{"title":"Stranger Danger: Social Distancing, the Bubble, and the War on Space in Times of Covid-19.","authors":"Sarah Marusek, Anne Wagner, Aleksandra Matulewska","doi":"10.1007/s11196-021-09865-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09865-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As authors, we recognize the scientific foundations for implementing social distancing in preventing the spread of Covid-19. Yet, we also recognize fundamental changes to the socio-legal discourse of everyday life that we research. We see legalized space itself as the foundation for social relationships significantly impacted through the 'new normal' of social/physical distancing guidelines. This paper will explore the positionalities of bodies that contribute to the transformation of cultural spaces and social interactions against the legalized backdrop of combatting viral spread of Covid-19 in the United States, France, and Poland.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"35 3","pages":"1145-1165"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8590427/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39642910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Justice and Money: How the Covid-19 Crisis was used to De-Differentiate Legality in Ecuador.","authors":"Katiuska King, Philipp Altmann","doi":"10.1007/s11196-021-09877-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11196-021-09877-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Legality in the Global South suffers from problems of application by convenience. Some rules are applied, and some are not, depending on certain actors, such as the State, the stakeholders, or others. This undermines legitimation as constructed by legality and due process. These problems are connected to a wider complex formed by coloniality, internal colonialism, and a form of functional differentiation that limits autonomy of the different social systems. This complex of structural properties allows States and other actors to systematically use one system against the other or-within a given system-one level of rules against the other. This was the case in Ecuador: in the initial months of quarantine due to Covid-19, the government took decisions about external state bonds following international legislation-and quite contrary ones related to local work contracts. Once again, legality followed different paths in diverse cases. Ecuadorian economic authorities accept and respect conditions on external public bonds which are protected by some complex and specific clauses to secure the payment. The same authorities have different practices towards international and national legislation that were organized in the sense of legal subsidiarity. This text will explore reasons and effects of legal de-differentiation in the Global South in times of crisis. The Ecuadorian case in time of Covid-19 helps to understand how structural problems related to the lack of autonomy of the legal system are perpetuated and lead to effects of convenient political action.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"35 3","pages":"1039-1057"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8728482/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39799555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"<i>Pandemica Panoptica</i>: Biopolitical Management of Viral Spread in the Age of Covid-19.","authors":"Anne Wagner, Aleksandra Matulewska, Sarah Marusek","doi":"10.1007/s11196-021-09821-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09821-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The current pandemic period has triggered a series of changes in society, at both individual and collective behavioral levels. These changes were perceived as either positive or negative by the impacted bodies, leading to both social change and positive interactions in a tense context. In this paper, the authors will deal with <i>Pandemica Panotpica</i>, subjugation infiltrating all levels of society, and the approach adopted by several countries in trying to find countermeasures to combat the virus' proliferation. Our research scope began at the onset of the pandemic and ended on early January 2021.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"35 3","pages":"1081-1117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11196-021-09821-1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25351289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Warning, or Manipulating in Pandemic Times? A Critical and Contrastive Analysis of Official Discourse Through the English and Spanish News.","authors":"María Ángeles Orts, Chelo Vargas-Sierra","doi":"10.1007/s11196-021-09869-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09869-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Focusing on media discourse and adopting a Critical Discourse Analysis-linguistic and rhetorical-perspective, this paper explores the role of the media in influencing citizens' behaviour towards the COVID-19 crisis. The paper evaluates the set of potentially persuasive lexical items and emotional implicatures used by two quality newspapers, i.e. <i>The Guardian</i> (UK edition) and <i>El País</i> (Spain edition), to report on the pandemic during the three waves-the periods between the onset and trough of virus contamination-that occurred until March 2021. A representative, ad-hoc, comparable corpus (COVIDWave_EN and COVIDWave_ES) was compiled in English and Spanish comprising the news on the pandemic that appeared in the aforementioned newspapers during the three established time periods. The corpora were uploaded to Sketch Engine, which was used to first detect and analyse different categories (nouns, verbs, and adjectives) of word frequency, and then assign negative or positive polarity. Lexical keyness was secondly analysed to categorize emotional implicatures of control, metaphors, signals of epistemic asymmetry and positive implicatures in order to discern how they become weapons of negative or positive persuasion. The ultimate end of the study was to critically analyse and contrast the lexicon and rhetoric used by these two newspapers during this time period so as to unveil the stance taken by governments and health institutions-voices of authority-to disseminate words of control and persuasion with the aim of exerting influence on the behaviour of citizens in UK and Spain.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11196-021-09869-z.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"35 3","pages":"903-935"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8590426/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39642909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Triadic Dimensionalities: Knowledge, Movement, and Cultural Discourse-in the Wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Sarah Marusek, Anne Wagner","doi":"10.1007/s11196-022-09897-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s11196-022-09897-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Since early 2020, the Covid-19 (CoronaVIrus Disease-19) pandemic has affected our world in multiple ways. What we know and how we know it has shifted on a global scale. How we move throughout the world has been restricted and locked down. How we see one another has changed the cultural narrative in numerous countries throughout the world. As we seek to rid ourselves of the novel coronavirus infecting our everyday, three significant paradigm shifts have mutated our realities and imaginaries in which we dwell. With millions dead or sickened by the evolving Covid-19 virus (According to the World Health Organization, \"Globally, as of 8:32 pm CET, 9 February 2022, there have been 399,600,607 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5,757,562 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 7 February 2022, a total of 10,095,615,243 vaccine doses have been administered.\" Source: https://covid19.who.int; Accessed Feb 9, 2022.), we are a different world now than we were. As guest editors for this Special Issue, <i>(In)Visible Mutations of the (Mis)Information Imaginary: Knowledge, Movement, and Cultural Discourse in the Wake of Covid-19</i>, we pay tribute to the millions affected by these changes by offering this collection of scholarship as a critical path forward. We examine three primary areas in which life, law, and legality have mutated with results that demand our immediate attention. The first section of contributing articles, <i>Knowledge</i>, engages with the dissemination of knowledge and (mis)information as either fact or fiction in lexicons and media outlets throughout the world. The second section, <i>Movement</i>, focuses on aspects of motion and its restriction in terms of bodies, legislation, access, and the threat of viral contamination across borders and within communities. The third section, <i>Cultural Discourse</i>, considers the (in)visibility of viral spread ranging from masks that cover the face to the separation of bodies through social distancing to the politicization of religion and vaccination. What once were normative cultural positionalities of space and politics have been volatized by institutionalized risk reduction and the confrontation of the unknown in the tenuous unforeseeable realm we now globally inhabit: L'idée se fait jour qu'il s'agit au moins autant d'une syndémie que d'une pandémie. Alors que la pandémie est une épidémie qui touche une partie importante de la population mondiale, une syndémie caractérise un entrelacement de maladie, de facteurs biologiques et environnementaux qui, par leur synergie, aggravent les conséquences de ces maladies sur la population. Ost F (De quoi le Covid est-il le nom ? Académie Royale de Belgique, Bruxelles, 2021, p. 6). We hope that this Special Issue helps to contribute as a vital source of critical engagement with the effects of the new pandemic lexicon and re-emerging, yet irrevocably mutated public and private spaces and relationships to each another.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"35 1","pages":"823-830"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9016123/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42881546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coronavirus Legislation and Obligations of Lessee in Jordan: Some Preliminary Reflections/Considerations.","authors":"Mohammed Ibrahim Abu El-Haija","doi":"10.1007/s11196-021-09842-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09842-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study focuses on discussing the choices of lessee in Jordan legislation because of a Defense Order in Curfew to face Corona Virus Disease 2019 and the impact of Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the lessor obligation. The study finds out that the lessee has two options: to cancel the contract regarding force majeure or refuge to court and to reduce the fare amount regarding exceptional circumstances. The study also recommended issuing a Defense Order specifying the exact percentage to be reduced. In the absence of a Defense Order, the study of a friendly agreement should be recommended between the lessor and the tenant on the reduced percentage.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"35 3","pages":"1059-1065"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11196-021-09842-w","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38889996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Don't Uncover that Face! Covid-19 Masks and the Niqab: Ironic Transfigurations of the ECtHR's Intercultural Blindness.","authors":"Mario Ricca","doi":"10.1007/s11196-020-09703-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09703-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay, between serious and facetious, addresses an apparently secondary implication of the planetary tragedy produced by Covid-19. It coincides with the 'problem of the veil,' a bone of contention in Islam/West relationships. More specifically, it will address the question of why the pandemic has changed the proxemics of public spaces and the grammar of 'living together.' For some time-and it is not possible to foresee how much-in many countries people cannot go out, or enter any public places, without wearing a sanitary mask. In short, almost all of us, by obligation or by urgent advice from the public authorities of the various countries, will not live the public sphere with our faces uncovered. The alteration of the social context affecting many Western countries will inevitably involve also the 'local' perception of the Islamic veil and-as a matter of equality-the consistency of the prohibition of wearing it. What will thus become of the ban on wearing it in public places established by some countries such as France and asseverated by the ECHR? If everyone can and will have to go around with their faces covered, why should only Islamic women be discriminated against? Will not the change in boundary conditions produced by Covid-19 also induce Western people to re-categorize the meaning of the veil? And will this re-categorization not directly affect the 'fact' of wearing the veil, that is, its empirical perception? And still, will this psycho-semantic change not show how empirical perceptions are cultural constructs rather than 'objective facts,' as such allegedly independent from the observer's point of view? Consequentially, will the plurality of perceptions and cultural meanings related to the gesture of covering one's own face not gain renewed relevance in determining the legitimacy of wearing the veil? The socio-semantic earthquake produced by Covid-19 compels us to rethink this and other issues orbiting around the translation of 'facts' into legal language; furthermore, it highlights the instrumentality of many ideological/partisan and ethnocentric assumptions passed off as objectivity regarding those alleged 'facts.' The essay will attempt to provide an answer to the above questions by proposing a semiotic-legal approach to intercultural conflicts and, indirectly, the pluralism in law.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"35 3","pages":"1119-1143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11196-020-09703-y","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38622187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"You are in Trouble!\": A Discursive Psychological Analysis of Threatening Language in Chinese Cellphone Fraud Interactions.","authors":"Jinshi Chen","doi":"10.1007/s11196-020-09765-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09765-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Currently cellphone fraudsters often use language to threaten and bully victims. From discursive psychological perspective, the present study applies conversation analysis to discuss fraudsters' threatening language in Chinese cellphone fraud conversations. The authentic data are collected from Chinese media which report legal news or conduct public legal education on the battle against cellphone frauds. Results of the study show that: (1) cellphone fraudsters construct their false identities through information gap and information sharing in their turn-taking designs, which brings victims into the threatening fraud interactions; (2) fraudsters use such conversational skills in a threatening tone as repetition, interruption, higher pitch, louder speech and so on to trigger victims' psychological panic; (3) fraudsters' discursive practices are situated for the threatening actions based on prepared and designed scripts. The findings of the study are expected to provide references for preventing cellphone fraud and fighting against fraudsters' threats and bullies.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"34 4","pages":"1065-1092"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11196-020-09765-y","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38622194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dario Henri Haux, Antoinette Maget Dominicé, Jana Alexandra Raspotnig
{"title":"A Cultural Memory of the Digital Age?","authors":"Dario Henri Haux, Antoinette Maget Dominicé, Jana Alexandra Raspotnig","doi":"10.1007/s11196-020-09778-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09778-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Considering digital cultural heritage as the digitalized assets from memory institutions and digital born art, this paper aims to build on its current normative definitions. This first notion addresses the subtle, yet complex relationship between technology and culture. In addition, we consider the criteria set for defining heritage in memory theorization. By doing so, we want to challenge the lack of uniform standards and approaches in dealing with digital cultural heritage and to give Aleida and Jan Assmann's Theory of Cultural Memory a normative dimension. Can there be a cultural memory of the digital age?</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"34 3","pages":"769-782"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11196-020-09778-7","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38717997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rights Metaphors Across Hybrid Legal Languages, Such as Euro English and Legal Chinese.","authors":"Michele Mannoni","doi":"10.1007/s11196-020-09814-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09814-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper focuses on two legal languages such as the legal English developed by the European Union institutions (Euro English) and the legal Chinese of Mainland China, to study whether the mental representations and the embodied simulation created by the conceptual metaphors for the same Western concept, right, differ in any significant ways. By analysing the data contained in two large corpora, this study has found that, despite the common origin of the concept right in the two legal languages, they conceptualise it in a significantly different fashion. Finally, the findings of this study are read through the theoretical framework proposed for this special issue-hybridity and the Third Space. While it is somewhat straightforward to conceive of Euro English as a hybrid language, owing to the multilingual and supranational setting where it is used, this study has found that the Chinese legal language, too, is a hybrid language exhibiting linguistic features that intersect different belief systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":44376,"journal":{"name":"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW-REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE SEMIOTIQUE JURIDIQUE","volume":"34 5","pages":"1375-1399"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11196-020-09814-6","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25596543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}