Keepers as social companions: Tactile communication and social enrichment for captive apes

Author(s): Mirko Cerrone / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2019

The article addresses the topic of great ape–keeper tactile communication. The aim of this paper is to understand whether direct physical contact can be considered a source of enrichment for captive apes and whether it could be used to enhance animal welfare in zoos. We make use of a multispecies perspective provided by umwelt theory in an attempt to determine the role of touch in zoological gardens. By referring to Konrad Lorenz, we describe keeper–animal relationships as a special case of companionship, highlighting the role of keepers in apes’ social behaviour. The paper considers social touch as the primary means used by social animals to create and maintain increasingly complex relationships. Since tactile communication in interspecific contexts has been underestimated previously, our theoretical framework allows for a better understanding of physical contact in zoological gardens without assuming an anthropocentric point of view. Our hypothesis is that physical contact with keepers may provide enriching opportunities for social animals and help strengthen the bond between animals and their keepers. We emphasize that ape–animal interactions in zoos need to involve keeper–animal physical contact as a possible means for enhancing the apes’ welfare.

Learning and knowing as semiosis: Extending the conceptual apparatus of semiotics

Author(s): Cary Campbell,Alin Olteanu,Kalevi Kull / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2019

If all knowing comes from semiosis, more concepts should be added to the semiotic toolbox. However, semiotic concepts must be defined via other semiotic concepts. We observe an opportunity to advance the state-of-the-art in semiotics by defining concepts of cognitive processes and phenomena via semiotic terms. In particular, we focus on concepts of relevance for theory of knowledge, such as learning, knowing, affordance, scaffolding, resources, competence, memory, and a few others. For these, we provide preliminary definitions from a semiotic perspective, which also explicates their interrelatedness. Redefining these terms this way helps to avoid both physicalism and psychologism, showcasing the epistemological dimensions of environmental situatedness through the semiotic understanding of organisms’ fittedness with their environments. Following our review and presentation of each concept, we briefly discuss the significance of our embedded redefinitions in contributing to a semiotic theory of knowing that has relevance to both the humanities and the life sciences, while not forgetting their relevance to education and psychology, but also social semiotic and multimodality studies.

Lexical Concepts as Fluctuating Structures

Author(s): Alyona Budnikova / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

National and Cultural Symbolism of Zoo-Anthropomorphic Creatures in Ukrainian Myphological Picture of the World

Author(s): Olena Kryzhko / Language(s): English / Issue: 101/2019

The article analyses the mythopoetic origins of the Ukrainian national and cultural symbolism of zoo-anthropomorphic creatures. It examines how animal names create ethnic symbols, i.e. the peculiar fragments of the Ukrainian mythological picture of the world. The national concepts of zoonyms and their implementation are described in the Ukrainian mythological system. The attention is given to zoo-anthropomorphic creatures: their etiologic function and having their own national and cultural symbolism, an axiological identification of good / evil in the explanation of the universe, the manner they are semanticised by the symbolism and value categories of the Ukrainian mythopoetic consciousness in the plot lines of Ukrainian myths and legends.

Nauczyć krytycznego myślenia i jasnej mowy. Postulaty krytycyzmu i jasności a sprawa tzw. logiki ogólnej

Author(s): Marcin Będkowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2019

Ograniczenia semantyki formalnej (logicznej)

Author(s): Jan Woleński / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2019

Okresy warunkowe i operator fikcji

Author(s): Maciej Sendłak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2019

Oral Narrative Genres as Communicative Dialogic Resources and their Correlation to African Short Fiction

Author(s): Loreta Huber,Evelina Jonaitytė / Language(s): English / Issue: 37(42)/2020

Oral and written storytelling traditions in Africa developed at the same time and influenced each other in many ways. In the twentieth century, the relation between the deeply rooted oral tradition and literary traditions intensified. We aim to reveal literary analysis tools that help to trace ways how oral narrative genres found reflection in African short fiction under analysis. A case study is based on two short stories by women writers, The Rain Came by Grace Ogot and The Lovers by Bessie Head. Images and symbols both, in oral and written traditions in Africa, as well as the way they evolved and extended in a literary genre of short fiction are considered within the framework of hermeneutics, reader reception theory and feminist literary criticism. The results obtained in the study prove that oral narrative genres interact with literary genres, though most importantly, women’s writing as a literary category and images embodied in the short stories play a decisive role and deviation from the images embodied in African oral tradition.

Out of the Closet, into the World: The Power of Puppets in Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist

Author(s): Rūta Šlapkauskaitė / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2019

The present paper examines the tropological significance of miniature figures in Jessie Burton’s novel The Miniaturist. By highlighting the ways in which the narrative’s figural system negotiates the structural and conceptual dichotomies of human/doll, object/thing, interiority/exteriority, authenticity/artificiality, and mobility/stasis, this reading of Burton’s novel attempts to show how the literary text rethinks the social life of things and the ambiguity of subject-object relations in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Aligned with the commercial circuits of material culture, which underscore the moral ambivalence of the novel’s Dutch society, material objects are shown to exceed their decorative function and reveal their destructive purchase on human life.

Pewne problemy z komutatywnością "i" koniunkcyjnego

Author(s): Elżbieta Magner / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2019

PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MORRIS’ SEMIOTIC THEORY

Author(s): Miloš Bogdanović / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

The subject of this paper is Charles Morris’ semiotic theory that has as one of its major projects the unification of all sciences of signs. However, since the above project has proven to be unsuccessful, we will try to examine here the reasons that led to this. Accordingly, we will argue that to transcend the particularities of individual disciplines that he wanted to unify, Morris had to make certain ontological assumptions, instead of theoretical and methodological ones, that they could share. However, because the ‘sign’ as an ontological category could in our view only be established if we follow the principles of the pragmatic philosophical tradition, we will try to show that the reasons for this failure should be primarily sought in different effects that consistent application of the pragmatic principles has in each of them (primarily in linguistics and the philosophy of language). On the other hand, this should enable us to draw several important conclusions regarding Morris’ project: namely, that his failure does not have to mean giving up semiotics as a potentially key discipline in approaching some fundamental philosophical problems, but also that it would demand return to the original semiotics developed in Peirce’s works.

Reizm w oczach swego rówieśnika

Author(s): Jerzy Pelc / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2019

Report on the 19th annual Gathering in Biosemiotics in Moscow

Author(s): Arran Gare / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2019

The 19th annual Biosemiotics Gathering that took place on 1–5 July 2019, was hosted by the Philosophy Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Review

Author(s): Claus Emmeche / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2019

Multiculturalism, biosemiotics, and cross-cultural friendship: An essay review of Olteanu’s multimodal semiotics of culture / Review of Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication: A Semiotic Perspective [Series Numanities – Arts and Humanities in Progress 9; Dario Martinelli, series ed.] by Alin Olteanu. Cham: Springer, 2019, xviii+140 pp.

Review

Author(s): Douglas Robinson / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2019

Möbius semioticity: Six takes on Peeter Torop’s semiotics-of-culture model of textuality. Reviewed by Douglas Robinson.

Semantic Meaning and Content: The Intractability of Metaphor

Author(s): Richmond Kwesi / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

Semiotics, image and narration. 12-th Early Fall School in Semiotics

Author(s): / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2006

It is by now a tradition that the intellectual efforts of the participants at the Early Fall School in Semiotics (EFSS), organized annually by the Southeast Center for Semiotic Studies (SEECSS) at the New Bulgarian University, result in a collection of selected papers. The present volume in English and French is an outcome of the XIIth edition of the EFSS on "Semiotics, Image and Narration", held in 2006 in the town of Sozopol. It is formally divided into two parts, containing texts by 'guest lecturers' from our partner Universities in Finland, Italy and USA, as well as by 'local participants' - professors and students at the New Bulgarian University. From parchments to paper and from print to the internet, "the story of humankind has been written, and will be written upon its virtual walls" (Albertson, 1997). In the new millennium we are ever more surrounded by bulletin boards and computer networks, from advertisement banners to cyberspace. Nowadays humankind learns by watching rather than by reading or being lectured to. In order to be considered literate in the information age, the new literate person needs to be media literate as well as being proficient in literature and arithmetic.

Simbolis viešosiose erdvėse: Rimanto Buivydo architektūrinė kūryba

Author(s): Goda Sūdžiūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 102/2020

The article discusses the architectural design works of the renowned Lithuanian architect professor, Rimantas Buivydas, as they relate to symbolism and the themes of public space design. It also specifically deals with his participation in the tradition of placing symbols in architectural design projects and in his designs for public spaces. For the analysis of this tradition, ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, Juan Edouard Cirlot and Umberto Eco are used. From Buivydas’s architectural legacy as well as from his theoretical studies, the principles of composition for public spaces and the aesthetics of their architectural design are analyzed. The focus is mostly on how symbols are coded in the architectural design plans and sculptures that dominate in the compositions.

The case for a semiotic method in Earth system science: Semantic networks of environmental research

Author(s): Alin Olteanu,Florian Rabitz,Jurgita Jurkevičienė,Agnė Budžytė / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2019

This paper sets a framework for using semiotics as an analytical method for Earth system science. It illustrates the use of such a method by analysing a dataset consisting of 32,383 abstracts of research articles pertaining to Earth system science, modelled as semantic networks. The analysis allows us to explain the epistemological advantages of this method as originating in the systems thinking common in both Earth system science and semiotics. The purpose of this methodological proposal is that of bringing the recent and critical planetary boundaries framework to the attention of ecosemiotics and biosemiotic criticism, and vice versa. Ecosemiotics is a branch of the biosemiotic modelling theory and is thus grounded in Charles Peirce’s schematic semiotics, but also developed in inspiration of Juri Lotman’s systemic semiotics. Both of these foundations of ecosemiotics are compatible with the rationale of Earth system science, given the schematism of Peirce’s semiotics and Lotman’s notion of meaning as an affordance of the biosphere. Far from exhausting the hermeneutic possibilities evoked by the discussed dataset, we argue that such semiotic analysis, made possible by the digital capacity of modelling large amounts of data, reveals new horizons for semiotic analysis, particularly regarding humans’ modelling of the environment.

The Effectiveness of Representations in Mathematics

Author(s): Jessica Carter / Language(s): English / Issue: 58/2020

This article focuses on particular ways in which visual representations contribute to the development of mathematical knowledge. I give examples of diagrammatic representations that enable one to observe new properties and cases where representations contribute to classification. I propose that fruitful representations in mathematics are iconic representations that involve conventional or symbolic elements, that is, iconic metaphors. In the last part of the article, I explain what these are and how they apply in the considered examples.