Sign (semiotics)

About: Sign (semiotics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4080 publications have been published within this topic receiving 70333 citations. The topic is also known as: semiotic sign.

On Existential Semiotics

Abstract: After modernism, signs permeate everywhere, resulting in countless possible academic thinking. Finnish semiotician Eero Tarasti was encouraged to launch a neo-semiotics—Existential Semitics. He traced back to classical philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, Sartre, etc. At the same time he applied theory of modality by Greimas and semiotics of body by Fontanille to modernize the above theories, to form an integrated critical system concerning epistemology, subjectivity and applied field. The basic foundation of such theory is that sign's journey with subject will reach transcendence through negation and affirmation; Observable subject is divided to be Moi and Soi, the two of which bind and influence each other; As for globalization, there is a kind of counter-current to resist the movement, which is the power from modality of "will" in Moi and "must" from transcendence to correct the direction of collective Dasein.

Seeing and feeling: representation in two poems of theocritus

Abstract: A S SOON AS poets begin to speak, at the end of the fifth century, about their skill at capturing the familiar look of things,' others begin to ask questions about the limits of this endeavor First, they ask technical questions, like the one posed in Aristophanes' Frogs: can the naturalistic manner adequately represent every kind of object? (According to "Aeschylus" in this play, there is a moral kind of object that literal images of life do not capture) Later, Plato suggests that some things cannot be represented directly by any manner of verbal or visual art Theocritus has similar concerns, partly technical and partly philosophical, about the peculiar status of human beings as objects of representation He sets human beings against a background of inhuman things, and he distinguishes consciously between the representation of one and the other Theocritus also distinguishes between different levels in the representation of human beings There is a category of feeling (Aristotle would call it pathos) that can be made recognizable in lifelike representation because its causes are visible and because it produces visible, physical symptoms; its primary elements are pleasure and pain2 A man's pathos, the way he responds to circumstances with pleasure or pain, may serve in turn as a sign of something deeper, his moral disposition or his character (Aristotle would call this ethos), which is not itself accessible to observation3 The first step away from the visible is easily made Pathos seems bound to its causes and symptoms by natural laws, and so the inferences required to detect it also seem natural; one recognizes another man's pathos instinctively, without conscious thought The next step, inferring another man's character, is more difficult because character is not wholly natural Social custom helps to form it, for example, in variable and unpredictable ways Therefore, the signs of ethos seem less natural and clear than the signs of pathos When someone tries to put his ethos into speech, his words may

Essential properties of language from the point of view of autopoiesis

Abstract: The structuralist heritage in linguistics continues to obscure the essential properties of natural language as an empirical phenomenon It is argued that the new framework of autopoiesis possesses a greater explanatory power, as it assumes the connotational na-ture of language The key notions of representation, sign and signification, interpreta-tion, intentionality and communication, and reciprocal causality, approached from the autopoietic angle, allow for deeper insights into the essence of language which is as a kind of adaptive behavior of an organism involving a system constituted by signs of signs

New Essays on 'The Scarlet Letter'

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction: the spirit and the sign Michael J. Colacurcio 2. Arts of deception: Hawthorne, 'romance' and The Scarlet Letter Michael Davitt Bell 3. Hester's labyrinth: transcendental rhetoric in Puritan Boston David van Leer 4. 'The woman's own choice': sex, metaphor and the Puritan 'sources' of The Scarlet Letter Michael J. Colacurcio 5. His folly, her weakness: demystified adultery in The Scarlet Letter Carol Bensick Notes on contributors Selected bibliography.

On language acquisition in speech and sign: development of combinatorial structure in both modalities

Abstract: Languages are composed of a conventionalized system of parts which allow speakers and signers to generate an infinite number of form-meaning mappings through phonological and morphological combinations. This level of linguistic organization distinguishes language from other communicative acts such as gestures. In contrast to signs, gestures are made up of meaning units that are mostly holistic. Children exposed to signed and spoken languages from early in life develop grammatical structure following similar rates and patterns. This is interesting, because signed languages are perceived and articulated in very different ways to their spoken counterparts with many signs displaying surface resemblances to gestures. The acquisition of forms and meanings in child signers and talkers might thus have been a different process. Yet in one sense both groups are faced with a similar problem: "how do I make a language with combinatorial structure"? In this paper I argue first language development itself enables this to happen and by broadly similar mechanisms across modalities. Combinatorial structure is the outcome of phonological simplifications and productivity in using verb morphology by children in sign and speech.