History of semiotics

The chapter provides a brief introductory overview of biosemiotics — the study of meaning-making mechanisms in the living world. Biosemiotics is a study of those types of sign processes that are not based on human language. We describe history of the field both before 1960 (focusing particularly on the work of Jakob von Uexküll), and after this date (in the framework of institutionalized semiotics). In addition to the phenomena and role of meaningful communication (including autocommunication, intra-species and inter-species communication) in the organization and design of organisms and communities, the problems as the semiotic thresholds, models of semiosis, role of semiosis in development and evolution, etc., are dealt from the biosemiotic point of view, i.e. on the basis of semiotic modelling.

""ITA: Quando nasce la semiotica come disciplina? Su quali fondamenti? Secondo quale percorso si è sviluppata? Più che fornire una definizione univoca di un campo di studi tanto ampio e variegato, che investe molteplici aree disciplinari (linguistica, estetica, critica letteraria, d’arte e musicale, scienze della comunicazione, sociali e cognitive), il volume offre un quadro sintetico delle istanze che hanno condotto alla formazione di un paradigma semiotico. Si tratta di una ricostruzione storico-teorica di un modello di pensiero che ruota intorno alle figure di Jakobson, Barthes, Greimas ed Eco, con particolare attenzione allo sviluppo concettuale delle diverse tendenze della semiotica e al dibattito italiano contemporaneo.
ENG: When was Semiotics born as a discipline? Upon which grounds? What was its path during its growth? Rather than providing an univocal definition for a field of studies of such extent, this volume offers a synthetic picture of the main facts that brought to the development of a semiotic paradigm.
It represents a historical-theoretical reconstruction of a model of thought which pivots on the figures of Jakobson, Barthes, Greimas and Eco, with a particular attention on the conceptual development of the different semiotic tendencies and on the contemporary Italian debate."

The paper organizes the topic of signs in Lev Vygotsky's various writings into a coherent whole in order to study signs' role in child development. Vygotsky related conventional signs that have their origin in interpersonal communication, and are subject to cultural history taking place over generations during historical time, to psychological functioning of individual human beings. Vygotsky's "natural history of signs" is the study of how symbolic activity appears and develops. The paper outlines the process of inclusion of symbols within the behaviour of the child and gives an account of various changes in psychological functions and their interrelations that it brings along. In cultural development specifically human forms of behaviour appear, and children's relationship to social and material environment is changed qualitatively. Vygotsky outlines the formation of sign use and analyses its developmental steps. Vygotsky's approach explains how the use of various sign systems shapes both the cognitive processes in the person, the child, and the cognitive development as a whole. Vygotsky's approach to signs is presented within the conceptual framework of its time.

Монография А. В. Карабыкова посвящена характеристи-
ке воззрений на сущность языка и способы его использова-
ния, свойственных культуре христианского Средневековья.
На основе изучения широкого круга источников, включа-
ющего в себя выдающиеся произведения агиографии и ры-
царской литературы, важнейшие богословско-философские,
морально-дидактические и исторические трактаты, автор
подвергает тщательному анализу как лингвистические воз-
зрения мыслителей, внесших решающий вклад в форми-
рование средневековой картины мира, так и сами социо-
культурные пласты и явления, способствовавшие развитию
средневекового сверхперформатизма.
Издание адресовано историкам-медиевистам, филоло-
гам, культурологам, а также всем интересующимся духовной
культурой Средних веков.

Umberto Eco (1975; 1985) has invariantly maintained that specular images have no semiosic status, basically because they stand in front rather than instead of an object. In his Kant and the Platypus (1997), Eco returns offering reasons to exclude specular images from signs, and definitely classifies mirrors as visual prosthetic devices. In this paper I argue that Eco is partly right and partly wrong. He is right inasmuch as he claims that seeing an object in a mirror must count as a case of seeing that object rather than as a case of seeing a sign of that object (or, a sign standing for a propositional content about that object). The only reason why we should agree with Eco on this point, however, is that otherwise we would be forced to admit that also when we see the object in normal visual perception, with no mirror involved, what we really see is a sign. But then Eco is wrong because he does not acknowledge that, although mirror phenomena do have no semiosic status per se, they may acquire it by taking advantage of independent sign-functions – thus coming to be part of what I call parasiticly semiosic phenomena. Specifically, since an object that is visually perceived in a mirror may appear to have some spatial or topological properties that the real object does not possess, it is sufficient for the mirror phenomenon to exploit an independent sign-function whose expressions admit spatial or topological properties among their distinctive traits in order for it to become fully (though parasiticly) semiosic.

Esta es una lección publicada originalmente en el portal del INCOM de las UAB en 2006, y corresponde a un texto didáctico (Lección) para introducir al lector a los objetos y problemas de la semiótica de la imagen (SI).
Entendemos por SI el estudio del signo icónico y los procesos de sentido-significación a partir de la imagen. El estudio de la imagen y las comunicaciones visuales en realidad desborda lo estrictamente pictórico o visual, tal como pueden ser los análisis de colores, formas, iconos y composición, para dar paso a los elementos históricos y socio-antropológicos que forman parte de la SI.

The bibliography provides a list of all known English-language publications by Juri M. Lotman (including in co-authorship and reprints), in chronological order, described de visu. The first English translation of J. Lotman’s work appeared in 1973, altogether there is 109 entries in the list. The bibliography demonstrates that in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the translations were published in the context of slavistics, whereas after 2000 Lotman’s work starts to appear in the anthologies of general semiotics.

C.K. Ogden (1889–1957) and I.A. Richards’ (1893–1979) The Meaning of Meaning is widely recognised as a classic text of early twentieth-century linguistic semantics and semiotics, but less well known are its links to the ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), one of the foundational doctrines of analytic philosophy. In this paper a detailed comparison of The Meaning of Meaning and logical atomism is made, in which several key similarities between the two theories in subject matter and approach are identified: both attempt to describe meaning in terms of the latest psychological doctrines and both pursue a normative program aimed at rectifying the perceived deficiencies of language. But there are also a number of differences between the theories. Ogden and Richards – most probably inspired by Victoria Lady Welby (1837–1912) – offered a pragmatically oriented account of ordinary language, while Russell sought a ‘logically perfect language’ beyond interpretation, and rejected the work of Welby and her allies. These differences contributed significantly to Russell’s largely negative opinion of The Meaning of Meaning. Despite this, several ideas pioneered in The Meaning of Meaning re-appear in Russell’s later writings. The Meaning of Meaning, it would seem, not only drew inspiration from Russell’s philosophy but may have also contributed to its further development.

È estatico ogni discorso che, costruendosi nel linguaggio e col linguaggio, rappresenta nondimeno una fuoriuscita da esso, un bloccarsi della semiosi, un venir meno delle distinzioni che fondano il senso. Trattasi dunque di un’impostura? Dell’evocazione impossibile, fra le maglie dell’immanenza, di una dimensione trascendente nella quale e verso la quale la prima si sfaldi, perdendo la consistenza di strutture e opposizioni? Rispondere affermativamente sarebbe forse semplicistico, sarebbe considerare l’estasi come puro effetto ottico, come sorta di trompe-l’oeil mistico. In realtà, come ogni trompe-l’oeil, anche l’estasi rinvia a qualcosa di più della propria semplice rappresentazione. Essa rimanda ai pregiudizi inconfessati di un’ideologia semiotica, alla trama nascosta, al negativo segreto che regge tutta la concezione moderna del senso e del linguaggio. Il discorso mistico, che corre parallelo e invisibile, spesso represso, a volte perseguitato, lungo tutta la storia delle religioni, esprime allora questo dubbio: e se il senso non fosse distinzione, separatezza, dualità? Se l’immanenza articolatoria che lo viviseziona non fosse che illusoria? A questo punta ogni racconto dell’estasi: al sospetto che i fondamenti della modernità, anti-mistici per definizione, non siano altro che una delle possibilità dell’umano, e che una storia non detta, in filigrana, si dipani accanto e sotto al moderno come traccia sbiadita di un altro percorso, di un altro modo d’intendere e di dire.

Medical semiotics in the 18th century was more than a premodern form of diagnosis. Its structure allowed for the combination of empirically proven rules of instruction with the theoretical knowledge of the new sciences, employing the relation between the sign and the signified.

L’Italia è stato uno dei Paesi ad accogliere con più anticipo e attenzione l’eredità della Scuola semiotica di Mosca-Tartu e, in particolare, del suo padre fondatore Jurij M. Lotman. L’impostazione lotmaniana si profila oggi un campo di studi in progress, che lascia trasparire incoraggianti prospettive d’indagine per gli studi culturali ma che necessita ancora di una profonda riflessione sulla sua ultima parabola intellettuale, la fase teorica meno conosciuta, per la quale si propone al lettore italiano la traduzione di cinque saggi inediti.
A vent'anni dalla sua morte, possiamo dunque accingerci a rileggere e in certo modo riscoprire quello che l’insigne maestro ancora ci vuol dire, cercando di attualizzare il suo pensiero esplosivo e disarticolante all’oggi: si presenta qui il lascito di Lotman, con le sue potenzialità in nuce, ovvero la cosiddetta semiotica della cultura alla luce del pensiero complesso.

Jurij M. Lotman (1922-1993): fondatore della Scuola semiotica di Mosca-Tartu e indiscusso protagonista delle scienze del linguaggio del Novecento. Russo di nascita, ebreo di origini, Lotman visse la maggior parte della sua vita a Tartu, in Estonia, a seguito delle purghe pietroburghesi del 1949-’51. I suoi quarant’anni di ricerche interdisciplinari sui sistemi segnici hanno sancito la nascita della semiotica della cultura.

129 THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION Walter Benjamin Source: H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations, H. Zohn (trans.). London: NLB, 1973 [1936], pp. 217-242. Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were estab- lished, in times ...

Signatim è termine raro. Compare in un passo attribuito all’autore Caio, all’interno dei cosiddetti Gromatici veteres, una raccolta di testi di agrimensura compilata nel V secolo d.C. “Gromatico” è infatti tutto ciò che si riferisce alla misurazione, divisione, e rappresentazione di terreni. Il termine deriva da “groma”, uno strumento che gli Etruschi prima, e poi i Romani, utilizzarono per tracciare sul territorio allineamenti ortogonali, necessari per la delimitazione di nuove città, quartieri, e strade, ma anche per suddividere il terreno in quadrati o rettangoli, e renderne così calcolabile la superficie.
Nel passo di Caio si descrive una tecnica gromatica. Al fine di poter identificare anche in futuro i paletti interrati che delimitano il terreno, è necessario contraddistinguerli con un segno a forma di stella, la cosidetta “stella junior”. In questo contesto, “signatim” è dunque avverbio che designa la scrittura e la lettura di segni nella delineazione di frontiere. Quale parola più appropriata per evocare il lavoro della semiotica della cultura, la quale pure si occupa dei segni, delle tracce, delle marche che gli individui e le società producono nell’istituire la diversità? Per cartografare non colture ma culture, non gromatiche ma grammatiche, riconducendone le forme esuberanti all’ortogonalità di strutture soggiacenti?

Through a diachronic reading of the writings of Benveniste contained
both in the two volumes of the Problèmes de linguistique générale, and in the handwritten notes of the « Fond Benveniste », the paper proposes the hypothesis that in the writings of the French linguist, we can find, even though implicitly, a twofold conception of enunciation, and not a single one : (1) a « strong (or particularizing) conception» which identifies enunciation specifically with the « discourse », the latter being connected to the structure of the dialogue and having a formal apparatus ; (2) a « weak (or generalizing) conception», according to which the enunciation is considered as a general mechanism of sense production in a semiotic system, which involves the whole language and being not connected
to a specific series of linguistic forms.

Tracing the emergence of biosemiotics, attention can be drawn to the very early usage of the term ‘biosemiotics’ (Biosemiotik) in the writings of Austrian chemist Vincenz Kletzinsky (1826–1882) that dates back to the 1850s. In the same decade, Kletzinsky also proved to be among the first to use the terms ‘biochemistry’ and ‘biophysics’.

The goal of this article is twofold. First, it revises the historiographic partition proposed by John Deely in Four Ages of Understanding (2001) by arguing that the moment marking the beginning of philosophical Modernity has been vividly recorded in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy with the experiment with the wax. Second, an upshot of this historical study is that it helps make sense of Deely’s somewhat iconoclastic use of the words “subject” and “subjectivity” to designate mind-independent worldly things. The hope is that successfully accomplishing these twin tasks will give semiotic inquiry a better appreciation of its own history, as well as resources genial to furthering its ongoing development.

The article gives an account of life and work of Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944), together with a description of his impact to theoretical biology, behavioural studies, and semiotics. It includes the complete bibliography of Uexküll's published works, as well as an extensive list of publications about him.

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. 

The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound.

Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward.

Di tutte le annunciazioni che popolano la storia umana e le sue svariate tradizioni, al semiologo non interessa la fonte in sé, il numinoso che all’umano si rivolge per significargli di volta in volta la propria presenza, intenzione, sensibilità; interessa, piuttosto, il modo in cui a seconda delle epoche storiche, dei contesti culturali, delle vicende sociali, ma anche delle sensibilità individuali, uomini e donne hanno utilizzato i materiali del mondo, quelli dell’immanenza, per forgiare i significanti del divino. Ovvero, specularmente, il modo in cui hanno immaginato, e creduto con fermezza, che tali materiali divenissero d’un tratto appannaggio di una divina intenzione di comunicare, stoffa della rivelazione, parole annuncianti. Al teologo, non al semiologo, spetta immaginare la ricostruzione della totalità a fronte della quale si dipana il messaggio divino nella sua vicenda immanente. Al semiologo tocca invece un compito che è insieme più modesto e più costrittivo; innanzitutto raccogliere e inventariare queste tracce: in quali circostanze gli uomini e le donne hanno raccontato e raccontano di un loro incontro con il divino? Utilizzando quali segni? Piegandoli a quali necessità comunicative? Il compito successivo, più arduo, è analizzare questi segni, con gli strumenti di cui dispone la metodologia semiotica, per capire se si possano in qualche modo catalogare, suddividere in tipologie, distribuire in atlanti che, anche al di là e a dispetto delle differenze d’origine storica e confessionale, manifestino nondimeno dinamiche comuni nella costruzione e nell’elaborazione del linguaggio.

Semiotics (sometimes spelled “semeiotic”) is the name first given by John Locke, and later reprised by Charles S. Peirce, for the “doctrine of signs,” or the study of how some things can stand for other things to still other things. This deliberate inquiry can be contrasted with “folk semiotic” accounts, which assume that there is some intrinsic feature about, say, the human voice or a painted board that makes them capable of signifying. Such a naive assumption does not withstand serious scrutiny. From a philosophical standpoint, what makes something a sign is an involvement in a specific sort of triadic relation. This relation is found in human/nonhuman and deliberate/nondeliberate signs alike. Semiosis, the action of signs, is what permits communication, but it is wider than communication. For example, if while in an adjacent room I smell that the turkey in the oven is ready, my pet dog can smell it too, and the turkey is not trying to “tell” us anything. But if the cook in the kitchen tells me it is ready, I receive that message, while my dog hears the sounds but is none the wiser (in contemporary semiotic parlance, my dog and I couple our Umwelten via indices, but the symbols at hand generate interpretants only in my anthroposemiosis). In spite of the fact that it has a long and distinguished history (especially during the medieval period), general inquiry into signs became an organized research program only in the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to philosophers, semiotics attracts a wide range of scholars, such as ethologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, art historians, logicians, media theorists, literary critics, computer programmers, biologists, sociologists, and so on. From a methodological standpoint, then, parochialism is not an option. The scholarly literature can nevertheless be fruitfully divided into theoretical and applied strands. Not surprisingly, most philosophers drawn to semiotic questions work in the former strand. Semiotics is not to be confused with “semiology,” a (now largely defunct) project that originated in the lectures of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and which was active in the 1960s, mainly in France. Semiotics, by contrast, is a vibrant tradition that continues to flourish worldwide. Although some persist in employing the term “semiotics” when discussing narrow studies that focus exclusively on cultural codes, such terminological misuse masks the fact that a study of signs is broader than a study of language. A sustained philosophy of signs, then, promises (as Locke initially surmised) to yield truly novel insights.

We briefly sketch some characteristics of Thomas A. Sebeok's program to develop semiotics and relate them to the approaches in the Tartu circle. It is not a historical, but effectively a paradigmatic insight into research in contemporary Tartu semiotics, where we can see the inevitability of cooperation between the large branches of semiotics such as bio-, socio-, and cultural semiotics that were, consciously or not, preceded by Sebeok. We take a closer look into Sebeok's arguments in between the times when he reintroduced semiotics to contemporary audiences and when he seemingly departed from the conceptual realm of the Tartu-Moscow School of semiotics. Likewise, we aim to show how his practical engagement in "radwaste" is already acute today and demands realization of the connection between the biological and the cultural as mediated by the social.

The evolution of comparative literature has been revealing, for more than a century, a sinuous process of self-definition: as of the beginning of the 20 th century, it has been emerging like a diverse set of research, with studies covering "international literary relations", from a historical perspective in line with the established tradition of founders and eventually building a comparative poetics, whose necessity and legitimacy are nowadays acknowledged. As far as its specific field is a "tertium comparationis, that does not belong to any of the studied texts" – or, we may add, to none of the domains to which it is associated in an interdisciplinary way – but "maintains relations with each of these", general and comparative literature is being mistaken for a "methodological utopia" (Pageaux 2000: 35). This (also) involves a relatively unrestrictive delimitation of the object and working methods (Wellek 1965: 282-295; Étiemble 1963), with all the positive connotations or the opposite ones associated with this state of fact. At the "crossroads of certain sets", each with its particularities, comparative literature beneficially feeds on these very "interferences", "meetings, exchanges" (Pageaux 2000: 34 – 35) between literatures and between domains of study. However, its very flexibility – available for constant assimilation and adaptation – determines the problem of a rigorous comparatist "methodology", founded on a coherent theory (Greimas & Courtès 1979: 49), to remain yet unsolved. The contributions of Étiemble (1958; 1963), Munteano (1967) or Marino (1988; 1998), among others, built around the concepts of "invariant" and literary "constant" have thus shaped, as of the middle of the 20 th century, a completely up-to-date research programme – yet unfinished – able to associate literary and intercultural studies, comparative literature and (inter)cultural anthropology. Resurfacing, at about the same time, the "intersemiotic" relations between literature and arts, Jakobson (1963) foreshadowed, in turn, today’s multi- and intermedial studies, even the latter’s crossing with the wide domain of comparative literature, as it is now globally understood: like an eminently interdisciplinary and – how else if not – intercultural domain. As a form of reverse ekphrasis, a piece of music or a dance may re(-)present a literary text. This paper proposes an analysis on the measure in which the semio-narrative categories and the Greimasian actantial model are relevant for the understanding of choreographic discourse as reverse ekphrasis. In particular, the study considers choreographies inspired by literary (pre)texts or pre-established narrative frames. In dance, gestural statements can be narratively semantized, caught – and thus clarified – within a story and within a constitutive aesthetics of ambiguity.

This dissertation is a historical study of influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, explored from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889–1957). Although no ‘Great Man’ in his own right, Ogden had a personal connection, reflected in his work, to several of the most significant figures of the age. The background to the ideas espoused in Ogden’s book The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with I.A. Richards (1893–1979), is examined in detail, along with the application of these ideas in his international language project Basic English. A richly interlaced network of connections is revealed between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics, all inevitably shaped by the contemporary cultural and political environment. In particular, significant interaction is shown between Ogden’s ideas, the varying versions of ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Ludwig Wittgensten (1889–1951), Victoria Lady Welby’s (1837–1912) ‘significs’, and the philosophy and political activism of Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) of the Vienna Circle. Amid these interactions emerges a previously little known mutual exchange between the academic philosophy and linguistics of the period and the practically oriented efforts of the international language movement. In exploring these connections, novel light is shed on the intellectual history of a period crucial in the development of both linguistics and philosophy.

A detailed review of the work of Thomas A. Sebeok (1920-2001) in the field of biosemiotics. This includes Sebeok’s relationships to biology and his work on building biosemiotics, or semiotic biology, including both his work as a theoretician in the field and his activity in organising, publishing, and communicating. It reviews Sebeok’s (a) establishing of zoosemiotics, (b) interpretation and development of Jakob von Uexküll’s and Heini Hediger’s ideas, (c) typological, comparative, and evolutionary study of semiosis and semiotic phenomena in living organisms, (d) idea that life is semiosis, and that semiosphere coincides with biosphere, (e) research on the history of biosemiotics, and (f) his organizational work in establishing biosemiotics.