Some decades before Umberto Eco refounded semiotics in the sixties, Alfred Schutz had already elaborated a theory on signs and symbols. Moreover, as Schutz himself affirms, neither was he the first to do so. The thoughts of Charles Sanders Peirce had already clearly influenced American pragmatism, and thinkers like George Herbert Mead and Ernst Cassirer had developed a theory of symbols, both referred to by Schutz in his later works. Nonetheless, sign theory was already present in his first book, Der (...) sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, and can be traced to the influence of Edmund Husserl. Schutz’s focus on the analysis of the relationship between individual and society fomented his perception of the importance of intermediary communication and sign processes as the setting and interpretation of signs, “Zeichensetzung und Zeichendeutung”, reflections that in his later working phase resulted in a proper sign theory, which is analyzed in the following article. Based on Husserl’s concept of pairing, Schutz here develops his theory of appresentational references, comprising a subdivision of: marks, indications, signs and symbols. This involves the concept of representation, a relationship between the signifier and the signified, and a subjective as well as constructive interpretation by actors. Consequently, this concept involves an objective sign system, a social situation and, as inserted into a process of communication, complementary producers and receptors of signs and symbols. In the final comments the question is addressed whether, and in what sense, given the preceding theory of appresentational references, Schutz would hold that reality is a symbolic construction, as proposes the title of the 2016 conference on Schutz in Tokyo, The Symbolic Construction of Reality. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to propose Charles Peirce's semiotic idealism as an acceptable middle way between skeptical anti-realism and contemporary mind independent realism. The present debate appears stagnant and entrenched in the rigid dualism of either scientific realism or relativism. It will be argued that this dualism constitutes a false dichotomy, and that idealism offers a coherent solution to this impasse. ;Much of the trouble engendering the present debate begins with the correspondence theory of truth. The correspondence (...) theory is habitually aligned with the claim that the referent of a true statement is mind-independent reality. In other words, even if there were no minds there to verify its truth, that statement would still be true and its referent would be real. ;The view of this work is that Peirce's idealism can acceptably qualify the correspondence theory by proposing an idealistic framework in which mind and reality are not seen as two opposing and alien entities. ;The dissertation contains six chapters. Chapter one begins with Peirce's critique of Cartesian and Modern epistemology. It rejects certain modern notions about intuitions, the locus of certitude, and raises general issues about methodology and argumentation. In chapter two, the critique of intuitions develops into an analysis and exposition of Peirce's semiotic, or theory of signs. This chapter pays special attention to Peirce's semiotic interpretation of mind and cognition. Chapter three is a continuation of Peirce's semiotic and unfolds his theory of Synechism, the evolutionary cosmology of a progressively and continually ordered reality. Chapter four helps the reader to place Peirce's theory by comparing it to other movements in 19th and 20th century idealism and realism. Chapter five continues in the same vein by considering Peirce's semiotic idealism as a viable middle way between contemporary mind-independent realism and skeptical anti-realism. Chapter six provides a brief summary and encapsulation of some major points of the work. (shrink)

This volume outlines a theory of translation, set within the framework of Peircean semiotics, which challenges the linguistic bias in translation studies by proposing a semiotic theory that accounts for all instances of translation, not only interlinguistic translation. In particular, the volume explores cases of translation which does not include language at all. The book begins by examining different conceptualizations of translation to highlight how linguistic bias in translation studies and semiotics has informed these fields and their development. The (...) volume then outlines a complexity theory of translation based on semiotics which incorporates process philosophy, semiotics, and translation theory. It posits that translation is the complex systemic process underlying semiosis, the result of which produces semiotic forms. The book concludes by looking at the implications of this conceptualization of translation on social-cultural emergence theory through an interdisciplinary lens, integrating perspectives from semiotics, social semiotics, and development studies. Paving the way for scholars to analyze translational aspects of all semiotic phenomena, this volume is essential reading for graduate students and researchers in translation studies, semiotics, multimodal studies, cultural studies, and development studies. (shrink)

A semiotic theory of systems derived from language would have the purpose of classifying all the systems of linguistic expression: philosophy, ideology, myth, poetry, art, as much as the dream, lapsus, and free association in a pluridimensional matrix that will interact with many diversified fields. In each one of these discourses it is necessary to consider a plurality of questions, the essence of which will only be comprehensible by the totality; it will be necessary to ask, in the first (...) place, what will be the purpose of this language, what function does it fulfill and for which reason has it been constructed. The concept of World vision (WV) is introduced and its relation with Generalized Collective Conscience (GCC) and Particularized Collective Conscience. Culture implies a particular WV. Culture creates GCC. The semantic field is a structure that formalizes the units of a certain culture constituting a portion of the vision of the Reality that owns this culture. An ecological case is explained. (shrink)

How can philosophy or science claim to discover objective truth when their arguments originate from subjective beings? In _Intentionality and Semiotics_, John Deely offers a controversial solution to the problem of subjectivity in inquiry. He creates an interface between semiotics and the concept of intentionality, as it appears in Aquinas’s work, to demonstrate that every sign is irrevocably linked to the reality of relations. In the process, Deely builds a bridge between classical thinkers such as Aristotle and modernists such (...) as Heidegger and Peirce in this innovative volume. (shrink)

In recognition of the central place that the concept of tragedy holds in the historical understanding of culture and society, this paper features an analysis of its presence, current state, and value in the digital environments of the postmodern era, with special attention to videogames. Thus, the overcoming of a classic model of tragedy in the cybertextual condition is first determined, along with the discursive dimension underlying said overcoming. To this end a theoretical statement to the issue of tragedy is (...) proposed, from the perspective of the cybertext as procedural rhetoric. This will establish the formulation of a semiotic analytical model that problematizes Greimas’ actantial system under the light of the digital and interactive reality of videogames. To avoid this constraint, we propose to attach a new variable to the base of the generative trajectory: the “configurative synthesis,” product of the so-called “gaming/playing function.” This addition will integrate the figures of the game and the player in the dynamic distinction of the “quasi-Actant.” Finally, a sample of 79 cases will be observed in regards to the implications of the cybertextual notion of tragedy to the narrative and discourse of videogames. (shrink)

The intersectionality of fat black women has been in the cultural spotlight in recent years and a significant amount of them might feel invisible or even ask themselves why to exist. When one feels self-inexistence, an imagined reality reinforced by the world, sadness, depression, and anger install within a person. The imaginary inexistence is induced by the unaware shamelessness that others project in the ignored person, who feels being invisible, and being invisible in a digital world is to not (...) exist. In this paper, we answer why they should exist. We approach the issue with Positive Semiotics on desirability based on Positive Psychology, which focuses on understanding and facilitating well-being. We propose a semiotic framework for the construction of positive meaning paving the way from fatphobia to fat praise, passing by fat appraisal, to promote the well-being of fat black women. The proposed framework is the Positive Semiotics Construction, which is simultaneously an individual and collective construction of meaning for well-being, with a Sign-System Functional Model applicable to the digital world. Furthermore, a semiotic approach to Law and Social Norms may understand norms as the ability to send and receive signals for cooperation, which derives from moral appraisals of and reactions to the behavior of others and ourselves, consequently forming the normative underpinning of Law. Hence, the Positive Semiotics Construction might impact normative values and influence Law affecting the language of a society. (shrink)

John Law notes that — by the early 1990s — Latour’s approach contained the entirety of the principles of actor-network theory: attention to heterogeneous relations, use of semiotic tools, adherence to symmetry in describing the truth or false statements, performativity of practices, focus on circulations, predisposition to case studies. Expanding the list of approaches and tools used in the ANT, Law turns to material semiotics. He aspires to show it as a set of themes that stimulate the researcher’s sensitivity (...) to the problem of polysemanticity in a particular field. At the same time, his version of material semiotics implicitly contains a critique of the of Greimas’ semiotics developed by Latour. Law’s vision describes practices of producing multiple realities, maintaining uncertainties and the polysemantic. In contrast, Latour’s semiotics are more instrumental, showing how particular actors eliminate multiplicity by creating common rules. The article shows that the contradiction between Latour’s semiotics and Law’s material semiotics is related to the question of tracing the networks’ length created by heterogenous actors. However, this question is empirical. The article explores a particular case of interaction from the practices of a center for the development and socialization of children and adults with mental disabilities. It is shown that the problem of polysemanticity and uncertainties has two solutions: limiting the network through a “shifting in” of the “enunciator” and maintaining polysemanticity through “partial connections”. (shrink)

The logic of worldviews provides a consistent method of comparison between multiple worldviews. The present paper connects the logic of worldviews to important historical and contemporary influences. Beginning with its roots in semiotics, an account of epistemology emerges which is mediated by a belief system. We show that Charles Peirce’s pragmatistic theory of inquiry is the bedrock beneath the logic of worldviews. We formulate it as a generalized version of inquiry with underlying game-theoretic semantics. In this paper, we extend Peirce’s (...) triadic model of signs to cover knowledge mediated by systems of beliefs. Michael Polanyi’s account of personal commitment includes a subsidiary/focal distinction that views theoretical frameworks as tools for interpreting orders of reality through actual practices of research. We also see how a precedent is set by Johan Georg Hamann’s epistemology of belief, recovered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, using reason as an interpretation of God’s speech in nature. We argue that Thomas Kuhn’s theory of inquiry and worldviews (or paradigms) may be fruitfully contrasted with Peirce’s theory, with reasoning by abduction, deduction, and induction occurring within the community of inquirers. The upshot is that although worldviews may be adopted for non-rational reasons, one can meaningfully compare worldviews through a method proposed by Alasdair MacIntyre: the proponent of a theory learns the language of competing theories and uses them as a metatheory to show how one’s own theory may not have the resources to resolve certain problematic situations. Our result is a meta-linguistic falsification in the sense of Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticism: the competing theory may be used to show that the object theory does not have a strategy at its disposal to interpret the anomalous phenomenon. (shrink)

When we press the “A” key on our computer keyboard, an “a” appears on our screen almost simultaneously. In between those two points there are a number of layers of computer program which communicate with each other: the keyboard controller sends a message to the operating system which is interpreted by a word processor, which then returns a message to the operating system, which communicates with the video controller and the video board sends a message that it needs an “a” (...) and this is mapped as a group of pixels which light up on the screen. Except that none of this actually happens. At the level of physical reality, all that happens is the shifting of magnetic fields and the passing of electrons. The electrons orbiting atoms slide from one atom to the next along wires, among silicon and metal. Entities like computer programs and operating systems are. (shrink)

John Deely uses the way of signs not only to establish the contact and dependencies between human thought and action and the surrounding physical universe, but also to account for a social construction of reality as part of human experience beyond mere “thinking thing”. Experiencing evolutionary love is a reciprocal exchange of desire, which is the primary strength of Eros, where eroticism and semiotics intertwine. When Deely states that all animals signify, but only human animals are capable of developing (...) semiotics, he opens a whole way of understanding for us to move beyond the definition of human being as a rational animal into a “semiotic animal” that is also capable of love. (shrink)

How is reality really manufactured? The idea of social construction has become a commonplace part of much social research, yet precisely what is constructed, how it is constructed, and what constructionism means are often left unclear or taken for granted. In this major work, Jonathan Potter explores the central themes raised by these questions. Representing Reality explores the different traditions in constructivist thought--including sociology of scientific knowledge; conversation analysis and ethnomethodology; and semiotics, poststructuralism, and postmodernism--to provide a lucid (...) introduction to several key strands of work that have overturned the way we think about facts and descriptions. Potter illustrates his points throughout with varied and engaging examples taken from newspaper stories, relationship counseling sessions, accounts of paranormal events, social workers' assessments of violent parents, informal talk between program organizers, political arguments, and everyday conversations. Representing Reality offers the student and scholar in social psychology, rhetoric and discourse, and related fields a critical introduction to constructivism. (shrink)

Brown examines the types of scene that exist, along with related concepts such as authenticity and the 'really' real. It also explores the effectiveness of scenes in spreading new actions and ideas, as welll as their role in both facilitating 'difference' and introducing originality and newness in modern society. Finally, the book deals with the fragility of scenes, why they can often become subsumed by normality and how this might be prevented.

The European Union is one of the ‘big ideas’ of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and has been built on the idea of the European Community, which it supersedes. Seen in this light the emergent law of the European Union is becoming omnipresent in so many ways and yet it does not appear to have been the subject of as much semiotic study as it deserves. This paper takes a multilingual stance and explores emerging EC and EU law from (...) a perspective of a lawyer-linguist practitioner in the field. The purpose is to describe a range of practitioner ‘realities’ and to explore how semiotics provides a tool for analysis and insights for a better understanding and awareness of EU law, with particular emphasis on the legislative, or law-making aspects. (shrink)

The interpretation of many texts in the everyday world is concerned with their truth value in relation to the reality around us. The recent publication experiments with computer-generated texts have shown that the distinction between true and false, or reality and fiction, is not always clear from the text itself. Essentially, in today’s media space, one may encounter texts, videos or images that deceive the reader by displaying nonsensical content or nonexistent events, while nevertheless appearing as genuine human-produced (...) messages. This article outlines certain problems with artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content, and frames the issue as a problem of recognising its proper referential reality. Examples include generative texts, deepfakes and their functioning in contemporary culture. The article makes use of the concepts of mimicry and nonsense to reveal the elements and counterparts in the communicative processes involving generated media. (shrink)

This essay develops a theory of representation that confirms realism - an objective dependent on establishing that reality is autonomous of representation. I argue that the autonomy of reality is not incompatible with epistemic access and that an adequate account of representation is capable of satisfying both criteria. Pursuit of this argument brings the work of C. S. Peirce and Roy Bhaskar together. Peirce's doctrine of semiotics is essentially a realist theory of representation and is thus relevant to (...) the project of critical realism. However, critical realism is also required to finesse Peirce's intricate over-theorising. Although a complete treatment remains absent from Bhaskar's writings, his philosophy, I discovered, incorporates an implicit theory of representation. Peirce can be employed to extract this theory and amplify it. The only way the problem of representation can be addressed adequately is to locate it in a realist framework. This, however, is contingent on re-conceiving representation as a process rather than an object. Such a ‘perspectival switch’ reconfirms the intentional structure of representation but also suggests that it be considered, in teleological terms, as an activity oriented to a representation-transcendent object. Representation finally emerges as an investigative process with the aim to make being accessible in its autonomy. (shrink)

Basic, key concepts of semiotic are surveyed en route to establishing signs, units of signification, as always dealing in relations. These relations are triangular and mediate. Signs span and mediate between the internality and externality of things, thing being defined as a composite of subjectivity and objectivity. Because signs are relational and mediate, identicality is postulated as the limit of the sign. Identicality is aligned with things-in-themselves, which are assigned to meta-reality, to associate semiotic and metaphysic. Mind, (...) thought, world, and reality are conceptualized in such a way as to link signs with experience. Experience is explained as being founded in relations and practices between things. These relations and practices are formulated in significations. From these signification relations experience is founded, and through experience identities are situated and selves emerge. Holding experience as being formative of and fundamental to reality, it is concluded that reality is best described as being constituted in signs and ultimately bound by significations and relations between things. (shrink)

My intention in this paper is to contribute the debate on “realism” in order to raise a different sort of question: not whether ‘reality’ exists or does not exist, but rather what effects does the belief in this or that reality produce (as Peirce put it 150 years ago). I will turn to Eco’s later thought, and to his support for a form of ‘negative’ realism, and try to demonstrate how his appeal to Peirce’s distinction between Immediate and (...) Dynamical Object is affected by a common-sense interpretation of what ‘real’ amounts to. Peirce in fact distinguished between the “existence” of facts and their “reality.” The former implies a dynamic of blind force, a dynamical reaction. Yet, “reality consists in the future” (CP 8.284), in the public recognition of what it always will be, or we hope will be, in the long run (Peirce uses the word “mellonization”). In Eco’s work, though, the Being or the Real, seen as pure Something, is understood after the form of a Thing, above all External, which simply says many ‘No’s. Peirce’s pragmaticism leads us further on, concentrating on the concept of habit that is also detectable in Eco’s analysis. We could say that Peirce distinguishes brute existence hic et nunc from the persistence of habits. Acts and dispositions to act, and not facts (as opposed to interpretations) appear as real; and it is in this respect that I think we can find a promising line of research for better explaining Eco’s theory of realism. (shrink)

A long tradition, which starts with the metaphor of the wax tablet presented in the Theaetetus of Plato, leads us to think that the relationship between mental representation and the represented reality is in a certain way mechanical or automatic. But the truth is that the conventional aspects of signification make it impossible to understand it as a physical- mechanical process. The computer sciences, contrary to a superficial vision, do not support but rather disprove this mechanistic conception of rationality, (...) confirming that semiosis can only occur in free subjects, that is to say, not completely subject to the laws of matter. (shrink)

Purpose. The article is aimed to substantiate the view on the phenomenon of laughter as a subject of semiotic analysis, which leads to the following tasks: to reveal the possibilities of semiotics application in the study of laughter nature; to analyze the phenomenon of laughter as a cultural and natural phenomenon, as a sign and as an attribute; to consider the place of laughter in culture, which is understood as a sign system. Theoretical basis. The semiotic approach proceeds (...) from the fact that human lives in the world of signs, all the surrounding reality can be interpreted as a sign system. The basic concept of semiotics is the concept of a sign. The theoretical basis of the article is understanding the culture as a sign-symbolic system. Laughter is considered as a phenomenon ontologically rooted in human culture. At the same time, laughter is on the edge of culture. The research is based on the work of semiotic authors, cultural researchers, and the researchers of laughter. Originality. The originality lies in the application of the semiotic method to the research of laughter phenomenon, consideration of the dialectics of natural and cultural, signedness and non-signedness, manifested in the phenomenon of laughter. Conclusions. Laughter is considered as a psychophysiological phenomenon and as a cultural phenomenon. Laughter acts as an emotional manifestation, a physiological reaction, but socially and culturally mediated. In any case, laughter indicates an emotional or cognitive state of a human. Laughter acts as a process and result of the interpretation of a sign, a reaction to a sign. Laughter is a form and a means of communication. Being a natural phenomenon, in the process of social evolution, laughter acquires signedness, is integrated by culture as a sign system, and, at the same time, maintains a connection with nature. Thus, laughter occupies an ambivalent position between nature and culture. In the phenomenon of laughter, the dual state of human is revealed. In laughter, boundaries are blurred, the unity and opposition of natural and cultural, biological and social, soul and body, thought and feeling, sign and attribute are manifested. (shrink)

In most societies, greetings are the expression of emotions such as friendliness or rejection, and form the basis of social and moral order. The symbolic dimension of greetings is frequently entwined in the cultural and metaphysical reality of a community. In African societies this ethical and religious dimension carries its own peculiarities. It is interesting to see how much of the content-meaning of greetings depends on cultural traditions. This paper presents an analysis of greetings in the Yoruba culture in (...) Nigeria. (shrink)

James Mark Baldwin left a legacy that has yet to be fully examined, one with profound implications for science and the humanities. In some sense it paralleled that of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce, whose semiotics became understood only a century later. Baldwin was trying to make sense of complex biological and social processes that only now have come into the limelight as biological sciences have re-emerged in psychology. Baldwin's focus on development, based on the observation of his own children (...) and extrapolated to his general theoretical scheme, is fully in line with where contemporary biological sciences are heading. This is exemplified by the bounded flexibility of the work of the genetic system. The general principle of persistent exploration of the environment with the result of creating novelty, which was the core of Baldwin's theoretical system, has since the 1960s become the guiding idea in genetics. Contemporary developmental science is rooted in Baldwin's thinking. In his new introduction, Jaan Valsiner shows that Baldwin's Genetic Theory of Reality demonstrates how human beings are in their nature social beings, establishes an alternative conceptualization of evolutionary theory, and formulates a system of developmental logic, all of which serve as the foundation for developmental psychology as a whole. This is a work of social science rediscovery long overdue. (shrink)

Despite popular consensus or relativist sentiments, rhetoric is not a purely subjective phenomenon but is firmly grounded in semiotic reality. The same definite semiosic nature of the universe that makes geology and archaeology work is also operant within rhetoric — as are syntactic configurations and the semantic situations that proceed from them. Inasmuch as semiosis extends throughout all the universe, from organic life in its most complex forms all the way to the most basic structures of physical matter, (...) so rhetoric finds its roots extending along these pathways. While language use falls partially within the multistability of the universe, with the result that there can be pliability in its use and perception, nevertheless the roots of rhetoric as semiotic ensure that syntax, the subsequent semantic content, and the rhetorical sense this semantic content presents within communication — all these are never fully nor finally reducible to human subjectivity. As the semiotic spiral in principle makes all that occurs within the universe discoverable and read-able, seen especially in forensic studies of physical structures, in just the same way we find that rhetoric and all instances of its usage are also discoverable and read-able. All that is needed is that the one reading has access to the semiosic traces, especially the relevant interpretants. Such is a very sobering ethical accountability grounded upon semiosis itself, extending to all anthroposemiotic life. (shrink)

Framed within the broader theoretical context of social semiotics, we attempt to show how university students communicate using a variety of unique means, in particular social contexts. We privilege Pennycook and Otsuji’s semiotic assemblages, Jimaima and Simungala’s semiotic creativity, and the notion of semiotic economy as critical ingredients that conspire to give rise to the unique and complex coinages and innovations constituting students’ repertoires. We argue that, born out of creativity, the students’ repertoires are semiotically and economically (...) charged discourses that generate extended narratives such that more is realized with less. We show that this reality undoubtedly constitutes a multi-semiotic meaning-making endeavor that enacts and sustains students’ imagined and lived experiences in real sociocultural, historical, and political spaces in the multilingual landscapes of university campuses. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural semiotics will systematically change the present-day academic compartmentalization, especially impacting the constitutionof historiography. Emphasizing the distinction between reality and discourse this paper suggests a new historiographic view based on documents-centrism rather than periodical division. Then historians can more reasonably reach historical truth in a hermeneutic term. Following a semiotic rereading of a modern Chinese historical school Gu-Shi-Bian (textual criticism of historical literature), a more serious comparative historical theory will be established in the global humanities. This (...) modern critical Chinese historiography will be instructive to the development of historical science in the world. (shrink)

Semiotics, the theory of sign and meaning, may help physicians complement the project of interpreting signs and symptoms into diagnoses. A sign stands for something. We communicate indirectly through signs, and make sense of our world by interpreting signs into meaning. Thus, through association and inference, we transform flowers into love, Othello into jealousy, and chest pain into heart attack. Medical semiotics is part of general semiotics, which means the study of life of signs within society. With special reference to (...) a case story, elements from general semiotics, together with two theoreticians of equal importance, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American logician Charles Sanders Peirce, are presented. Two different modes of understanding clinical medicine are contrasted to illustrate the external link between what we believe or suggest, on the one hand, and the external reality on the other hand. (shrink)

This article presents a fresh perspective on the interplay among visual, verbal, and auditory modalities, positing that these modalities, as semogenic resources, compete to express dynamic meanings. The theoretical paradigm emphasizes that whether a modality or an element within a modality gets or loses semantic status, it will elicit an additional layer of social meaning to depict a comprehensive picture of a story together with an explicit semiotic meaning. The article adopts a qualitative method to analyze the data, which (...) are drawn from The Good Wife and My Roommate is a Gumiho and annotated in ELAN 6.3. It was found that modal competition can shed light on the dynamic meaning-making processes in semiotic and societal orientations. Modal competition may distort space and time of different stories, and reconstruct a different discursive spatio-temporal dimension in the TV world. It can diversify the dynamic orientations from New to Given in visual, verbal, and auditory texts of multimodal discourses to tell stories. Modal competition provides a lens to understand the multidimensional reality and to appreciate the aesthetics of a modern TV series. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: “Evil is really only a privation.” This philosophical commonplace reflects an ancient solution to the problem of theodicy in one of its dimensions: is evil of such a nature that it must have God as its author? Stated in this particular way, it also reflects the commonplace identification of the real with natural being—the realm of what exists independently of human thought and perspectives—as opposed to all that is termed, by comparison, “merely subjective” and “unreal”. If we stick with (...) this way of construing the meaning of “reality”, then by the excellent arguments of the tradition we are also stuck with defending the sufficiency of privation as a response to what evil “really is”. -/- In this article, we argue against both ways of being stuck. We argue, first, that a one-sided focus upon the being of nature blocks an adequate understanding of the world we actually live in: the semiotically constituted lifeworld that is the proper locus of human realities, including moral evil. We argue, second, that the positivity of moral evil consists not only, nor even primarily, in the positivity of “action” as such, but in structures of objectivity engendered by creative reason that oppose the due end, and that involve a specific genus of pure object which we call a mystical daydream. Like any objects, these objects are communicable and formative in relation to the lifeworld, within which they in turn engender further interpretants for both those who do and those who suffer evil, thanks to the causality of signs. (shrink)

The concept of information is related to fundamental philosophical questions: the relationship between being and thinking, truth and delusion, problems of communication in human society, problems of virtual reality, their connection with language, etc. The topic of information in its various aspects has recently become one of the most popular among scientists, publicists, journalists, and politicians. To date, there is a wide variety of definitions of the concept of “information”, however, there is no generally accepted understanding of the nature (...) of information and the ways of its existence. On the basis of the semantic approach in the theory of information using semiotic methodology, the problem of the relationship and relationship between information and reality is considered; on this basis, the symbolic nature of information is analyzed, the problem of perception and interpretation of information by its recipients is investigated, the reasons and mechanisms of information distortion are analyzed. Information is considered as a sign, a representative of reality. There is always an uncertain, unstable, situational connection between signs and reality. There is a possibility of the existence of information in its pure form, without real events, which is not tied to real reality. Distortion is considered as a property of information; it is caused by the symbolic nature of information. The concept of “reality” is analyzed. Reality is largely a cultural construct, culture and society play a significant role in shaping perceptions of reality. Information becomes a model of reality, and at the same time information models reality. The concepts of “virtual reality” and “informational reality” are in use, which, in fact, are iconic constructions simulating reality. (shrink)

How does fiction work? How can mere words create realities that exist only in the mind of the writer and the reader, yet seem so tangible in their realness? How can the first sentence of a novel transport one into a very real, yet purely objective, world — literally word-by-word? How do the subjective worlds of the writer and reader interact with the words on the page to create similar, yet always highly individualized, objective worlds? How can semiotics function as (...) a means to analyzing a written text in order to answer these questions about how the processes of writing and reading work? These, amongst others, are the questions explored in this paper, “Mrs. Dalloway and the Semiotics of a First Sentence”. In it I analyze Virginia Woolf ’s classic novel from a semiotic stance. Through exploring the semiotics of the novel’s first sentence, I attempt to show how we can read even the first nine words of a book and find ourselves transported to a whole, new, highly detailed world — the world of fiction. (shrink)

The most powerful assumption in French semiotic thought since Saussure has been the notion that a sign consists not of a name and the object it refers to, but of a sound-image and a concept, a signifier and a signified. Saussure, as amplified by Roland Barthes and others, has taught us to recognize an unbridgeable gap between words and things, signs and referents. The whole notion of "sign and referent" has been rejected by the French structuralists and their followers (...) as too materialistic and simple minded. Signs do not refer to things, they signify concepts, and concepts are aspects of thought, not aspects of reality. This elegant and persuasive formulation has certainly provided a useful critique of naive realism, vulgar materialism, and various other-isms which can be qualified with crippling adjectives. But it hasn't exactly caused the world to turn into a concept. Even semioticians eat and perform their other bodily functions just as if the world existed solidly around them. The fact that the word "Boulangerie" has no referent does not prevent them from receiving their daily bread under that sign. As Borges put it: "The world, alas, is real; I, alas, am Borges." Obviously, the whole question of the relationship between words and things cannot be debated without any assistance from nonverbal experience seems to me highly unlikely. In my view, if language really were a closed system, it would be subject, like any other closed system, to increase in entropy. In fact, it is new input into language from nonverbal experience that keeps language from decaying. Robert Scholes, professor of English and director of the program in semiotic studies at Brown University, is co-author of The Nature of Narrative and author of Structuralism in Literature. A Guggenheim fellow for 1977-78, he is currently working on "A Semiotics of Fiction." He has also contributed "Language, Narrative, and Anti-Narrative" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

The relevance of the topic of the article is due to the need for philosophical research into the nature of information as a factor that significantly affects the development of modern society. Understanding the nature of information is important for the study of processes, mechanisms, and technologies in any sphere of social life.The study is based on a semiotic approach, the relationship between information and reality is considered based on the semantic and pragmatic aspects of this problem. The (...) concept of semantic information by Luciano Floridi and the views on the nature of information by Yuval Noah Harari are analyzed. The semantic aspect is understood not only in terms of the “truthfulness” of data, but also in terms of the perception and interpretation of this data by the consumer of information. Information appears as a model of reality, and at the same time information models reality, creating a second, illusory reality. A person exists in a situation of “two realities” (ontological and semiotic). This situation of “two realities” creates numerous philosophical and semiotic problems.Information not only reflects and constructs reality but is also used as a means of influencing consciousness, as a means of control. The modern information society is built on technologies of manipulation of consciousness. This is associated with the peculiarities of the functioning of information in society. In modern culture, information increasingly replaces reality, simulates reality. These are fakes and disinformation, rumors and conspiracy theories, as well as literature and art that exist as an imitation of reality. The media record events less and less often, and more and more often direct them. This is what describes the state of post-truth, when information flows themselves determine what is true and what is not. Information loses touch with reality, information and reality do not intersect or intersect rarely. People are increasingly immersed in this artificial reality, being in the information, virtual world. (shrink)

Introduction. The rapid dynamics of the present world results in its complication and construction. Reality turns out to be woven from many quote fragments, representing a collage that a person creates and comprehends through the prism of various texts. Constantly transformable forms come to the fore and, as a result, there exists a plurality of meanings. Models of the world are continuously generated, replacing the actual reality with a multi- tude of spectacular simulacra. The search for ways to (...) comprehend reality through the identification of markers of its transformations is noted, and under- standing becomes the basis of ontology and one of the dominants of consciousness in the last quarter of the 20th and first quarter of the 21st centuries. Signs and symbols of subculture, determined by the context of culture and presented by various means, become one of the markers of the social reality transformations. The purpose of the study is to show the markers of the transformation of the total communication society. Methods. Methodological framework is in G. Gadamer’s hermeneutic approach and the provi- sions of M. Halliday’s social semiotics to coding/de- coding the meanings of operators-markers of social transformations. In addition, other methods were used in the work - methods of analogy, analysis and synthesis. Fragments of the study devoted to the study of chanson as a creolized text required the use of a systematic method. Scientific novelty of the research. The authors re- vealed the specificity of the chanson as a creolized text and present understanding of the subculture as a marker of the social reality transformations, which is manifested by sign-symbolic forms of con- tinuously generated creolized texts, thanks to the technique and technologies of communication. Results. Markers of social reality transformations represent them in the format of creolized texts. What is broadcast in them is filled with a person and, consequently, his responsibility for their con- tent is growing. Semiotic methodology based on the synthesis of the intellectual capital of hermeneutics and linguistics makes it possible for us to consider them as a product of human sign-symbolic activity and decode the content. Conclusions. The specificity of human existence is determined by the existence of a person in the lin- guistic aspect of the world around him - the world is given by language, which involves the search for meaning and understanding of the world. Thinking and language are ontologically connected: mean- ing is expressed by linguistic means. Although the nature of the markers of social reality transforma- tions is different, nevertheless, it is presented and framed as a text, the understanding of which is one of the ways to comprehend social reality. (shrink)

The contrast between real and fictional characters in our thinking needs further elaboration. In this commentary on Eco’s look at the ontology of the semiotic object, I suggest that human semiotic construction entails constant modulation of the relationship between the states of the real and fictional characters in irreversible time. Literary characters are examples of crystallized fictions which function as semiotic anchors in the fluid construction — by the readers — of their understandings of the world. Literary (...) characters are thus fictions that are real in their functions — while the actual reality of meaningmaking consists of ever new fictions of fluid (transitory) nature. Eco’s ontological look at the contrast of the semiotic object with perceptual objects (Gegenstände) in Alexius Meinong’s theorizing needs to be complemented by the semiotic subject. Cultural mythologies of human societies set the stage for such invention and maintenance of such dynamic unity of fictionally real and realistically fictional characters. (shrink)