This book challenges the framing of comedic acts as apolitical and it adopts a multimodal critical discourse approach to interrogate the performance of comedy as a form of power. It proposes using Bakhtin's carnivalesque as the analytic tool to distil for readers key differences between humour as banal and humour as critical (and political) in today's social media. Drawing from critical theory and cultural studies, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach in formulating a contemporary view of power that reflects social realities not only in the digital economy but also in a world that is increasingly authoritarian. With the proposition of newer theoretical lenses in this book, scholars and social scientists can then find a way to shift the conversation to uncover the evolving voices of (existing and newer) power holders in the shared digital space; and to view current social realities as a continual project in unpacking and understanding the adaptive ways of the human spirit.

Video games are among the most popular media on the planet, and billions of people inhabit these virtual worlds on a daily basis. This book investigates the architecture of video games, the buildings, roads and cities in which gamers play out their roles. Examining both the aesthetic aspects and symbolic roles of video game architecture as they relate to gameplay, Gabriele Aroni tackles a number of questions, including: - How digital architecture relates to real architecture - Where the inspiration for digital gaming architecture comes from, and how it moves into new directions - How the design of virtual architecture influences gameplay and storytelling. Looking at how architecture in video games communicates and interacts with players, this book combines semiotics and architecture theory to display how architecture is used in a variety of situations, with different aims and results. Using case studies from NaissanceE, Assassin's Creed II and Final Fantasy XV, The Semiotics of Architecture in Video Games discusses the techniques used to create successful virtual spaces and proposes a framework to analyse video game architecture, ultimately explaining how to employ architectural solutions in video games in a systematic and effective way.

This book introduces the concept of Inquiry Graphics, which positions graphics as significant and integrated tools of inquiry in higher education teaching and research. Simply put, the book explores the nuances of thinking and learning with digital images as types of graphics. Although the amount of images in modern life is overwhelming, they have been scarcely explored and understood as integral to concept and knowledge development within higher education practice. This book reflects on why and how digital photographs can be adapted and used in teaching and research contexts. It provides practical examples and applications, as well as theoretical foundations, building on a range of perspectives, such as Peircean triadic sign and approaches to conceptual development. Ultimately, it builds on diverse approaches to make a case for exploring knowledge and analysing concepts and images in a non-dualist and pluralist manner. This unique book will appeal to scholars and students in education studies and educational research, media and communication, and anyone interested in applied semiotics, visual and multimodal pedagogy and learning.

An Introduction to Applied Semiotics presents nineteen semiotics tools for text and image analysis. Covering a variety of different schools and approaches, together with the author's own original approach, this is a full and synthetic introduction to semiotics. This book presents general tools that can be used with any semiotic product. Drawing on the work of Fontanille, Genette, Greimas, Hebert, Jakobson, Peirce, Rastier and Zilberberg, the tools deal with the analysis of themes and action, true and false, positive and negative, rhythm narration and other elements. The application of each tool is illustrated with analyses of a wide range of texts and images, from well-known or distinctive literary texts, philosophical or religious texts or images, paintings, advertising and everyday signs and symbols. Each chapter has the same structure - summary, theory and application, making it ideal for course use. Covering both visual and textual objects, this is a key text for all courses in semiotics and textual analysis within linguistics, communication studies, literary theory, design, marketing and related areas.

This unique book, inspired by the work of Umberto Eco - one of the greatest semioticians of all times - provides a compelling overview of current developments in semiotic research, bringing together various academic voices and critical reflections on the nature and function of signs, signification, and communication. Contributors, including Eco himself, discuss the status quo of the discipline, its scope, theoretical orientations, and methodological approaches, shedding light on the cognitive and philosophical complexity of the meaning-making process and form-meaning interfaces. The book is an outcome of the SIVO Signum-Idea-Verbum-Opus project initiated by Umberto Eco's keynote address during his visit at the University of Lodz in 2015. More theoretical insights and further explorations into contemporary semiosphere can be found in Current Perspectives in Semiotics: Texts, Genres, and Representations, published simultaneously by Peter Lang.

This book is the beginning of a conversation across Social Semiotics, Translanguaging, Complexity Theory and Radical Sociolinguistics. In its explorations of meaning, multimodality, communication and emerging language practices, the book includes theoretical and empirical chapters that move toward an understanding of communication in its dynamic complexity, and its social semiotic and situated character. It relocates current debates in linguistics and in multimodality, as well as conceptions of centers/margins, by re-conceptualizing communicative practice through investigation of indigenous/oral communities, street art performances, migration contexts, recycling artefacts and signage repurposing. The book takes an innovative approach to both the form and content of its scholarly writing, and will be of interest to all those involved in interdisciplinary thinking, researching and writing.

This book shows that the semantic analysis of modal notions of possibility and necessity can be used to enhance our understanding of the interpretation of reports of belief or emotional state. It introduces intuitive notation and terminology to express ideas in modern theories of modal interpretation that are normally represented in complex logical formulas, effectively updates the 1960s-era link between possible worlds and the semantics of propositional attitude ascriptions, and reconciles two disparate views of the role of events in semantic interpretation, that of Donald Davidson and that of David Lewis. It reduces a host of variable behaviors of propositional attitude ascription to an intuitive and precise distinction between ascriptions that merely express a commitment to propositional content versus ones that attribute a mental state to the holder of the propositional attitude. This leads to an explanation of the nature and effects of the language disorder of fluent aphasia.

This book aims to explain social variation in language, otherwise the meaning and motivation of language change in its social aspect. It is the expanded and improved 2nd edition of the author's self-published volume with the same title, based on revised and adapted posts on the author's Languagelore blog. Each vignette calls attention to points of grammar and style in contemporary American English, especially cases where language is changing due to innovative usage. In every case where an analysis contains technical or recondite vocabulary, a Glossary precedes the body of the essay, and readers can also consult the Master Glossary which contains all items glossed in the text. The unique form of the book's presentation is aimed at readers who are alert to the peculiarities of present-day American English as they pertain to pronunciation, grammar, and style, without "dumbing down" or compromising the language in which the explanations are couched. Praise for the First Edition "Michael Shapiro is one of the great thinkers in the realm of linguistics and language use, and his integrated understanding of language and speech in its semantic and pragmatic structure, grammatical and historical grounding, and colloquial to literary stylistic variants is perhaps unmatched today. This book is a treasure to be shared." Robert S. Hatten, The University of Texas at Austin "Jewel of a book...a gift to us all from Michael Shapiro. Like a Medieval Chapbook it can be a kind of companion whose vignettes on language use can be randomly and profitably consulted at any moment. Some may consider these vignettes opinionated. That would be to ignore how deeply anchored each vignette is in Shapiro's long and rare polyglot experience with language. It could well serve as a night table book, taken up each night to read and reflect upon --to ponder--both in the twilight mind and in the deeper reaches of associative somnolence. There is nothing else like it that I know of." James W. Fernandez, The University of Chicago

While multimodality is one of the most influential semiotic theories for analysing media artefacts, the concepts of this theory are heterogeneous and widespread. The book takes the differences between approaches in Germany and those in international contexts as a starting point, offering new insights into the analysis of multimodal documents. It features contributions by researchers from more than 15 nations and various disciplines, including theoretical reflections on multimodality, thoughts about methodological, empirical, and experimental approaches as well as analyses of various multimodal artefacts.

This is the first volume to deal specifically with the quality of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) in Europe, with contributions from the UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, France and Germany. Drawing on the results of the EU-funded project DTV4ALL, the book looks at the issue of quality in the reception of SDH in Europe as a combination of three factors: what viewers think about SDH, how they understand these subtitles and how they view them. The viewers' preferences have been obtained through questionnaires and their comprehension has been analysed with tests, involving clips with SDH and questions. The viewers' perception has been measured with eye-tracking technology, involving the analysis of 71,070 subtitles in what is so far the largest international eye-tracking study on subtitling. With this research, we have sought to obtain both subjective (preferences) and objective (comprehension and perception) data that can inform national guidelines on SDH. The book also introduces the notion of viewing speed and points to the existence of certain universals of SDH and subtitling that can contribute to advance our understanding of how different types of viewers from different nationalities view, process and understand subtitles as a means to access audiovisual content.

Translation scholars have for a long time been arguing in favor of a shift in paradigms to redefine the relationship between translation and the spreading of knowledge. Although a substantial share of worldwide knowledge is conveyed thanks to translation, the effects of this state of affairs upon the ways in which knowledge is actually built are all too rarely taken into account. This is particularly the case in the humanities. The papers presented in this volume fall into three thematic categories - cultural transfer, terminology and literature. The authors are all scholars in the humanities, and some of them are also translators. They analyze the effects of translation in diverse domains such as the intercultural exchanges among Far Eastern countries, and between Asia and the West; the constitution of terminologies; clinical practices in psychoanalysis; and the impact on the definition of literary genres. Each contribution shows how the act of translation is an integral part of the humanities, producing effects which may often be unforeseen and surprising but are always occasions for innovation. This volume contains contributions in English and French.

The body is a site bearing multiple signs of cultural inscriptions. People's postures, use of space, dress codes, speech particularities, facial expressions, tone qualities, gaze, and gestures are codes that send messages to observers. These messages differ across cultures and times. Some of these non-verbal messages are taken to be conscious or subconscious projection of a sense of personal or collective identity. The various forms of "body talk" may flag personal distinction, style, uniqueness or politics, in which case, the body and its presentations become stances of the self. Different from this, body talk may exhibit a society's or culture's standardized norms of valuation with respect to what conforms or deviates from expectations.The subject of this anthology is non-verbal communication signals with contributing studies from societies and cultures of Africa and African Diaspora. The goals are to document popular gestures, explore their meanings, and understand how they frame interactions and colour perception.The anthology is also aimed at offering interdisciplinary perspectives on the problematics of non-verbal communication by making sense of the various ways that different cultures speak without "voice", and to examine how people and groups make their presence felt as social, cultural and political actors. Some of the contributions include case studies, descriptive codification, theoretical analyses and performative studies. The issues highlighted range from film and literature studies, gender studies, history, religion, popular cultural, and extends to the virtual space. Other studies provide a linguistic treatment of non-verbal communication and use it as means of explicating perception and stereotyping.

This book presents cutting-edge research into the complex interrelationships between linguistic diversity and ideology. It provides insight into how institutions and individual stakeholders carry ideologies forward into the discursive space through policies, propaganda or individual perceptions and reflections. The chapters focus on different European localities (UK, Central Europe, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Italy), social actors (migrant communities, citizens, and policy-makers), and institutional contexts such as public bodies (European, national) and private enterprises. Understanding ideology as a social act of conceptualization, the book contributes to the growing interdisciplinary body of linguistic research into the social theory of meaning and change.

Everyday consumers buy into the concept of brands and their associated meanings - the perception of quality, a symbolic relationship, a vicarious experience, or even a sense of identity. Marketing Semiotics suggests that the extent to which consumers recognize, internalize, and relate to brand meanings is not only an academic question. These meanings contribute to 'brand equity', the financial value of intangible brand benefits that exceed the use value of goods, and impacts upon a firm's financial performance. Therefore, the management of brand equity demands first and foremost the management of brand meanings, or semiotics.
The book uses structural semiotics, a discipline that extends the laws of structural linguistics to the analysis of verbal, visual, and spatial sign systems, to shed light on the cultural codes and discourse of brands. It proposes that semiotic research should form the cornerstone of brand equity management, since brands rely so heavily on sign systems that contribute to profitability by distinguishing brands from simple commodities, from competitors, and engaging consumers in the brand world.
The book includes dozens of global business cases where semiotics has been used to refocus, reposition, or extend the brand to new products, customers, and markets. Drawing upon twenty years of academic and consulting experience, the book provides actionable direction for steering brands through technological and cultural change, differentiating brands in the competitive environment, and counteracting the natural depletion of brand meaning over time.

"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on inhis previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature... thiscollection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." --Times Literary Supplement

The Routledge Companion to Semiotics provides the ideal introduction to semiotics, containing engaging essays from an impressive range of international leaders in the field.

Topics covered include:

• the history, development, and uses of semiotics
• key theorists, including Saussure, Peirce and Sebeok
• crucial and contemporary topics such as biosemiotics, sociosemiotics and semioethics
• the semiotics of media and culture, nature and cognition.

Featuring an extended glossary of key terms and thinkers as well as suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable reference guide for students of semiotics at all levels.

The Routledge Companion to Semiotics provides the ideal introduction to semiotics, containing engaging essays from an impressive range of international leaders in the field.

Topics covered include:

• the history, development, and uses of semiotics
• key theorists, including Saussure, Peirce and Sebeok
• crucial and contemporary topics such as biosemiotics, sociosemiotics and semioethics
• the semiotics of media and culture, nature and cognition.

Featuring an extended glossary of key terms and thinkers as well as suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable reference guide for students of semiotics at all levels.

Interrogating the relatively new field of cognitive semiotics, this book explores shared issues in cognitive science and semiotics. Building on research from recent decades, Per Aage Brandt investigates the potential of a cognitive semiotic approach to enhance our understanding of language, thought and semiosis in general. Introducing a critical, non-standard approach both to cognitive science and to semiotics, this book discusses the understanding of meaning and mind through four major dimensions; mental architecture, mental spaces, discourse coherence and eco-organization. Encompassing a rich variety of topics and debates, Cognitive Semiotics outlines several bridges between 'continental' and 'analytic' thinking in the study of semantics, pragmatics, discourse and the philosophy of language and mind.

Each chapter of this book analyzes the rhetoric of speeches by major British or American politicians and shows how metaphor is used systematically to create political myths of monsters, villains and heroic leaders. Metaphors are shown to interact with other figures of speech to communicate subliminal meanings by drawing on the unconscious emotional association of words. This book is an innovative study of interest to students and researchers in discourse analysis, political communication, journalism and media studies.

What is the relationship between the ideas of the Enlightenment and the culture and ideology of the French Revolution? This book takes up that classic question by concentrating on changing conceptions of language and, especially, signs during the second half of the eighteenth century. The author traces, first, the emergence of a new interest in the possibility of gestural communication within the philosophy, theater, and pedagogy of the last decades of the Old Regime. She then explores the varied uses and significance of a variety of semiotic experiments, including the development of a sign language for the deaf, within the language politics of the Revolution. A Revolution in Language shows not only that many key revolutionary thinkers were unusually preoccupied by questions of language, but also that prevailing assumptions about words and other signs profoundly shaped revolutionaries' efforts to imagine and to institute an ideal polity between 1789 and the start of the new century. This book reveals the links between Enlightenment epistemology and the development of modern French political culture.

Starting from the minimal principle of generative anthropology--that human culture originates as "the deferral of violence through representation"--the author proposes a new understanding of the fundamental concepts of metaphysics and an explanation of the historical problematic that underlies the postmodern "end of culture."
Part I begins with the paradoxical emergence of the "vertical" sign from the "horizontal" world of appetite. Two persons reaching for the same object are a minimal model of this emergence; their "pragmatic paradox" can be resolved only by substituting the representation of the object for its appropriation. The nature of paradox and the related notion of irony, as well as the fundamental concepts of being, thinking, and signification, are rethought on the basis of this triangular model, leading to an anthropological interpretation of the origin of philosophy and semiotics in Plato's "Ideas." Part I concludes with an exploration of the psychoanalytic categories of the unconscious and the erotic.
Part II develops the idea that material exchange originates in the "sparagmos" or violent rendering of the sacrificial victim from which each participant obtains a roughly equal portion. The dependence of the process on the central victimary figure culminates in the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jews, whose crucial role in Western culture is their rejection of the central image in favor of peripheral exchange. As a result, postmodern dialogue becomes dominated by the rhetoric of victimage, and the culture of centrality gives way to an aesthetic of the marginal.

The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward.

Advance Praise for "Law, Culture and Visual Studies "

"This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays explores the many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a must read that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. "

Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London "

Law, Culture & Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. "

Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA

"This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law s representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection.
"Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities & the Arts, Australian National University, Australia

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The human body is a primary source of meaning-making, with the body conveying over two-thirds of our messages. But how can we understand these physical communicative cues? How are they being expressed and exploited in new media and multimodal online and mobile interaction? Offering an in-depth guide to help you investigate and understand real and virtual nonverbal communication using semiotic theory, this book assumes little previous knowledge of semiotics or linguistics. With in-depth, comparative case studies, each chapter deals with a traditional aspect of nonverbal communication, such as facial expressions, touch, and gesture, before extending the discussion to new media and cyberspace. Explaining the issues step by step and supported by exercises, directed further reading and a glossary of key terms, Understanding Nonverbal Communication provides you with all the tools you need to understand how nonverbal communication unfolds in all kinds of contexts, and the kinds of messages that it makes possible.