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.

Advancing Icon Design for Global Non Verbal Communication: Or What Does the Word Bow Mean?

Abstract: Written language is limited in effectiveness to those who can read. Verbal language is effective only for those who understand the particular language being spoken. But everyone, except those with obvious visual impairment, can effectively perceive images without regard for literacy or language. For decades these realities have suggested the promise of a universal visual language but with little real result. The occasional Olympic event sign or restroom door sign are state of the art for global non-verbal communication. While icon design has evolved little since the 1970's, the world has moved on. Increasing economic globalization and the expansion of global communication networks have made it easier to deliver messages and more important to do so, while science has advanced understanding of perception and cognition establishing principles only speculated about in the 1970's. The dream of using images to greatly facilitate global communication persists. Unfortunately, image based communication is not currently well enough informed by principles of effectiveness to attempt such a project. To address this problem a team of researchers assembled at the University of Cincinnati to explore the development of advanced techniques for global non-verbal or image based communication. The team explored novel approaches and identified several principles designed to expand icon based communication so that it can communicate more complex messages and more abstract concepts with greater specificity than previously. bow What does the word "bow"mean? Several things, but the most accurate answer is it depends on the context. To illustrate: shoe | bow ship | bow arrow | bow rain | bow take a | bow bow | down IN EACH OF THE ABOVE PAIRS SOMETHING SPARKS a different meaning for the single typographic sign: "bow." That something is simply another sign, a context. In some pairs the context sparks a meaning that is only subtly different, no doubt in homage to the vagaries of linguistic etymology, but in other instances the context spotlights a meaning that is a different part of speech altogether, a verb instead of a noun for example. In each case context is what illumines the meaning (Wittgenstein. 1961 [1921]). This is as true for sentences and stories as it is for words (Wright, 1992). Unfortunately, written language though rich in context is limited in effectiveness to those who can read. Even verbal language is effective only for those who understand the particular language being spoken. But everyone, except those with obvious visual impairment, can understand images without regard for literacy or language. Donis A. Dondis even goes so far as to claim "Among illiterate constituencies, visual communi cation's effectiveness is undisputed"(Dondis, 1973). From street signs to Olympic venues, images communicate where words fail. What exactly does the icon of a man mean? Again, it appears to depend in part on the context: street sign I human icon park sign I human icon airport door sign I human icon (left to right Figure 1 below) The visual changes in the human icons are minimal and fairly subtle yet, in their context, viewers from all over the world have 'read' these icons as meaning specific and very different things: a crosswalk, a hiking trail, a restroom. In a park context adding two additional strokes to the man icon suggests a backpack and walking stick. The park context combined with two immediate iconic clues redefine the 'crosswalk' icon to a hiking trail icon. Like words, the overall context of the human icon changes its meaning. This is an impressive transformation accomplished with an economy of means. However, as successful as these icons are in their contexts, they are not as comprehensive or as definitive as words. The system from which the hiking icon came has no icon for 'pleasant hiking trail' or 'difficult hiking trail' or even 'dangerous hiking trail. …

Systematicity and arbitrariness in novel communication systems

Abstract: Systematicity and Arbitrariness in Novel Communication Systems Carrie Ann Theisen (C.A.Theisen@sms.ed.ac.uk) School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, UK Jon Oberlander (jon@inf.ed.ac.uk) School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, UK Simon Kirby (simon@ling.ed.ac.uk) Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, University of Edinburgh Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AD, UK Abstract Human languages include vast numbers of learned, arbitrary signal-meaning mappings but also many complex signal- meaning mappings that are systematically related to each other (i.e. not arbitrary). Although arbitrariness and systematicity are clearly related, the development of the two in communication systems has been explored independently. We present an experiment in which participants invent signs from scratch to refer to a set of real concepts that share semantic features. Through interaction, the systematic re-use of arbitrary elements emerges. Keywords: arbitrariness; systematicity; signs; language evolution; emergent communication Introduction Two of language’s most fascinating properties, arbitrariness and systematicity, characterize the nature of the mappings between signals and meanings. A sign is arbitrary when there is no inherent relationship between the signal and its meaning. For example, the sounds in the word “house” have nothing to do with what the word means. In contrast, some subsets of signs in a language are systematic, in that signals for similar meanings share an element. The referring expressions “big house”, “red house”, “big apple”, and “red apple” are an example. In language, words are often arbitrary while multi-word phrases are systematic. How does this property, the systematic re-use of arbitrary elements, emerge in communication systems? Recent experimental work has shown that people are able to successfully communicate in the absence of conventional communication systems, often by creating novel signs. (de Ruiter et al., 2007; Galantucci, 2005; Garrod et al., 2007; Healey et al., 2002; Scott-Phillips, 2009). The first signs people produce in these situations are often not arbitrary, but rather iconic or motivated in some other way. (Galantucci, 2005; Garrod et al., 2007) Psycholinguistic work has demonstrated how referring expressions can change during dialogue. (Garrod & Doherty, 1994; Pickering & Garrod, 2004). In particular, conversational partners collaborate to establish definite references, and allowing their referring expressions to shorten. (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986). This simplification causes iconic signs in novel communication systems to become more arbitrary. (Garrod et al., 2007) Kirby (2001) demonstrated how, given a set of arbitrary signs, systematicity might evolve. Simple artificial agents learn sets of signs and detect chance regularities in them (e.g., that the words for two red items both contain the syllable “ka”). Over many generations of agents producing signals for new meanings (meanings they didn’t learn signals for) according to the regularities they observed, a set of signs can become systematic. Kirby et al. (2008) confirmed the result in human experimental participants. Taking these two lines of research together, we have one route to the systematic re-use of arbitrary elements: people generate signs that are non-arbitrary, those signs become arbitrary as they simplify, by chance there are a few signal- meaning regularities, generations of people propagate these regularities, and the language becomes systematic. It’s this longer history of a communication system, from the birth of the first sign to a set of signs which systematically re-uses arbitrary elements, that the current work aims to explore. Goldin-Meadow et al. (1995)’s study on the emergence of systematicity in homesign (gestures created by deaf, non- signing children for use with their caretakers) covers this range. They found that, in the early stages of the homesign systems, a particular value of a particular gesture component (such as a 1” distance between the thumb and index finger) was used in gestures for just one object. In the later stages, the homesigners apparently collapsed some distinctions between objects and applied some values of gesture components to more than one object, increasing the systematicity of his or her set of gestures. This work shows that systematicity doesn’t require complete arbitrariness – the recurrences between signal components and meaning components weren’t chance. Unfortunately, we cannot know whether homesigners systems would have been systematic from the earliest stages, given similar-enough objects. Here we present an exploration of the emergence of the systematic re-use of arbitrary elements in one controlled experiment. In this way, we can probe the relationship between systematicity and arbitrariness as communication systems develop.

John Bull's Italian Snakes and Ladders: English Attitudes to Italy in the mid-nineteenth Century

Abstract: This book examines representations of Italy and Italians in the mid-nineteenth century and the uses made of them by English writers and readers. Italians were shown on the one hand as despised public nuisances, personified by organ grinders, but were also depicted in the most glamorous and fashionable settings such as opera houses. The range of meanings accorded to the sign 'Italian' was vast and this is the source of the title metaphor: as John Bull played his Italian Snakes and Ladders, his self esteem and self-image waxed and waned correspondingly. In tracing this, the study examines how and why Italy operated as an important mechanism in the construction of 'Englishness', and the factors combining to make the mid-nineteenth century such a crucial period. The versions of 'Italianness' in circulation established an iconography of 'the Italian', emblematic representations which could be repeated or alluded to as a taxonomy, building up a complex map of discourses about Italy. Sometimes these might conflict, or they may be traced as combining to create a field of prejudice as, for example, the construction of Italians as primitive, closer to nature, and more instinctive. Such a view could shade either into ideas of dirtiness, disreputability and evil or, conversely, into Italy as a site of unspoilt, 'natural' bliss. The study focuses particularly on the middle-class male reader and traces reasons for, and advantages conferred by, the circulation of such myths. Masculinity, nationality and class positioning can be seen as fragile walls to the edifice of self-esteem, supporting each other from similar foundations. The sources for analysis are chosen with this readership in mind; there is a wide range of texts from high and popular culture, including contemporary periodicals, and a key feature is the central use of visual texts in the argument, with over fifty illustrations. Italy, and Italians, can be seen to have held an important place in Victorian self-fashioning. "Annemarie McAllister's book on the representation of Italian culture in the nineteenth century draws on both a range of cultural theory and a wide diversity of sources to suggest some of the ways in which stereotypes and popular perceptions were constructed and used within Victorian society. Particularly compelling and original is her analysis of music as a site for building popular beliefs and assumptions about Italy and its people, but her study includes such topics as Italian history, gender, and sensuality as the focus for debate. McAllister's use of illustrations, and her detailed knowledge of the illustrated press, offer original and telling ways into the constructions of national identities so central to the Victorian way of thinking and believing." Brian Maidment Professor of English, University of Salford. "I am delighted to have the chance to comment on this book. I read the doctoral thesis on which it is based with great interest and enjoyment, and learnt enormously from it. As a historian of nineteenth-century Britain with a particular interest in the construction of identities (and as an Italophile) I found it highly rewarding. The topic is of intrinsic interest and considerable significance. The author identifies a key period in the emergence of the English idea(s) of 'Italianness' and interrogates the topic through a variety of thoughtfully chosen case studies and via a rich array of appropriate primary sources. Most of the material was new to me and even topics that I felt some familiarity with, notably street music, were presented in a novel and rewarding way. I think the topic alone is worthy of a book-length study; matters Italian were at the heart of much political and cultural discussion in the mid-Victorian period and shaped both international political discourses and notions of British/English identity. However, what I think gives added value to this particular treatment is its approach. The work is inter-disciplinary in the best sense of the word. Dr McAllister is confident with the historical component (knowledge of context, strength and weakness of sources) but also with a number of approaches drawn from the field of cultural studies. Crucially, she manages to fuse the two so as to avoid the empirical overload that can blight the former and the linguistic opacity and wilfulness that can mark the later. The result is a subtle work that adds much to our knowledge but is also a model of how to write this type of study." Professor David Russell, Department of History, University of Central Lancashire "The book sets out to examine a range of representations of Italy, Italians and, more, of 'Italianness' in mid-nineteenth-century England, with a view to exploring how ideas of Englishness were defined against Italian archetypes. Taking the mid-century years of the Risorgimento as her focus, Dr McAllister demonstrates, in a well-orchestrated and well-illustrated argument, the significance of a taxonomy of 'Italianness' to Victorian self-understanding and self-fashioning. She is particularly interested in its meanings for middle-class English men, and its role in the construction of Victorian masculinity. The reach of this study is wide, taking in high and popular cultural texts, both literary and visual, including novels, poetry, painting, the periodical press and its illustrations, travel literature, and critical and historical writing in the context of the Risorgimento struggle for Italian unification and independence. Dr McAllister's book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the high profile of Italy and the Italian in the mid-nineteenth-century English imagination and of the impact of such cross-cultural negotiations on the self-definition of the middle-class male." Professor Hilary Fraser, Geoffrey Tillotson Chair in Nineteenth-Century Studies, School of English & Humanities, Birkbeck University of London

Minority semiotic landscapes: an ideological minefield?

Abstract: If the linguistic landscape encompasses a variety of signs and (place)names in various territories, regions and urban centres (Landry and Bourhis, 1997), then our attention tends to be drawn, not unreasonably, to the visual aspect of such ‘linguistic objects that mark the public space’ (Ben-Rafael, 2009, p. 40; our emphasis). It is this simultaneous focus on both the linguistic and the visual that leads us to locate linguistic landscapes in a wider, semiotic framework, since the linguistic aspect is but one component in an interface between cultural, social, economic and (re)productive processes; moreover, ‘landscapes possess “semiotic” properties, in other words, they contain signs in them that can be decoded by those with intimate knowledge of them’ (Selman, 2006, p. 53). Our approach follows recent research in the area which seeks to examine wider fields of investigation than just the linguistic, such as ‘visual images, non-verbal communication, architecture and the built environment’ (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010, p. 2). As a result, semiotic analysis takes place on a variety of levels and in the case of signage in minority languages, the indexicality of the sign tends to dominate debates, though decoding can also focus on the iconic aspects. Such indexicality, we argue, is very often decoded through the prism of language ideology, especially in situations of linguistic minoritization.

Studies in Swedish Sign Language : Reference, Real Space Blending, and Interpretation

Abstract: This thesis comprises four separate studies of the same material: a ten-minute Swedish Sign Language monologue. Study I describes the form, meaning, and use of the sign INDEX-c, a pointing toward t ...