Agent, person, subject, selfKockelman, Paul
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.072pmid: N/A
Building on ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), this essay outlines a social and semiotic theory of four seemingly human-specific and individual-centric capacities that, while essential for understanding modern social processes, are often confused and conflated. Loosely speaking, agency is a causal capacity: say, the relatively flexible wielding of means towards ends. Subjectivity is a representational capacity: say, the holding of intentional states such as belief and desire. Selfhood is a reflexive capacity: say, being the means and ends of one's own actions, or being the object of one's own beliefs and desires. And personhood is a sociopolitical capacity: say, rights and responsibilities attendant on being an agent, subject or self.
Residence in the world: Affordances, instruments, actions, roles, and identitiesKockelman, Paul
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.073pmid: N/A
This essay brings Peirce's understanding of meaning to bear on Heidegger's critique of mind, thereby articulating being-in-the-world in terms of semiosis. Using ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005), it theorizes five interrelated semiotic processes — heeding affordances, wielding instruments, undertaking actions, performing roles, and filling identities — that constitute the key modes of non-linguistic and/or non-representational meaning in which human-beings are always already holistically implicated. It doing so, it theorizes what is meant by purchases, functions, purposes, statuses, and values (as well as providing a semiotically sophisticated account of ‘material culture’). And it generalizes Anscombe's idea of ‘acting under a description’ to comporting within an interpretation.
Representations of the world: Memories, perceptions, beliefs, intentions, and plansKockelman, Paul
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.074pmid: N/A
‘Mental states’ are retheorized from the standpoint of social statuses (qua commitments and entitlements to signify and interpret in particular ways) and speech acts (qua signs with propositional contents). Using ideas developed in ‘The semiotic stance’ (2005a), it theorizes five interrelated semiotic processes that are usually understood in a psychological idiom: memories, perceptions, beliefs, intentions, and plans. It uses this theory to account for the key features of human-specific modes of intentionality (or ‘theory of mind’), as well as the key dimensions along which culture-specific modes of intentionality may vary (or ‘ethnopsychologies’). And it theorizes ‘emotion’ in terms of a framework that bridges the distinction between social constructions and natural kinds.
The epistemological turn in semiotic strategy: From signs in the natural/cultural world to the semantic institutions of academic discoursesLi, You-Zheng
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.076pmid: N/A
This paper attempts to state that the semiotic movement will obtain a new momentum in the globalization era if a more desirable strategy could be widely adopted. First of all, it should equally include both European-American and non-European-American academic/cultural traditions; it should be also engaged in the current remoulding process of all social/human sciences; especially, semiotics will hopefully become one of the theoretical bases for reorganizing and reforming the entire humanities. Signs have been the central conceptual units used for the study of meaning in semiotic history. While for the past decades the study of meaning has expanded more and more to the scope of the structure and formation of the entire humanities. Accordingly, our concern with the progress of semiotics today is closely linked to the general endeavor to promote the development of human sciences. In essence semiotics can be regarded today as one of the main gateways to the epistemological and methodological modernization of human sciences across all cultural traditions. Regarding this goal, the main object-domain of semiotic operation will be naturally shifted from the actual world (where signs appear) to the academic discourses (where multiple semantic units appear). The cross-cultural semiotics will certainly further strengthen this tendency.
The temporal musical sign: In search of extrinsic musical meaningSpies, Bertha
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.077pmid: N/A
Generally speaking, musical analysis does not sufficiently involve the temporal nature of music to facilitate making connections between music and language. In search of extrinsic musical meaning, this association could be enhanced by following the changing character of the music as it unfolds in time, its texture, musical shapes, contours, and patterns of inflection. As the music is considered in its unreduced rhythmical state, it facilitates immediate contact between listener and music. In an attempt to make sense of music, this essay focuses on its performative function by linking up with musical effects that are directly audible. My argument is based on the notion that the listener acts as the mediator of the musical sign, and that the musical trace could act as facilitator for constructing meaning. In search of extrinsic meaning, this essay concentrates on the musical signification of psychological states. First, the manner in which psychological states are represented by musical topoi is discussed. Second, the essay traces the temporal unfolding of sound-images that signify changing psychological states in a composition as a whole. When the static musical sign is transformed into dynamic signification, additional information about signification by means of topoi is revealed, namely signification of an ambiguous nature. Two songs, two operas, and one ballet are used for the demonstration.
Understanding and handling unreliable narratives: A pragmatic model and methodHeyd, Theresa
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.078pmid: N/A
This paper explores the pragmatic foundations of unreliable narration (UN), a narrative technique highly popular in western literary texts. It sets out by giving a critique of the competing theoretic frameworks of UN, namely the seminal Boothian concept and more recent constructivist approaches. It is argued that both frameworks neglect a pragmatic perspective as the most viable way for identifying and analysing UN. Such a pragmatic model is then developed on the basis of theories of cooperation, such as the Gricean maxims, relevance theory, and politeness. The emerging definition of UN treats a narrator as unreliable if he or she violates the cooperative principle without intending an implicature. This model is tested against three prototypical UNs: Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day , and Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart . These sample analyses yield a typology of UN: while pragmatic deviation is shown to be the intrinsic feature of the phenomenon, unreliable narrators vary according to their degree of intentionality. Finally, two recurring issues in the UN debate are briefly discussed: the existence of textual clues of UN, and the role of the reader in constructing unreliability.
The murderous grandparent motif: Myth as political discourseSchellekens, J. Jona
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.079pmid: N/A
This paper proposes an approach to myth that incorporates structural techniques while also taking into account the discourse context. It argues that the structure of myths contains clues to identification of the kind of discourse of which they are part. It is nearly impossible to identify the structure of an isolated myth. In an attempt to evade this problem, this paper proposes an intertextual analysis that searches for a structure common to several myths. A contextual analysis then looks at differences between the myths in order to detect the historical context of each myth. The method is illustrated by five related myths that come from the same discourse area and belong to a larger family of myths known as ‘the birth of the hero.’ Three of the myths, containing the murderous grandparent motif, will be used in the intertextual analysis. The other two closely related myths are added at the stage of the contextual analysis. In spite of the small number of cases a fairly clear structure emerges from the intertextual analysis, suggesting that all five myths are part of a political discourse in which legitimacy is a central issue. However, questions of legitimacy may rise in different historical contexts. This paper proposes to look at the role of the central character for a lead to the historical context.
Blood on their hands: The story of a photograph in the Israeli national discourseKampf, Zohar
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.080pmid: N/A
The intention of this paper is to describe the evolution of a photographic narrative constructed in the Israeli media. The analysis will focus on the case of the ‘lynch in Ramallah’ photograph, an image of upheld blood-stained hands of young Palestinian photographed immediately following the lynching of two IDF soldiers, that was first published on 13 October, 2000. The paper will provide an account of several processes involved in the production and consumption of photographs in contemporary violent conflicts: First, a detailed semiotic description of the characteristics of the lynch image will demonstrate how it became a metonymic representation of the enemy and, thereafter, a defining reference for the ongoing conflict. Second, an account of the reproduction and distribution of the image will illustrate the way in which it's communicative mode changed through several visual processes, and how these changes function in the image contest. Third, an analysis of the role of national institutions in the constructed narrative will demonstrate the nature of the efforts invested in bring about closure to one particular episode, within the wider context of an ongoing and unfinished narrative such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By exploring the aforementioned practices this paper intends to conceptualize a basic structural element of the visual narrative — a thematic ‘violation-revenge’ pairing that emerges from traumatic photographs. This conceptualization will further contribute to our understanding of the role of collective visual archives during national conflicts.
Images, diagrams, and metaphors: Hypoicons in the context of Peirce's sixty-six-fold classification of signsFarias, Priscila; Queiroz, João
doi: 10.1515/SEM.2006.081pmid: N/A
In his 1903 Syllabus, Charles S. Peirce makes a distinction between icons and iconic signs, or hypoicons, and briefly introduces a division of the latter into images, diagrams, and metaphors. Peirce scholars have tried to make better sense of those concepts by understanding iconic signs in the context of the ten classes of signs described in the same Syllabus. We will argue, however, that the three kinds of hypoicons can better be understood in the context of Peirce's sixty-six classes of signs. We analyze examples of hypoicons taken from the field of information design, describing them in the framework of the sixty-six classes, and discuss the consequences of those descriptions to the debate about the order of determination of the 10 trichotomies that form those classes.