Aesthetics or Communication?: Social Semiotic Traits of Structured Forms in Studies of “Animal Beauty”

Biosemiotics 17 (3):769-792 (2024)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The article investigates basic relations between aesthetics and communication based on studies of and discussions about what has been termed “animal beauty”. The concepts _beauty_, _aesthetics_, and _communication_ are problematised, starting from utterances’ _structured form_, which is seen both as the physical basis for as well as one of five key aspects in animal utterances (form, content, act, time, and space). The relational, and thus social semiotic, communicational role of this aspect is searched in different studies leading to two major claims: Firstly, that five corresponding constitutional traits or _aspects_, aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, temporality, and spatiality collectively form a basis for animals’ evaluation of the subjective _value_ of utterances. The importance of each of them varies depending on what _kind_ of communication (life-genre) they are associated with. Secondly, that aesthetics should be comprehended on four integrated _levels_, from micro to macro, sign, utterance, life-genre, and life-world. These four levels plus five aspects or components in utterances make up a systemic, social semiotic communicational framework which in turn is applied for inspections of studies studying “beauty”. Methodological challenges applying them are briefly discussed. An overall conclusion is that research on the evolutionary role of animal beauty should treat the aesthetics of utterances as part of the hermeneutic circle, simultaneously as categorial _and_ relational, in other words as a constitutive part of a whole, a semiotic, species-specific socio-communicational system.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,836

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

John Maynard Smith’s typology of animal signals.Timo Maran - 2009 - Sign Systems Studies 37 (3-4):477-495.

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-09-19

Downloads
6 (#1,737,297)

6 months
5 (#826,666)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?