Ersu Ding
Biographic Data
| ID | 3864509 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ersu Ding |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ersu |
| FAMILY NAME | Ding |
| SIGNATURE | DING E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lingnan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9927-421X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Transmuting the painterly sign
According to renowned linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson, translation can be divided into three general categories: intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation/transmutation. Unlike the first two categories, intersemiotic transmutation lacks the usual isomorphism that exist between a source and its target, but that should not deter us from discovering an underlying universal process of two-step interpret…
Poetic logic and sensus communis
Giambattista Vico first published his masterpiece The New Science in 1725, but it did not receive much attention from the academic world until the middle of the twentieth century. The last fifty years of academic research have witnessed a so-called “linguistic” and “cultural” turn which has revived our interest in this great Italian thinker. Looking at the Vichian scholarship of the recent past, it seems that Vico’s theory of poetic wisdom has ga…
Towards a dynamic model of the sign
This paper argues that a linguistic or any other type of sign should not be viewed as a static unit in a synchronic system, but rather as a dynamic entity that appears in real communicative events. As discrete entries in a dictionary, words are given definitions as their meanings, but these definitions may lead to interpretations that have not been sanctioned by a language community and yet are totally reasonable and understandable. In this way, …
Rethinking the Peircean trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol
Classification of signs into various kinds is a vital enterprise in semiotic research. As early as over a century ago, the American semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce laid down a solid foundation for this work by proposing his famous trichotomy of signs. Later scholars have been mostly applying Peirce’s theory to their own semiotic studies rather than challenging the inadequacies that exist therein, thus giving rise to a great number of confusion…
Semiotics Turning Cross-Cultural
Since its beginning, semiotics as either "a general, quasi-formal theory" of representation (Innis, 1985, p. 1) or "a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life" (Saussure, 1989, p. 15) has always exhibited a tendency toward interdisciplinarity which is proudly claimed by semioticians as their intellectual trademark. Indeed, by asking such basic existential questions as "What does this mean?" "How?" and "Why?" and equipped wit…
Ubiquitous but arbitrary iconicity
This paper addresses the issue of iconicity, which is largely neglected by Saussure for playing only a minor role in language. What it tries to show through ample examples is that iconicity exists at every level of language, but more importantly and contrary to popular belief, that the motivatedness of indices and icons does not in any way contradict the notion of the arbitrariness of the sign. This paper addresses the issue of iconicity, which i…
Parallels, Interactions and Illuminations
The first major work in Sino-Western comparative semiotics, Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations is a trans-disciplinary and intercultural effort that makes intellectual connections not only across diverse academic fields but also between Chinese and Western theories of the sign
The ‘handles’ and ‘sides’ of metaphor
This article explores from a semiotic perspective the structural features of the ‘poetic logic’ that lies behind metonymy and metaphor. More specifi-cally, it treats metonymy and metaphor not as ‘abnormal’ uses of language but as the results of the same indexical and iconic ways of thinking that we see elsewhere in our lives. The paper also brings to bear on the topic of metaphor some important insights from the late Chinese scholar Qian Zhong-sh…
Hidden iconicity
According to Peirce, iconic interpretation is an associative inference on the basis of similarity. In that sense, nearly all Chinese characters are icons. The more obvious support for this claim comes from the pictorial nature of Chinese characters, which are either ‘pictographic’ or ‘indicative’. A better adjective for both is ‘ideographic’ because they share the same interpretive movement from ‘graphs’ to ‘ideas’ that are similar. There is anot…
Philosophical Discourse of Postmodernity in the Chinese Context
As is suggested by the title of this article, the following discussion of postmodernism will be confined to the realm of philosophy, especially to the issue of whether it is possible to have some relatively stable cognitive criterion against which we can evaluate our day-to-day speech acts. Unlike other humanistic areas such as literature and art where the postmodernist movement has exerted a considerable impact upon the Chinese scene, the philos…
Semiotics Turning Cross-Cultural
Since its beginning, semiotics as either "a general, quasi-formal theory" of representation (Innis, 1985, p. 1) or "a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life" (Saussure, 1989, p. 15) has always exhibited a tendency toward interdisciplinarity which is proudly claimed by semioticians as their intellectual trademark. Indeed, by asking such basic existential questions as "What does this mean?" "How?" and "Why?" and equipped wit…
Ubiquitous but arbitrary iconicity
This paper addresses the issue of iconicity, which is largely neglected by Saussure for playing only a minor role in language. What it tries to show through ample examples is that iconicity exists at every level of language, but more importantly and contrary to popular belief, that the motivatedness of indices and icons does not in any way contradict the notion of the arbitrariness of the sign. This paper addresses the issue of iconicity, which i…
Hidden iconicity
According to Peirce, iconic interpretation is an associative inference on the basis of similarity. In that sense, nearly all Chinese characters are icons. The more obvious support for this claim comes from the pictorial nature of Chinese characters, which are either ‘pictographic’ or ‘indicative’. A better adjective for both is ‘ideographic’ because they share the same interpretive movement from ‘graphs’ to ‘ideas’ that are similar. There is anot…
Philosophical Discourse of Postmodernity in the Chinese Context
As is suggested by the title of this article, the following discussion of postmodernism will be confined to the realm of philosophy, especially to the issue of whether it is possible to have some relatively stable cognitive criterion against which we can evaluate our day-to-day speech acts. Unlike other humanistic areas such as literature and art where the postmodernist movement has exerted a considerable impact upon the Chinese scene, the philos…
Hidden iconicity
According to Peirce, iconic interpretation is an associative inference on the basis of similarity. In that sense, nearly all Chinese characters are icons. The more obvious support for this claim comes from the pictorial nature of Chinese characters, which are either ‘pictographic’ or ‘indicative’. A better adjective for both is ‘ideographic’ because they share the same interpretive movement from ‘graphs’ to ‘ideas’ that are similar. There is anot…
The ‘handles’ and ‘sides’ of metaphor
This article explores from a semiotic perspective the structural features of the ‘poetic logic’ that lies behind metonymy and metaphor. More specifi-cally, it treats metonymy and metaphor not as ‘abnormal’ uses of language but as the results of the same indexical and iconic ways of thinking that we see elsewhere in our lives. The paper also brings to bear on the topic of metaphor some important insights from the late Chinese scholar Qian Zhong-sh…
Parallels, Interactions and Illuminations
The first major work in Sino-Western comparative semiotics, Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations is a trans-disciplinary and intercultural effort that makes intellectual connections not only across diverse academic fields but also between Chinese and Western theories of the sign
Ubiquitous but arbitrary iconicity
This paper addresses the issue of iconicity, which is largely neglected by Saussure for playing only a minor role in language. What it tries to show through ample examples is that iconicity exists at every level of language, but more importantly and contrary to popular belief, that the motivatedness of indices and icons does not in any way contradict the notion of the arbitrariness of the sign. This paper addresses the issue of iconicity, which i…
Semiotics Turning Cross-Cultural
Since its beginning, semiotics as either "a general, quasi-formal theory" of representation (Innis, 1985, p. 1) or "a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life" (Saussure, 1989, p. 15) has always exhibited a tendency toward interdisciplinarity which is proudly claimed by semioticians as their intellectual trademark. Indeed, by asking such basic existential questions as "What does this mean?" "How?" and "Why?" and equipped wit…
Rethinking the Peircean trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol
Classification of signs into various kinds is a vital enterprise in semiotic research. As early as over a century ago, the American semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce laid down a solid foundation for this work by proposing his famous trichotomy of signs. Later scholars have been mostly applying Peirce’s theory to their own semiotic studies rather than challenging the inadequacies that exist therein, thus giving rise to a great number of confusion…
Towards a dynamic model of the sign
This paper argues that a linguistic or any other type of sign should not be viewed as a static unit in a synchronic system, but rather as a dynamic entity that appears in real communicative events. As discrete entries in a dictionary, words are given definitions as their meanings, but these definitions may lead to interpretations that have not been sanctioned by a language community and yet are totally reasonable and understandable. In this way, …
Poetic logic and sensus communis
Giambattista Vico first published his masterpiece The New Science in 1725, but it did not receive much attention from the academic world until the middle of the twentieth century. The last fifty years of academic research have witnessed a so-called “linguistic” and “cultural” turn which has revived our interest in this great Italian thinker. Looking at the Vichian scholarship of the recent past, it seems that Vico’s theory of poetic wisdom has ga…
Transmuting the painterly sign
According to renowned linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson, translation can be divided into three general categories: intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation/transmutation. Unlike the first two categories, intersemiotic transmutation lacks the usual isomorphism that exist between a source and its target, but that should not deter us from discovering an underlying universal process of two-step interpret…
Philosophy (9 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Semiotics (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Iconicity (4 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (4 works) · Mathematics (4 works)