On the ontology of fictional characters: A semiotic approach

Author(s): Umberto Eco / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

Why are we deeply moved by the misfortune of Anna Karenina if we are fully aware that she is simply a fictional character who does not exist in our world? But what does it mean that fictional characters do not exist? The present article is concerned with the ontology of fictional characters. The author concludes that successful fictional characters become paramount examples of the ‘real’ human condition because they live in an incomplete world what we have cognitive access to but cannot influence in any way and where no deeds can be undone. Unlike all the other semiotic objects, which are culturally subject to revisions, and perhaps only similar to mathematical entities, the fictual characters will never change and will remain the actors of what they did once and forever

Facing emergences: Past traces and new directions in American anthropology (Why American anthropology needs semiotics of culture)

Author(s): Irene Portis-Winner / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

This article considers what happened to American anthropology, which was initiated by the scientist Franz Boas, who commanded all fields of anthropology, physical, biological, and cultural. Boas was a brave field worker who explored Eskimo land, and inspired two famous students, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, to cross borders in new kinds of studies. After this florescence, there was a general return to linear descriptive positivism, superficial comparisons of quantitative cultural traits, and false evolutionary schemes, which did not introduce us to the personalities and inner worlds of the tribal peoples studied. The 1953 study by the philosopher David Bidney was a revelation. Bidney enunciated and clarified all my doubts about the paths of anthropology and his work became to some extent a model for a narration of the story of American anthropology. In many ways he envisaged a semiotics of culture formulated by Lotman. I try to illustrate the fallacies listed by Bidney and how they have been partially overcome in some later anthropological studies which have focused on symbolism, artistry, and subjective qualities of the people studied. I then try to give an overview of the school started by Lotman that spans all human behavior, that demonstrates the complexity of meaning and communication, in vast areas of knowledge, from art, literature, science, and philosophy, that abjured strict relativism and closed systems and has become an inspiration for those who want anthropology to encompass the self and the other, and Bahtin’s double meaning. This paper was inspired by Bidney as a call to explore widely all possible worlds, not to abandon science and reality but to explore deeper inner interrelations and how the aesthetic may be indeed be paramount in the complexities of communication.

Parentheticals and the dialogicity of signs

Author(s): Barbara Sonnenhauser / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

The term ‘parenthetical’ is applied to an almost unlimited range of linguistic phenomena, which share but one common feature, namely their being used parenthetically. Parenthetic use is mostly described in terms of embedding an expression into some host sentence. Actually, however, it is anything but clear what it means for an expression to be used parenthetically, from both a syntactic and a semantic point of view. Given that in most, if not all, cases the alleged host sentence can be considered syntactically and semantically complete in itself, it needs to be asked what kind of information the parenthetical contributes to the overall structure. Another issue to be addressed concerns the nature of the relation between parenthetical and host (explanation, question, etc.) and the question what is it that holds them together. Trying to figure out the basic function of parentheticals, the present paper proposes a semiotic analysis of parenthetically used expressions. This semiotic analysis is not intended to replace linguistic approaches1, but is meant to elaborate on why parentheticals are so hard to capture linguistically. Taking a dynamic conception of signs and sign processes (in the sense of Peirce, Voloshinov and Bahtin) as starting point, parentheticals are argued to render explicit the inherent dialogicity of signs and utterances. This inherent dialogicity is hardly ever taken into consideration in linguistic analyses, which take the two-dimensional linearity of language as granted.

Between fiction and reality: Transforming the semiotic object

Author(s): Jaan Valsiner / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

The contrast between real and fictional characters in our thinking needs further elaboration. In this commentary on Eco’s look at the ontology of the semiotic object, I suggest that human semiotic construction entails constant modulation of the relationship between the states of the real and fictional characters in irreversible time. Literary characters are examples of crystallized fictions which function as semiotic anchors in the fluid construction — by the readers — of their understandings of the world. Literary characters are thus fictions that are real in their functions — while the actual reality of meaningmaking consists of ever new fictions of fluid (transitory) nature. Eco’s ontological look at the contrast of the semiotic object with perceptual objects (Gegenstände) in Alexius Meinong’s theorizing needs to be complemented by the semiotic subject. Cultural mythologies of human societies set the stage for such invention and maintenance of such dynamic unity of fictionally real and realistically fictional characters.

Action in signs

Author(s): Andres Luure / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

The present article discusses sign typology from the perspective of action which is conceived as having a sextet structure. The relation between means and purpose in action is analogous to the relation between sign and meaning. The greater the degree in which the action has purpose, the less tool-like the action is. Peirce’s trichotomies correspond to a fragment of the sextet structure.

Language in social reproduction: Sociolinguistics and sociosemiotics

Author(s): Patrizia Calefato / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

This paper focuses on the semiotic foundations of sociolinguistics. Starting from the definition of “sociolinguistics” given by the philosopher Adam Schaff, the paper examines in particular the notion of “critical sociolinguistics” as theorized by the Italian semiotician Ferruccio Rossi-Landi. The basis of the social dimension of language are to be found in what Rossi-Landi calls “social reproduction” which regards both verbal and non-verbal signs. Saussure’s notion of langue can be considered in this way, with reference not only to his Course of General Linguistics, but also to his Harvard Manuscripts. The paper goes on trying also to understand Roland Barthes’s provocative definition of semiology as a part of linguistics (and not vice-versa) as well as developing the notion of communication-production in this perspective. Some articles of Roman Jakobson of the sixties allow us to reflect in a manner which we now call “socio-semiotic” on the processes of transformation of the “organic” signs into signs of a new type, which articulate the relationship between organic and instrumental. In this sense, socio-linguistics is intended as being sociosemiotics, without prejudice to the fact that the reference area must be human, since semiotics also has the prerogative of referring to the world of non-human vital signs. Socio-linguistics as socio-semiotics assumes the role of a “frontier” science, in the dual sense that it is not only on the border between science of language and the anthropological and social sciences, but also that it can be constructed in a movement of continual “crossing frontiers” and of “contamination” between languages and disciplinary environments.

Translating Jakob von Uexküll — Reframing Umweltlehre as biosemiotics

Author(s): Prisca Augustyn / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

Thomas Sebeok attributed it to what he called the ‘wretched’ translation of Uexkull’s Theoretische Biologie (1920) that the notion of Umwelt did not reach the Anglo-American intellectual community much earlier. There is no doubt that making more of Uexkull’s Umweltlehre available in English will not only further the biosemiotic movement, but also fill a gap in the foundational theoretical canon of semiotics in general. The purpose of this paper is to address issues of terminology and theory translation between Uexkull’s Umweltlehre and current biosemiotics.

Mutual understanding and misunderstanding in biological systems mediated by self-representational meaning of organisms

Author(s): Karel Kleisner,Anton Markoš / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

Modern biology gives many casuistic descriptions of mutual informational interconnections between organisms. Semiotic and hermeneutic processes in biosphere require a set of “sentient” community of players who optimize their living strategies to be able to stay in game. Perceptible surfaces of the animals, semantic organs, represent a special communicative interface that serves as an organ of self-representation of organic inwardness. This means that the innermost dimensions and potentialities of an organism may enter the senses of other living being when effectively expressed on the outermost surfaces of the former and meaningfully interpreted by the later. Moreover, semantic organs do not exist as objectively describable entities. They are always born via interpretative act and their actual form depends on both the potentialities of body plan of a bearer and the species-specific interpretation of a receiver. As such the semantic organs represent an important part of biological reality and thus deserve to be contextualized within existing comparative vocabulary. Here we argue that the study of the organic self-representation has a key importance for deeper insight into the evolution of communicative coupling among living beings.

A text on biosemiotic themes

Author(s): Sergey V. Chebanov,Anton Markoš / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

What follows is a two-part review of Günther Witzany’s two-part book, The Logos of the Bios (2006, 20073). The first part of the review is written by Sergey Chebanov, and it approaches the text as a source of ideas on biosemiotics and biohermeneutics. The second part is written by Anton Markoš, and it estimates the biological pithiness of the book and the correctness of the reflection of the included data of modern biology.

Photo: Umberto Eco and Juri Lotman, during Lotman’s visit to Italy (Milan, 1987)

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2009

Humanities: State and prospects

Author(s): Eero Tarasti,Winfried Nöth,Marek Tamm / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2008

The developments in the humanities over the recent years could be characterised by the following three tendencies: florescence of methodological “turns”, increasing importance of interdisciplinarity, and extensive travelling of concepts. Looking at the list of titles of the books and articles produced in humanistic and social disciplines over the recent years one is led to believe that we are living in a time of “turns”. New methodological turns are announced time and again, for instance, most recently, the performative turn, the spatial turn, and the iconic turn. Although each of these turns was first announced within a particular discipline, the ambition has usually been greater, proclaiming changes in the humanistic and social sciences in general. Evidently, scholars are eager to find methodological platforms to bridge the current classifications of sciences and to create new interdisciplinary fields of research.

Translation and semiotics

Author(s): Peeter Torop / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2008

Translation semiotics is on its way to becoming a discipline on its own. The present special issue does not aim to merge different ways of thinking about translation but instead to widen the field of thought and to highlight those keywords that would help us to understand translation activity better and to perceive the boundaries of translation semiotics. The identity of translation semiotics as a discipline that has evolved in the contacts between translation studies and semiotics (of culture) can first be understood via mutual influences. Translation studies has already long ago turned to semiotics, and semiotics in its turn has made use of the concept of translation. It is natural that in the beginning, such processes bring about simplified treatments and terms become metaphorical. At the same time such metaphors enrich academic and critical thinking and have a significant role in the development of science.

История одного текста Ю. М. Лотмана

Author(s): Bogusław Żyłko / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2008

В начале восьмидесятых годов прошлого столетия я получил пред- ложение из лодзинского издательства составить антологию работ по семиотике культуры, которые возникли в кругу т. наз. Тартуско- московской школы. Несколько позже из Варшавы (из Министерства просвещения) пришло письмо, в котором сообщалось, что с 1 сентября 1983 года я могу начинать свою научную стажировку, длящуюся 6 месяцев, в Ленинградском университете.

Jakobson: Translation as imputed similarity

Author(s): Bruno Osimo / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2008

Jakobson, in his essays, has tried to insert Peirce’s typology of signs (icon, index, symbol) in his own binary logic, in which every feature of a text may be considered or dismissed either with a 0 or with a 1 (absent, present). In so doing, he used the features “similarity versus contiguity” and “imputed versus factual”, and discovered that the notion of “imputed similarity” was not covered by Peirce’s triad. Hence the search for it. In this article, whose ideological basis and quotations are mostly from Jakobson’s essays, the author tries to show that the notion of “translation” may be the missing link. Starting from Peirce’s main triad, and its initial incomprehension among Western scholars influenced by Saussure, the interpretant is then viewed as the subjective, affective component of sign and its interpretation. Syntax, considered in Peircean and Jakobsonian terms, is iconic. The evolution of meaning, characterizing all communication, is possible thanks to construction and thanks to metaphoric and metonymic connections. In the last part of the article, cultural implications of communication — and translation — are considered.

Jakobson and Peirce: Translational intersemiosis and symbiosis in opera

Author(s): Dinda L. Gorlée / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2008

Metalinguistic operations signify understanding and translation, specified in Jakobson’s varieties of six language functions and his three types of translation. Both models were first presented in the 1950s. This article is rooted in Jakobson’s models in connection with Peirce’s three categories. Bühler’s three functions with qualitative difference anticipated, perhaps not accidentally, Jakobson’s distinctions indicating qualitative difference within literary forms and structures as well as other fine arts. The semiotic discovery, criticism and perspective of elements and code-units settle the numerical differences as well as the differences in realistic messages and conceptual codes. Jakobson’s intersemiotic translation is updated in vocal translation, which deals with the virtual reality of opera on stage, reaching a catharsis of the operatic mystique. The word-tone synthesis of opera (or semiosic symbiosis) will demonstrate the typological unification of verbal and nonverbal languages.

Несколько вводных слов

Author(s): Yuri M. Lotman / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2008

Семиотика культуры — дисциплина, находящаяся на перекрестке лингвосемиотического и историко-культурного циклов научных дисци- плин, это историческая семиотика интеллектуальной деятельности чело- века. Обращение к культуре как семиотическому объекту ставит иссле- дователя перед исключительно сложной ситуацией: он изучает семиоти- ческие модели, определяющие круг представлений и действий людей в потоке их исторического существования. Культура в семиотическом аспекте предстает как некоторый континуум языков, которыми поль- зуется самосознающее мышление человека, а действия, как вербальные, так и совершаемые с помощью разнообразных поступков, могут быть истолкованы как тексты на некоторых языках. Понять смысл истори- ческих поступков людей, их поведения и их сочинений означает овладеть языками их культур.

Specialization, semiosis, semiotics: the 33rd annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America

Author(s): Paul Cobley / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2008

The 33rd annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, ‘Specialization, semiosis, semiotics’, took place, this year, entirely in a hotel. The Renaissance Hotel, Houston is set on its own lot and, like Houston itself, is car-friendly but forbidding for pedestrians who might wish to gain access to any signs of life beyond its edifice. The 20th floor, where the proceedings took place, looks out across the endless suburbs of Houston and further, into the pancake flatness of Texas. Although the conference was this year run under the auspices of the University of St. Thomas, whose open, welcoming, campus was just a mile or so up the road, delegates found themselves thrown together for the duration, braving the sessions at the conference or the individually wrapped soaps in the air-conditioned atmosphere of their rooms. The disadvantage of having a conference in a hotel that I am pointing out here, of course, is that there is no escape. In that respect, the Renaissance was a bit like the Valtionhotelli in Imatra, Finland, where annual meetings of the ISI have forced conference — goers to either stay indoors and engage with each other or face a legion of mosquitoes and profound ennui. Like the Imatra meetings, however, this SSA conference made the disadvantage into a virtue and any perception of that disadvantage a lost figment of memory. It is a measure of the conference’s success that the main complaint I heard and, indeed, voiced myself, was that there was too little time and that the conference was too short.

Animal vocalization and human polyglossia in Walter of Bibbesworth’s thirteenth-century domestic treatise in Anglo-Norman French and Middle English

Author(s): William Sayers / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2009

Walter of Bibbesworth’s late thirteenth-century versified treatise on French vocabulary relevant to the management of estates in Britain has the first extensive list of animal vocalizations in a European vernacular. Many of the Anglo-Norman French names for animals and their sounds are glossed in Middle English, inviting both diachronic and synchronic views of the capacity of these languages for onomatopoetic formation and reflection on the interest of these social and linguistic communities in zoosemiotics.

Konrad Lorenz’s epistemological criticism towards Jakob von Uexküll

Author(s): Carlo Brentari / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2009

In the work of Lorenz we find an initial phase of great concordance with Uexkulls theory of animals’ surrounding-world (Umweltlehre), followed by a progressive distance and by the occurrence of more and more critical statements. The moment of greater cohesion between Lorenz and Uexkull is represented by the work Der Kumpan, which is focused on the concept of companion, functional circles, social Umwelt. The great change in Lorenz’ evaluation of Uexkull is marked by the conference of 1948 Referat über Jakob von Uexküll, where Lorenz highlights the vitalist position of Uexkull. In the works of the years after World War II, the influence of the Estonian Biologist greatly diminishes, even though Lorenz continues to express his admiration for particular studies and concepts of Uexkull. References to Uexkull’s work are less and far in between, while the difference is highlighted between the uexkullian theoretical frame (vitalistic) and Lorenz’s one (Darwinian and evolutionist). The two main critical lines of argument developed by Lorenz in this process are the biological and the epistemological one: on the biological side Lorenz heavily criticizes Uexkull’s vitalism and his faith in harmonizing forces and supernatural factors (which leads to concepts such as the perfect fusion of all biological species in their environment and the absence of rudimentary organs). On the epistemological side, Lorenz, arguing from the point of view of the critical realism, accuses Uexkull of postulating the separateness of all living beings, a separateness which is due to the Kantian idea that every subject of knowledge and action is imprisoned in the transcendental circle of its representations and attitudes.

Animals and music: Between cultural definitions and sensory evidence

Author(s): Gisela Kaplan / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2009

It was once thought that solely humans were capable of complex cognition but research has produced substantial evidence to the contrary. Art and music, however, are largely seen as unique to humans and the evidence seems to be overwhelming, or is it? Art indicates the creation of something novel, not naturally occurring in the environment. To prove its presence or absence in animals is difficult. Moreover, connections between music and language at a neuroscientific as well as a behavioural level are not fully explored to date. Even more problematic is the notion of an aesthetic sense. Music, so it is said, can be mimetic, whereas birdsong is not commonly thought of as being mimetic but as either imitation or mimicry and, in the latter case, as a ‘mindless’ act (parrots parroting). This paper will present a number of examples in which animals show signs of responsiveness to music and even engage in musical activity and this will be discussed from an ethological perspective. A growing body of research now reports that auditory memory and auditory mechanisms in animals are not as simplistic as once thought and evidence suggests, in some cases, the presence of musical abilities in animals.