Language and semiotic studies最新文献

{"title":"A poetics of “Wind in a Box”","authors":"John Robinson","doi":"10.1515/lass-2024-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2024-0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay is a re-application of the language codes of Roland Barthes and Jonathan Culler’s concept for Structuralist Poetics. The approach I use explores the codes demonstrated in Barthes’ well-known text, S/Z with slight modifications for their application to poetry. The concepts borrowed from Mr. Culler are from his book of the same title: Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (Cornell University Press, 1975). Culler’s main argument is that there must be other, un-attempted strategies combined with conventional approaches in literature of that time period. His answer to this problem was to develop a set of linguistic-based concepts to compensate for the reader in the analysis of literary works. I have applied in this essay my approach based on Culler’s methodology and the language codes of Roland Barthes: semantic, symbolic, cultural-referential, actional and hermeneutic. I apply Culler’s concepts to a reading of poetry followed by an application of the language codes as a further development of my work in revitalizing this never-before applied method.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141668239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Narrative as “legal tender”: the semiotic meanings of “exchange” in Malcolm Bradbury’s Rates of Exchange","authors":"Yanfang Song","doi":"10.1515/lass-2024-0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2024-0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Malcolm Bradbury’s novel Rates of Exchange, taking the economic term “rates of exchange” as a central metaphor, depicts various exchanges occurring in the socio-economic landscape of Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of governmental emphasis on economic development, the novel intricately explores exchanges among diverse entities, playing with multiple meanings of the term “exchange”. In this way, the novel itself becomes a form of “legal tender,” exchanged for reader comprehension, communication, and participation. It highlights the ubiquitous presence of exchange and the risks associated with the uncertain exchange rates between different entities. Furthermore, it invites readers to participate in the story-telling and the nostalgic journey back to British literary tradition. This paper, drawing on Roland Barthes’s semiotic theory along with structuralist and poststructuralist concepts, investigates the multifaceted meanings of “exchange” in the novel. Through this analysis, the paper aims to illuminate the semiotic significance of various narrative forms and the profound thematic concerns in Bradbury’s work.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141676921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Directives and references in selected coronavirus-motivated internet memes","authors":"Ayo Osisanwo, Toluwalope Mary Falade","doi":"10.1515/lass-2024-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2024-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The use of directives in communicating the nature of the pandemic and reference to social experiences were promoted using images on social media platforms. The images or memes are used to create awareness and reinforce the criteria for safety during the pandemic. Previous studies on internet memes have concentrated on humor generation, speaker-hearer shared knowledge, neologism, and multimodality among others, with insufficient attention paid to the use of directives and references in such coronavirus-motivated memes. This paper, therefore, examines how directives and references are employed in conveying expected social responsibilities through coronavirus-motivated internet memes in Nigeria and other socio-cultural contexts. For data, one hundred coronavirus-motivated memes were purposively selected from Facebook, and eight representative memes were subjected to pragmatic analysis using aspects of Jacob Mey’s (2001. Pragmatics: An introduction, 2nd edn. USA: Blackwell Publishing) pragmatic acts theory to unearth insights from them. The paper observes that the various spheres of life that are relatable to an online audience help to express what the pandemic is about and enhance the meaning of the pandemic with the context of the use of the memes, giving clearer perspectives on the pandemic. Directives and references are useful tools for conveying social responsibilities to online audience.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141334950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Survival” and “death” in Céline’s novels","authors":"Huimin Duan","doi":"10.1515/lass-2024-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2024-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a French writer of the twentieth century, was an important author during the two world wars in France. His works, set against the backdrop of these wars, depict the various aspects of human nature during wartime. “Survival” and “Death” are important themes discussed in Céline’s novels. Under the background of wars, “survival” becomes the instinct of characters in Céline’s works, but the threat of death is always present. Through the perspective of a doctor, Céline materializes “survival” and “death,” using metaphors such as “devouring,” “decomposition,” and “corrosion” to illustrate the viewpoint of “death on the installment plan,” vividly depicting the “imagination” and “fear” between “survival” and “death,” presenting the disasters and sufferings caused by wars, and expressing strong antiwar sentiments within a pessimistic view of life and death. By using semiotic isotope as a tool, we study the thematic generation process of “survival and death,” analyzing the “surface-level image paths” of the text through the “discourse images,” and then delving into the deeper layers of the text to discover the inherent and shared nuclear seme features of these images and their repetition of information, namely semiotic isotope.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141341719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Discourse analysis of knowledge-based live streaming: a case study of East Buy streamer Dong Yuhui","authors":"Yehui Song, Junhua Mo","doi":"10.1515/lass-2024-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2024-0017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Live streaming e-commerce is not only an important part of China’s digital economy but also the preferred way of purchase for many Chinese, especially the young. Since 2022, a new model initiated by East Buy has emerged, quickly becoming known as knowledge-based live streaming. The most famous streamer from this novel type of live streaming is Dong Yuhui, a former English teacher of the New Oriental School. As a top Internet influencer with millions of followers, Dong Yuhui has become a conspicuous social sign of the rising China that is undergoing fast technological, economic, and cultural changes. This study thus takes Dong Yuhui as an example to examine the typical discourses of the knowledge-based live streaming. Through a triangulation of case study, discourse analysis, and sentiment analysis, it finds that Dong Yuhui mainly employs the strategies of disseminating encyclopedic knowledge, telling intriguing stories, and using poetic language in his live streaming discourse. This unique discourse has the main function of fulfilling customers’ intellectual, emotional, and psychological needs. As such, it is warmly received by customers, whose comments are centered on the talents of the streamer rather than the attributes of the commodity.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141115509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contexts and pragmatic strategies of COVID-19 related cartoons in Nigeria","authors":"E. Olajimbiti, O. Jolaoso","doi":"10.1515/lass-2024-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2024-0001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The global outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has been experienced differently by people depending on their socio-cultural contexts. These varied experiences are expressed in various forms of communication, including cartoons. This paper examines the pragmatic resources inherent in COVID-19-related cartoons depicting the impact of the virus on Nigerian society. Forty COVID-19-related cartoons, circulated on social media, were collected on Twitter and WhatsApp platforms between March and April 2020 as data. Multimodality and presupposition served as theoretical framework and descriptive research design was adopted. Findings reveal five socio-contextual domains, religion, health, economy, politics and governance nd family, characterizing the social experiences of Nigerians during the pandemic. Through the evocation of situational reality, pragmatic sarcasm, punning, and orientation to government insensitivity, the cartoonists evoke pragmatic functions of informing and warning about social behaviours in the religion, family and health domains; recreating situational realities on socioeconomic impacts in the domain of economy; and satirizing government policies and mocking politicians’ insincerity in the domain of politics and governance on sociopolitical experiences of Nigerians before and during the pandemic. The study concludes cartoons are a strong means of portraying societal realities and people’s experiences comically and graphically.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141056981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Semiosic Translation: a Bayesian-heuristic theory of translation and translating","authors":"S. Torres-Martínez","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0042","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the context of Semiosic Translation, two elements are essential for a translation to emerge: the body–brain–context interface (extended mind) and the sign systems making up a translation output. In this paper, I explain how a renewed view of the body as a Bayesian-heuristic Semiotic Prior helps to understand in a more holistic manner the motivations and agentive character of translation, defined herein as a phenomenological grasp of the world. Central to the present proposal is the idea that bodily self-stabilization (homeostasis) and brain-driven correction (allostasis) provide translator-agents with maps of action upon the world that are semiotic in nature. All this occurs thanks to information weighing (Bayesian) and cue-driven (heuristic) types of inference whereby exteroceptive (exogenous) and interoceptive (inner-body) signals converge to create a sense of bodily awareness responsible for the construction of the symbolic persona (the translator-agent).","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140415030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The cautionary tale of Peirce’s logical interpretant","authors":"Tony Jappy","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0043","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In 1904, Peirce described to Lady Welby a six-division typology composed of the sign, two objects, and a trio of interpretants for which he subsequently proposed numerous denominations. Of the three, the final interpretant was particularly problematic, and over the years Peirce experimented with at least eight different identifying terms such as “final,” “rational,” “normal,” “eventual,” etc. One group of interpretants is especially interesting as it only occurs in a single manuscript but has attracted considerable critical attention, namely the emotional, energetic, and logical interpretant series in a projected article of 1907. The paper examines the description of these, paying particular attention to the logical interpretant, and suggests how important aspects of the logic determining how Peirce defined them may have been neglected or ignored by researchers. It first shows how the group was presented, how the logical interpretant related to Peirce’s purpose in the article, how it related to a restricted conception of the dynamic object in the manuscript, and explains through an analysis of its logical complications why Peirce was led to abandon it. These considerations suggest that much of the critical attention that the logical interpretant in particular has generated might be incomplete or, more seriously, nonsense.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140415931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Surviving covid-19: a multimodal discourse analysis of new media covid-19 vaccination-related pictorials","authors":"O. Adebomi","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0035","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper explores the communicative acts deployed in covid-19 vaccination-related pictorials circulated on digital media platforms. Seven internet images were purposively sampled with a view to exploring their communicative functions as well as their generic structure. The data, which were culled from the websites of the World Health Organisation, Centre for Disease Control, Pan American Health Organisation and Facebook, were subjected to qualitative analysis. The study deployed van Leeuwen’s Multimodal Discourse Analysis and Yuen’s Generic Structure Potential as theoretical anchor. The multimodal communicative acts are deployed for instructive, illustrative, informative, persuasive, inviting and advisory purposes. Categories such as Lead, Emblem, Announcement and Enhancer are compulsory in the data while Display, Tag and Call-and-Visit Information are non-compulsory elements. This can be catalogued as: ‘Lead^(Display)^Emblem^(Announcement)^(Enhancer)^(Tag)^(Call-and-Visit Information)’. The study contends that the various semiotic resources deployed in the internet-circulated covid-19 images are used not only for informative and other communicative purposes but also to evoke attitudinal change towards and encourage widespread acceptance of the covid-19 vaccines.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139523158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Semiotics and political discourse in the post-truth era","authors":"Betül Çanakpınar, Murat Kalelioğlu, V. Günay","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The concept of post-truth has been on the world’s agenda since 2016. Perhaps this concept, which is frequently encountered in political life, provides the speaker with a freer speaking platform. Politicians, instead of presenting the reality to their constituents as it is, want to reshape this reality according to their own ideology and present it to the recipient. Politicians have certain objectives in creating such a virtual reality. These aims can be listed as keeping the voters, increasing the voting potential, and attracting undecided voters to their favor. The common result of all these aims is to gain political power or to remain in the existing power. Post-truth reality is constructed relatively more easily in social media environments. The construction of reality can be through beliefs or emotions. In such ways, the recipient is tried to be persuaded, and thus behavioral change is achieved. One of the most necessary subjects for this artificial reality atmosphere is the anti-subject. The idea that the anti-subject does not know the truth that we (you and I) know and believe and is trying to destroy it is the main theme of post-truth discourse. Politicians try to persuade the voters to believe in their own truth by expressing this idea to them. There are many examples of this around the world. In this study, firstly, the concept of post-truth is examined and its various definitions are discussed. The distinctions between the concepts of real and truth are analyzed and then it is explained how and for what purposes the concept of post-truth is used in politics. Following the comparison of post-truth and fake news, the concept is discussed within the framework of sender-receiver interaction in terms of communication. The concept is tried to be elucidated with the modalities such as /convincing/, /believing/, /being/, /appearing/. Besides, using the semiotic square, the study also tries to reveal the different purposes and forms of use of the concept of post-truth. As a result, it has been observed that the concept of post-truth is effective in many areas of contemporary societies, and rather than real information, expected and desired information has become more important.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139525867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}