Showing papers on "Semiosphere published in 2007"

Biosemiotic research trends

Abstract: Preface More Than Metaphor: Genomes Are Objective Sign System Limitations on Applying Peircean Semeiotic Biosemiotics as Applied Objective Ethics and Aesthetics Rather than Semeiotic The French Reception of Jakob von Uexkulls Umwelt: A Regional Variation of Global Semiotics Nature of Music / Music of Nature: An Introduction to Zoomusicology The Ant on the Kitchen Counter Biological Information Sign Processes in Living System How Living Systems Manage the Uncertainty of Events: Adaptation by Semiotic Cognition Investigating the Dynamics of Becoming From Cybernetics towards Semiotics From Biosphere to Semiosphere to Social Lifeworlds Biology as an Understanding of Social Science How Junk Became Selfish: The Nominalist Breakdown of Molecular Biology The Wake of Consilience Produces Monsters Evolutionary Psychology, Social Construction, and a Biosemiotic Proposal for Symmetry Semiotics in Biology: Inside Neodarwinism Index.

The formation of learners' semiosphere by authentic inquiry with an integrated learning object Young Scientist

Abstract: An integrated learning object, a web-based inquiry environment "Young Scientist" for basic school level is introduced by applying the semiosphere conception for explaining learning processes. The study focused on the development of students' (n=30) awareness of the affordances of learning objects (LO) during the 3 inquiry tasks, and their ability of dynamically reconstructing meanings in the inquiry subtasks through exploiting these LO affordances in "Young Scientist". The problem-solving data recorded by the inquiry system and the awareness questionnaire served as the data-collection methods. It was demonstrated that learners obtain complete awareness of the LO affordances in an integrated learning environment only after several problem-solving tasks. It was assumed that the perceived task-related properties and functions of LOs depend on students' interrelations with LOs in specific learning contexts. Learners' overall awareness of certain LO affordances, available in the inquiry system "Young Scientist", developed with three kinds of patterns, describing the hierarchical development of the semiosphere model for learners. The better understanding of the LO affordances, characteristic to the formation of the functioning semiosphere, was significantly related to the advanced knowledge construction during these inquiry subtasks that presumed translation of information from one semiotic system to another. The implications of the research are discussed in the frames of the development of new contextual gateways for learning with virtual objects. It is assumed that effective LO-based learning has to be organized through pedagogically constrained gateways by manifesting certain LO affordances in the context in order to build up the dynamic semiosphere model for learners.

"What Good Newes from Barbary?" Nascent Capitalism, North-Africans and the Construction of English Identity in Thomas Heywood's Drama

Abstract: During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries England experienced an epistemological transition that entailed the construction of a still precarious identity. This process involved the adoption of a new economy (nascent capitalism) and the shaping of a proto- racialist project of exclusion, which was mainly addressed towards the Muslim Other. In this paper I will show how a corpus of four plays by the Elizabethan playwright Thomas Heywood problematizes this project by simultaneously reinforcing and interrogating it: I will suggest that whereas the new economy is apparently privileged and celebrated and Islam still appears to be approached without racialist assumptions, the plays develop some strategies that nostalgically question nascent capitalism and its consequences, as much as they start to display a process of racial stereotyping towards North-African Muslims. The four plays studied are Parts 1 and 2 of The Fair Maid of the West (ca. 1599-1603 and 1625-1630) and If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody (Parts 1 and 2) (ca. 1604 and ca. 1605). In order to explore these texts, and to define how the plays engage with these processes, I will employ Juri Lotman's cultural semiotic notion of the semiosphere.