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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.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Lucretius uses hunting in the De Rerum Natura both to craft a model of Epicurean epistemology and to challenge his Roman audience to consider an alternative to traditional animal hunting as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Lucretius uses hunting in the De Rerum Natura both to craft a model of Epicurean epistemology and to challenge his Roman audience to consider an alternative to traditional animal hunting. Dogs, representing Epicurus, Lucretius, and the reader, follow tracks to knowledge with the help of Ratio and Natura . Nets, on the other hand, are a sign of unnecessary developments that distract from superior lifestyles, and Hercules’ violent deeds are equally unnecessary in modern life. Lucretius’ philosophical and poetic manipulation of hunting encourages active philosophy students rather than a passive audience.

14 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines the ongoing transformation of the McDonald's logo and concludes that the communicative purpose of McDonald's, through its logo, has taken a long time to build and is evolutionary in nature.
Abstract: This paper examines the ongoing transformation of the McDonald’s logo. The objective is to achieve a fuller understanding of the meanings that the logo has embodied for McDonald’s identity, mission, and relationships, as well as the messages that the logo conveys to viewers. The semiotic framework used in this analysis is Peirce’s (1958 [1931]) semiotic model, composed of a three-part model of signification: the representamen (the sign itself), the object (or “referent” – what the sign refers to), and the interpretant (the effect on the viewer). A chief conclusion of this analysis is that the communicative purpose of McDonald’s, through its logo, has taken a long time to build and is “evolutionary” in nature.

14 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
22 Mar 2013-Helios
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make use of a comic fragment from Philemon's Brothers, where the prostitutes "stand there naked, lest you be deceived: look everything over... The door's open. [Price] one obol; jump right in" (fr 3 K-A; translation by Kurke 1999, and can be bought in garboulus, 197).
Abstract: The project of this article, and of this volume as a whole, must be situated in contemporary interest in the related topics of the 'gaze,' the body, and performance. (1) Gaze theory is indebted to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, which postulates the infant's gaze in the 'mirror stage' as formative of its subjectivity: the infant looking at himself in the mirror is jubilant in his misrecognition of the wholeness of the image as a sign of his own physical integration, but soon experiences alienation (Lacan 1977). (2) Thus, following existentialism and Sartre in particular, Lacan recognizes that there is another gaze or look outside that of the subject's own (Lacan 1981, 67-78, 84; Sartre 1956, 252-66). That external gaze is also significant in Foucault's notions of discipline and spectacle exemplified by the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham, where the inmates are visible at all times, but the guards are invisible: "visibility is a trap" (Foucault 1977, 200-7). These concerns are also of central interest to feminists who, since the time of Mary Wollstonecraft, have engaged with the problem of women as objects of the male gaze. (3) As is often pointed out, John Berger (1972, 47) made the important claim that woman in culture is "to be looked at": Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object--and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. Lacan (1981, 75) says something similar in his work on the gaze: "At the very level of the phenomenal experience of contemplation, this all-seeing aspect is to be found in the satisfaction of a woman who knows that she is being looked at, on condition that one does not show her that one knows that she knows. (4) Going further, Laura Mulvey argued that in mainstream cinema woman is the passive object for the active male gaze; furthermore, she claimed (esp. 1989b, 19-26) that that structure of viewing is fundamental to male power. Her work has been challenged and developed by others, in particular by those arguing that there are other spectatorial positions for women in the audience. (5) In a subsequent collection of her essays, Mulvey modified some of her early statements by putting them in the context of particular moments in feminist politics (1989a, vii; 1989c; see the excellent summary in Stewart 1997, 13-9). (6) These hypotheses about the masculinity of the filmic gaze, and its role in objectifying women, raise important questions for my consideration of the gaze in tragedy. We clearly cannot simply apply modern theories to antiquity, especially a theory of cinema to ancient theater, where, for one thing, many points of view replace single lens of the camera. Moreover, the visual regimes of antiquity and codes of gendered behavior were different from our own. Boys and men were the objects of the gaze, and the primary sign of respectable women's relationship to the gaze in antiquity was their modesty or aidos; that in turn was related, at least in ideology, to their relegation to the private sphere, not to be looked at, and to their stereotypically downcast eyes when in public. (7) A womans failure to lower her eyes might even be taken as a sign of prostitution (Cairns 2005a, 134); hetairai and pornai were in part defined by the fact that they were available to be admired in the case of the former, and possessed in the case of the latter. In a comic fragment from Philemon's Brothers, the prostitutes "stand there naked, lest you be deceived: look everything over ... The door's open. [Price] one obol; jump right in" (fr. 3 K-A; translation by Kurke 1999, 197). Other comic writers similarly give the impression that women for sale stand about naked, or in transparent garb, and can be bought cheaply (Euboulus, Pannychis, fr. …

14 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: According to a common opinion, the word "semantics" appeared for the first time, at least in modern times, in the book Essai de semantique, science de significations by M. A. Breal (1897).
Abstract: According to a common opinion, the word ‘semantics’ (precisely: its French counterpart semantique’), derived from the Greek word semantikos (=having meaning, denoting), appeared for the first time, at least in modern times, in the book Essai de semantique, science de significations by M. J. A. Breal (1897). However, Quine says in his lectures on Carnap: As used by C. S. Peirce, “semantic” is the study of the modes of denotation of signs: whether a sign denotes its object through causal or symptomatic connection, or through imagery, or through arbitrary convention and so on. This sense of semantic, namely a theory of meaning, is used also in empirical philology: empirical semantic is the study of historical changes of meanings of words.1 For Breal, semantics was a branch of general linguistics. In particular, semantics was occupied with so-called lexical meaning and its changes through time. Thus, semantics in this sense belonged to what was called “the diachronic treatment of language”. This tradition is fairly alive in contemporary linguistic theory. Quine’s description of the word ‘semantic’ in Peirce corresponds, which Quine explicitly states, to its use in philology. However, some linguists ascribe a more theoretical role to lingustic semantics. Karl Buhler is an example. In his Sprachtheorie (1934) he says that a theory of semantic functions of language is a part of theory of language.2 This account is to be found also among philosophers. It is also rather obvious that Peirce did not limit his semantic only to empirical studies. Linguists (and sometimes philosophers) also use the word ‘semasiology’ instead of ‘semantics’; Buhler proposed the term ‘sematology’ for a general theory of symbols.3

14 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A fully semiotic perspective on living and learning draws on poststructuralism in seeing meaning and learning as deferred, and avoids mind-body substance dualism by collapsing the signal-sign distinction.
Abstract: A fully semiotic perspective on living and learning draws on poststructuralism in seeing meaning and learning as deferred, and avoids mind-body substance dualism by means of collapsing the signal-sign distinction. This article explores the potential for, and constraints on the 'sign(al)' as a meaningful unit of analysis for universal application among the human sciences. It compares and contrasts this fully semiotic approach with the educational philosophy of John Dewey, concluding that if Dewey had problematized the signal-sign distinction, his legacy for education might have significantly different.

14 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20222
2021178
2020196
2019188
2018186
2017177