Public Journal of Semiotics (PJOS) is a non-profit open access journal that publishes original research articles in semiotics: the systematic study of meaning. The field investigates meaning making in different semiotic systems such as language, gestures, pictures, and music, and when they combine in polysemiotic communicaton. We especially welcome submissions combining theory and robust empirical methodology on any kinds of topics that deal with human and animal meaning making, such as the evolution and history of communication, child development, and universal cognitive semiotic structures such as narrative and metaphor. Our intention is to help make semiotics more relevant for current issues, and in this sense: public.
Division for Cognitive Semiotics, Lund University
Preventive Pragmatics in Jordanian Arabic: Regulating Fear, Belief, and the Unseen
This article examines how speakers of Jordanian Arabic pragmatically regulate discourse about supernatural entities known as jinn, treating such discourse as a socially consequential domain where fear, normativity, and belief intersect. Drawing on ethnographically grounded interactional data, the study identifies a structured repertoire of preventive pragmatic acts, including apotropaic invocations, Qurʾanic supplications, metapragmatic prohibitions on naming, affect-regulating moves, and sceptical or humorous stances. These practices function not merely as expressions of belief, but as interactional technologies for governing emotional escalation, allocating epistemic and deontic authority, and managing moral accountability in situations construed as risky. The analysis develops a sociopragmatic account of how linguistic ideologies that construe speech as causally efficacious shape what can be said, when, and by whom. By theorising jinn-related talk as a site of preventive pragmatics and semiotic world-making, the article contributes a transferable analytical framework for the study of normativity, stance-taking, and the interface between language, affect, and cosmology in everyday interaction.
Copyright (c) 2026 Public Journal of Semiotics
Heinrich Heine’s ‘Die Lorelei’: A Roland Barthes’ Semiotic Perspective
This article explores Die Lorelei by Heinrich Heine from the perspective of Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory and focuses on the poem as a system of signs, analysed through Barthes’ stages of signification, including denotative meaning, mythological signification, and the naturalization of ideology. The aims of the article are to describe (1) the identification of signs at the denotative level, (2) mythological analysis, and (3) how the process of naturalization operates in Heinrich Heine’s poem Die Lorelei. The study employs a qualitative descriptive approach using this approach. The findings indicate that Die Lorelei constructs meaning through a mechanism of double signification, as theorized by Barthes. Signs at the primary level function as signifiers within the mythological system, which subsequently naturalizes particular meanings through poetic narrative and symbolism. Therefore, the text does not merely represent myth, but actively operates myth as an ideological system of meaning.
The Semiotics of a Slap: Metafunctional and Visual Grammar Analyses of Meaning-Making in Selected Macron Memes
This study examines eleven “Macron Slap” memes circulating on X (formerly Twitter) between May 26 and May 31, 2025, to analyze how humor, irony, humiliation, gendered power inversion, and ideological commentary are produced through complex processes of multimodal semiosis. Grounded in Halliday’s ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions, and supported by Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and Barthes’s concept of anchorage, the analysis demonstrates how the memes transform a single embodied gesture into a globally recognizable semiotic phenomenon circulating across international digital networks. Meaning is shown to accumulate through four analytical groups: Causal, Action, Reaction, and Intertextual Representations. This framework reveals how each redesign resemiotizes the original gesture and extends its interpretive range. Ideationally, the slap functions as a shifting signifier moving from a fictional domestic scene to a symbolically charged commentary on gender, authority, and political vulnerability. Interpersonally, gaze, posture, gesture, and evaluative captions position viewers within a shared stance of humorous appraisal. Textually, salience, framing, sequential pairing, and verbal anchorage stabilize the preferred readings and bind the meme sequence into a coherent multimodal narrative. A key semiotic feature of the cycle is its intertextual expansion, in which appearances by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and globally circulating cultural templates recontextualize the slap within broader semiotic frameworks of public embarrassment and contested masculinity. Overall, the study illustrates how participatory media employ multimodal redesign to resemiotize political figures and generate ideological meanings that resonate across diverse cultural contexts.
A language of resistance: The pro-Palestinian linguistic landscape of Cape Town (South Africa) and its physical, lingual, and functional complexity
This article is dedicated to the pro-Palestinian linguistic landscape (PPLL) of Cape Town. An analysis of 239 signs reveals that the linguistic landscape of this research site is highly complex. The signage is diverse with regard to its physicality (modality, materiality, and compositionality), lingualism (languages used, their formal properties, and mutual configurations), and functionality (authorship, readership, purposes, domains of use, and thematic scope). Overall, the properties of the PPLL in Cape Town largely coincide with those characterizing the linguistic landscape of resistance in Palestine, particularly its street-art subtype. The two principal differences between Cape Town and Palestine concern the use of Arabic as a genuine resistance element in the landscape – absent in Cape Town but prominent in Palestine – and the incorporation of several local (South) African elements into the PPLL in Cape Town.
A Tagmemic Semiotic Analysis of Chemical Representations
A semiotic analysis of chemical formulas and reactions using tagmemic theory discloses many features relevant for semiotic structure. Among these are the etic/emic distinction; the presence of units, hierarchy, and specific system contexts; the relevance of particle, wave, and field perspectives; contrast, variation, and distribution in units; filler, prominence, and function in the hierarchy. In chemical representations, a principal hierarchy of three levels is spelled out: (i) the level of the smallest units, which includes the signs for the chemical elements, (ii) the level of the formulas for molecular compounds, and (iii) the level of equations for chemical reactions. Further, it is argued that chemists use not one but four distinct kinds of semiotic systems in describing these three levels: (a) formulas like H2O to describe molecules; (b) descriptions using special technical vocabulary; (c) stick diagrams in two dimensions; and (d) three-dimensional models with balls representing the atoms. There are also hybrid descriptions that use resources from more than one of the four distinct systems. The analogous structural features that belong to chemical formulas, on the one hand, and natural languages, on the other hand, show that such a semiotic analysis of chemical formulas is appropriate and fruitful.
The relevance of relevance: A review of Charles Forceville’s Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle
Relevance theory (RT), originally proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995), is a theory of human communication that is based on a general view of human cognition. In the classic version of RT, the paradigmatic example of human communication is a verbal exchange between a single speaker and a single hearer who are occupying the same space and time. In the book Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle, Charles Forceville (2020) has two main goals: first, to make classic RT accessible to a wider (and non-expert) audience; and second, to adapt RT in order to account for other forms of communication beyond the purely verbal – namely, visual and multimodal communication. In the second half of the book, Forceville demonstrates how this adapted version of RT can be applied in a series of case studies on “static visuals”. In this extended review, I attempt to do justice to Forceville’s ambitious project and to outline the key concepts and terminology involved. In the discussion, I present some criticisms and questions, while offering some suggestions as to how adapted RT can be developed even further in order to account for moving images and film.
Copyright (c) 2025 Public Journal of Semiotics
Ludic Surveillance and Semogenesis of Choice in The Uber Game
News gamification integrates video game mechanics such as points, badges, and challenges, transforming the experience of news reading into an interactive, competitive process. This commodifies users’ news consumption, aligning it with the logic of neoliberal self-entrepreneurship and engagement metrics. To this end, this study examines how the gamified news feature story The Uber Game transforms choice into a semiotic mechanism of control, where ludic surveillance, regulates players’ decision-making through algorithmic incentives and constraints. Drawing on Halliday’s concept of semogenesis, this study argues that The Uber Game encodes choice as a structured process, where players navigate a predetermined system of algorithmic incentives and semiotic constraints. The Uber Game, developed by The Financial Times, offers players a first-hand experience of life as a full-time Uber driver, immersing them in the precarious conditions of the gig economy. The study unravels how the game simulates platformized conditioning and labour discipline within Uber’s broader system. The semiosis of choices the players enact is not isolated within the game context, but rather is part of a socially conditioned discourse that is related to gig work and corporate algorithms. By mapping these dimensions, this study not only analyses meaning-making within the gamified system but also reflects on the broader gig economy structure that Uber exemplifies.
Stories that banks tell: Narrative semiotics and the discourse of financial crisis
This paper combines a narrative-semiotic method and crisis communication theory to analyse the CEO and Chairperson’s letters in annual reports of international banks during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Its objective is to outline and apply narrative semiotics in identifying discursive patterns in banking strategies aimed at managing the crisis and addressing hostile audiences. As a benchmark to the narratives created in the annual reports, the paper examines reports of independent investigations to identify areas of agreement and dissent. Findings include a conflicting role attributed to regulation and bonus pay schemes between the narratives of banks and the narrative of the independent reports, a difference in tone in banks from different regions, and a prominent bolstering strategy across all banks. The paper’s significance lies in showing the value and relevance of narrative semiotics for crisis communication theory, a hitherto largely unexplored field.
Lost (and Found) in Translation: Evaluating English translations of Mulan Shi
The classical Chinese poem Mulan Shi has been translated many times into different languages and adapted to different media. Drawing upon Sonesson’s definition of translation as a double act of communication and combining it with concepts from narratology and translation theory, we develop a framework comprising three levels of translation resemblance: (a) between the structure and content of the source and target texts, (b) stylistic resemblance, and (c) pragmatic resemblance, concerning the impacts of the texts upon respective audiences. We compare five English translations of the poem, selecting the one by Arthur Waley from 1923 for detailed scrutiny. We triangulate between a first-person, second-person and third-person methods, leveraging our intuitive grasp of languages and cultures, and measures of different aspects in the source and target texts. To be able to assess pragmatic resemblance we conducted a survey with 20 participants from each cultural/linguistic group (Chinese and Western English speakers), asking for interpretations and evaluations of key aspects of the poem. The findings were that the target text exhibits high resemblance with respect to narrative structure but moderate resemblance on content due to some key omissions and substitutions. The stylistic resemblance was also moderate, while the pragmatic was considerable, with similar assessments in the two groups, though with different proportions.
A Multimodal Analysis of Negation in Princess Diana’s "Panorama" Interview
Stylistic analyses of negation have traditionally and predominantly focused on linguistic texts due to lack of a well-defined tool for investigating negation in multimodal texts. To fill this methodological gap, the present study integrates the critical stylistics tool of negation in written texts with Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) framework of visual analysis to develop a tool for the analysis of negation in multimodal texts. This tool is named the multimodal textual conceptual function of negation (MTCFN) and is used to explore how multimodal meanings of negation are constructed in Princess Diana Panorama interview, broadcasted in 1995. The analysis revealed that the co-occurrence of language and images in the same text creates a co-text that regulates and determines the meanings of negation produced by both semiotic systems. The combination of the visual affordances of gaze direction, head tilts, and different shot types and angles helps reinforce and make coherent the meanings initiated through the verbal medium, thus creating a coherent and impactful multimodal narrative. The study concludes that stylistics holds significant potential for informing approaches to the analysis of multimodal texts and recommends that further research is carried out on other multimodal text types to test the explanatory adequacy of the proposed MTCFN tool.
Framing Social Actors in Climate Change Communication: A Functional Analysis of Transitivity
This paper attempts to analyze the social actor's representation in news articles about climate change policies in the Arab World. We employed van Leeuwen's social actors theory combined with Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory, specifically the transitivity system analysis. The data included twelve news articles from pro-government news outlets in the Arab World, covering the period from 2021 to 2024. The articles were purposively selected to cover the study topic, focusing on the articles that were found to engage the multiple social actors involved in the process and legislation of climate change policies. The findings revealed that the news articles concentrate on specific social actors while minimizing the role of others who may have a crucial role to play. Highlighted social actors include the governments and countries' leaderships, the international institutions providing funding for climate change initiatives in the Arab World, and lastly and least focused on, the private sector. Ignored social actors include scientists and researchers, environmental activists, and other public groups that may usually get involved in such initiatives. The study recommends that the media and news writers should pay more attention to linguistic elements when tackling such a critical issue that affects all sectors of society. Keywords: climate change, linguistic choices, representation strategies, transitivity, SFL, social actors
Synecdochic and metonymic chains in the organizing narratives of PRC forensic genetic research targeting Uyghurs in Xinjiang
In this paper, I demonstrate how synecdochical and metonymic chains function in the semiotic narrative schema of forensic genetics articles. Greimas’s narrative schema and work on categories provides a framework that can be synthesized with cognitive linguistic advances on synecdoche and metonymy chains to understand how meaning is created in organizational interactions through the circulation of objects of value. Based on an empirical analysis of controversial forensic genetic articles involving Uyghur subjects on ancestry inference marker and phenotype (visible appearance) inference marker research projects, it shows how scientists from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and other scientists organize through a shared manhunting narrative schema. In this schema, Society and/or Humanity send scientists quests to protect society by improving forensic genetic technologies to variously track down and capture or kill criminals, separatists, insurgents and terrorists. Utilizing recent advances in theorization of synecdoche, the article shows how synecdoche functions in the categorization of Uyghurs as “Eurasian” and “mixed East Asian and European” populations. It also shows how synecdoche and metonymy function through syllogisms to mediate relations and the exchange of objects of value such as Uyghurs’ genetic materials and data between the phases and sub-narratives of the scientific articles’ narrative schema.
Thesauri in the modern world: Research and prospects for application
In today’s information society, where the amount of available information is constantly growing, the issues of semantic classification and data organization are becoming more and more relevant. Efficient information retrieval and analysis play a key role in scientific and applied fields, requiring innovative tools for semantic processing of texts and words. The study aims to analyse the structure, role, and potential of thesauri by means of statistical and structural analysis methods, as well as analytical-synthetic and comparative methods. The results emphasized the importance of thesauri in providing accurate and structured access to information in various fields. Statistical results showed that the broadest thesaurus categories in Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) were art, library systems, medicine, culture, and media, followed by scientific research, linguistics, and semantics. The study presented a hierarchy between the subject area of research, thesaurus categories, narrowly focused terms, and ways to improve the classification and presentation of information. For example, the subject area art and culture included such thesaurus categories as sculpture, literature, painting, at the same time, the category sculpture can include such terms as sculpture group, statue, bust. Among the prospects of thesaurus development, we suggest improvement of information classification quality, efficiency of data analysis, optimization of catalogue search, development of new thesaurus structures, identification of interrelations between terms by means of semantic analysis, improvement of information accessibility of materials in libraries. The practical significance of the research lies in providing a basis for the development of effective strategies for thesaurus tools application in information technology, medicine, education, and art.
The Phonosemantics of the Open Front Unrounded Vowel /a/ in Standard Igbo and Ogbunike Igbo Variety
Among the phonemes of the Igbo language is the open front unrounded vowel /a/. It is here argued that it has certain phonosemantic connotations when uttered alone at different pitches in standard Igbo and Ogbunike Igbo variety. We further examine the role tone plays in revealing the phonosemantic associations of this vowel. The primary data were supplied by the two authors as Igbo native speakers, combined with the first author’s intuitive knowledge of Ogbunike variety. The secondary data were obtained from Swadesh 100 Wordlist, the authors-adapted Wordlist of 141 words, and other existing literature. Three other competent Igbo native speakers were orally interviewed and their judgements helped for the analysis. A qualitative research approach was adopted for the analysis, revealing that, in addition to the earlier findings in the literature that the vowel has phonosemantic connotations of vigorous activity, strong, bright, and extended, it connotes bravery, domineering, intimidating, versatility, and spreading. Finally, it could also be confirmed that, through additional changes in pitch, /a/ also connotes surprise in Standard Igbo and Ogbunike Igbo Variety, but attention in Ogbunike Igbo Variety.
A Cognitive Linguistic analysis of HAND and FACE metaphors and metonymies in Jordanian Arabic
This study aims to investigate the metaphorical and metonymical uses of hand and face in Jordanian Arabic (JA) by adopting a version of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) based on the notion of main meaning focus. A 30,000-word corpus was built for the sake of this study. The original Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz Group, 2007) was employed to identify metaphorical expressions; then, Steen’s (2007) procedure was used to extract the conceptual metaphors. The results showed that hand as a source domain can be used to conceptualize character traits, cultural values, states, and emotions, whereas face as a source domain can be used to conceptualize character traits and emotions. This conceptualization is realized through metaphtonymies in which the source domain is constructed metonymically. The findings also showed that there are both similarities and differences between JA and other languages and varieties in relation to hand and face metaphorical conceptualizations. Similarities are attributed to the universality of human embodiment, whereas differences are related to cultural variations. The study recommends that future studies be conducted on the metaphor and metonymies of other body parts, including eye, heart, head, tongue, back, mouth, etc.
Copyright (c) 2024 Public Journal of Semiotics
Musical Meaning and the Semiotic Hierarchy: Towards a Cognitive Semiotics of Music
Research on the meaning of music has a long tradition, with approaches from several fields, but it lacks a coherent framework for interdisciplinary discussions. As a result, the notion of meaning in music is fragmented among contrasting perspectives. I propose a cognitive-semiotic approach to the analysis of the meaning evoked by music listening, adopting a framework that eludes disciplinary limitations and expands the notion of meaning to the phenomenological concept of intentionality. For this purpose, I apply Zlatev’s Semiotic Hierarchy to the experience of listening to music, analysing the diversity of meaning-making processes involved in music as distributed among several layers of experience. As a result, I propose an updated version of the Semiotic Hierarchy, clarifying its structure as based on possibilities of meaning-making, and allowing for temporality to pervade experience throughout all layers. I highlight the connectedness and simultaneity of different kinds of intentionality, resulting in the addition of the dimension of aesthetic experience – which I analyze as characterizing culture-general music listening. A key claim is that experiencing music aesthetically articulates the listener’s body in their inner sense of space and time, making them feel a sense of movement and vitality. This grounds music as a semiotic system, connecting with and fostering virtually uncountable subject-relative and culture-specific meaning-making acts.
Copyright (c) 2023 Public Journal of Semiotics
Fifteen ways of looking at a pointing gesture
The human pointing gesture may be viewed from many angles. On a basic description, it is an intentional movement, often of the hand, by which one person tries to direct another’s attention toward something; it is, in short, a bodily command to look. But this definition is only a start. Pointing may also be seen as a semiotic primitive, a philosophical puzzle, a communicative workhorse, a protean universal, a social tool, a widespread taboo, a partner of language, a part of language, a fixture of art, a graphical icon, a cognitive prop, a developmental milestone, a diagnostic window, a cross-species litmus test, and an evolutionary stepping-stone. A tour of these fifteen ways of looking at pointing reveals the diverse dimensions of one of our most unassuming, ubiquitous behaviors. It also reveals a series of dualities that make the gesture especially compelling: it is at once natural and irreducibly cultural; simple yet put to sophisticated purposes; by turns salient and subtle; and is—in its prototypical form, with the index finger extended—special in some ways and not so special in others. These tensions in part explain why pointing has been treated so widely and variously across disciplines. But there is also, I propose, a deeper reason: The gesture embodies our distinctively human preoccupation with attention.
On the Lookout for Dialogue: Towards an Extended Dialogism
What is dialogue and where can we search for it? This is the major question asked in this article, with the intention to contribute to a discussion of the essence of extended dialogism (ED), the study of dialogue in a broad perspective. I begin with a brief summary of ED formulated in 18 points, and then elaborate on some of these, including the relation between basic utterances (actions) and activity types, between literal and extended (metaphorical) notions of dialogue, and between descriptive and normative dialogism. I argue that ED has the potential to highlight interesting aspects of these issues, and illustrate with relevant examples, concluding with that of the ongoing war of the Russian Federation and its dictator, Vladimir Putin, against the people of Ukraine.
Copyright (c) 2022 Public Journal of Semiotics
Icons and metaphors in visual communication: The relevance of Peirce’s theory of iconicity for the analysis of visual communication
In this paper we adopt Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of iconicity to analyse pictural communication. While visual semiotics has a well-developed structural school, the concepts of visual semiotics stemming from Peirce’s pragmatic sign theory are often overlooked. The specific purpose of this study is to explore the semiotics of visual signs, exemplified by two prominent pictures of former US President Donald Trump. We argue that Peirce’s semiotic framework for iconicity in visual signs (the image, the diagram, and the metaphor) offers a useful framework for discussing how the meaning of visual signs is motivated. On this basis, we propose that Peirce’s concept of hypoicons provides us with a richer understanding of how visual signs acquire meaning and how their interpretation varies across cultural habits, and collateral experience.
Mechanisms involved in the formation of metaphorical classes within the framework of the class-inclusion model of metaphor comprehension
According to Glucksberg’s class-inclusion model of metaphor comprehension, metaphors are understood by the inclusion of the topic X into a metaphorical class of the vehicle Y. But what is the cognitive mechanisms through which X is included in the metaphorical class of Y? Drawing on previous literature on the roles of semantic features, metonymy, and relations in metaphor processing, this article presents a new proposal according to which every metaphorical class is defined by one of three categories of a concept’s characteristics: semantic features, metonymic aspects, or relational aspects. Each category may consist of a large set of such characteristics. One characteristic (or at most several characteristics) usually defines the metaphorical class of Y. Additionally, it is proposed that the metaphorical class is created by the suppression of metaphorically-irrelevant characteristics, consistent with ideas from Relevance Theory. The result of this process is a metaphorical class which has a higher degree of abstractness compared to the literal class of Y. Finally, it is proposed that the three categories of characteristics may be in interaction with each other. Therefore, in some cases, two or even three categories of characteristics may be involved in the formation of a metaphorical class, but one specific category plays the main role in the process.
Language Norms: What and where are they?
The notion of a language norm is far from clear. Lacking a conclusive explication, one may wonder what language studies are actually studying. Is it the experience of speakers? Is it their brains? Is it their behavior? Is it the product of expert intuitions? Even within linguistics the views seem scattered on this point, and no consensus has been reached on what the object of study in linguistics is supposed to be. The ontology of language norms is thus of high relevance, not only philosophically, but for the empirical implications of any potential ontological claim. In a question: what are we studying when we are studying language norms? This paper is thus an effort to, primarily with the help of Husserlian phenomenology, discuss language norms and their location in order to answer this question as well as to obviate or at least mitigate some of the concerning trends found in recent discussions on language norms.
Equivalence and polyvalence: A case for the stratification of semantics
The article presents a semantic theory suggesting that equivalence and polyvalence are closely con­nected phe­nomena. The connection between them is utilised by making equivalence the basis of an argu­­ment for polyvalence within semantics, or in other terms, for a stratified semantics encompassing two levels of description. This argument from equivalence lends new support to frameworks assuming a strati­fied se­man­tics. For the argument to work properly, it is necessary to distinguish between equivalences that are facts of language and equi­valences that depend on extralinguistic circum­stances. A few other re­quire­ments for a coherent concept of equi­valence are also introduced. A major part of the article is devoted to an investiga­tion of previous accounts of equi­valence and of the conceptual underpinnings of these ac­counts. The investigation shows that all previous accounts have failed to make the necessary dis­tinction. Close examination of various cases of equivalence reveals differences that are cap­tured by the proposed dis­tinction, thus providing evidence for its ac­cu­racy. The article concludes that the argument from equi­valence strengthens the case for a stra­tified seman­tics pro­vided that the concept of equivalence has been ap­propriately delimited and defined.
Right for the wrong reason; wrong for the right reason: Gibson and Arnheim on picture perception
Although J J Gibson’s theory of picture perception was often crude and biased toward naturalism, its fundamental division between the visual world and the visual field made it a semiotic theory. Contrariwise, although Arnheim wrote sensitively on pictures, he never seemed to admit that they were signs. This paper reviews both Gibson’s and Arnheim’s theories of picture perception, and explains where Arnheim’s biases caused him to lose the possibility of framing his approach in the most basic semiotic terms. Nevertheless, using the phenomenological semiotics of Sonesson and his theory of the Lifeworld Hierarchy, I demonstrate latent semiotic elements in Arnheim’s theory, due perhaps to Alfred Schutz’s influence. Hoping to argue against the brute theory of denotation, Arnheim instead sought to delay invocation of (conventional) signs as long as possible, and his idea of iconic pictorialization assumes but does not name signification. Nevertheless, I propose that Arnheim has a kind of theory of the Lifeworld Hierarchy inside the picture. Thus, he (wrongly) does not see the picture as overtly signifying but interestingly gives hints about how to treat the objects of the virtual world of the picture based on their relationship to the overall style of the work.
Copyright (c) 2021 Public Journal of Semiotics
Representation as repression: A First Peoples context
Visual images of a marginalised minority group from southern Africa are analysed against a series of colonialist representations to demonstrate tangible evidence of the role of representation in both disenfranchisement and an increasing autonomy in the case of the San, who are The First Peoples of the Kalahari, commonly known outside Africa as ‘Bushmen’ and in the dominant language of Botswana as Basarwa. This particular group is represented by government and its corporate affiliates as primordial for tourist consumption, yet systemically denied their language, ethnicity and ancestral land. Analysis is supported by critical tourism literature, showing the attitudes, power dynamics and practices evident in the produced imagery. An overview of the theoretical enframing and methodology is followed by analysis of a range of visual representations of the San. Analysis herein is based on a blend of application of post-colonial theory and post-tourism critique, along with some concepts from semiotics. Most of these visual and linguistic materials have been produced by government and industry for tourist consumption, while others include my own photography and ostensibly impartial museum exhibits.
Revisiting the life of things: A cognitive semiotic study of the agency of artefacts in Amazonia
Many contemporary scholars have recently defended the idea that the agency of things is symmetrical and equivalent to human agency. We propose an alternative approach to artefacts’ agency based on a field study concerned with contextually situated observations of the process of design of artefacts in Amazonia. By means of participant observation and interviews, we address the role of artefacts in relation to human agency. In so doing, we focus on the human-unique capacity for design as it is related to cognitive resources such as intentionality, decision-making, planning, and volitional adaptations of the material world to human purposes. We argue that such cognitive resources are ultimate manifestations of human agency. The findings allow us to conclude that artefacts possess a special form of agency, which operates in different ways from the agency of true agents. This agency is derived: it depends on the actions of true agents, with either function as remote intentions or are required for the artefact to work at the moment of use. Thus, the relation between artefacts and agents is asymmetrical. Given that the derived agency of artefacts allows people to expand their own agency, we propose the notion of enhanced agency for the prosthetic incorporation of artefacts into the agentive capabilities of human agents.
Michelangelo, the Duck and the Rabbit: Towards a Robust Account of Modes of Existence
The concept of modes of existence of semiotic entities underlies (post)Greimasian semiotics, yet it seems to have received little attention. Modes of existence can be used in different senses. For Greimas, from the perspective of narrative semiotics, when Michelangelo first receives a block of marble and decides to sculpt the David, his intention is in a virtual mode; as Michelangelo progresses he ends up bringing the David into existence, and his intention comes to the realized mode. In Fontanille’s tensive semiotics, however, modes of existence can have to do with how one can narrow or broaden the scope of our apprehension of the David as our eyes look at it in order to produce a meaningful experience. In this work, the perspectives of narrative and tensive semiotics are contrasted both theoretically and practically applying both to a number of examples. In order to identify all possible modes of existence and all the possibilities of transitioning from one to the other in the examples presented, we resort to the method of finite-state automata from computer science. In the end, we propose a robust narrative account of modes of existence that relies on narrative semiotics for its definition, but into which intent and apprehension from tensive semiotics can be integrated. This work calls for the need of establishing a syntax of modes of existence, since both Greimas and Fontanille construe them as being necessary to account for the production of signification.
Interpreting the concept of sedimentation in Husserl’s Origin of Geometry
In the influential text Origin of Geometry, Edmund Husserl argues that even the invariant meaning found in theoretical disciplines like geometry has a historical becoming: through gradual abstraction and stabilization, ending in a completely rational discipline. This is a process which Husserl proposes is due to language and other symbolic systems. In the absence of a system allowing for stable communication of meaning, geometry or any other tradition would constantly have to begin anew. At the same time Husserl also sees the historical process of meaning stabilization in linguistic form as detrimental. It allows for a reception of an established meaning, which simultaneously entails the forgetfulness of the experiential basis and intuitive knowledge that made ideality possible in the first place. Husserl calls this Janus-faced dialectical process between discovery and forgetfulness sedimentation. This paper analyzes this concept in Origin of Geometry and places it in the context of Husserl’s thought more generally. In contrast to Husserl’s negative view of the effects that sedimentation has for an authentic meaning, I discuss four interpretations of sedimentation that provide more constructive perspectives on the concept. These interpretations also differ considerably from one another, a fact which speaks both to the richness and the tensions in Origin of Geometry.
Narrative approaches to lyric poetry: On Kim Sowöl’s 'The Azaleas'
This paper aims at illustrating how narrative theories can apply to the analysis of lyric poetry with an example from Korean literature: The Azaleas by Kim Sowöl. This poem in seven-and-five-syllable meter as well as with its thematic aspect that is concerned with lamentation or broken heart is considered the most representative of the folkloric tradition in the history of Korean lyric poetry. Based on Hühn’s work on “Transgeneric narratology”, I proposed here to analyze the so-called mental story of this poem from a narratological point of view that covers, among many others, the following three topics: i) text and norm; ii) story and discourse; iii) thematic and narrative. First, reading a poetic text inevitably leads us to the poetic tradition serving as an interpretative norm, whether it is explicit or implicit. So the image of scattering flowers in this poem, for instance, cannot be fully understood without reference to the Buddhist tradition in which it is interpreted in terms of charity or mercy. Second, the mental story relative to this symbolic act is doubly mediated – put in narrative terms, by a voice that speaks on the one hand and, on the other by eyes that see - so as to manifest itself in the form of a poetic discourse. Third, the narrative strategy at work in this poem, here considered in Greimas’ terms, pinpoints the ironic aspect of its thematic: so the story of parting in appearance turns out to be a love returning in the end.
Languaging Behaviour as Catalytic Process: Steps Towards a Theory of Living Language (PART I)
Motivations for Sound Symbolism in Spatial Deixis: A Typological Study of 101 Languages
We investigated possible motivations for sound symbolism in spatial demonstratives within 101 areally and genetically diverse languages. Six different predictions were formulated on the basis of factors such as (a) semiotic ground (iconic, indexical or combined), (b) speaker-centered, hearer-centered or both and (c) applicable to vowels, consonants or both. Each one of these six predictions resulted in different expected scales of phonemes on the proximal-distal dimension. Languages which conformed to these scales were regarded as motivated (according to a particular prediction). Languages which opposed it were treated as reverse, and if neither was the case, as neutral. The results showed significant motivated/reverse and motivated/neutral ratios only for the prediction based on vowel-frequency, motivated by a combination of iconic and indexical factors, and marginal support for the other predictions concerning vowels. The two predictions based on an assumed link between preverbal vocal pointing and demonstratives also found some, if weaker, support. The only prediction that was completely unsupported concerned the frequency of consonants. The conclusions are that a number of factors combine to motivate sound symbolism in spatial deixis, which appears to involve vowels more than consonants.