Books in the Semiotics, Communication and Cognition [SCC] series

This volume is the first reader dedicated to the discipline of zoosemiotics- the study of signification, communication and representation within and across animal species.

In his 'Letter on Humanism' of 1947, Heidegger declared that the subject/object opposition and the terminology that accrues to it had still not been properly addressed in the history of philosophy, and he awaited a proper disquisition that resolved the problem. To date, that has not been provided. This volume explains and solves the prevailing problems in the subjectivity/objectivity couplet, in the process making an indispensable contribution both to semiotics and to philosophy. This book shows that what is thought to be 'objective' in the commonplace use of the term is demonstrably different from what objectivity entails when it is revealed by semiotic analysis. It demonstrates in its exegesis of the 'objective' that human existence is frequently governed by examples of a 'purely objective reality'- a fiction which nevertheless perfuses, is perfused by, and guides experience. The ontology of the sign can be mind-dependent or mind-independent, just as the status of relation can be as legitimate on its own terms whether it is found in ens rationis or in ens reale. The difference in the awareness of human animals consists in this very contextualization that Deely's writings in general have made so evident: the ability to identify signs as sign relations, and the ability to enact relations on a mind-dependent basis. Purely Objective Reality offers the first sustained and theoretically consistent interrogation of the means by which human understanding of 'reality' will be instrumental in the survival- or destruction- of planet Earth.

Apart from the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did not write whole manuscripts, but composed short fragments. The current volume reveals the depths of Wittgenstein's soul-searching writings - his "e;new"e; philosophy - by concentrating on ordinary language and using few technical terms. In so doing, Wittgenstein is finally given the accolade of a neglected figure in the history of semiotics. The volume applies Wittgenstein's methodological tools to the study of multilingual dialogue in philosophy, linguistics, theology, anthropology and literature. Translation shows how the translator's signatures are in conflict with personal or stylistic choices in linguistic form, but also in cultural content. This volume undertakes the "e;impossible task"e; of uncovering the reasoning of Wittgenstein's translated texts in order to construct, rather than paraphrase, the ideal of a terminological coherence.

Musical semiotics is a new discipline and paradigm of both semiotics and musicology. In its tradition, the current volume constitutes a radically new solution to the theoretical problem of how musical meanings emerge and how they are transmitted by musical signs even in most "e;absolute"e; and abstract musical works of Western classical heritage. Works from symphonies, lied, chamber music to opera are approached and studied here with methods of semiotic inspiration. Its analyses stem from systematic methods in the author's previous work, yet totally new analytic concepts are also launched in order to elucidate profound musical significations verbally. The book reflects the new phase in the author's semiotic approach, the one characterized by the so-called "e;existential semiotics"e; elaborated on the basis of philosophers from Kant , Hegel and Kierkegaard to Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre and Marcel. The key notions like musical subject, Schein, becoming, temporality, modalities, Dasein, transcendence put musical facts in a completely new light and perspectives of interpretation. The volume attempts to make explicit what is implicit in every musical interpretation, intuition and understanding: to explain how compositions and composers "e;talk"e; to us. Its analyses are accessible due to the book's universal approach. Music is experienced as a language, communicating from one subject to another.

The theory of signifying (significs), formulated and introduced by Victoria Welby for the first time in 1890s, is at the basis of much of twentieth-century linguistics, as well as in other language and communication sciences such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, translation theory and semiotics. Indirectly, the origins of approaches, methods and categories elaborated by analytical philosophy, Wittgenstein himself, Anglo-American speech act theory, and pragmatics are largely found with Victoria Lady Welby. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say, in addition, that Welby is the "e;founding mother"e; of semiotics. Some of Peirce's most innovative writings - for example, those on existential graphs - are effectively letters to Lady Welby. She was an esteemed correspondent of scholars such as Bertrand Russell, Charles K. Ogden, Herbert G. Wells, Ferdinand S. C. Schiller, Michel Breal, Andre Lalande, the brothers Henry and William James, and Peirce, as well as Frederik van Eeden, Mary Everst Boole, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Giovanni Vailati. Her writings directly inspired the Signific Movement in the Netherlands, important for psycholinguistics, linguistics and semantics and inaugurated by van Eeden and developed by such authors as Gerrit Mannoury. This volume, containing introductions and commentaries, presents a selection from Welby's published and unpublished writings delineating the whole course of her research through to developments with the Significs Movement in the Netherlands and still other ramifications, contemporary and subsequent to her. A selection of essays by first-generation significians contributing to the Signific Movement in the Netherlands completes the collection, testifying to the progress of significs after Welby and even independently from her. This volume contributes to the reconstruction on both the historical and theoretical levels of an important period in the history of ideas. The aim of the volume is to convey a sense of the theoretical topicality of significs and its developments, especially in semiotics, and in particular its thematization of the question of values and the connection with signs, meaning, and understanding, therefore with human verbal and nonverbal behavior, language and communication.

The book offers a completely new view of language and of languages such as Russian, Chinese, Bulgarian, Georgian, Danish and English by dividing them into three supertypes on the basis of a step-by-step examination of their relationship to perception and cognition, their representation of situations and their use in oral and written discourse. The dynamic processing of visual stimuli involves three stages: input (experience), intake (understanding) and outcome (a combination). The very choice among three modalities of existence gives a language a certain voice -- either the voice of reality based on situations, the speaker's voice involving experiences or the hearer's voice grounded on information. This makes grammar a prime index: all symbols are static and impotent and need a vehicle, i.e. grammar, which can bring them to the proper point of reference. Language is shown to be a living organism with a determinant category, aspect, mood or tense, which conquers territory from other potential competitors trying to create harmony between verbal and nominal categories. It is demonstrated that the communication processes are different in the three supertypes, although in all three cases the speaker must choose between a public and a private voice before the grammar is put into use.

A fully-fledged doctrine of signs, with many horizons for the future, was the result of Thomas A Sebeok's work in the twentieth century. This volume offers a picture of how Sebeok enabled semiotics in general to redraw the boundaries of science and the humanities as well as nature and culture.

Readings in Zoosemiotics

The volume draws from Charles S. Peirce's pragmatic philosophy, as well as from diverse areas in contemporary arts and sciences, and certain facets of Buddhist philosophy- especially regarding notions of interconnectedness, self-organization, and co-participation of the knowing subject with her inner world, her socio-cultural world, and her physical environment. Contradictory, complementary, and coalescence are also fundamental watchwords, in addition to entanglement. 'Contradictory', since conflicts, clashes and inconsistencies there will always be, in spite attempts to resolve them. 'Complementarity', since poles of opposition can at least provisionally be resolved by mediation and moderation, however vaguely and ambiguously, such that consonance might emerge from dissonance, balance from imbalance, and accord from discord. And 'coalescence', since the union of disparities is an ongoing, and always incomplete, process; it is never fixed product. These concepts, along with the key word, entanglement, place Peirce in a new light, giving rise to new questions and possible responses from readers who are searching for alternate means of understanding in our increasingly complex, rapidly globalizing world.

In 2014, Peirce will have been dead for one hundred years. This book helps you celebrate this prolific thinker and the relevance of his idea for semiotics, communication, and cognitive studies. It provides a major statement of Peirce's work within semiotics.

Culture and Explosion, now appearing in English for the very first time, is the final book written by the legendary semiotician Juri Lotman. Originally published in Russian in 1992, a year before Lotman's death, the volume puts forth a fundamental theory: the semiotics of culture. Proceeding from a model of communication, Lotman extends the work of the renowned Tartu-Moscow school that he founded, showing not only how culture can be observed and described, but also how it can be governed and guided. In fact, as Lotman demonstrates with copious examples, the modelling system of culture has an immeasurably strong influence on the way that humans experience "e;reality"e;. As usual, Lotman's erudition is brought to bear on the theory of culture, and the book comprises a host of well-chosen illustrations from history, literature, art and right across the humanities. The book is of interest to students and researchers in semiotics, cultural/literary studies and Russian studies, as well as anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary intellectual life.

The series focuses on the state of contemporary semiotics and its current applications. It is intended to produce a number of concise interventions in semiotics, by which is meant studies of discrete areas of nature and culture that are interrogated using sign theory (in particular, as derived from the example of Peirce, Saussure, Sebeok, Lotman, von Uexkull, Greimas, Eco). Semiotics has undergone exciting sea changes in recent years. It has also been supplemented and reinvigorated by developments in media and theory and new areas of application. The series is designed to present developments in contemporary semiotics by focusing primarily on specific areas of its application. In addition to their specific focus, the books in this series give a rounded picture of current semiotics. Their emphasis is on current theory and the possibilities offered by the implementation of such theory. Each volume in the series places its topic within a general understanding of today's semiotics, a disciplinary field which comprises not just the study of culture but also the study of nature. Given the interdisciplinary character of this field and the spread of the target audience, the books are accessibly written and communicate with an academic readership that is not overspecialized. SCC is a peer-reviewed series of international scope.

It is commonly believed that some approaches of structural semiotics, narratology and cognitive science have not yet succeeded in constructing a complete and coherent theory of literary character. The author argues that the primary explanation of the failure is the artificial separation between characters and their actions. One of the chief implications of such separation is treating characters in terms of structures, agents, actants, functions, roles, and signs, which obviously mean that actions can hardly be explained as intended, motivated, performed and experienced. Survival, as a motivation-based concept, is one of the key concepts making the separation between character and action something impossible. Humans in literary narratives search for survival as an aware process of knowing and meaning making. Meaning in literary narratives can be produced by heroizability, which treats literary characters as living anthroposemiotic entities aware of their natural motivation to achieve in order to survive and produce meanings of their survival. As such, characters in literary narratives have active cognitions, and their cognitive activities remain meaningless without a process of semiosis. Applying Anthroposemiotic theory with Modeling System Theory, heroizability provides methodical tools to explain how the narrative text is represented and, thus, how it is to be interpreted properly by the reader not only to find, but also to make meaning in narrative world.

The series focuses on the state of contemporary semiotics and its current applications. It is intended to produce a number of concise interventions in semiotics, by which is meant studies of discrete areas of nature and culture that are interrogated using sign theory (in particular, as derived from the example of Peirce, Saussure, Sebeok, Lotman, von Uexkull, Greimas, Eco). Semiotics has undergone exciting sea changes in recent years. It has also been supplemented and reinvigorated by developments in media and theory and new areas of application. The series is designed to present developments in contemporary semiotics by focusing primarily on specific areas of its application. In addition to their specific focus, the books in this series give a rounded picture of current semiotics. Their emphasis is on current theory and the possibilities offered by the implementation of such theory. Each volume in the series places its topic within a general understanding of today's semiotics, a disciplinary field which comprises not just the study of culture but also the study of nature. Given the interdisciplinary character of this field and the spread of the target audience, the books are accessibly written and communicate with an academic readership that is not overspecialized. SCC is a peer-reviewed series of international scope.

The series focuses on the state of contemporary semiotics and its current applications. It is intended to produce a number of concise interventions in semiotics, by which is meant studies of discrete areas of nature and culture that are interrogated using sign theory (in particular, as derived from the example of Peirce, Saussure, Sebeok, Lotman, von Uexkull, Greimas, Eco). Semiotics has undergone exciting sea changes in recent years. It has also been supplemented and reinvigorated by developments in media and theory and new areas of application. The series is designed to present developments in contemporary semiotics by focusing primarily on specific areas of its application. In addition to their specific focus, the books in this series give a rounded picture of current semiotics. Their emphasis is on current theory and the possibilities offered by the implementation of such theory. Each volume in the series places its topic within a general understanding of today's semiotics, a disciplinary field which comprises not just the study of culture but also the study of nature. Given the interdisciplinary character of this field and the spread of the target audience, the books are accessibly written and communicate with an academic readership that is not overspecialized. SCC is a peer-reviewed series of international scope.

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.