"The Semiotics of Happiness "examines the rise of 'happiness' (and its various satellite terminologies) as a social and political semiotic, exploring its origins in the US and subsequent spread into the UK and across the globe. The research takes as its starting point the development of discussions about happiness in UK newspapers in which dedicated advocates began to claim that anew 'science of happiness' had been discovered and argued for social and political change on its behalf. Through an in-depth analysis of the written and visual rhetoric and subsequent activities of these influential 'claims-makers', Frawley argues that happiness became a serious political issue not because of a growing unhappiness in society nor a demand 'on the ground' for new knowledge about it, but rather because influential and dedicated 'insiders' took the issue on at a cultural moment when problems cast in emotional terms were particularly likely to make an impact.Emerging from the analysis is the observation that, while apparently positive and light-hearted, the concern with happiness implicitly affirms a 'vulnerability' model of human functioning, encourages a morality of low expectations, and in spite of the radical language used to describe it, is ultimately conservative and ideally suited to an era of 'no alternative' (to capitalism).

Cassirer thought of culture anthropologically as the entire complex of human modes of meaning and existence: it encompassed science, technology, language, and social life in addition to art, religion, and philosophy. This conception of culture and Cassirer's theory of symbolism anticipated much of later cultural theory. In this collection of essays, eminent Cassirer scholars examine the many different aspects of his thinking on this subject and demonstrate how pioneering and important it is to cultural studies.

Alberto Korda's famous photograph of Che Guevara titled the "Guerrillero Heroico" has been reproduced, modified and remixed countless times since it was taken on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba. This book looks again at this well-known mass-produced image to explore how an image can take on cultural force in diverse parts of the globe and legitimate varying positions and mass action in unexpected global political contexts. Analytically, the book develops a comparative analysis of how images become attached to a range of meanings that are absolutely inseparable from their contexts of use. Addressing the need for a fluid and responsive approach to the study of visual meaning-making, this book relies on multiple methodologies such as semiotics, research-creation, multimodal discourse analysis, ethnography and phenomenology and shows how each method has something to offer toward the understanding of the social and cultural work of images in our globally oriented cultures.

Luxury has been both celebrated and condemned throughout history right up to the present day. This groundbreaking text examines luxury and its relationship with desire, status, consumption and economic value, exploring why luxury remains prominent even in the context of a global recession. Using approaches from cultural studies, semiotic research and aesthetics, Luxury presents a wide range of case studies including urban space and new technologies, travel, interior design, cars, fashion ads and jewellery to explore what luxury represents, and why, in the contemporary world. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars across a range of fashion studies, cultural studies and sociology, and anyone interested in the power and allure of luxury today.

This volume presents an overview of new developments and applications of social semiotic theory. Pioneered by M.A.K. Halliday, social semiotic theory sees meaning as created through the interaction of texts (including writing, images, sound and space) within a given context. Divided into five sections, the contributors use social semiotic theory to analyse a range of contexts, including the classroom, the museum and cinema. The case studies show the range and scope of this method of analysis, and include: the school curriculum; literacy; print media; online resources; film; and advertising. Multimodal Semiotics will be of interest to academics researching social semiotic theory, systemic functional linguistics and applied linguistics.

One of the first attempts ever to present in a systematic way a non-western semiotic system. This book looks at Japanese esoteric Buddhism and is based around original texts, informed by explicit and rigorous semiotic categories. It is a unique introduction to important aspects of the thought and rituals of the Japanese Shingon tradition. Semiotic concerns are deeply ingrained in the Buddhist intellectual and religious discourse, beginning with the idea that the world is not what it appears to be, which calls for a more accurate understanding of the self and reality. This in turn results in sustained discussions on the status of language and representations, and on the possibility and methods to know reality beyond delusion; such peculiar knowledge is explicitly defined as enlightenment. Thus, for Buddhism, semiotics is directly relevant to salvation; this is a key point that is often ignored even by Buddhologists. This book discusses in depth the main elements of Buddhist semiotics as based primarily on original Japanese pre-modern sources. It is a crucial publication in the fields of semiotics and religious studies.

In an age where the use of electronic media is expanding and the nature of traditional texts and text-based learning is changing, new literacies are becoming increasingly important in the school classroom. This volume examines how new literacies can be used in the English curriculum, and presents a series of research-based studies applied to every level of school-age education. The chapters examine: early literacy; picture books; the internet; secondary school English; and the problems of assessment in the new literacy age.
This forward-thinking volume will be of interest to teachers and academics researching education, literacy, applied linguistics, and social semiotic theory.

"Semiotic Landscapes" is an exciting addition to the study of linguistic landscapes.
It looks at how landscape generates meaning and combines three major areas of scholarly interest each concerned with central dimensions of contemporary life: language and visual discourse, spatial practices, and also the changes bought about by global capitalism and ever increasing mediatization.
The editors look at: the textual/discursive construction of place; the use of space as a semiotic resource; the extent to which these processes are shaped by wider economic and political re-orderings of post-industrial or advanced capitalism; changing patterns of human mobility and transnational flows of ideas and images.
The collection demonstrates the way written discourse interacts with all other discursive modalities: visual images, nonverbal communication, architecture and the built environment. From the red light districts of Switzerland to the transgressive public art of graffiti, all landscape can be seen to generate meaning. "Semiotic Landscapes" looks at how and why, and places this meaning generation in an interdisciplinary and thoroughly modern cross-section of global trends.

Semiotics is long on theoretical, often obscure discourses, but short on applications that demonstrate with clarity the applicability of its methods. This book confronts a challenging object, the circus, and endeavors to describe its performances in ways that explain how circus acts produce meaning and cause a deep emotional involvement for their audiences. The approach is not top-down, such as would be a method that would dogmatically apply a particular theory to fully explain the phenomena in terms of this theory alone. Epistemologically, this book is an example of the bottom-up strategy, which consists of considering first the objects and heuristically calling upon methodological resources in a broad theoretical array to come to grips with the problems that are encountered. Any circus act is a complex event that has cognitive and emotional dimensions. It is also a part of a history and an institution, and cannot be abstracted from its cultural and sociological contexts. Thus the range of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches must include structural semiotics, biosemiotics, pragmatics, socio-semiotics, cultural anthropology, the cognitive sciences, the psychology and sociology of emotions, to name only the most important. But the ultimate focus of this book is to enable the readers to better understand the meaning of circus performances and to appreciate the skills and creativity of this traditional popular art, which constantly renews itself from generation to generation.

This book explores the strikingly similar ways in which information is encoded in nonverbal man-made signals (e.g., traffic lights and tornado sirens) and animal-evolved signals (e.g., color patterns and vocalizations). The book also considers some coding principles for reducing certain unwanted redundancies and explains how desirable redundancies enhance communication reliability.

Jack Hailman believes this work pioneers several aspects of analyzing human and animal communication. The book is the first to survey man-made signals as a class. It is also the first to compare such human-devised systems with signaling in animals by showing the highly similar ways in which the two encode information. A third innovation is generalizing principles of quantitative information theory to apply to a broad range of signaling systems. Finally, another first is distinguishing among types of redundancy and their separation into unwanted and desirable categories.

This remarkably novel book will be of interest to a wide readership. Appealing not only to specialists in semiotics, animal behavior, psychology, and allied fields but also to general readers, it serves as an introduction to animal signaling and to an important class of human communication.

Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, better known as Augustus, was the first Roman emperor and is one of the most iconic figures in world history. Two thousand years after his death, Augustus remains a strong presence in modern culture. The Semiotics of Caesar Augustus examines the meanings and significances of Augustus in Western literary and popular culture, from the 1960s until the turn of the millennium. Drawing on the theoretical background of semiotics and classical reception studies, Elina Pyy investigates the representation of Augustus in the postmodern novels of Kurt Vonnegut and Christoph Ransmayr, as well as in the genre of historical fiction, and in screen representations from both sides of the Atlantic. Scrutinizing what Caesar Augustus stood for in the postmodern world, and the main factors that influenced (and still influence) the modern reader's interpretation of him, this book is grounded on the premise that the past, being a system of signs based on our culturally shared understanding of them, is continuously created and reconstructed by the modern audience. Arguing that the 'many faces of the emperor' can be considered to be reactions to contemporary cultural, socio-political or emotional needs, The Semiotics of Caesar Augustus shows how his character was recurrently utilized to explain and understand the ways in which the discourses of power, liberty, oppression and humanity operated in the postmodern world.

Principled Headship equips you with the essential skills needed for a future in school leadership. Pioneering a programme of techniques and exercises using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and a combination of left and right brained approaches, it includes indirect suggestions, visual image associations and extensive work on personal beliefs. Written in a light and personal style, it will improve your ability to lead, communicate and motivate. The book covers a range of personal skills that are currently given insufficient prominence in teacher training. It provides you with practical ways of improving your awareness and your emotional, behavioural, linguistic and self-management skills. It also presents a fresh and practical approach to clarifying and consolidating a core of personal beliefs and values. If you are contemplating launching yourself into a teaching career, and especially if headship is your aim, Principled Headship is the book that will help you achieve your goals.

Semiotics of Musical Time investigates the link between musical time and the world of signs and symbols. It examines the extent to which musical time is a product of signs, sign systems, and sign-oriented behavior. Sound is discussed as a potential sign of time and of musical time. Inherent and recognizable temporal features are identified in a number of musical works. Time as a compositional concern is examined in the case of Igor Stravinsky and Karlheinz Stockhausen. A principal distinction between hearing associated with perception and listening associated with cognition provides the basis for the proposition that musical time is both unheard and imperceptible. The role of concepts, and their designations, is investigated to demonstrate that consciousness of musical time involves semiotic processes.

"Human Communication Theory and Research" introduces students to the growing body of theory and research in communication, demonstrating the integration between the communication efforts of interpersonal, organizational, and mediated settings. This second edition builds from the foundation of the original volume to demonstrate the rich array of theories, theoretical connections, and research findings that drive the communication discipline. Robert L. Heath and Jennings Bryant have added a chapter on new communication technologies and have increased depth throughout the volume, particularly in the areas of social meaning, critical theory and cultural studies, and organizational communication.
The chapters herein are arranged to provide insight into the breadth of studies unique to communication, acknowledging along the way the contributions of researchers from psychology, political science, and sociology. Heath and Bryant chart developments and linkages within and between ways of looking at communication. The volume establishes an orientation for the social scientific study of communication, discussing principles of research, and outlining the requirements for the development and evaluation of theories.
Appropriate for use in communication theory courses at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level, this text offers students insights to understanding the issues and possible answers to the question of what communication is in all forms and contexts.

If not by nature, then by habit, people tend to match one thing with another--man and woman, laughter and tears, sickness and health, fire and water, master and servant--thereby accentuating similarities and contrasts and opening a field of relations. In "The Mirror of Ideas," Michel Tournier examines these pairs and a host of others to demonstrate how pairing one object or idea with another generates the work of imagination, philosophy, and creative thinking of all kinds.
Tournier treats pairs both lowly and exalted--moving from fork and spoon, horse and bull, cat and dog, to fear and anguish, poetry and prose, body and soul, being and nothingness. Hardly an exhaustive inventory of traditional pairs, his selection nonetheless opens the door to patterns deeply embedded in culture and civilization, speech and writing, memory and habit. Possessed of both brilliant surfaces and surprising depths, Tournier's myriad reflections on the mirror of language reveal why his works have generated international attention and acclaim.

At his death in 1945, the influential German philosopher Ernst Cassirer left manuscripts for the fourth and final volume of his magnum opus, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene have edited these writings and translated them into English for the first time, bringing to completion Cassirer's major treatment of the concept of symbolic form. Ernst Cassirer believed that all the forms of representation that human beings use-language, myth, art, religion, history, science-are symbolic, and the concept of symbolic forms was the basis of his thinking on these subjects. In this volume, which contains one text written in 1928 and another in about 1940, Cassirer presents the metaphysics that is implicit in his epistemology and phenomenology of culture. The earlier text grounds the philosopher's conception of symbolic forms on a notion of human nature that makes a general distinction between Geist (mind) and life. In the later text, he discusses Basis Phenomena, an original concept not mentioned in any of his previous works, and he compares his own viewpoint with those of other modern philosophers, notably Bergson and Heidegger.

A companion volume to Art and Illusion, The Image & the Eye provides a comprehensive and intriguing overview of art and our perception of its different dimensions. In a series of landmark papers and lectures, Professor Gombrich presents his thoughts and arguments on subjects as diverse as the tricks of photography with perspective, the problems of expressing emotion through art and how pictorial representation can alter the way in which we see the world. Like any work from Gombrich's vast oeuvre, these masterly pieces display a lively curiosity and an infectious enthusiasm for understanding the challenges presented by art.

100 Symbols That Changed The World looks at the genesis and adoption of the world's most recognizable symbols. Universal symbols have been used as a form of communication from the Bronze Age, when the dynasties of ancient Egypt began the evolution of the thousand characters used in Egyptian hieroglyphics. In pre-Columbian America the Mayan civilization set out on a similar course, using pictures as a narrative text. With the adoption of written languages, symbols have come to represent an illustrated shorthand. The dollar sign in America evolved from colonists' trade with the Spanish, and the widespread acceptance of Spanish currency in deals. Merchants' clerks would shorten the repeated entry of "pesos" in their accounts ledgers, which needed to be written with a 'p' and an 's'. A single letter 's' with the vertical stroke of the 'p' was much quicker. Historically correct dollar signs have a single stroke through the 'S'. Symbols are also used to impart quick, recognizable safety advice. The radio activity symbol was designed in Berkley in 1946 to warn of the dangers of radioactive substances - and following the widespread use of gas masks in WWII, the trefoil symbol echoed the shape of the mask. There are many symbols of affiliation, not only to religious groups, but support of political causes or even brand loyalty. Symbols are used for identification, military markings and recognition of compatibility. They allow users to convey a large amount of information in a short space, such as the iconography of maps or an electrical circuit diagram. Symbols are an essential part of the architecture of mathematics. And in the case of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics - the first Games to be held in an Asian country - symbols allowed the organizers to create event signage that wouldn't be lost in translation. The set of Olympic sports pictograms for the Games was a novel solution, and one that was added to in Mexico and Munich. Organized chronologically, 100 Symbols That Changed The World looks at the genesis and adoption of the world's most recognizable symbols.

The Symbolic Forms has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer's works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science-the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. "These three volumes alone (apart from Cassirer's other papers and books) make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if 'The Golden Bough' had been written in philosophical rather than in historical terms."-F.I.G. Rawlins, Nature

A comparative history of the practices, technologies, institutions, and people that created distinct literary traditions around the world, from ancient to modern times Literature is such a familiar and widespread form of imaginative expression today that its existence can seem inevitable. But in fact very few languages ever developed the full-fledged literary cultures we take for granted. Challenging basic assumptions about literatures by uncovering both the distinct and common factors that led to their improbable invention, How Literatures Begin is a global, comparative history of literary origins that spans the ancient and modern world and stretches from Asia and Europe to Africa and the Americas. The book brings together a group of leading literary historians to examine the practices, technologies, institutions, and individuals that created seventeen literary traditions: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, English, Romance languages, German, Russian, Latin American, African, African American, and world literature. In these accessible accounts, which are framed by general and section introductions and a conclusion by the editors, literatures emerge as complex weaves of phenomena, unique and deeply rooted in particular times and places but also displaying surprising similarities. Again and again, new literatures arise out of old, come into being through interactions across national and linguistic borders, take inspiration from translation and cultural cross-fertilization, and provide new ways for groups to imagine themselves in relation to their moment in history. Renewing our sense of wonder for the unlikely and strange thing we call literature, How Literatures Begin offers fresh opportunities for comparison between the individual traditions that make up the rich mosaic of the world's literatures. The book is organized in four sections, with seventeen literatures covered by individual contributors: Part I: East and South Asia: Chinese (Martin Kern), Japanese (Wiebke Denecke), Korean (Ksenia Chizhova), and Indian (Sheldon Pollock); Part II: The Mediterranean: Greek (Deborah Steiner), Latin (Joseph Farrell), Hebrew (Jacqueline Vayntrub), Syriac (Alberto Rigolio), and Arabic (Gregor Schoeler); Part III: European Vernaculars: English (Ingrid Nelson), Romance languages (Simon Gaunt), German (Joel Lande), and Russian (Michael Wachtel); Part IV: Modern Geographies: Latin American (Rolena Adorno), African (Simon Gikandi), African American (Douglas Jones), and world literature (Jane O. Newman).

The changes taking place in our aesthetic and emotional sensibility: a deep mutation in the psychosphere, caused by semio-capitalism. Franco "Bifo" Berardi's newest book analyzes the contemporary changes taking place in our aesthetic and emotional sensibility-changes the author claims are the result of semio-capitalism's capturing of the inner resources of the subjective process: our experience of time, our sensibility, the way we relate to each other, and our ability to imagine a future. Precarization and fractalization of labor have provoked a deep mutation in the psychosphere, and this can be seen in the rise of psychopathologies such as post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, panic, and attention deficit disorder. Sketching out an aesthetic genealogy of capitalist globalization, Berardi shows how we have arrived at a point of such complexity in the semiotic flows of capital that we can no longer process its excessive currents of information. A swarm effect now rules: it has become impossible to say "no." Social behavior is trapped in inescapable patterns of interaction coded by techno-linguistic machines, smartphones, screens of every size, and all of these sensory and emotional devices end up destroying our organism's sensibility by submitting it to the stress of competition and acceleration. Arguing for disentanglement rather than resistance, Berardi concludes by evoking the myth of La Malinche, the daughter of a noble Aztec family. It is a tale of a translator and traitor who betrayed her own people, yet what the myth portends is the rebirth of the world from the collapse of the old.

Ferdinand de Saussure is commonly regarded as one of the fathers of 20th Century Linguistics. His lectures, posthumously published as the Course in General Linguistics ushered in the structuralist mode which marked a key turning point in modern thought. Philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan, the anthropologist ClaudeLevi-Strauss and linguists such as Noam Chomsky all found an important influence for their work in the pages of Saussure's text. Published 100 years after Saussure's death, this new edition of Roy Harris's authoritative translation is now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series with a substantial new introduction exploring Saussure's contemporary influence and importance.

This book provides a forum for theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to research on language(s), multimodality and public space, which will advance new ways of understanding the sociocultural, ideological and historical role of communication practices and experienced lives in a globalised world. Linguistic Landscape is viewed as a metaphor and expanded to include a wide variety of discursive modalities: imagery, non-verbal communication, silence, tactile and aural communication, graffiti, smell, etc. The chapters in this book cover a range of geographical locations, and capture the history, motives, uses, causes, ideologies, communication practices and conflicts of diverse forms of languages as they may be observed in public spaces of the physical environment. The book is anchored in a variety of theories, methodologies and frameworks, from economics, politics and sociology to linguistics and applied linguistics, literacy and education, cultural geography and human rights.

Social Semiotics is a major new textbook in communication and cultural studies. It offers a comprehensive and original approach to the study of the ways in which meaning is constituted in social life. Hodge and Kress begin from the assumption that signs and messages -- the subject matter of semiotics -- must always be situated within the context of social relations and processes. They then show what is involved in analysing different kinds of messages, from literary texts, TV programmes and billboards to social interactions in the family and the school. While presenting a judicious assessment of different perspectives, Hodge and Kress also develop their own distinctive and highly fruitful approach, demonstrating how semiotics can be integrated with the social analysis of power and ideology, space and time, and gender and class. Social Semiotics is richly illustrated with examples and written in a clear style which does not presuppose prior knowledge of the field. It will become a key textbook for courses in communications, media and cultural studies and will be of general interest to students of sociology, literature and linguistics.