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Public Journal of Semiotics
Number of Followers: 1

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 1918-9907
Published by Lunds universitet

[14 journals]

Michelangelo, the Duck and the Rabbit: Towards a Robust Account of Modes
of Existence
- Authors: Juan Felipe Miranda Medina, Marisol Cristel Galarza Flores
  Pages: 1 - 29
  Abstract: The concept of modes of existence of semiotic entities underlies (post)Greimasian semiotics, yet it seems to have received little attention. Modes of existence can be used in different senses. For Greimas, from the perspective of narrative semiotics, when Michelangelo first receives a block of marble and decides to sculpt the David, his intention is in a virtual mode; as Michelangelo progresses he ends up bringing the David into existence, and his intention comes to the realized mode. In Fontanille’s tensive semiotics, however, modes of existence can have to do with how one can narrow or broaden the scope of our apprehension of the David as our eyes look at it in order to produce a meaningful experience. In this work, the perspectives of narrative and tensive semiotics are contrasted both theoretically and practically applying both to a number of examples. In order to identify all possible modes of existence and all the possibilities of transitioning from one to the other in the examples presented, we resort to the method of finite-state automata from computer science. In the end, we propose a robust narrative account of modes of existence that relies on narrative semiotics for its definition, but into which intent and apprehension from tensive semiotics can be integrated. This work calls for the need of establishing a syntax of modes of existence, since both Greimas and Fontanille construe them as being necessary to account for the production of signification.
  PubDate: 2021-01-08
  DOI: 10.37693/pjos.2020.9.22417
  Issue No: Vol. 9, No. 2 (2021)
Revisiting the life of things: A cognitive semiotic study of the agency of
artefacts in Amazonia
- Authors: Juan Carlos Mendoza-Collazos, Göran Sonesson
  Pages: 30 - 52
  Abstract: Many contemporary scholars have recently defended the idea that the agency of things is symmetrical and equivalent to human agency. We propose an alternative approach to artefacts’ agency based on a field study concerned with contextually situated observations of the process of design of artefacts in Amazonia. By means of participant observation and interviews, we address the role of artefacts in relation to human agency. In so doing, we focus on the human-unique capacity for design as it is related to cognitive resources such as intentionality, decision-making, planning, and volitional adaptations of the material world to human purposes. We argue that such cognitive resources are ultimate manifestations of human agency. The findings allow us to conclude that artefacts possess a special form of agency, which operates in different ways from the agency of true agents. This agency is derived: it depends on the actions of true agents, with either function as remote intentions or are required for the artefact to work at the moment of use. Thus, the relation between artefacts and agents is asymmetrical. Given that the derived agency of artefacts allows people to expand their own agency, we propose the notion of enhanced agency for the prosthetic incorporation of artefacts into the agentive capabilities of human agents.
  PubDate: 2021-02-07
  DOI: 10.37693/pjos.2020.9.22012
  Issue No: Vol. 9, No. 2 (2021)
Representation as repression: A First Peoples context
- Authors: Roie Thomas
  Pages: 53 - 73
  Abstract: Visual images of a marginalised minority group from southern Africa are analysed against a series of colonialist representations to demonstrate tangible evidence of the role of representation in both disenfranchisement and an increasing autonomy in the case of the San, who are The First Peoples of the Kalahari, commonly known outside Africa as ‘Bushmen’ and in the dominant language of Botswana as Basarwa. This particular group is represented by government and its corporate affiliates as primordial for tourist consumption, yet systemically denied their language, ethnicity and ancestral land. Analysis is supported by critical tourism literature, showing the attitudes, power dynamics and practices evident in the produced imagery. An overview of the theoretical enframing and methodology is followed by analysis of a range of visual representations of the San. Analysis herein is based on a blend of application of post-colonial theory and post-tourism critique, along with some concepts from semiotics. Most of these visual and linguistic materials have been produced by government and industry for tourist consumption, while others include my own photography and ostensibly impartial museum exhibits.
  PubDate: 2021-04-06
  DOI: 10.37693/pjos.2020.9.21856
  Issue No: Vol. 9, No. 2 (2021)
Right for the wrong reason; wrong for the right reason: Gibson and Arnheim
on picture perception
- Authors: Ian Verstegen
  Pages: 74 - 87
  Abstract: Although J J Gibson’s theory of picture perception was often crude and biased toward naturalism, its fundamental division between the visual world and the visual field made it a semiotic theory. Contrariwise, although Arnheim wrote sensitively on pictures, he never seemed to admit that they were signs. This paper reviews both Gibson’s and Arnheim’s theories of picture perception, and explains where Arnheim’s biases caused him to lose the possibility of framing his approach in the most basic semiotic terms. Nevertheless, using the phenomenological semiotics of Sonesson and his theory of the Lifeworld Hierarchy, I demonstrate latent semiotic elements in Arnheim’s theory, due perhaps to Alfred Schutz’s influence. Hoping to argue against the brute theory of denotation, Arnheim instead sought to delay invocation of (conventional) signs as long as possible, and his idea of iconic pictorialization assumes but does not name signification. Nevertheless, I propose that Arnheim has a kind of theory of the Lifeworld Hierarchy inside the picture. Thus, he (wrongly) does not see the picture as overtly signifying but interestingly gives hints about how to treat the objects of the virtual world of the picture based on their relationship to the overall style of the work.
  PubDate: 2021-12-12
  DOI: 10.37693/pjos.2021.9.23480
  Issue No: Vol. 9, No. 2 (2021)