Showing papers on "Sign (semiotics) published in 2020"

The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce

Abstract: ..". fascinating throughout.... the book is recreative in the highest sense." --Arthur C. Danto, The New Republic"A gem for Holmes fans and armchair detectives with a penchant for logical reflection, and Peirce scholars." --Library Journal

Thinking with Digital Images in the Post-Truth Era: A Method in Critical Media Literacy

Abstract: This article introduces a new method to support critical media literacy, learning and research in higher education. It acts as a response to an unprecedented profusion of visual information across digital media that contributes to the contemporary post-truth era, marked by fake news and uncritical consumption of the media. Whereas much has been written about the reasons behind and the character of the post-truth, less space has been dedicated to how educators could counteract the uncritical consumption of images from the perspective of semiotics. This article adopts a unique semiotic approach to address the stated gap. It discusses in depth the meaning making of pictures, digital photographs and material objects that photographs can embody. It does so by focusing on three aspects of a pictorial sign: (1) the materiality of its representation and representational elements, (2) its object (what the sign refers to) and (3) its descriptive interpretations. These three aspects inform the signification analysis within the proposed production-signification-consumption (PSC) method, exemplified with digital photographs. Understanding and analysing images via the PSC method draw attention to how humans create, interpret, (re)use, consume and respond to online and offline communication signs. The method can contribute to the development of critical media literacy as an engagement with postdigital semiotics, much needed in an age of global ecological and social crises, uncertainty and fast consumption of digital content.

Ecosemiotics: The Study of Signs in Changing Ecologies

Abstract: This Element provides an accessible introduction to ecosemiotics and demonstrates its pertinence for the study of today's unstable culture-nature relations. Ecosemiotics can be defined as the study of sign processes responsible for ecological phenomena. The arguments in this Element are developed in three steps that take inspiration from both humanities and biological sciences: 1) Showing the diversity, reach and effects of sign-mediated relations in the natural environment from the level of a single individual up the functioning of the ecosystem. 2) Demonstrating numerous ways in which prelinguistic semiotic relations are part of culture and identifying detrimental environmental effects that self-contained and purely symbol-based sign systems, texts and discourses bring along. 3) Demonstrating how ecosemiotic analysis centred on models and modelling can effectively map relations between texts and the natural environment, or the lack thereof, and how this methodology can be used artistically to initiate environmentally friendly cultural forms and practices.

Social meanings of linguistic variation in BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language)

Abstract: (International Sign) In contrast to sociolinguistic research on spoken languages, little attention has been paid to how signers employ variation as a resource to fashion social meaning. This study focuses on an extremely understudied social practice, that of sign language usage in Indonesia, and asks where one might look to find socially meaningful variables. Using spontaneous data from a corpus of BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language), it blends methodologies from Labovian variationism and analytic practices from the ‘third wave’ with a discursive approach to investigate how four variable linguistic features are used to express social identities. These features occur at different levels of linguistic organisation, from the phonological to the lexical and the morphosyntactic, and point to identities along regional and ethnic lines, as well as hearing status. In applying third wave practices to sign languages, constructed action and mouthings in particular emerge as potent resources for signers to make social meaning.

Evaluating web and mobile user interfaces with semiotics : An empirical study

Abstract: Computer interface signs, such as navigational links, thumbnails, small images, command buttons, symbols, icons, etc., which serve as communication artifacts between designers/systems and users, constitute an under-researched area. To design and evaluate intuitive interface signs, the Semiotic Interface Sign Design and Evaluation (SIDE) framework was developed. The aim of this study is to test the framework's applicability to evaluate web and mobile user interfaces. To that end, two empirical user studies were conducted among a total of 86 practitioners (n1 = 58, n2 = 28). The results show that the SIDE framework helps identify unique usability problems, such as the intuitiveness of interface signs in terms of their referential meaning, which would not have been detected with traditional heuristic evaluation methods. The paper increases our understanding of the intuitive nature of interface signs of web and mobile interfaces, and of the practical use of intuitive signs.

When Queerness Meets Intersectional Thinking: Revolutionizing Parallels, Histories, and Contestations.

Abstract: Intuitively distinguishing the myriad of critically informed paradigms requires an in-depth analysis of genealogies, histories, and philosophical underpinnings grounding each paradigm. Despite sign...

Dispossessing academics: The shift to ‘appropriation’ in the governing of academic life:

Abstract: This article offers a critical theoretical exploration of the transformation of academic life that is currently taking place under the sign of ‘neoliberalization’. The main aim is to differentiate ...

Form, meaning, and reference in natural language : a phenomenological account of proper names

Abstract: In my book Eigenname und Bedeutung (1996), I started from the observation that modern theories of proper names fail to do justice to the specific and complex semantic nature of proper names. Since the 1960’s and 1970’s, theorizing about proper names has been dominated largely by scholars working in the traditions of analytic philosophy and logic, in particular John R. Searle and Saul Kripke. I argued, however, that the highly specific kind of meaning typical of proper names should be studied within a theory more in touch with general linguistics proper. The main philosophical (especially referential) and logical (especially formal) accounts start from the assumption that a proper name is “backed up” by encyclopaedic information held by speakers of the referents (Searle), or that a proper name is a meaningless, yet rigidly designating sign (Kripke). In contrast to these views, I argue that a general linguistic definition of the proper name has to focus not only on logical and philosophical issues, but also on the specifically linguistic semantic function of the proper name as a “part of speech” in actual utterances. This approach has nothing to do with pragmatics or discourse analysis, but aims at describing proper names and appellative nouns as categories of speech in language use, bringing into play a functional focus on proper names that has largely been lacking in definitions of the proper name so far. An outline of a semantic theory of proper names is then proposed based on some aspects of a “phenomenology of language and linguistics” as found in the work of Edmund Husserl and Eugenio Coseriu. Roughly speaking, Husserl represents the general epistemological implications of the paper and Coseriu its specifically linguistic aspects.

Understanding visual images in picturebooks

Abstract: Visual systems of meaning in picture books offer different resources and potentials for constructing meanings from written language. Because of this, readers need to familiarize themselves with a variety of differing ways of making sense and reading the images. Picture books represent a traditionally accepted, ubiquitous literary format that continues to play a significant role in elementary reading curricula. Images in picture books depict characters, actions and relationships between participants and viewers. Various narrative processes are used to represent action in the story and the relationships between objects and characters. Visual symbols are used to represent ideas that are conventionalized through their use in socio-cultural contexts: for example, offering a red rose as a sign of love or caring, the golden arches of a particular fast food chain, the use of a cross for Christian values, or the colour red for anger or violence.

A Dataset for Linguistic Understanding, Visual Evaluation, and Recognition of Sign Languages: The K-RSL

Abstract: The paper presents the first dataset that aims to serve interdisciplinary purposes for the utility of computer vision community and sign language linguistics. To date, a majority of Sign Language Recognition (SLR) approaches focus on recognising sign language as a manual gesture recognition problem. However, signers use other articulators: facial expressions, head and body position and movement to convey linguistic information. Given the important role of non-manual markers, this paper proposes a dataset and presents a use case to stress the importance of including non-manual features to improve the recognition accuracy of signs. To the best of our knowledge no prior publicly available dataset exists that explicitly focuses on non-manual components responsible for the grammar of sign languages. To this end, the proposed dataset contains 28250 videos of signs of high resolution and quality, with annotation of manual and non-manual components. We conducted a series of evaluations in order to investigate whether non-manual components would improve signs’ recognition accuracy. We release the dataset to encourage SLR researchers and help advance current progress in this area toward real-time sign language interpretation. Our dataset will be made publicly available at https://krslproject.github.io/krsl-corpus

Semiotic Fitting and the Nativeness of Community

Abstract: The concept of ‘semiotic fitting’ is what we provide as a model for the description and analysis of the diversity dynamics and nativeness in semiotic systems. One of its sources is the concept of ‘ecological fitting’ which was introduced by Daniel Janzen as the mechanism for the explanation of diversity in tropical ecosystems and which has been shown to work widely over the communities of various types. As different from the neo-Darwinian concept of fitness that describes reproductive success, ‘fitting’ describes functional (sign) relations and aboutness. Diversity of a semiotic system is strongly dependent on the mutual fitting of agents of which the semiotic system consists. The focus on semiotic fitting means that, in the analysis of diversity, we pay particular attention to decision making (choice), functional plasticity, recognition windows, the depth of interpretation of the agents, and the categories responsible for the structure of the semiotic system. The concept of semiotic fitting has an early analogue in Jakob von Uexkull’s concept of ‘Einpassung’ (as different from ‘Anpassung’, meaning ‘evolutionary adaptation’). The close concepts of ‘semiotic fitness’, introduced by Jesper Hoffmeyer and by Stephanie Walsh Matthews, ‘semiotic selection’, introduced by Timo Maran and Karel Kleisner, and ‘semiotic niche’, introduced by Hoffmeyer, provide different versions of the same model. If community is constructing itself on the basis of (relational) fitting, then nativeness of the community is a product of fitting, not vice versa. Nativeness is a feature that deepens in the course of community succession. The concept of ‘semiotic fitting’ demonstrates the possibility to analyse the role of both indigenous and alien species or other agents in a community on the basis of a single model.

Transtemporal sport histories; or, rethinking the ‘invention’ of American basketball

Abstract: The predominant narrative on the history of basketball assumes that James Naismith ‘invented’ the game in 1891. This narrative argues the game emerged as a modern sport different in design and sign...

The Origins and Perspectives of ‘Culture’—Is it Relevant Anymore?

Abstract: This paper argues that ‘culture’ is a crucial element of humans’ mental developmental dynamics and traces various threads of explorations of the concept of ‘culture’ and aims to contribute to its systemic understanding. Culture has been represented predominantly as external to a person or as something that is at the same time inside and outside of the mind by the various streams of Cartesian social sciences. The latter theoretical stances led to the essentialization, ‘entification’ and objectification of the concept/phenomenon. The systemic approach is proposed in order to more adequately reflect the relational organization of individuals, societies and cultures. ‘Culture’ should be understood as an entirety of relational processes of sense-making of experiences that are self-centred, intentional and future-oriented, however, always rooted in historically constructed sociocultural systems. Cultural elements and individuals are indissolubly and meaningfully linked and defined in relation to each other. Interaction between people and cultural elements is dialogical and is organized in intransitive hierarchical structures. The systemic approach to the cultural and semiotic dynamics allows us to understand how patterns of signs, meanings and behaviours are constructed through the past historical process and in relation to the anticipated short-term and distant future. ‘Culture’ is everywhere wherever and whenever human relates to or anticipates real or imaginary ‘other’, or whenever s/he constructs or interprets any ‘objectified’ sign. It is considered as the systemic totality of the processes of meaningful relating to others that is the basis for affectively charged meaning-making processes. The self-definition is possible only through ‘Culture’.

Sub)lexical changes in iconic signs to realign with community sensibilities and experiences

Abstract: Sign language lexicons include iconic items, where phonological form is somewhat representative of sense. As experiences of individuals change, the mapping from form to meaning may become inappropriate (as when technological or environmental changes occur) or may be considered incongruous with perceptions of reality (as when culture shifts). Many misalignments of form and sense are tolerated, with the result that a sign's original iconicity is lost. Other misalignments are obliterated; signers make sublexical changes or entire lexical substitutions. We call these (sub)lexical changes ‘corrections’. We argue that misalignments that are regrettable are more likely to be corrected, where regrettable misalignments are those that are not true to realities/experiences of profound importance to deaf individuals.While the focus here is on American Sign Language, corrections should be apparent in any sign language and might occur in those spoken languages with a high frequency of nonarbitrary relationships between form and sense. (Sign language, variation, taboo terms, euphemism, iconicity, identity)*

Bengali Hand Sign Gestures Recognition using Convolutional Neural Network

Abstract: Sign language and spoken language, both of them are generated from the same human brain but their linguistic and physical transmission varies greatly from each other. The deaf people have a hearing disability and the dumb or mute people have a speaking disability except other things are normal for them. Persons having hearing and speaking impairment are often incapable of communicating their statements appropriately. So they use sign language to communicate with each other and with the rest of the world. As a result, sign language recognition (SLR) has become one of the most interesting topics in computer vision and machine learning recently. Researchers are trying to improve this language to use in a large-scale though it is not an international language. This paper proposed a model to recognize Bangla sign language gestures using convolutional neural networks (CNN) to support Bengali natives. A large publicly available sign language dataset was used for detecting Bangla Sign Language (BSL). CNN was used to recognize and classify hand image in the screen and then to categorize the hand skeletal features extracted from the image into a standard communicative meaning for all. The proposed method shows 98.75% accuracy.

TheRuSLan: Database of Russian Sign Language

Abstract: In this paper, a new Russian sign language multimedia database TheRuSLan is presented. The database includes lexical units (single words and phrases) from Russian sign language within one subject area, namely, “food products at the supermarket”, and was collected using MS Kinect 2.0 device including both FullHD video and the depth map modes, which provides new opportunities for the lexicographical description of the Russian sign language vocabulary and enhances research in the field of automatic gesture recognition. Russian sign language has an official status in Russia, and over 120,000 deaf people in Russia and its neighboring countries use it as their first language. Russian sign language has no writing system, is poorly described and belongs to the low-resource languages. The authors formulate the basic principles of annotation of sign words, based on the collected data, and reveal the content of the collected database. In the future, the database will be expanded and comprise more lexical units. The database is explicitly made for the task of creating an automatic system for Russian sign language recognition.

The effect of sociolinguistic factors on sign variation in the Kata Kolok lexicon

Abstract: (International Sign) Sign languages can be categorized as shared sign languages or deaf community sign languages, depending on the context in which they emerge. It has been suggested that shared sign languages exhibit more variation in the expression of everyday concepts than deaf community sign languages (Meir, Israel, Sandler, Padden, & Aronoff, 2012). For deaf community sign languages, it has been shown that various sociolinguistic factors condition this variation. This study presents one of the first in-depth investigations of how sociolinguistic factors (deaf status, age, clan, gender and having a deaf family member) affect lexical variation in a shared sign language, using a picture description task in Kata Kolok. To study lexical variation in Kata Kolok, two methodologies are devised: the identification of signs by underlying iconic motivation and mapping, and a way to compare individual repertoires of signs by calculating the lexical distances between participants. Alongside presenting novel methodologies to study this type of sign language, we present preliminary evidence of sociolinguistic factors that may influence variation in the Kata Kolok lexicon.

Dicta-Sign-LSF-v2: Remake of a Continuous French Sign Language Dialogue Corpus and a First Baseline for Automatic Sign Language Processing

Abstract: While the research in automatic Sign Language Processing (SLP) is growing, it has been almost exclusively focused on recognizing lexical signs, whether isolated or within continuous SL production. However, Sign Languages include many other gestural units like iconic structures, which need to be recognized in order to go towards a true SL understanding. In this paper, we propose a newer version of the publicly available SL corpus Dicta-Sign, limited to its French Sign Language part. Involving 16 different signers, this dialogue corpus was produced with very few constraints on the style and content. It includes lexical and non-lexical annotations over 11 hours of video recording, with 35000 manual units. With the aim of stimulating research in SL understanding, we also provide a baseline for the recognition of lexical signs and non-lexical structures on this corpus. A very compact modeling of a signer is built and a Convolutional-Recurrent Neural Network is trained and tested on Dicta-Sign-LSF-v2, with state-of-the-art results, including the ability to detect iconicity in SL production.

(What we don’t know about) Sign Languages in Higher Education in Europe: Mapping Policy and Practice to an analytical framework.

Abstract: This paper focuses on issues related to sign language policies in Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) in Europe. Drawing on the analytical framework proposed by Darquennes/Du Plessis/Soler (2020, i. e. this volume), which serves to address HEI language planning issues at macro, meso and micro levels, we carry out an inventory of how these issues play out for sign languages across Europe. Our investigation reveals the scarcity of information about sign language policies in HEIs, relating to both sign language as a language of instruction and as a subject of study. What becomes clear is that language planning activities (sign language acquisition, sign language status and corpus planning) are taking place in many countries but tend to go undocumented and unresearched. Given the increase in formal recognition of sign languages across Europe, coupled with the ratification of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) by all EU member states, it would seem logical to expect that the status and prestige of sign languages would rise, with greater visibility of, and planning for, incorporation of sign languages in HEIs. However, the reality of the situation is unclear, suggesting the need for coordinated effort, supported by key pan-European bodies like the Council of Europe, the European Centre for Modern Languages and the European Commission, to ensure that sign language policy is on the agenda as parts of a rights-based response to deaf communities and the sign languages of Europe. Equally important is the need for European HEIs to embrace sign languages and ensure that they are part of the linguistic landscape. This will support and promote the status planning of sign languages and open up access to HEIs for deaf communities, a group that remains under-represented in academia.

‘An outward sign of an inward grace’: how African diaspora religious identities shape their understandings of and engagement in international development

Abstract: Mainstream development discourse and practice often marginalise the significance of ‘religion’ and ‘faith’ for international development and humanitarianism. However, recent geopolitical events hav...

Naturalizing Models: New Perspectives in a Peircean Key

Abstract: This paper reconsiders semiotic modelling in light of recent scholarship on Charles Peirce, particularly regarding his concept of proposition. Conceived in the vein of Peirce’s phenomenological categories as well as of his taxonomy of signs, semiotic modelling has mostly been thought of as ascending from simple, basic sign types to complex ones. This constitutes the backbone of most currently accepted semiotic modelling theories and entails the further acceptance of an unexamined a priori coherence between complexity of cognition and complexity of signification. Following recent readings of Peirce’s post-1900 semiotic, we engage in a discussion as to what are the limits of this approach. From Stjernfelt’s conception of the dicisign in nature, we derive a perspective that affords understanding the practice of modelling as a reciprocal interplay between (top-down) decomposition of complexity and (bottom-up) recombination into further complexity. This discussion is facilitated by the recent extrapolation of the (initially) constructivist concept of scaffolding in biosemiotics research. Cognition, we argue, begins with a fundamental irritation of trying to make sense of a structure that is more complex than what can directly be derived from experience and, in so doing, urges meaning-seeking (abductive) processes. The yet unknown object is decomposed into more tangible objects and is subsequently reassembled from these more manageable conceptions of the object. In support of our argument, we discuss the notions of semiotic competences and resources in light of such a naturalized account of meaning-making.

Reconciling dialogue and propagation: A ventriloquial inquiry

Abstract: Dialoguing is about co-orienting to various elements of a situation, that propagate themselves in what people say and do. In other words, each time people talk about an element of a situation, whether it is the weather, the economy, or the declaration of a presidential candidate, it is, by definition, a way for it to transport itself through time and space, which is the essence of propagation. Language must therefore be rethought as something that not only allows us, but also other things to do things with words. More generally, communication, whether verbal or non-verbal, must be understood as a process by which everything or everyone can always become a medium, sign or intermediary through which other elements propagate, diffuse or disseminate themselves.

Bangla Sign Language Recognition and Sentence Building Using Deep Learning

Abstract: Modern age being the era of Information technology, it would not have come this far without the piled up data or information. Whereas communication is the basis of collecting or gathering data or information, almost 5% of the world’s population is not blessed with the ability of verbal communication [1]. Sign language varies from the verbal language in every form and rule. This creates a gap between people conversing in verbal language and those communicating in sign language. Verbal languages are easy to interpret for having a common rule-following but sign language differs from region to region. This hampers the communication between normal people and those interacting in sign languages. Human to human interpretation is tough because of the enriched word wise signs and vocabs. To eradicate this issue, we are proposing a machine-based approach for training and detecting the Bangla Sign Language. Our aim is to create a multi modal system to for recognising Bangla signs. In addition, we hope to train the system with enough samples containing different signs used in Bangla Sign Language. In this research, we are using the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for training each individual sign. In addition to working as a medium of communication between the deaf and mute with the remaining society, this approach would also serve as a tool for the hearing deprived to learn and use the sign language properly.