Showing papers on "Sign (semiotics) published in 1997"

Jacques Derrida: ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’

Abstract: Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an ‘event’, if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural — or structuralist — thought to reduce or to suspect. But let me use the term ‘event’ anyway, employing it with caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the exterior form of a rupture and a redoubling.

Media Semiotics: An Introduction

Abstract: Part 1 Signs and myths: the semiotic point of view sign systems components of the sign sequences of linguistic signs visual signs connotation and myth wrestling and Julius Caesar myth and social meanings myth and ideology sources and further reading suggestions for further work. Part 2 Advertisements: the advertising business analyzing advertising the semiotic critique of ads ideology in ads the ideology of ads problems in the ideological analysis of ads Volkswagen Gold State the VW Gold State ad's contexts and readers wonderbra the wonderbra ad's contexts and readers sources and further reading suggestions for further work. Part 3 Women's business: the magazine business myths of femininity the reading subject address and identity the 'woman's world' the limits of the imaginary sources and further reading suggestions for further work. Part 4 Newspapers: the newspaper business news value news discourse headlines and graphics photographs in the news newspaper readers sources and further reading suggestions for further work. Part 5 Television news: news in the TV schedule defining TV news mythic meaning in TV news the structure of TV news visual signs in TV news myth and ideology in TV news making sense of TV news global news sources and further reading suggestions for further work. Part 6 More television: watching television television signs and codes television narrative and ideology viewer involvement viewer positioning: TV comedy polysemic television and multiaccentuality television viewers: the case of Dallas specific audience groups sources and further reading suggestions for further work. Part 7 Cinema: the film business cinema spectatorship the gendered spectator film signs and codes film narrative film genre cinema audiences sources and further reading suggestions for further work.

Peirce, signs, and meaning

Abstract: CS Peirce was the founder of pragmatism and a pioneer in the field of semiotics His work investigated the problem of meaning, which is the core aspect of semiosis as well as a significant issue in many academic fields Floyd Merrell demonstrates throughout Peirce, Signs, and Meaning that Peirce's views remain dynamically relevant to the analysis of subsequent work in the philosophy of language Merrell discusses Peirce's thought in relation to that of early twentieth-century philosophers such as Frege, Russell, and Quine, and contemporaries such as Goodman, Putnam, Davidson, and Rorty In doing so, Merrell demonstrates how quests for meaning inevitably fall victim to vagueness in pursuit of generality, and how vagueness manifests an inevitable tinge of inconsistency, just as generalities always remain incomplete He suggests that vagueness and incompleteness/generality, overdetermination and underdetermination, and Peirce's phenomenological categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness must be incorporated into notions of sign structure for a proper treatment of meaning He also argues that the twentieth-century search for meaning has placed overbearing stress on language while ignoring nonlinguistic sign modes and means Peirce, Signs, and Meaning is an important sequel to Merrell's trilogy, Signs Becoming Signs', Semiosis in the Postmodern Age; and Signs Grow This book is not only a significant contribution to the field of semiotics, it has much to offer scholars in literature, philosophy, linguistics, cultural studies, and other academic disciplines in which meaning is a central concern

The Postcolonial: Conceptual Category or Chimera?

Abstract: No discussion of the 'postcolonial' should proceed without participants making known their understanding of the term, for no word is more seductive in appearing to offer limitless possibilities for composing a revised narrative of colonialism and its consequences, and few words have proved more elusive. Yet within the multiplicity of literary and cultural studies now identified as constituting a 'postcolonial criticism', there is a constant slippage between significations of an historical transition, a cultural location, a discursive stance, and an epochal condition. Not only has postcoloniality been privileged as the position from which to deconstruct colonialism's past self-representations and legitimating strategies but it is also designated the location for producing properly postmodern intellectual work on the contemporary world, which, it is asserted, has seen the implosion of Western culture under the impact of its inhabitation by other voices, histories, and experiences.1 Nor do these variants exhaust the connotations which, more narrowly, include a description of those Third World literatures characterized by intertextuality that (in contrast to fictions of an earlier phase) devise 'post-nationalist narratives'. Such indeterminacy in signification has prompted essays and lectures with titles such as 'What is Post(-)colonialism?' and 'When was the Postcolonial?';2 and indeed a glance at the contents of the two recent Postcolonial Readers will suggest the range of topics and methodologies now being subsumed under the sign of the postcolonial.3 But if the critical freedom from precision and closure has induced scepticism in some critics, the very multivalencies of the term have been valorized by others concerned to rearticulate colonialism and its aftermath from a theoretical position that has disentangled itself from the categories of political theory, state formation, and structural socio-economic relationships. It is this model that came to attain predominance in the burgeoning discussion, and while its suppositions and

Semiotik: Ein Handbuch zu den zeichentheoretischen Grundlagen von Natur und Kultur

Abstract: The conceptualization of sign processes in all their variations as a unitary phenomenon connecting living nature with human culture and distinguishing them both from inanimate nature may serve as a key to providing the human, social, engineering, and natural sciences with a common theoretical basis for a well-defined division of labor and cooperation. It is feasible to regard human behavior in all cultures as sign production and reception. Following this approach, life in family and profession, commerce and administration, art and religion can be understood in a unified way and studied in all its transdisciplinary aspects. Semiotics has made this its task. In the handbook Semiotics, consisting of 4 volumes containing 178 articles written by 175 authors from 25 countries, the current state of research in general, descriptive, and applied semiotics is presented. It introduces the reader to systematics and subject matter and gives a comprehensive overview of the historical development of sign conceptions in philosophy, aesthetics, logic, mathematics, grammar, stylistics, poetry, music, architecture, the fine arts, medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, religion, and everyday life. Furthermore, the handbook compares semiotics to other interdisciplinary approaches, and demonstrates its applicability to the analysis of urgent problems of industrial and postindustrial societies. The accessibility of the handbook Semiotics is enhanced by a comprehensive index of persons and subjects which also serves as a two-way bilingual glossary (German-English and English-German) of semiotics terminology.

On the Narrative Nature of Young Children's Iconic Representations: Some Evidence and Implications.

Abstract: Reflection on the relationship between a sign and its meaning (i.e. semiotic activity) is a fundamental form of cognitive activity that already occurs at an early age. The improvement of this semiotic activity in young children prepares for their later learning activity. Iconic representations are one important category of signs for young children (3‐7 years old). Iconic representations (drawings, diagrams, schemes) are generally conceived of as means bridging the gap between early enactive, perception‐bound thinking and abstract‐symbolical thinking. From the Vygotskian perspective iconic representations are complex signs referring to some object (situation, action) in a special way. On the bases on the analysis of children's drawings it is argued that iconic representations are narrative in nature for young children. Children tend to supplement their drawings with verbal symbols in order to make sure that their intended meanings are maximally clear. In doing so, children learn to carry out semio...

Dancing around Meaning (and the Meaning around Dance)

Abstract: I want to begin this chapter with a statement from a recently published text on the ‘philosophy of dance’. This statement is included here because it alerts us to a significant feature of dance and urban life that informs much of this chapter. We are told that when walking through the City, indoors or outdoors, one is everywhere confronted with the worn-down forms of distinctively artistic activity. There is architecture all over the place, of course. But also there is music everywhere, a background privately or publicly generated; there are sculptural and graphic forms, and literary language. One is surrounded, not indeed by artistic masterpieces, but by signs and symbols used in ways that could not be what they are without the direct influence of self-consciously artistic practice. But there is no sign of dance anywhere, other than in actual dances which have to be located and sought out. (Sparshott, 1995, p. 6)

The poverty of media theory

Abstract: The author argues here that media theory, also called cultural studies, probably does not deserve the academic standing it has and that it has little place in professional education for the media. Whereas journalistic practice seeks to be committed to a realist worldview, an ethical regard for the audience, and good writing, the media theory approach is directly opposed to these aspects. With its heavy leaning on structuralism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, media theory teaches journalism students that there is no reality ‘out there’ - everything, including the audience, is an illusion, and that incomprehensibility in writing is a sign of greatness. It is also argued that, when put to the test of providing theoretical analysis of the media, cultural studies has failed to deliver and has led to a regrettable loss in the range of concepts and terminology. Possible steps to address the situation are suggested, including student and employer initiative and review of curricula.

Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets Prior to the Rise of Deaf Education

Abstract: Visual-kinetic communication systems - ancient finger numbers, medieval and Renaissance finger alphabets, conventionalized 'coverbal' gesture systems for oratory and the theater, the Roman pantomime, monastic sign lexicons, and the elusive possibility of natural sign languages - have all received the scholarly attention that has turned up the few surviving primary texts from the period before 1600. The extant documentation indicates that many visual-kinetic systems were sporadically in use among the general (i.e., hearing) population to a degree almost unimaginable to post-Renaissance societies such as ours that popularly associate 'gesture languages' with the deaf. In detail, however, the texts are often difficult to interpret, not only because of their scarcity and generally highly allusive nature, but also because of modern historians' often unproductive or misproductive approaches to them. This survey is meant to provide an overview of the textual evidence and a foundation for both sign language linguists and historians of the deaf education to analyze and interpret more accurately and usefully the extant evidence for visual-kinetic communication systems before the rise of Deaf Education.

Model Guidelines for Visibility of On-Premise Advertisement Signs:

Abstract: On-premise advertising signs play an important role in directing drivers Well-placed and well-designed on-premise advertising signs can guide vehicle operators toward their destinations with minimal demand for attention Poor placement of signs can sap a driver's cognitive and perceptual resources, resulting in erratic maneuvers such as inappropriate slowing and lane changing Increasingly, however, the visibility of on-premise advertising signs is being determined not by human factors researchers, visibility experts, or traffic engineers but by local planning and zoning officials, who lack specialized training in relevant fields Regulations affecting on-premise sign visibility characteristics, such as means of illumination, lateral offset, and sign size, have been established mainly on the basis of arguments for improved aesthetic appeal and of vague, often unsubstantiated safety claims There is a clear need to determine, from scientific and ergonomic perspectives, the effects these regulations have on sign visibility and traffic safety An organized synthesis of existing literature on sign visibility based on 60 years of research and consisting of more than 150 journal articles and technical reports is presented The synthesis may be used by sign designers to optimize the visual effectiveness of their signs It also can provide a scientific basis for the development of new on-premise sign regulations or changes to existing regulations A model set of guidelines for designing and locating on-premise advertisement signs for conspicuity and legibility is provided

Progress in Sign Languages Recognition

Abstract: The automatic recognition of sign language is an attractive prospect; the technology exists to make it possible, while the potential applications are exciting and worthwhile. To date the research emphasis has been on the capture and classification of the gestures of sign language and progress in that work is reported. However, it is suggested that there are some greater, broader research questions to be addressed before full sign language recognition is achieved. The main areas to be addressed are sign language representation (grammars) and facial expression recognition.

Language convergence and wave phenomena in the growth of a national sign language in Kenya

Abstract: African educators and policy makers often (informally) ask sign-language researchers whether it is really possible for a national sign language to evolve naturally in an ethnically heterogeneous country. In our view, the question of whether it is or is not possible does not arise because it has happened. Already, in a number of African countries, for example, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, deafpeople are operating in language communities each of which has a national membership. Such communities are based on language bonds constituted by the emerging national sign languages such as Kenyan Sign Language, Ugandan Sign Language, and Tanzanian Sign Language, for the countries mentioned above. The relevant research question, therefore, is, what makes it possible for a national sign language to evolve among the deafofa country such as Kenya, which has approximately 42 ethnic groups covering a landarea of 582,644 square kilometres? Finding an answer to this question is important because it has significant implications for sign-language dialectology and sign-language development in general. In this paper, we summarize our findings on this question as it relates to Kenya. The key factors responsible for the growth of a national sign language in Kenya seem to be the regional mobility of deaf persons, the growth of deaf awareness, and, at the linguistic level, language convergence and the attendant wave phenomena. The scientific significance of these findings is that there are natural social trends that can be generated and/or enhanced in order to facilitate the growth ofnatural sign languages in the ethnically heterogeneous nations of Africa. This eliminates the undesirable temptation to import foreign sign languages or, even worse, design artificial sign languages for the deaf of Africa. Thefindings also give us some ideas about how to facilitate the homogenization of the emerging Subsystems without applying the fiat associated with traditional standardization procedures.

A Postmodern Revelation: Signs of Astrology and the Apocalypse

Abstract: In this new interpretation of the Book of Revelation, Jacques M. Chevalier examines the relationship between astromythology and Western interpretation. While scholars have noted the influence of ancient astromythology in Revelation before, Chevalier shows how John's heavenly imagery is the key to a polemical dialogue between modes of storytelling in Western history: astrology and eschatology, and naturalism and logocentrism. The book also explains how the 'genealogical' concerns of modern academia about the origins of natural and cultural history have supplanted the future-oriented visions of sidereal divination and Christian prophecy.The first three chapters and epilogue situate Chevalier's biblical analysis in the context of broader interpretations of astrology and the apocalypse developed by Jung, D.H. Lawrence, LTvi-Strauss, Derrida, Foucault, Cassirer, Adorno, Frye, Barthes, and Morin. They also provide the reader with a solid background in the history of astrological belief systems and exegetic readings of Revelation extending from antiquity to the late twentieth century. The remaining chapters are devoted to two questions. First, how does the imagery in Revelation relate to expressions of astromythology? Second, how do twentieth-century readings of Revelation reflect a 'genealogical' perspective on notions of signs, textuality, and destiny?A Postmodern Revelation is itself an 'apocalypse,' a revelation to scholars interested in sign theory, eschatology, and the history of astrology. The book does far more than interpret the specific biblical text of John's Revelation: it plays with polemics and parallels in the history of Western thought, tracing the history of signs and their meaning from antiquity to a postmodern era that heralds the end of all myths of the End.

Sign, Text, Scripture: Semiotics and the Bible

Abstract: This book is an introduction to the field of semiotics specifically directed to students of the Bible as well as to biblical scholars trained in other methodologies. The primary focus is on what semiotics is now-how contemporary scholars actually approach the Bible semiotically. Attention is given to the history and varieties of semiotic theory, because as it has influenced the work of more recent thinkers, and because postmodern reappraisals of semiotics call for rereading of biblical texts. The book is organized according to topics ('Sign', 'Message', 'Text', etc.), which provide a way to interrogate semiotics as a system. This stimulating account also includes, for good measure, reflections on what theology has become, for believer and unbeliever alike, in a post-Nietzschean, post-Heideggerian world: What does it mean to see theology as 'ideology'-a complex and never wholly conscious network of understandings, preconceptions, and expectations about 'the way things are'.

Semiotics for beginners

Abstract: Why study signs? This perennial question of philosophy is answered in the 20th century by the science of semiotics. An animal's cry, poetry, the medical symptom, media messages, language disorders, architecture, marketing, body language - all these, and more, fall within the sphere of semiotics. Introducing Semiotics outlines the development of sign study from its classical precursors to contemporary post-structuralism. Through Paul Cobley's text and Litza Jansz's illustrations, this seminal introduction identifies the key semioticians and their work and explains the simple concepts behind difficult terms. For anybody who wishes to know why signs are crucial to human existence and how we can begin to study systems of signification, this book is the place to start.

Expectation as Narrative Strategy in Richard Wagner's Parsifal

Abstract: The story of Parsifal is presented in two manners: through action and through narrative. Using the formalist theories of Vladimir Propp, the overall narrative is articulated in three narrative episodes. This thesis interprets the structure of narrative episodes in Parsifal on the basis of expectation. Propp's theory of functions provides labels for an interpretive analysis. Levi-Strauss' reconstruction of Propp's functions into paired structures identifies key points in the drama as moments of "functional" saturation. This "functional" saturation coincides with Wagner's practice of Leitmotivic saturation. The semiotic theories of Charles Sanders Peirce, specifically his notion of sign, clarify the dense accumulation of meanings accrued by the Leitmotifs. Finally, Parsifal, as a "quest" for the unobtainable object, fits into the matrix of desire as formulated in the theories of Jacques Lacan.

Theatre Iconography: An Introduction

Abstract: Theatre iconography systematically attempts to integrate the pictorial representation of theatre as a vital source of information in researching the history of theatre. Given the primacy of the written word (logos) in western culture, the status of the illustration as a source of historical research has remained low in the West where it is the norm to give the text priority over illustrations, which serve merely as decorations, to support a conclusion or confirm a statement made in the text. Theatre iconography, however, involves the search for a new dialectical relationship between the written word and the theatre illustration, one in which the illustration is not immediately interpreted as an appendage to a text. It involves an autonomous ‘reading’ of the image in which the use of other documents, preferably from other sign systems, cannot and may not be discounted. The aim here is to study theatre history with the help of tools that are more effective than those used previously.

The Semiotics of Accessibility and the Cultural Construction of Disability.

Abstract: This paper draws on the observations of an international college student with an upper socio-economic background from Kenya who, prior to graduate work in the United States, had almost no contact with people with physical disabilities. The paper explores the construction of accessibility and disability on a college campus as viewed from a semiotic perspective through a research project that was conducted with a student with physical disabilities who used a motorized wheel chair. The paper contrasts an initial reaction to the freedom of accessibility the person with disability appears to have in the United States with the reality of a case study of a wheel-chair confined student. The commentary considers how signs of accessibility (such as the ramp sign) operate at three levels: (1) the iconic (signifying access or a way in/out); (2) indexical (as a marker of a society accessible by all citizens, even those with disabilities); and (3) symbolic (as a representation of freedom of movement, convenience, and inclusion). At this third symbolic level, the paper suggests that the ramp, when inconveniently though legally located, represents confinement, inconvenience, restriction of freedom, and a sense of censored access. The paper also examines ways that a person can be "dis-abled" by a culture through denial of a person's abilities or "enabled" and empowered. (Contains 11 references.) (DB) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting Chicago, IL, March 26, 1997 Semiotics Special Interest THE SEMIOTICS OF ACCESSIBILITY AND THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF DISABILITY

The Language of Twentieth-Century Art: A Conceptual History

Abstract: Recent theory has tended to understand the meaning of art primarily as a function of original contexts of production and reception or in its relation to fashionable notions of gender, multiculturalism and "scopic regimes". These approaches, however, fail to negotiate adequately art's tranhistorical and transcultural significance, a shortcoming that is particularly serious in relation to 20th-century works because it confines their significance to contexts that are regulated by the specialist interests of curators, critics and historians. In this book, Paul Crowther provides a reinterpretation of key phases and figures in 20th-century art, focusing on the way artists and critics negotiate philosophically significant ideas. Crouther begins by discussing how and why form is significant. Using Derrida's notion of "iterability" - a sign's capacity to be used across different contexts - he links this possibility to key reciprocal cognitive relations that are the structural basis of self-consciousness. He then argues that while such relations are necessarily involved in any pictorial work, they are especially manifest in aesthetically valuable representations, and even more so in those 20th-century works that radically transform or abandon conventional modes of representation. The involvement of key reciprocal relations gives such works a transhistorical and transcultural significance. To show this, Crowther investigates the theory and practice of key artists such as Malevich, Pollock, Mondrian and Newman, and major tendencies such as Futurism, Surrealism and Conceptual Art. By linking them to reciprocal relations, he is able to illuminate a language of 20th-century art that cuts across those boundaries set out by such conventional notions as modern, avant-garde and postmodern.

Reading The Silences Within Critical Feminist Theory

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature produced on gender and critical literacy, particularly research which has drawn on Kristeva's (1986) three tier model of women's work to inform critical feminist literacy curriculum. It examines the strengths and limitations (silences) in this literature, and then proposes an alternative reading of Kristeva which draws on the work of postcolonial theorists. A postcolonial interpretation of Kristeva's (1986) theory of how the sign or representation of `woman' is constructed enables an analysis of the `difference' within the category `woman' not only the relational `difference' symbolically constructed between `man' and `woman'. Kristeva (1986) proposes that in the space of the postmodern nation, such as Australia, symbolic representation in the form of the sign of `woman' is constituted in and through three temporal relations. Kristeva's three temporal relations can be described as: (1) Monumental time (eternity), (2) Cyclic time, and (3) Linear or cursive time. From this perspective, the present of women's time (monumental, cyclical and linear) is a zone of representational instability. That is, the representation of women in and through the sign `woman' becomes the site of continual challenge and reconstruction. It is from this instability of cultural signification that the literary canon comes to be articulated as a dialectic of various temporalities - modern, colonial, postcolonial, feminist, post feminist, poststructural feminism(s), `native', traditional - that cannot be a knowledge that is stablized in enunciation. In this time, `woman' does not signify the female body as an a priori historical presence, a discursive object; but a discursive subject constructed in the performance of the narrative.

Authority and reality in the representation of the Past

Abstract: Reviewing eight recent texts that address historical methodology offers the opportunity to highlight the central features of the relationship of history to the past through the historian's discourse. These texts prompt the reviewer to ask what is to be gained by questioning the established relationship between the reality of the past as signifier, its signified as written history, and their associative meaning: the sign of history as authoritative empirical truth? The review concludes historians should think of the past as an empty signifier. Endowing the past with meaning signifies written history: the past conceptualized as we employ covering laws, colligation, comparison, verification, theoretics, emplotments, or whatever. However, the past does not determine written history because it is with the third element in the semiological equation — the sign — that meaning is achieved. The traditional historian's sign is referentialism and empiricist discourse. These texts suggest to the reviewer that...

National Sign Languages and Language Policies

Abstract: The development of national sign languages and of language policies associated with national sign languages are both relatively recent, and are products of the spread of nationalism, spurred on by national and international movements in the fields of human rights and education. There have, however, always been policies towards sign languages, policies which have overtly or covertly been influenced by wider attitudes towards language in general. These policies have often denied sign language the status of languages and have in turn denied their users their full humanity. The impact of philosophers of language on these policies towards sign languages has often been profound, especially where speech has been assumed to be synonymous with language.

Literary History and Translation: An Indian View

Abstract: A discussion of the relations between canonized and non-canonized literary forms, between 'self and 'other', within the Indian context, leads to a differenciation between the Western tradition of a single dominant literary tradition and the more diverse, and inclusive, parallel and multiple traditions of India. At the origin of such traditions, and holding them together long enough to permit cross fertilization, are acts of translation, merging sign systems and forming a community of 'translating consciousness' where several languages are used simultaneously and are parts of a larger, continuous spectrum. Translation in such a multilingual context plays a fundamental role, transforming and revitalizing original texts.

Chapter 5 Sign language acquisition and the development of meaning in a lowland gorilla

Abstract: Publisher Summary The chapter discusses sign language acquisition and the development of meaning in a lowland gorilla. This chapter approaches the topic of meaning through examining the development of a lowland gorilla, Koko. In this investigation, the focus is primarily on the early stages of Koko's acquisition of a sign language lexicon. In particular, how Koko learned to use signs, her rate of sign acquisition, and the content of her vocabulary are examined. The chapter also describes Koko's use of gestures and her emerging cognitive abilities. This additional information both supplements and buttresses the depiction of how Koko's development of understanding unfolds. Throughout the presentation, Koko's development is systematically compared with that of young children learning to sign. Koko's relatively more circumscribed environment, compared with that of children, may have been less conducive to vocabulary growth. Differences between the species in fine motor ability might also account in part for Koko's smaller vocabulary; certain signs may have been more difficult for her to form than for children to make.

Signs and Manual Communication Systems: Selection, Standardization, and Development

Abstract: Selection, Standardization, and Development Frank Caccamise' Robert Ayers Karen Finch Marilyn Mitchell NATIONAL TECHNICAL INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF, ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY The trend toward the inclusion of manual communication as part of a "total" approach to the education of hearing impaired persons has been documented by Jordan, Gustason, and Rosen (1976). These authors sent a survey form to all 970 educational programs for the hearing impaired on the Office of Demographic Studies mailing list. The total number of responses was 796 (82%). Table 1 gives the number of programs and classes reporting the use of manual communication as part of their Total Communication Approach,2 and shows that over 50% of all classes at all educational levels are using manual communication. Further data reported by Jordan et al. showed that of 343 programs reporting a recent change in communication modes used, 333 of these reported a change to include the use of manual communication. When major decisions such as this are made, more often than not new major decisions need to be confronted. In this case, the decision to include the use of manual communication in the education of hearing impaired children has led to discussions, and sometimes confrontations, relative to the question, "How should we sign or manually communicate?" The purpose of this paper is to provide information that should assist the reader in responding to this question. In practice, the above question has become two questions: 1) Which signs should be used?, and 2) Which manual communication system(s) (or languages) should be used? The first question involves the selection of individual lexical units, that is, the selection of signs. (The lexicon of a language consists of all the signs, or words, that the language employs. A single member of a lexicon is a lexical term, i.e., a single sign or a single word.) Most books and standardization projects have addressed this question. The second question involves selection of an entire language, including how the lexical units (signs) selected are to be combined into phrases and sentences. In this paper, sign selection will first be discussed, and then selection of manual communication systems. The general goal of this paper is to provide a rational, objective basis for the process used in selection, standardization, and development of signs and manual communication systems. It is hoped that this base will assist others in establishing policies on usage of signs and manual communication systems on an equally objective basis, rather than depending on any one sign or manual communication book (or books). The Need for Sign Selection, Standardization, and Development (SSSD) Regardless of the mode of communication or language used, "consistency" is recognized as a critical factor for efficient, effective communication and language development. This is the basic premise upon which the need for sign standardization rests. As Gustason (1973, pp. 38-48) has stated, "It is less important that one adhere faithfully to a given book than that consistency be attempted in a specific program" (p. 46). The fact that many educational programs have identified sign standardization as a need is evident from the data reported by Jordan et al. (1976). Responses to their survey indicated that among the 565 programs reporting the use of Total Communication, 340 had attempted sign standardization and 87 more would possibly do so in the future. Support from the deaf community for sign standardization has been stated by the editor of The Deaf American, Jess Smith (1975): "We still hold that some kind of standardization is overdue.... Too many people and organizations are riding off in all directions" (p. 2). Rosen (Reference Note 3), in discussing sign selection and standardization, stated: People have expressed concerns to Gallaudet College and asked about the possibility of standardization of signs. …

Mapping the "Unmappable": Inhabiting the Fantastic Interface of 'Gravity's Rainbow.'

Abstract: The map as a mode of representation and as a metaphorical image of the representational impulse is an insistent presence both in studies of the postmodern and in postmodernist fiction The map, its iconic status apparently assured, seems to proffer cognitive control over a geographical correlate Yet, through its invocation of representational transparency, the map both obscures and unavoidably flaunts the conventions with which it charts or, more specifically, names in "letters" that which resists exact referential mapping The map, that is, can be construed as a usually unwitting case of the representational self-reflexivity endemic to the postmodern condition The analogical patterning implicit in the mapmaking process both fosters and relies on traditional notions of representation as the mimetic charting of an ontologically homogeneous domain But the map's iconic modelling of its geographical referent is overlaid with the imprint of the letter, of the linguistic sign The postmodernist "map," foregrounding this fragile iconic status, enacts a self-conscious blending of icon and sign The foregrounding of the sign is, in effect, the conversion of the sign into its own icon: the linguistic sign as an icon of a sign, not of an extra-textual reality In the process, the referential power of this "iconic" sign is textually ravaged by the postmodernist proliferation of "phantasms of difference without hierarchy"(1) Hence the representational conundrum implicit in many postmodernist texts: the representational sign seems hopelessly cut off from a grounding reality yet, at the same time, it seems to exude an iconic muteness harboring some virtually unnameable and strangely threatening connection to the real In Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, for example, the involuted conspiratorial representations apparently woven by Pierce Inverarity to entrap a hapless Oedipa may hide an unmentionable enigma or they may be all representational surface enveloping a hollow interior Signs may lead to only more signs or give way to the iconic thrust of the real itself, as in Oedipa's vision of a megalomaniacally-deluded Inverarity ironically and "iconically" crushed in his bed by the physical reality of his Jay Gould bust(2) Critical studies or "mappings" of the postmodern, taking their cue from postmodernist fiction itself, play on the conventions of "mapping," the conventions of representation, to point up the very conventionality of the mapping process and, ultimately, the implied "unmappability" of that which it would chart in a totalizing manner But, needless to say, such debunking gestures are themselves a form of critical "mapping" that attempt, in their more unguarded theoretical moments, to elide their own necessary involvement with the representational metaphor they deride The more pondered studies of the postmodern, however, like Pynchon's fiction itself, confront the representational paradox inherent in the metaphor of the "map" by recognizing its informing presence within their own critical and fictional scenarios(3) They attempt to tackle the question of how one goes about "mapping" a postmodern real that no longer responds to the controlling binary models of conventional representation How, that is, to employ a literary term given new life by postmodernist fiction, does one represent a "fantastic real"? The fantastic, especially in its post-Todorovian or poststructuralist variants, is an attempt to represent the unrepresentable or to "map the unmappable" But, in its infiltration of the representational maps of postmodernist fiction as a guest from the literary past, it not only reinvigorates but also tempers contemporary projects of representational disruption Such is its self-conscious employment within Pynchon's multiply- or overly-mapped fictions The narrative saturation in which Pynchon indulges is itself a defining characteristic of our overcoded, postmodern reality It is precisely this multiplication of divergent topographies that undermines the referential correlations of the representational "map …

Introduction: The Life of Signs in Visual History

Abstract: The work of history is always a work of interpretation. History does not speak for itself. It is always something that has to be, in one way or another, told – or, at least, represented. The painstaking work of archaeology is a matter of piecing together data, a work of reconstituting and reconstruction. The reassembled bits and pieces of an archaeological enterprise have to be sifted, gathered together and put into order. Those bits and pieces might be taken for signs, signs of the past that are organized according to a twofold logic of form: the form of the thing and the form of its reconstruction. Between these two forms is an inevitable gap. The reduction of the gap between object or event and representation is the work of the historian. In this meaningmaking process atomistic signs and sign configurations are being constructed into more or less coherent texts. These texts inevitably are organized in discourses. Discourses in turn classify knowledge into fields, orders, practices. Discourses shape the production of know1 S. Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices

Semiotics in landscape design

Abstract: This paper claims that concepts of language can help us create better and more relevant landscape design. It is based on research undertaken by Karsten Jorgensen (1989), and subsequent studies carried out at the department of Land Use and Landscape Planning at the Agricultural University in Norway. The 'signs' that constitute the design language are categorised using the analytical vocabulary of landscape design; for example, elements, materials, effects and shapes. Studies of these signs are based on elements of semiotics and cognitive science, especially the Umwelt-theories developed by Jakob von Uexkull (Hoffmeyer 1994). We are constantly exposed to numerous signs of different kinds. Everywhere in society we see signs around us; for example, traffic signs, advertising signs and logos. It is therefore relevant to introduce the term 'semiosphere' in order to focus on the significance of semiosis at all levels of activity in the world, from cellular activities, to complex systems of development such as those found in a population. This study focuses on the semantic aspects of landscape architecture. In explaining the meaning of a statement, it is useful to have a set of rules or 'codes' to correlate a specific expression with a specific interpretation. These codes may be based on conventions, or on similarity between or stylisation of objects, such as natural or cultural landscapes. In any case, they are based on the interpreter's language and 'mind-structure'. At a general level, it is only possible to study sign content. To analyse meaning in landscape design you have to look at the context; for example, the overall composition of a garden or park and the situation, which includes the interpreter's cultural background, their experiences and so on. In other words, you have to analyse a specific case to be able to speak reasonably about meaning in landscape (de)signs.

The Ideological Impediment: Feminism and Film Theory

Abstract: The "truth" of [women's] oppression cannot be "captured" on celluloid with the "innocence" of the camera; ... What the camera in fact grasps is the "natural" world of the dominant ideology. -Claire Johnston' As an advanced representation system, cinema poses questions of the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking. -Laura Mulvey2 Born under the sign of Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, feminist film theory's birthright was a certain account of representation, a semiotic theory already evident in these formative contributions to the field. Beginning with the first premise of semiology-the nonidentity of sign and thing-Johnston reminded feminists that cinematic images are representations, not the traces of a transparent reality. Meanwhile, Mulvey rehearsed the insight that representations, cinematic images among them, structure our conscious and unconscious relations to the world. As a result, perception itself is always a way of seeing, a function of conceptual categories in no way compelled by the reality they purport to grasp. Both Mulvey and Johnston went beyond the unassailable claim that cinematic images are not identical with the objects they picture, however. Both identified the constitutive role of language-the fact that knowledge is a function of representation and not the other way around-with the operation of ideology. Feminist film theorists following Mulvey and Johnston combined Althusser's definition of ide-