Existential semiotics is a new paradigm which combines classical semiotics with continental philosophy. It does not mean a return to existentialism, albeit philosophers from Hegel and Kierkegaard to Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre are its sources of inspiration. It introduces completely new sign categories and concepts to the field, recasting the whole of semiotics, communication and signification as integral to a transcendental art. The volume contains essays on music, the voice, silence, calligraphy, metaphysics, myth, aesthetics, entropy, cultural heritage, film, the Bible, among other subjects.

This original study examines Jean-Francois Lyotard's philosophical concept of the differend and details its unexplored implications for literature. it provides a new framework with which to understand the discourse itself, from its Homeric beginnings to postmodern works by authors such as Michael Ondaatje and Jonathan Safran Foer.

This edited volume is the first specialized book in English about the Swiss zoologist and anthropologist Adolf Portmann (1897-1982). It provides a clarification and update of Portmann's theoretical approach to the phenomenon of life, characterized by terms such as "inwardness" and "self-presentation." Portmann's concepts of secondary altriciality and the social uterus have become foundational in philosophical anthropology, providing a benchmark of the difference between humans and animals. In its content, this book brings together two approaches: historical and philosophical analysis of Portmann's studies in the life sciences and application of Portmann's thought in the fields of biology, anthropology, and biosemiotics. Significant attention is also paid to the methodological implications of his intended reform of biology. Besides contributions from contemporary biologists, philosophers, and historians of science, this volume also includes a translation of an original essay by Portmann and a previously unpublished manuscript from his most remarkable English-speaking interpreter, philosopher Marjorie Grene. Portmann's conception of life is unique in its focus on the phenomenal appearance of organisms. Confronted with the enormous amount of scientific knowledge being produced today, it is even clearer than it was during Portmann's lifetime that although biologists employ physical and chemical methods, biology itself is not (only) physics and chemistry. These exact methods must be applied according to what has meaning for living beings. If biology seeks to understand organisms as autonomous agents, it needs to take display and the interpretation of appearances as basic characteristics of life. The topic of this book is significantly relevant to the disciplines of theoretical biology, philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and biosemiotics. The recent epigenetic turn in biology, acknowledging the interconnections between organismal development, morphology and communication, presents an opportunity to revisit Portmann's work and to reconsider and update his primary ideas in the contemporary context.

This Pivot studies the influence of Julia Kristeva's work on American literary and film studies. Chapters consider this influence via such innovative approaches as Hortense Spillers's and Jack Halberstam's to Paule Marshall's fiction and Bram Stoker's Dracula, respectively. The book also considers how critics in the United States receive Kristeva's work on French feminism, semiotics, and psychoanalytic writing in complex, controversial ways, especially on the question of marginalized populations. Examples include Kelly Oliver and Benigno Trigo on Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil as well as Frances Restuccia on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Carol Mastrangelo Bove also examines Kristeva's take on the US in her essays and fiction, which provide a vital part of the dialogue with American critics. Like them, Bove incorporates Kristeva's thought in her own creative readings of little-known authors and directors including Christiane Rochefort, Nancy Savoca, and Frank Lentricchia.

Semiotic Margins analyses the meaning making potential of not only language, but modalities like laughter, music, colour, and architectural spaces. By examiningresources often positioned on the side-line of mainstream semiotic accounts, this study raises the question of what counts as part of language and communication and why. Beginning with the more established nonverbal resources of communication, four major themes of modalities of meaning are covered. The investigation of music and space looks at how semiotic systems in classical music interact. Using children's books, the relationship between images and verbal meaning is then explored, presenting implications for student literacy as well as a methodology for supporting children excluded from mainstream literary practices. Finally new approaches to transcribing representations in screen-based technologies are presentedthrough an examination of television advertisements. Semiotic Margins will appealtolinguists and semioticians wishing to pursue research in systemic functional linguistics and multimodal discourse analysis.

Lighting and shadows are used within a range of art forms to create aesthetic effects. Piotr Sadowski's study of light and shadow in Weimar cinema and contemporaneous visual arts is underpinned by the evolutionary semiotic theories of indexicality and iconicity. These theories explain the unique communicative and emotive power of light and shadow when used in contemporary indexical media including the shadow theatre, silhouette portraits, camera obscura, photography and film. In particular, Sadowski highlights the aesthetic and emotional significance of shadows. The 'cast shadow', as an indexical sign, maintains a physical connection with its near-present referent, such as a hidden person, stimulating a viewer's imagination and provoking responses including anxiety or curiosity. The 'cinematic shadow' plays a stylistic role, by enhancing image texture, depth of field, and tonal contrast of cinematic moments. Such enhancements are especially important in monochromatic films, and Sadowski interweaves the book with accounts of seminal Weimar cinema moments. Sadowski's book is distinctive for combining historical materials and theoretical approaches to develop a deeper understanding of Weimar cinema and other contemporary art forms. The Semiotics of Light and Shadows is an ideal resource for both scholars and students working in linguistics, semiotics, film, media, and visual arts.

This book reflects the chronological changes in Chinese cultural values, social relations, economy and politics by critically analyzing the Chinese advertising discourse. The work is based on research into the ideological values portrayed in Chinese household appliance advertisements in the 1980s - 1990s. The analytical framework covers a variety of methods: critical discourse analysis, chronological analysis, visual and verbal analysis, and qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings suggest that ideological values consciously or unconsciously manifested by the visual and verbal devices in the Chinese advertisements moved in a pattern from simplicity to diversity, from being politically-oriented to being economically and profit-oriented, from conservatism to globalization and westernization, in keeping with the progression of the Chinese economic reform. The findings further indicate that the ideological values in the Chinese household appliance advertisements are embedded in the advertising language and illustrations. Lastly, the work reveals the reality of Chinese politics, economy and society at a time when China experienced the growth of the market economy and evolution of Chinese mainstream ideologies, and demonstrates the impacts of these changes on the ideological meanings in advertisements. This book will help readers discover the more profound meanings behind the superficial content of Chinese advertisements.

Our understanding of CS Peirce, and his semiotics, is largely influenced by a twentieth century perspective that prioritizes the sign as a cultural artifact, or as one that that 'distorts', in some way, our understanding of the empirical world. Such a perspective will always undermine appreciation of Peirce as a philosopher who viewed signs as the very mechanisms that enable us to understand reality through concept formation. The key to this repositioning of Peirce is to place his work in the broad frame of Hegelian philosophy. This book evaluates, in detail, the parallels that exist between Peircean and Hegelian thought, highlighting their convergences and also the points at which Peirce departs from Hegel's position. It also considers the work of Vygotsky on concept formation showing that both are, in fact, working within the same Hegelian template. This book, therefore, contributes to our broader understanding of Peircean semiotics. But by drawing in Vygotsky, under the same theoretical auspices, it demonstrates that Peirce has much to offer contemporary educational learning theory.

Positioned within the field of linguistics and multisemiotic discourse analysis, the theme of this book is the multifaceted interaction between text and image in different discourse genres, and it offers critical views on how we talk and show our experience of the world around us.

Warning signs are all around us. In ancient Egypt, tombs were lavishly adorned with signs and symbols warning of the dire consequences that would befall any robbers and thieves. And yet these signs were often read as provocations and challenges. Why was this? And how could we more effectively communicate dangers from our world, such as toxic waste, to future civilizations? This book examines and evaluates the kinds of signs, symbols, narratives and other semiotic strategies humans have used across time to communicate the sense of danger. From paleolithic cave art and ancient monuments to the dangers of nuclear waste, carbon emissions and other pollution, Marcel Danesi explores how danger has been encoded in language, discourse, and symbolism. At the same time, the book puts forward a plan for a more effective 'semiotising' of risk and peril, calling on linguists, semioticians and agencies to face up our collective responsibilities, and work together to more clearly communicate vitally important warnings about the dangers we've left behind to civilizations beyond the semiotic gap.

This book opens readers' eyes to something they see all the time but take for granted: street signs. It is a portrait of the signs on modern English streets: what they look like, who and what they are for, how they link to English history and how they form part of life in multilingual England today. It describes how their shapes, materials, letters, vocabulary, and grammar differ from other forms of written English, using a framework based on linguistics, typography and writing systems research. It provides readable and entertaining insights into an important use of written English, illustrated with over 400 examples of street signs. The book represents a starting point for the study of street signs as an academic area in its own right.

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 multidisciplinary anthology discusses the problems and possibilities of digital culture and the information age. It focuses on media critical, analytical and philosophical approaches to contemporary media cultures, future technologies, and electronic utopias. The following topics are among those discussed: the textual theory of hypertext multimedia literature; phenomenology; Nelson Goodman's philosophy of languages; Jean-Luc Godard as media philosopher; American television discourse; Internet in Russia; tomorrow's media environments; and the controversial advertising of Benetton. The main disciplines shared by the contributors are philosophy, semiotics, and media and communication studies.

This book examines the issues surrounding the problematic perpetuation of dominant sign systems through the framework of 'semioethics'. Semioethics is concerned with using semiotics as a powerful tool to critique the status quo and move beyond the reproduction of the dominant order of communication. The aim is to present semioethics as a method to engage semiotics in an active rethink of our ability as humans to affect change.

This pioneering book presents a reconstitution of Charles Sanders Peirce philosophical system as a coherent architecture of concepts that form a unified theory of reality. Historically, the majority of Peircean scholars adopted a thematic approach to study isolated topics such as semiotics and pragmatism without taking into account the author's broader philosophical framework, which led to a poor and fragmented understanding of Peirce's work. In this volume, professor Ivo Assad Ibri, past president of The Charles Sanders Peirce Society and a leading figure in the Brazilian community of Peircean scholars, adopts a systemic approach to Peirce's thought and presents Peirce's scientific metaphysics as a deep ontological architecture based on a semiotic logic and on pragmatism as criteria of meaning. Originally published in Portuguese, this book became a classic among Brazilian Peircean scholars by presenting a conceptual matrix capable of providing a clear reference system to ground the thematic studies into the broader Peircean system. Now translated to English, this reviewed, amplified and updated edition aims to make this contributions available to the international community of Peircean scholars and to serve as a tool to understand Peirce's work in a more systemic way by integrating concepts such as experience, phenomenon, existence and reality, as well as theories such as Chance, Continuity, Objective Idealism, Cosmology and Pragmatism, in a coherent system that reveals Peirce's complex metaphysical architecture. "As the philosophical reputation of Charles S. Peirce continues to rise to first-tier prominence in the history of American philosophy, Ivo Ibri's Kosmos Noetos assumes a unique status in both a pioneering and a magisterial work of transcontinental Peirce scholarship. This original work of this internationally renowned scholar and editor, and Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of San Paulo, penetrates to the heart of Peirce's architectonic system of phenomenological, metaphysical, and semiotic categories which heuristically characterize our world as "a universe perfused with signs." Ibri's own synergistic commentary on the radiating registers of Peirce's cosmogonically and pragmatistically conceived "one intelligible theory of the universe" also instructively contributes to the illumination of significant nodes of interface with a range of relevant theoretical trends in the contemporary academy; as well, it places Peirce in the company of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, and Schelling who preceded Peirce in providing a legacy of first-tier reasoning on our intelligibly developing world. Kosmos Noetos impresses as Ibri's pure, lucid, passionately thought-loving, philosophical articulation of his own and as the indispensable prolegomena to all future Peirce studies." David Dilworth, State University of New York at Stone Brook - USA "Ivo Ibri has offered us in this exquisite work a framing of the inner logic of Charles S. Peirce's core metaphysical vision and its existential implications. It is a deep and nuanced exploration of the internal dynamics of Peirce's central metaphysical categories, developed through rigorous and detailed attention to the evolution of Peirce's thought on the 'vitally important topics' of the appearing, the reality, and the intelligibility of the world. The two-leveled format of the book, an intricate weaving of Peirce's texts and discursive elaboration and linkage by Ibri, gives it a distinctive feel and is the bedrock of its value. The book is a remarkable combination of presentation and analysis. It is informed by Ibri's deep philosophical culture and is a gentle and convincing argument for the centrality of metaphysics in understanding Peirce's thought. It offers in a new way indispensable suggestions for our own attempts to think about our places in an evolving universe with the aid of Peirce and offers threads of thought to be followed up by others." Robert E. Innis, University of Massachusetts Lowell - USA

This edited collection brings linguistics into contact with a millennia of works by Buddhist scholars. Examining the Buddhist contemplative tradition and its extensive writings from an interdisciplinary perspective, the authors bridge the gap between such customs and human language. To do so, they provide chapters on linguistics, history, religious studies, philosophy and semiotics. Uniting scholars from three different continents and from many disciplines and institutions, this innovative and unique book is sure to appeal to anyone interested in Buddhist traditions and linguistics.

Semiotics is a superpower for marketers. It generates profits for brands. It's a proven, powerful method of uncovering consumer insight and tailoring brand strategies that work. Companies such as Unilever and P&G attest to the success of Lawes semiotics in stimulating innovation and boosting sales. This book makes semiotics accessible. You can do semiotics. All agency-side and client-side marketers can pick up the skills to use and apply semiotics to brands. Using Semiotics in Marketing is an acclaimed how-to guide. It's the only book on semiotics ever published that sets out a complete blueprint for research projects. Clear instructions show how to write briefs and proposals, design projects, conduct analysis, write reports and present research findings. Newly updated, this second edition is packed with even more revelations about brands, consumers and their emerging needs. Three new chapters reveal the unseen social forces that drive the Be Kind movement, public appetite for sincerity and the emotions of younger generations. Start using semiotics today. Position and launch new brands. Rejuvenate established brands. Design products and packaging. Inspire timely and provocative ad campaigns. Innovate. See the future.

Bringing together leading and emerging scholars in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this book explores the contributions made to SFL theory by James Robert Martin. A leading light in the field for 40 years, this book reviews, explores and develops the theoretical agendas set out in his momentous body of work. Focussed around the four themes of systemic functional theory, linguistic typology, educational linguistics and (positive) discourse analysis, chapters debate and develop the key concepts of Martin's work. Engaging with cutting edge theoretical debates in areas such as discourse-semantics, register and genre and affiliation, Discourses of Hope and Reconciliation examines Martin's lasting impact on the field, developing his momentous contributions to point the way to exciting future research directions in SFL.

The book is the first annotated reader to focus specifically on the discipline of zoosemiotics. Zoosemiotics can be defined today as the study of signification, communication and representation within and across animal species. The name for the field was proposed in 1963 by the American semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok. He also established the framework for the paradigm by finding and tightening connections to predecessors, describing terminology, developing methodology and setting directions for possible future studies. The volume includes a wide selection of original texts accompanied by editorial introductions. An extensive opening introduction discusses the place of zoosemiotics among other sciences as well as its inner dimensions; the understanding of the concept of communication in zoosemiotics, the heritage of biologist Jakob v. Uexkull; contemporary developments in zoosemiotics and other issues. Chapter introductions discuss the background of the authors and selected texts, as well as other relevant texts. The selected texts cover a wide range of topics, such as semiotic constitution of nature, cognitive capabilities of animals, typology of animal expression and many other issues. The roots of zoosemiotics can be traced back to the works of David Hume and John Locke. Great emphasis is placed on the heritage of Thomas A. Sebeok, and a total of four of his essays are included. The Reader also includes influential studies in animal communication (honey bee dance language, vervet monkey alarm calls) as well as theory elaborations by Gregory Bateson and others. The reader concludes with a section dedicated to contemporary research. Readings in Zoosemiotics is intended as a primary source of information about zoosemiotics, and also provides additional readings for students of cognitive ethology and animal communication studies.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.