Showing papers on "Sign (semiotics) published in 1988"

Sign languages of aboriginal Australia : cultural, semiotic and communicative perspectives

Abstract: List of illustrations Preface Orthographic conventions and descriptive terms 1 Introduction 2 Aboriginal sign languages observed: a history 3 Aboriginal sign languages observed: geographical review 4 North central desert background 5 Sign structures 6 Sign forming and sign meaning 7 Sign organization and word structure 8 Signing spoken language grammar 9 Discourse in sign and speech 10 Signing and speaking simultaneously 11 Signs of kinship 12 Comparing Aboriginal sign languages 13 Australian Aboriginal sign languages and other semiotic systems 14 Aboriginal interaction and Aboriginal sign language Appendix I Sign notation symbols Appendix II Two versions of a Warlpiri story References Index of signs General index

Ritual Wailing in Amerindian Brazil

Abstract: As a means of charting the complicated semiotic pathway leading from ceremonialized expressions of emotion to their underlying social motivations, this article undertakes a comparative investigation of the “ritual wailing” complex of Amerindian central Brazil. Based upon fine-grained analyses of tape-recorded instances of wailing, coupled with ethnographic descriptions of their social contexts, the article argues that ceremonialized affect is itself a sign vehicle, a form of “meta-affect,” designed to communicate a desire for sociability.

Interface design: A semiotic paradigm

Abstract: Design principles are semiotic by nature. To design means to structure systems of signs in such a way as to make possible the achievement of human goals: communication (as a form of social interaction), engineering (as a form of applied technical rationality), business (as a form of shared efficiency), architecture, art, education, etcetera. Design comes about in an environment traditionally called culture, currently identified as artificial (through a rather romantic distinction between natural and artificial), and acts as a bridge between scientific and humanistic praxes. A long this line of thinking, Simon (1982) stated, ‘Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent not with how things are but how things might be in short, with design’. The object of semiotics is sign systems and their functioning within culture. For a long time (and for reasons whose presentation is beyond the scope of this article), one type of sign the symbol has been considered representative of all signs in human culture: ‘for most of us . . . the significant part of the environment consists mostly of strings of artifacts called “symbols” that we receive through eyes and ears in the form of written and spoken language and that we pour out into the environment as I am now doing by mouth or hand’ (Simon 1982). Actually, we perceive signs through all our senses, and we generate signs that address the same. The fact that some of these signs (visual, auditory) are more important should not prevent us from considering any other sign that can be used for representation, communication, and communication functions. But before dealing with these basic functions, we have to settle upon one of the many definitions of sign that have been advanced in the field of semiotics, and then apply it as consistently as possible. The definitions fall into two basic categories: 1. Adoption of one kind of sign usually pertaining to verbal language as a paradigm, with the understanding that every other sign is structurally equivalent. Artificial intelligence researchers are quite comfortable with this model. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure advanced

The law as a system of signs

Abstract: I Introduction to Legal Semiotics.- 1 Legal Semiotics: The Peircean Frame.- 2 Staking the Claim/Walking the Field.- 3 Perspectives on the Legal System.- 4 A Comparatist View.- 5 Global Developments.- II The Open Hand.- 6 The Art of Conversation.- 7 Riddles, Legal Decisions, and Peirce's "Existential Graphs".- 8 Speech Acts: Decisions.- 9 Pure Play: Rules of Law and Rules of Conduct.- 10 Limits of Authority in Law.- III Quid Pro Quo.- 11 Contracts and Equivalences.- 12 The Mapping of Morals onto Law: Problems of Rights, Ethics, and Values.- 13 Economic Justice: The "Takings Clause" and Legal Interpretation.- 14 Economic Links with Law: The Market as Sign of a Free Society.- 15 Signs of the Naked and the Dressed: Contract and Cause in Law.- IV Interpretation and Value.- 16 Origins and Development: Hermeneutics of Law and Politics.- 17 American Realism.- 18 The Constitution as Interpretant Sign.- 19 Property I.- 20 Property II.- V Inquiry as Method of Freedom.- 21. Inquiry and Discovery Procedures.- 22 Conflict of Laws: A Complex Indexical Sign.- 23 The Means-End Process of Freedom in Law.- References.

The City and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics

Abstract: (1988). The City and the Sign: An Introduction to Urban Semiotics. Economic Geography: Vol. 64, No. 1, pp. 77-80.

Primate Vocal Expression of Affective State

Abstract: A major feature of communication, which is all too easy to forget when one specializes in the study of particular aspects of information transmission, is the multifunctionality of signal use. Karl Biihler highlighted the fact that most signals serve several functions simultaneously in his “Organon” model of language arguing that a “sign complex” serves, at the same time, as a symbol, a semantic representation of an object or idea, as symptom, an expression of sender state, and an appeal (“Appell”), provoking a reaction of the receiver. In an attempt to classify the functions of nonverbal signs in conversation, K. R. Scherer (1980) suggested to use the semiotic approach (Morris 1946; Peirce 1931–1935) to differentiate between semantic functions (i.e., nonverbal signs replacing, amplifying, contradicting, or modifying verbal signs), pragmatic functions (expression of sender state, reactions, and intentions), and dialogic functions (relationship between sender and receiver, regulation of interaction). These types of functions can be easily mapped onto Buhler’s symbol, symptom, and appeal functions, respectively. In addition, Scherer noted a syntactic function, related to the ordering of signs in a sequence as well as its hierarchical organization.

Explanation and Power: The Control of Human Behavior

Abstract: Explanation and Power was first published in 1988. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The meaning of any utterance or any sign is the response to that utterance or sign: this is the fundamental proposition behind Morse Peckham's Explanation and Power. Published in 1979 and now available in paperback for the first time, Explanation and Power grew out of Peckham's efforts, as a scholar of Victorian literature, to understand the nature of Romanticism. His search ultimately led back to-and built upon-the tradition of signs developed by the American Pragmatists. Since, in Peckham's view, meaning is not inherent in word or sign, only in response, human behavior itself must depend upon interaction, which in turn relies upon the stability of verbal and nonverbal signs. In the end, meaning can be stabilized only by explanation, and when explanation fails, by force. Peckham's semiotic account of human behavior, radical in its time, contends with the same issues that animate today's debates in critical theory - how culture is produced, how meaning is arrived at, the relation of knowledge to power and of society to its institutions. Readers across a wide range of disciplines, in the humanities and social sciences, will welcome its reappearance.

Sign Language with Students with Severe/Profound Mental Retardation: How Effective Is It?.

Abstract: The scope, rationale for use, intervention practices, and effectiveness of sign language with school-aged students with severe /profound mental retardation (SPMR) were studied. Findings suggest that sign language is the communication alternative selected for more than one quarter of the students studied, although the rationales presented for its selection were not usually based on a full consideration of factors that indicate its use or prognosticate its success. Additionally, the educational programs as stated in the students' most recent I.E.P. (goals, lexicon, methodologies) included in this study do not reflect "best practices". This finding confounds our ability to evaluate the efficacy of sign language with this population. Results do suggest that given "common practices" emerging from this study, sign language is not an effective communicative alternative for most of these students who are severely handicapped. The need for practice sensitive research growing out of current theory is needed before one can adequately evaluate the efficacy of sign language with students with SPMR. During the past decade, the use of sign lanbols of spoken language (Bonvillian & Or guage with children and adults with severe lansky, 1984; Doherty, 1985; Luftig, 1983); and profound mental retardation (SPMR) and (3) manual signs are easier to teach be has increased dramatically (Bonvillian & Orcause they may be held visually static, pro lansky, 1984). Surveys have indicated that viding a better model to imitate and an op the use of sign language systems (American portunity for the teacher to physically mold Sign Language, Seeing Essential English, or shape the student's hand(s) for sign pro Signed English, and Signing Exact English) duction (Dennis, Reichle, Williams, & Vo with students with SPMR is likely to continue gelsberg, 1982; Doherty, 1985; Kohl, 1981; as more students who are severely handiRomski, et al., 1984). capped are served by the schools and as more Clearly, many case studies and research re professionals become familiar with the range ports indicate that sign language can indeed of augmentative communication systems be effective with certain severely handi (Goodman, Wilson, & Bornstein, 1978; capped populations (cf, Benaroya, Wesley, Poulton & Algozzine, 1980). Ogilvie, Klein, & Meaney, 1977; Bonvillian & Use of sign language with this population is Nelson, 1976; Brady & Smouse, 1978; Carr, based on several rationales, including (1) sign Binkoff, Kologinsky, & Eddy, 1978; Fulwiler language can by-pass the oral-motor speech & Fouts, 1976). However, it still remains un mechanism in cases where the prognosis for clear whether sign language is an optimal developing speech is not optimistic (Romski, communication system for this heteroge Sevick, & Joyner, 1984; Shane & Bashir, neous group. Sign language, like all language 1980); (2) the cognitive demands are not as systems, is a symbol system and, as such, re great as with spoken language because signs quires certain cognitive abilities on the part are more iconic than are the arbitrary symof the user (i.e., Piaget's sensorimotor stages V or VI in means-end relations, imitation, and representational ability). Additionally, Correspondence concerning this manuscript although sign language can indeed by-pass a should be addressed to Diane N. Bryen, Special faulty oral-motor mechanism, it does require Education Program, Ritter Annex 283, Temple certain motor skills involving the hands if University, Philadelphia, PA 19122. sign production is to be at all intelligible. Fi

Parallels and divergences between warlpiri sign language and spoken warlpiri: analyses of signed and spoken discourses

Abstract: Among the Warlpiri, as among other central Australian Aborigines, older women use a complex sign language as an alternative to speech when, for ritual reasons, as in mourning, silence must be observed. As part of a study of the relationship between this sign language and spoken Warlpiri, a comparison is undertaken between a signed version and a spoken version of two traditional narratives, each told by the same woman out recorded on separate occasions. It is found that signs are ordered in the same way within signed discourse as are words in spoken discourse and a comparison between discourse units in the two versions dealing with the same content shows a close correspondence between the words and signs used; complex lexical items, such as preverb-verb formations in the spoken language are commonly matched by compound signs that correspond to the morphological structure of the spoken form. However, only lexical morphemes are represented in sign. Markers of case relations, tense, and cliticized pronouns are not signed. The findings are interpreted as supporting the view that these alternate sign languages, unlike sign language of the deaf, are not fully autonomous systems but are built up as gestural representations of the semantic units provided by the spoken language.

Visual literacy and print literacy‐theoretical considerations and points of contact

Abstract: The theoretical stance of visual literacy advocates is described as a multi‐sign approach that goes beyond the usual focus on print literacy but does not deal adequately with nonlinguistic signs other than the visual. Semiotics, the general theory of signs, is seen as a more cohesive basis for theory‐building in education. Five areas of overlap between visual literacy and print literacy are discussed: (1) use of graphic organizers as learning aids; (2) study of propaganda; (3) video technologies; (4) use of computers; and (5) children's drawing and writing. The authors state that the points of contact further suggest the need for a semiotic frame of reference. They describe an expansive semiotics‐based model of human experience developed by Deely, but modified by Cunningham and Luk to be a comprehensively multi‐sign model. Suhor's general model for a semiotic theory is presented as a way of depicting relationships among not only linguistic signs and visual signs, but other signs and sign systems in educat...

Sign systems in special education: some experiences of their use with deaf children

Abstract: The recent and striking growth in the use of sign-systems with communication-handicapped children other than the deaf has not been monitored by systematic research. Sign-systems have been in use with deaf children, however, for a considerable number of years and much research has been undertaken aimed at evaluating their effectiveness as a means of developing communication. This research is discussed, and the conclusion is that using signs with deaf children is not unproblematic. The findings may well be applicable to the use of signs with any communication- handicapped child. Thus enthusiasm for alternative communication approaches should not be mistaken for efficacy.

On the Nature of the Theodore Psalter

Abstract: The Theodore Psalter may be the most important Byzantine manuscript signed and dated by its maker. The miniature cycle was devised for use by the abbot of the Studios Monastery, as a sign of his authority and reminder of his responsibility to the monastic community. By examining the miniatures in the context of earlier illuminated psalters and comparing them with contemporary writings, the book's lessons of virtue and its emphasis on prayer can be shown to reflect important changes in eleventh-century society.

Callimachus and the Muses. Some aspects of narrative technique in Aetia 1-2

Abstract: Books 1-2 of Callimachus’ Aetia display a highly innovative narrative structure, subtly blending traditional and modern elements under the sign of literary allusion and poetological self-reflection.

Reference, Sign, and Language: Being and Time , Section 17

Abstract: The beginning of the unfolding of the Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein is marked by the effort to unroll the discussion of the familiar but as yet uncomprehended phenomenon of the world. The issue which sustains this discussion throughout, and distinguishes it from philosophy’s concern with the world is called reference (Verweisung). Although this issue is specifically dealt with in section 17 of Being and Time, reference so pervades the entire discussion of the world as to extend its influence far beyond this section. Without the involvement of reference overall in the discussion, Preparatory Fundamental Analysis could not de facto demonstrate that the dominion of ‘relation’ and ‘object’ is brought to an end and a new understanding of the world is attained. Henceforth it makes no sense to talk about being related to the world. The phenomenon of reference provides the primary indication that we are in the world. Composed of references of all kinds, referential contexts are indicators of our being in the world. Subsequent to the discovery of the world in Being and Time, ‘object’ too loses its primacy along with ‘relation.’ Now we realize that the confrontation with objects happens only when we do not heed the flexible referential contexts which give rise to something entirely different from an object. This is so because referential contexts do not have the constancy which supports something as immutable as an object.

Nothing but the Truth: The Case of Pierre Rivière

Abstract: Contemporary thinkers as diverse as Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman are no longer confident that a sign can exchange for meaning; that is, they suggest that we can no longer look at words as trustworthy substitutes for the 'real' objects and situations to which those words supposedly refer. This is not to say that narrative accounts are unrelated to reality but rather to warn us that the meaning of those accounts is always closely edited and socially constructed. Foucault tells us in The Order of Things that in the sixteenth century language and things were endlessly interwoven, but that this is no longer so. The age of resemblance, he says, is drawing to a close. He argues, in particular, that while representation has always aimed at likeness, words and things do not resemble one another any more; therefore the written word—and I would add the spoken word as well—can no longer be a mark of the truth.

La linguistique semiotique de c. S. Peirce : propositions pour une grammaire phaneroscopique

Abstract: This thesis is subdivided into four parts. The first two parts expound the philosophical foundations of peirce's theory of assertion: pragmaticism, as a theory of the scientific development of concepts, and its relevancy in terms of the description of natural languages; and the cenopythagorean categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness, as universal modes of being of phenomena (verbal phenomena, in particular), viewed as the objects of phaneroscopy. The third part of the thesis deals with peirce's triadic theory of semiosis, and focuses on the idea that the different moments of the semiotic process can be approached by discriminating as many viewpoints as there are modes of being and relations between the sign, its two objects and its three interpretants. Such a system has given ten trichotomies, which serve to describe not only speech as expressive of linguistic competence, but its perception by users of the language. The fourth part develops peirce's grammatical theory and the fundamental operations of identification, otherness and representation expressed by the three constituants of assertion: the icon-predicate, the index-subject and the symbol-copula.

O caráter dialógico e social do signo e do pensamento em Peirce

Abstract: The semiotic character of all thought requires this phenomenon to be intrinsically dialogic, because a mediation interferes in the own thought production. All thought is equally social because sign is the product of tradition and determines a program of conduct to the future, which has by ultimate subject the totality of minds in the end of history.

Sign of the Crimes

Abstract: Most detective fiction organizes itself around the incidence of one or more murders and the subsequent process of identifying the perpetrator of the crime. The investigation of murder also involves both law and medicine. It is reasonable therefore to expect the incorporation of medico-legal discourses within the literary discourse of detective fiction. This genre became recognizable as such during the latter part of the nineteenth century, while the development of modern clinical and latter part of the nineteenth century, while the development of modern clinical and forensic medicines from the late eighteenth century onwards corresponds to its emergence at this particular time. Following the early work of Foucault in asserting the catalytic interaction of contemporary discourses, one may argue that detective fiction, forensic medicine, and modern clinical practice draw in their own ways on related semiotic systems based on the interpretation of clues and depending upon principles of close observation.

Švejk's Stage Figure: Illustration, Design, and the Representation of Character

Abstract: Stage figure is the Prague School term for the material signifier of theatrical acting, a human body or puppet made over for aesthetic perception. Stage figures usually correlate with single characters of particular plays, though this conventional practice has been interestingly violated in any number of plays featuring "mistaken identities." According to the Prague School model of the acting sign, as initiated by Otakar Zich, the stage figure stands in an intermediate, technical relation to the actor and the incorporeal dramatic character who resides in the consciousness of the perceiving audience

A Note on Some Basic Concepts of the Sign

Abstract: A conceptual basis for understanding meaning in language was established by Saussure’s analysis of the word as a sign in his Cours de Unguistique generale. His analysis has proved to be a point of departure for further studies in linguistics insofar as they are concerned with the signifying or semiotic function of language (rather than with problems that are principally philological, having to do with the historical development of particular languages). The contribution of Saussurian linguistics to epistemology has been enhanced by investigations in another discipline--philosophy--that have attempted to understand how words have meaning in ordinary language. This work originated with logical positivists in England and has since been pursued chiefly by English-speaking philosophers who are sometimes referred to as “ordinary language philosophers.” The best known of their publications is probably J.L. Austin’s How to do Things with Words. Put very simply, their investigations attempt to understand meaning in language by analyzing the word as a sign in the context of a given utterance.

Signs and Meaning in the Study of the Immune and Higher Nervous Systems

Abstract: Semiotics is the study of how people use signs to communicate. It seems likely that significant semiotic findings will be incorporated with time into a neurophysiological theory of how we perceive the world through our senses, make sense of it, and use signs to communicate our understanding. Signs can be received through any or several of the five senses, and their meaning is distinct from what they are. For example, a bunch of roses, the signifier, can express passion, the signified, if an interpretant is present who recognizes the intended relationship, the sign, between bunch of roses and passion. Interpretations are dependent on the context in which they are given; in other words, a bunch of roses does not always signify passion (1).

The Constitution as Interpretant Sign

Abstract: Because of the wealth of his contributions to American law and to the shaping of the United States Constitution, and because of his principal role in interpreting Peirce’s pragmatism and semiotic theory and method into what has developed as the most revolutionary movement in modern law, namely, legal realism and its congeners, the thought of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes should be examined more closely than is possible within the scope of this book. The writings about Holmes, from the viewpoints of jurisprudence, social philosophy, and legal philosophy, are voluminous, raising questions far beyond those addressed in this introduction to legal semiotics; they warrant a separate study on Holmes, which is in preparation.

Satisfying Khlestakov's Appetite: The Semiotics of Eating in The Inspector General

Abstract: The subject of gastronomy-as it touches upon the significance of what, how, and why man eats-has begun to receive increasing attention in recent years, during which time quite a number of books on the history of food and drink have appeared. Scholars, moreover, have demonstrated a heightened interest lately in the anthropological aspects of this topic.' Since eating is a human activity that by its very nature encompasses a social, a psychological, as well as a biological dimension, the depiction of fictional meals in literature allows this ritualistic event to be transformed into a narrative sign with vast semiotic possibilities-not only within the world of the literary work itself (intratextually) but also within a broader cultural context (extratextually). It is not surprising, therefore, that some literary critics have begun to focus their attention quite scrupulously upon the culinary and gastronomical aspects of prose fiction. These socalled "gastrocritics" have examined the various roles played by food and fictional meals in the works of such diverse authors as Franqois Rabelais, Jean-Baptiste Moliere, Alain-Rene Lesage, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marquis de Sade, Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Gustave Flaubert, Anton Chekhov, and Lev Tolstoi.2 It is perhaps only natural and appropriate that these studies should gravitate toward French literature, since the French have traditionally regarded Paris as the culinary capital of the universe and considered themselves to be inherently fine judges of good