cross-cultural semiotic similarity are incorrect. Interpreting biosemiotics as the investigation of apprehending the Innenwelt of radically different others (species), such semiotic understandings themselves are not necessarily generalizable between different members of the same species in a group, same-species groups in different natural cultural contexts, or even (as with humans) the same animal at different points of time (based on new understandings, patterns, or events of meaning altering interpretations of self and events). Conjoining Deleuze’s insights of the complexity of multiplicity with Uexkull’s scientific-imaginative system of comprehending other creatures’ ways of understanding their world offers an increased self-reflexivity regarding the simultaneous levels of actual semiotic activity for biosemiotic inquiry.

My half-century saturated in semiotics: A spiralling confessional

Abstract: Ordinarily, a confession would not be a reply to a request or even a response to an invitation; a classic confession precipitates from an inner compulsion. This essay is a confession, even though it was nudged into existence by Kalevi Kull, the “who”, inviting me, the “whom”, to write some nebulous “what”. There was a suggestion of “when” (yet deadlines fortunately never die), and an assumption that I would grasp the “how” and that the “where” would be irrelevant. Back to the “what”. “What” remains a humongous mystery, as does “why”; precisely, that is my first confession. Yet I picked up the dangled thread, by default exploring via narrative the fusion of semiotics with my very self. These tangled traces also qualify as confessions. Let me add that the human tool-toy of language has forced these signs of thought and speech and writing, into secondness. Sharing the thirdness weakened into secondness leaves behind the spatiotemporal-free firstness of potential, and the thirdness of habit, drawing on Peirce (cf. CP 1: 356). Consequently, to start, even with an unknown, I must defy the symmetry of ultimate potential. I’ll let Kull do this, with his suggested frame of “50 years”. Let’s round that out to a half-century and allow gravity to take over. A persisting habit of mine, of leaning forward more than reflecting back, turns out to characterize my whole life. Any process consumes me, while products, or consequences, seem inconsequential, inasmuch as I will have already moved on – figuratively if not actually – to something else. I’ve found various metaphors for this condition, admitting to being a gourmand without pretension of ever becoming a gourmet, a dedicated lumper sidestepping analytical splitting. By analogy, I have been a “goat”; with that pesky goat as a totem, I could browse high and low and all around, fuelled by curiosity, steeled for surprise. From that vantage point, I might consider some conspecifics as “sheep” – somewhat linear and predictable grazers.

Lotman and play: For a theory of playfulness based on semiotics of culture

Abstract: The aim of the article is to introduce an approach to play based on semiotics of culture and, in particular, grounded in the works and ideas of Juri Lotman. On the one hand, it provides an overview of Lotman’s works dedicated to play and games, starting from his article on art among other modelling systems, in which the phenomenon of play is treated deeply, and mentioning Lotman’s articles dedicated to various forms of play forms, such as involving dolls and playing cards. On the other hand, it applies a few Lotmanian theories and ideas to playfulness in order to shed some light on this highly debated, as well as intriguing, anthropic activity. Thus, the paper approaches some of the core questions for a play theory, such as the definition of play, the cultural role of toys and playthings, the importance of unpredictability, the position held by playfulness in the semiosphere and, finally, the differences and commonalities between play and art. Lotman’s theories and works, often integrated by other existing semiotic or ludologic perspectives offer an extremely insightful and fresh take on play and illustrate the great heuristic potential of semiotics of culture.

Textualities of the city - from the legibility of urban space towards social and natural others in planning

Abstract: ‘Text’ has been a frequent notion in analytical conceptualizations of landscape and the city. It is mostly found in analyses of textual representations or suggestions concerning a metaphor of “reading” an (urban) landscape. In the Tartu- Moscow School of Semiotics the idea of the text of St. Petersburg has also been applied in analysing particular cities as organizing topics in literature and in culture more widely, but it has not happened to an equal degree in studies of actual urban spaces. The understanding of text as a semiotic system and mechanism is, however, more promising than revealed by these conceptions. Some potential can be made apparent by relating this textual paradigm to a more pragmatic understanding of the city and its planning. My project in this paper is to uncover an analytical framework focusing on the concepts of ‘text’, ‘textualization’ and ‘texting’ in studying the planning of urban environment. The paper observes the case of the urban planning process of the Tartu city centre in Estonia during 2010–2016, and is particularly concerned with the roles that urban nature has acquired in the process of this “textualization” of the local environment, societal ideals, practices and possible others .

Urban discourse - city space, city language, city planning: Eco-semiotic approaches to the discourse analysis of urban renewal

Abstract: Sustainable Urban Planning has to be understood as a communicative process connecting city architecture, technology, city district management and social infrastructure of neighbourhoods. The focus on sustainability raises the question of the necessary discourse conditions that allow architects and city planners enter into a dialogue with other urban stakeholders, citizens, local administrators and politicians, and discuss which cultural heritage should be preserved and where sustainability takes precedence. Looking at the style of discourse in urban communication brings also its socio-cultural modalities into focus. At the intersection of communication and discourse studies, urban ecology and sociology, the article focuses on the growing interest in architectural communication and, taking current approaches as a starting point, seeks to clarify which conversational maxims and discourse requirements by mediation, moderation, and integration are promising for achieving a new urban quality.

The circle and the maze: Two images of ecosemiotics

Abstract: This article compares the work of Jakob von Uexkull and Charles S. Peirce to elucidate two contrasting yet connected images of ecosemiotics. The intent is not simply to oppose their work, but to explore a tension which has implications for the ethical dimension of this emerging discipline. Uexkull’s functional cycle is associated with the image of a circle, which, while emphasizing the integration of organism and environment, is shown to invoke solipsism, and an overly deterministic depiction of ecological relations. Peirce’s drawing of a labyrinth is taken to represent a maze, which, while exemplifying the evolutionary play of ecosystems, may entail a level of unpredictability that is catastrophically chaotic. The root of these diverging depictions is identified with the role of subjectivity in engendering semiotic relations in the work of both Uexkull and Peirce. Where the more regressive aspects of Uexkull’s theoretical biology are mitigated by a teleological interpretation of life’s underlying causality, orientating agency within Peirce’s work depends upon attention to the idea of the self in his philosophy of signs. In conclusion, Eduardo Kohn’s conception of an ‘ecology of selves’ is cited, and the status of the organism as a living symbol of its environment is reaffirmed.

Dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin: A comparative study

Abstract: Th e notion of dialogue is foundational for both Juri Lotman and Mikhail Bakhtin. It is also central in Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotics and logic. While there are several scholarly comparisons of Bakhtin’s and Lotman’s dialogisms, these have yet to be compared with Peirce’s semeiotic dialogues. Th is article takes tentative steps toward a comparative study of dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin. Peirce’s understanding of dialogue is explicated, and compared with both Lotman’s as well as Bakhtin’s conceptions. Lotman saw dialogue as the basic meaning-making mechanism in the semio sphere. Th e benefi ts and shortcomings of reconceptualizing the semiosphere on the basis of Peircean and Bakhtinian dialogues are weighed. Th e aim is to explore methodological alternatives in semiotics, not to challenge Lotman’s initial model. It is claimed that the semiosphere qua model operating with Bakhtinian dialogues is narrower in scope than Lotman’s original conception, while the semiosphere qua model operating with Peircean dialogues appears to be broader in scope. It is concluded that the choice between alternative dialogical foundations must be informed by attentiveness to their diff erences, and should be motivated by the researcher’s goals and theoretical commitments.

Semiotic dimensions of human attitudes towards other animals: A case of zoological gardens

Abstract: This paper analyses the cultural and biosemiotic bases of human attitudes towards other species. A critical stance is taken towards species neutrality and it is shown that human attitudes towards different animal species differ depending on the psychological dispositions of the people, biosemiotic conditions (e.g. umwelt stuctures), cultural connotations and symbolic meanings. In real-life environments, such as zoological gardens, both biosemiotic and cultural aspects influence which animals are chosen for display, as well as the various ways in which they are displayed and interpreted. These semiotic dispositions are further used as motifs in staging, personifying or de-personifying animals in order to modify visitors’ perceptions and attitudes. As a case study, the contrasting interpretations of culling a giraffe at the Copenhagen zoo are discussed. The communicative encounters and shifting per ceptions are mapped on the scales of welfaristic, conservational, dominionistic, and utilitarian approaches. The methodological approach described in this article integrates static and dynamical views by proposing to analyse the semiotic potential of animals and the dynamics of communicative interactions in combination.

Homo polyglottus: Semiosphere as a model of human cognition

Abstract: The semiosphere is arguably the most influential concept developed by Juri Lotman, which has been reinterpreted in a variety of ways. This paper returns to Lotman’s original “anthropocentric” understanding of semiosphere as a collective intellect/consciousness and revisits the main arguments of Lotman’s discussion of human vs. nonhuman semiosis in order to position it in the modern context of cognitive semiotics and the question of human uniqueness in particular. In contrast to the majority of works that focus on symbolic consciousness and multimodal communication as specifically human traits, Lotman accentuates polyglottism and dialogicity as the unique features of human culture. Formulated in this manner, the concept of semiosphere is used as a conceptual framework for the study of human cognition as well as human cognitive evolution.

Ecosemiotic aspects of zoomorphic metaphors: The human as a predator

Abstract: Through history, predatory features are used to constructs when constructing textual representations on the human/animal frontier. The predatory act has remained a recurring motif that emerges from a metaphoric system in cultural imagination. An ecosemiotic approach to this topic allows us to understand how specific predatory behaviours constitute a source of meaning: in other words, how an alleged “animal tendency” is appropriated (translated) into various cultural texts through metaphors, creating a rhetorical order. To illustrate this, some features of metaphors of predatoriness in certain texts in Argentinian culture will be reviewed. A particularly vivid example is provided by two species, the cougar and the jaguar, that have generated cultural translations which expand and proliferate into contemporaneity. These translations constitute a form in which culture metaphorizes aggressiveness and interprets certain species from a historical and ideological perspective. The Argentinian cases suggest a revision of how history has treated the cultural other in terms of cultural and biological inferiority.

Notes on narrative, cognition, and cultural evolution

Abstract: Drawing on non-Darwinian cultural-evolutionary approaches, the paper develops a broad, non-representational perspective on narrative, necessary to account for the narrative “ubiquity” hypothesis. It considers narrativity as a feature of intelligent behaviour and as a formative principle of symbolic representation (“narrative proclivity”). The narrative representation retains a relationship with the “primary” pre-symbolic narrativity of the basic orientational-interpretive (semiotic) behaviour affected by perceptually salient objects and “fits” in natural environments. The paper distinguishes between implicit narrativity (as the basic form of perceptual-cognitive mapping) of intelligent behaviour or non-narrative media, and the “narrative” as a symbolic representation. Human perceptual-attentional routines are enhanced by symbolic representations: due to its attention-monitoring and information-gathering function, narrative serves as a cognitive-exploratory tool facilitating cultural dynamics. The rise of new media and mass communication on the Web has thrown the ability of narrative to shape the public sphere through the ongoing process of negotiated sensemaking and interpretation in a particularly sharp relief.

Intersemioticity and intertextuality: Picaresque and romance in opera

Abstract: Jakobson introduced the concept of intersemioticity as transmutation of verbal signs by nonverbal sign systems (1959). Intersemioticity generates the linguistic-and- cultural elements of intersemiosis (from without ), crystallizing mythology and archetypal symbolism, and intertextuality (from within ), analyzing the human emotions in the cultural situation of language-and-music aspects. The operatic example of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1867) intertextualized the cultural trends of Scandinavia. This literary script was set to music by Grieg to make an operatic expression. After the “picaresque” adventures, Peer Gynt ends in a “romantic” revelation. Grieg’s music reworded and rephrased the script in musical verse and rhythm, following the intertextuality of Nordic folk music and Wagner’s fashionable operas. Ibsen’s Peer Gynt text has since been translated in Jakobson’s “translation proper” to other languages. After 150 years, the vocal translation of the operatic text needs the “intersemiotic translation or transmutation ” to modernize the translated text and attract present-day audiences.

What kind of evolutionary biology suits cultural research

Abstract: Michel Foucault (1971[1966]) demonstrated remarkable parallelism and mutual infl uences between biology, linguistics and economics. Th e parallelism can be considered obvious, when taking into account that all three fi elds of research in principle study semiotic systems; together with humanities in general, they are areas of semiotic research, not physical sciences. However, the extent to which theories and models used in these fi elds are based on a semiotic approach varies. For instance, a model of evolutionary change may or may not take into account the processes of interpretation and meaning-making. Th ere is more than one version of the theory of evolution. Besides the neoDarwinian version (the “standard theory”, developed since the 1930s on the basis of the Modern Synthesis), there are others, among which at least one (the epigenetic theory, also called “Extended Synthesis”) is close to semiotic biology. It is particularly important to pay attention to this when applying biological models in cultural research, for the choice of initial assumptions in which the models of evolution diff er may result in remarkable diff erences in conclusions. Th e existence of alternative theories has been characteristic of the whole history of the study of evolution. What makes the contemporary period remarkable, in this context, is the epigenetic and semiotic turn in evolutionary theory. Th at this turn or shift has already largely happened could be observed at the recent conference “New trends in evolutionary biology: Biological, philosophical and social science perspectives”, held in London during 7–9 November 2016, and organized jointly by the Royal Society and the British Academy. Below I shall give an overview of this meeting, but some more words about the preliminaries and context are also pertinent. It is not usual for these two institutions to organize events together, as the Royal Society specializes in natural sciences, and the British Academy is concerned with social sciences and humanities. However, if the discrimination ‘semiotic versus physical’ points at a deeper divide than ‘human versus natural’ (or ‘culture versus

Agrarian rituals giving way to Romantic motifs: Sacred natural sites in Estonia

Abstract: Semiotic mechanisms involving sacred natural sites – or areas of land or water with special spiritual significance – that have been focal points in agrarian vernacular religion have been transformed in modern Estonian culture. Some sites have accrued new significance as national monuments or tourist attractions and the dominant way of conceptualizing these sites has changed. Sacred natural sites should not be presumed to represent pristine nature. Rather, they are products of complex culture-nature interactions as they have been formed in the course of traditional land management as well as different semiotic practices, including ritual and conservationist ones. The existence of sites encompassed by the term defies and blurs the rigid distinction between nature and culture. Individual sacred natural sites and categories of such sites can act as signifiers for a variety of different signifieds concurrently, acting as confluences of different sign systems and thus exemplifying the creolization of these systems as well as bringing about the hybridization of different landscape traditions in certain loci. Estonian literary culture has adopted motifs and narratives that define sacred natural sites more readily from other literary traditions than from the Estonian vernacular tradition; in turn, the vernacular tradition has also adopted and assimilated literary Romantic motifs.

Discourse genres as determiners of discursive regularities: A case of semiotic predictability?

Abstract: This article focuses on discursive regularities that can generally be observed in text corpora produced in similar communication situations (medical interviews, political debates, teaching classes, etc.). One type of such regularities is related to the so-called ‘discourse genres’, considered as a set of tacit instructions broadly constraining the forms of utterances in a given discursive practice. Those regularities highlight the relatively regulated, non-random nature of most of our discursive practices and epitomize the necessary constrained creativity of meaning making in discourse. In this perspective, we suggest that the concepts of Thirdness and Habit, as theorized by Charles S. Peirce, can be fruitful in describing the role and importance of such regularities in our sociodiscursive life. More specifically, we believe that discourse regularities are ideal case studies if one wishes to investigate instances of predictability in semiotic (discursive) processes. Overall, we suggest that their study can be one of many research orientations through which a prediction-based scientific conception of semiotics could be applied.

Critique of ideology or/and analysis of culture? Barthes and Lotman on secondary semiotic systems

Abstract: The article compares Roland Barthes’s and Juri Lotman’s notions of ‘second-order semiological systems’ [ systemes semiologique seconds ] and ‘secondary modelling systems’ [ вторичные моделирующие системы ]. It investigates the shared presuppositions of the two theories and their important divergences from each other, explaining them in terms of the opposite strategic roles that the notions of ‘ideology’ and ‘culture’ play in the work of Barthes and Lotman, respectively. The immersion of secondary modelling systems in culture as a “system of systems” characterized by internal heterogeneity, allows Lotman to evidence their positive creative potential: the result of the tensions arising from cultural systemic plurality and heterogeneity may coincide with the emergence of new, unpredictable meanings in translation. The context of Barthes’s second-order semiological systems is instead provided by highly homogeneous ideological frames that appropriate the signs of the first-order system and make them into forms for significations which confirm, reproduce and transmit previously existing information generated by hegemonic social and cultural discourses. The article shows how these differences resurface and, partially, fade away in the theories of the text that Barthes and Lotman elaborated in the 1970s. The discussion is concluded by some remarks on the possible topicality of Barthes’s and Lotman’s approaches for contemporary semiotics and the humanities in general.

Two versions of ecosophy: Arne Næss, Félix Guattari, and their connection with semiotics

Abstract: This paper adopts a comparative approach in order to appreciate the distinct contributions of Arne Naess and Felix Guattari to ecosophy and their respective connections to semiotics. The foundational holistic worldview and dynamics ecosophy propounds show numerous connections with semiotics. The primary objective of this paper is to question the nature and value of these connections. Historically, the development of ecosophy was always faced with modelling and communication issues, which constitute an obvious common ground shared with semiotics. As a means to an end, ecosophy settled to develop a thoughtful axiology based on ecological wisdom and promote it bottom-up. Political activism notwithstanding, semiotics also deals with value: sign value and meaning. In this respect, semiotics is inherently axiological, but most often this dimension is effaced or muted. Emphasizing the axiological dimension of semiotics helps understand how dominant significations, habits, and values are established, and enlighten the crucial part it could play in the humanities and beyond by partly coalescing with ecosophy. As the complementarity of both traditions is appreciated, the plausibility of a merger is assessed. Arguably, ecosophy is axiomatized semiotics. From this novel perspective, one can see human communities as dynamically partaking in signifying processes, in a space that is at once an ecosphere, a semiosphere, and a vast political territory. As there is growing evidence that environmental degradation lessens our quality of life and the sustainability of our communities, ecosophy might help reform values and practices.

Hedge mazes and landscape gardens as cultural boundary objects

Abstract: Despite their obvious functional and stylistic differences, hedge mazes and English landscape gardens have salient symbolic and structural similarities which make them fruitful objects of comparative analysis. Both invert the norms expected of interior and exterior spaces, of human cultivation and “wilderness”, creating landscapes of semiotic uncertainty. Being at once natural and cultural, both types of space present a “problem to be solved” either by reaching a centre or understanding a layout. Both “play” with the notion of boundary by constructing uncrossable and at times oppressive walls from seemingly fragile plant matter or by hiding their boundaries. At the same time there are important differences which make this comparison of boundary spaces even more interesting: hedge mazes and landscape gardens are distinguishable by their respective structural levels, the presence or absence of a centre, their relation to other parts of gardens and connected human habitations. Using Juri Lotman’s notion of hybrid and transitional objects characteristic of boundary mechanisms, this paper explores the semiotically dense nature-culture boundary which these mazes and gardens both inhabit and create. The objects of our analysis are 17th-century English mazes and early English gardens dating from the beginning of the 18th century: mazes at Longleat and Hampton Court, and landscape gardens such as Rousham and Stowe.

Barthes and Lotman: Ideology vs culture

Abstract: Despite both being great names in semiotics, Roland Barthes and Juri Lotman have more differences than they share similarities – not only because of their different political and historico-cultural environments, but also because they do not have the same object of study: it is ‘ideology’ for Barthes, and ‘culture’ for Lotman. Thus, there is no intellectual common ground between them, yet comparing them can lead us to a more important question: what is semiotics, and what has structuralism to do with it?

Literature as a defining trait of the human umwelt: From and beyond Heidegger

Abstract: Writers and readers of literature are, among other things, biological en tities that evolve under particular political (geographical/historical) conditions. A comparative study of certain texts by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) can help us establish a fruitful interpretation of this threefold link between literary art, biology and politics. However, careful analysis reveals that Heidegger remains too rooted in an old-world, nationalistic and anthropocentric paradigm. We will attempt to rethink Heidegger’s assumptions on the grounds that literature, a cultural practice, enables us to delineate our natural environment. By reformulating Heidegger’s line of thought, we can more precisely address the plural structure of our biotic and political-literary experiences.

Rethinking theoretical schools and circles in the 20th-century humanities

Abstract: Review of Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities: Literary Theory, History, Philosophy , ed. by Marina Grishakova and Silvi Salupere. New York, London: Routledge, 2015. 287 pp.

From paradigm to environment: The foreign rhythm and punctual catalysis of culture

Abstract: Lotman and Barthes created two different critically oriented semiotic traditions. Both of them wen t through an evolution in their thought, moving from systematic organization to living transformations in cultural systems. This allowed them to carry out a bilateral critique of codes and identities in favour of either anonymous hybridity (Lotman) or neutrality (Barthes), where heterogeneity becomes a principle of creative “disorder”. Though quite different as regards their theoretical production, both scholars meet in their refusal to turn descriptive practices (studium) into a model of any other form of behaviour, considering that the determination of textual or institutional perimetres is not always clear. In short, Barthes and Lotman anticipated current research trends on the semiotics of practices; Barthes because of a sort of self-reflexion on the behaviour of the interpreter in front of an object, and Lotman through his analytic interest in attitudes and ways of living. Barthes’s view on writing essentially reaches Lotman’s conception of culture as a “collective person”: we are looking for traces of breathing in the life of signs. More precisely, we can assert that, in the view of both scholars, inscribing speech events in history problematizes the dynamic and asynchronous relation between the structural frame of a culture and its textual heritage. The rhythm of fashion is not a side topic in their research, but, rather, it is the clearest exemplification of a dialectic between structural projection from the outside and local introjection of forms, depending on the conditions that make a difference.

On semiotic (un)predictability: Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2015

Abstract: From 17 August to 20 August 2015, the 10th Summer School of Semiotics2 “Semio tic (un)predictability”, which also hosted the 9th Conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies3, took place in Tartu, Estonia. The 2015 conference was organized by the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu, the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies and the Estonian Semiotics Association. Tiit Remm (the main organizer), Kalevi Kull, Kristin Vaik, Lauri Linask and Tyler Bennett participated in the work of both the scientific committee (that, besides them, also included Inesa Sahakyan, Luis Emilio Bruni, Morten Tonnessen, Peeter Torop, Sara Lenninger and Timo Maran) and of the organizing team (which also included Katre Parn, Liina Sieberk and Maarja Vaikmaa). The conference was attended by over a hundred scholars from more than twenty countries, representing various traditions and very different approaches to semiotic studies. Among them, there were many young scholars, who created a particularly joyful intellectual ambiance during the whole four working days – this witnesses to the ever growing interest of the younger generation for semiotics4. The title of the conference corresponded well to what a neophyte would have certainly felt looking at the very rich program of this event. As the organizers stated in the foreword to the Book of Abstracts (Parn, Bennett 2015: 9), “[t]he paradoxical co-presence of predictability and unpredictability is a fundamental aspect of the dynamics of the semiotic world. Abduction, habit, diversity explosion,

Against the Frame

Abstract: The paper explores theoretical foundations of the frame from two semiotic perspectives: that of the Saussurean dyadic sign dominant in the European tradition and that of the triadic sign of the Peircean/American descent. If – within the post- Saussurean agenda – meaning can be fairly easily “framed” and closed in the field of the signified, Peirce’s concepts of interpretant and infinite semiosis implement a mechanism which inherently obliterates the frame. Given this duality of approaches, the contention “No meaning without a frame” is thus true and paradoxical at the same time, and that paradox goes far beyond the Derridean concept of the parergon , which only belongs to both the inside and the outside. The frame, as construed in this paper, is not merely a material or imaginary, inactive partition, but is itself an operational agent which isolates and delineates a text ontologically as the other of the context, and simultaneously subverts that otherness by necessitating further semiosis and its own partial self-erasure. Regarding the interrelations amongst texts and between text and context, the frame is thus envisaged, and investigated in the paper, not so much as a factor of resistance or separation, but as an osmotic boundary facilitating rather than preventing a bi-directional flow of meanings. Putting this in epistemological terms, one may say that interpretation – paradoxically again – requires an enframing of its object, but at the same time it dissolves the stipulated frame and reaches beyond it.

Introduction: Framing nature and culture

Abstract: Lauri Linask, Riin Magnus The articles gathered in this special issue of Sign Systems Studies discuss a variety of discourses, theoretical models, artistic activities, principles of design, etc. which in one way or another expose and manifest, but also guide, our perception of nature and human-environment relations. Most of the articles in this issue have grown out of presentations made at the conference Framing Nature: Signs, Stories, and Ecologies of Meaning, which took place in Tartu from 29 April 2014 to 3 May 2014.3 Humans create multiple environments by using various frames of interpretation. In addition, specific means of expression and modes of signification give nature a particular shape and character. However, framing nature is not a one-way process – i.e. the semiotic frames are not simply of nature, but they are part of nature as they have an effect on the ecological processes themselves. Such a modified environment in turn becomes an object of further models, interpretations and significations. Hence, nature frames culture just like culture frames nature in a variety of ways, some of which are examined in the articles of the current issue. In the first article of the issue, “Urban discourse – city space, city language, city planning: Eco-semiotic approaches to the discourse analysis of urban renewal”, Ernest W. B. Hess-Lüttich reviews a broad set of approaches to the discourse of urban development. He finds that, for planning a sustainable urban environment, successful communication between different stakeholders should take place, the stakeholders’ various backgrounds, interests and even perceptions of reality must be observed and taken into account, and a coherence of different discourses involved