Semiotic Society of America
Biographic Data
| ID | 9593468 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Semiotic Society of America |
| GIVEN NAMES | Semiotic Society of |
| FAMILY NAME | America |
| SIGNATURE | AMERICA S S O |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 38 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Binary Thinking in the Art of Vincent van Gogh
Both taking a semiotic approach, as well as drawing on art historical resources in an attempt to explore the conjuncture between these two disciplinary spaces in a novel way, this essay argues for a view of Vincent van Gogh as an artist deeply and innovatively engaged with binary thinking. Concentrating on questions of meaning in his work, this essay interprets him as concerned to deal visually with issues of binary opposition. In particular, it …
Agonistic and Ecstatic Chiasm
An analysis of the logic function of Analogy as historically adapted by the disciplines of Philosophy and Rhetoric (Communicology, Linguistics, Semiotics). Most cultures assimilate analogy as a disposition for causal thinking [G. aitia] which becomes a habit for making judgments, e.g., deictic expressions of comparison, then contrast. The main illustration is Plato’s Analogy of the Line as used by philosophers (dialectic, mathematic as Ontology) …
The Signification of Forbidden Hope
The Polish national anthem, titled “Mazurek Dąbrowskiego”, was composed at a time when Poland was not an independent European state. Józef Wybicki composed the text in Italy in July 1797 on the occasion of General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski’s departure with Polish legions to fight under Napoleon Bonaparte. The legions hoped to secure independence from Poland’s third partition under Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Monarchy of Au…
Semiotics and Psychotherapy
The practice of psychotherapy involves the careful interpretation of certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as potential of some disorder or maladjustment, in order to facilitate treatment. That treatment itself involves the exchange of signs within a process of verbal communication and interaction. This article will explore some resources in semiotic theory that might be useful for understanding the nature and purpose of psychotherapy. My att…
Rescuing Forgotten Signs
Considering the idea of forgetting as a setting aside and not as some form of mnemonic lapse, the question arises as to what signs the harsh otherness of reality conditions us to forget? It is a type of forgetting that casts to the wayside what could, in fact, nourish all that is proposed as new, all that possibly stems from a rebirth of what has indeed not even been born. I will explore in this text precisely how forgetting is imposed on us by t…
De-sign, Renewal, and Rebirth
Through the use of De-sign, as termed by Farouk Seif (2019), this work aims to promote an understanding of trance as it is linked to rebirth, which is a metaphor for a lived experience. To achieve this goal, this work will be developed in three interconnected axes. The first is rebirth, which implicates a temporal reconfiguration in which the freshness of novelty characterizes the new self. In this state, present, future, and past are implicated …
Signs as First (Human) Creations
Any type of semiosis—whether it be that of manufacturing or signalling (as coined and defined by Barbieri [2009, 2009a]), or of interpretation (as defined by Peirce), or of the vegetative, animal, or cultural umwelten (as explained by Kull [2009, 2009a])—is a process that (re-)creates signs and meanings as amalgams of contingency, change, similarity, relativity, stability, and continuity. It is the concept of continuity that helps us understand h…
A Tale of Two Cadences
Charles Tomlinson Griffes was a visionary American composer at the turn of the twentieth century who synthesized highly diverse elements into a new artistic voice. This essay explores two instances of musical irony in Griffes’s oeuvre. “The Vale of Dreams” introduces a new tonal center at the end, which casts doubt on the overall structural role of the recurring bass pedal. Griffes’s use of irony in “Prelude #3” has a more critical character in t…
Toward an Adequate Theoretical Framework for Interpreting Complex Signification in Music
A fundamental issue for music semiotics is how we might address the signification and interpretation of complex amalgams that do not neatly subdivide into what I call “atomistic signs.” At all levels of musical organization, we are confronted with complex amalgams that demand a more synthetic kind of perception and cognition (e.g., gestures) or a more integrative approach to reconstruction and implementation (e.g., musical styles, understood as c…
Conceptual Palettes as Sites of Creative Negotiation in Leah Asher’s TRAPPIST-1
In this paper, I consider the creation and performance of Leah Asher’s TRAPPIST-1 (2017), a solo piano work in graphic notation that I commissioned and premiered. Musical works that utilize open notations often have a complex relationship to the work-concept and, in turn, an elusive ontology. I consider the role of conceptual palettes as significant sites in the creative process where ontological boundaries are delineated. I analyze four sites in…
Watching Musical Symbols Grow
The changing forms of gestures used in choral conducting (both in rehearsal and performance) exemplify processes of symbol growth that challenge interpretations of Charles S. Peirce’s later hexadic semiotic as aligning with highly deterministic, (post-)structuralist theories of semiosis. The case in point discussed, a performance of Charles Ives’s A Christmas Carol, demonstrates that the Dynamic Object represented via the conductor’s changing ges…
Conceptual Blending and Mendelssohn’s Poetics of Song
Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s model of conceptual blending is especially helpful in illustrating the type of text-music correspondences that often occur in Felix Mendelssohn’s songs and other vocal works. It corresponds to the way he spoke of his “poetics of song” compositions in his writings on the topic. Following a comparison of the Berlin-based approach to the songwriting of Mendelssohn to that of the Vienna-based song composers, such a…
The Semiotic Square Applied to Silence
The semiotic square is a tool developed by Algirdas J. Greimas and François Rastier that adapts rules based on binary logic. Its logic is established by looking for the complementary opposite of an initial term and then studying the contradictory terms of this pair. As an analysis tool, it has been applied to numerous wide-ranging fields. Dennis Kurzon applied the semiotic square to silence in his Discourse of Silence, but the study did not offer…
The Indeterminacy of Reality and the Fallibility of Science
According to Charles Sanders Peirce, a thing does not need to be fully determined to be real. It becomes known to us as real in a process of indeterminate inference. We acquire knowledge of the real through cognition as a not-fully-determined sign, and because of this, our knowledge about the world is always fallible. Theories do not need infallibility in order to be established—they are accepted in a provisional manner, and this acceptance is a …
Multiple Perspectives in Semiotics, Illustrated with Tagmemic Analysis of Tic-Tac-Toe
A semiotic analysis of tic-tac-toe illustrates the use of multiple perspectives in human understanding of signs. Tagmemic theory is a semiotic framework that pays explicit attention to multiple perspectives. It can generate multiple complementary analyses of the same semiotic system. We illustrate using the game of tic-tac-toe. Our analysis illustrates how three distinct perspectives or views (particle, wave, and field) can be applied to the sam…
Representing Existential Danger
A Dynamic Model of Delimited Infinite Semiosis
Although it is broadly accepted that semantic interpretation depends on various kinds of conditions, it is still a big challenge to provide an account of meaning that clarifies how the plurality of meaning structures can be stabilized. In this paper, we analyze the ambiguity of interpretive processes, proposing a model that schematizes the mechanisms that can lead to the arrest of so-called unlimited semiosis. Although we elaborate our analysis m…
A Dialogue with Leone’s Socio-cultural Semiotics of Innovation
Innovation has become emblematic of our times. Indeed, innovation is seen as a vital economic, social, and technological phenomenon, increasingly attracting research interest. However, innovation is, we believe, much more than this; innovation also concerns processes of signification, communication, and inference. Therefore, both the process and product of innovation are open to semiotic explanation and analysis. However, not many semioticians ha…
Semiotics and the Suburbs
On Peirce’s Earliest Conception of Metaphysics
In this paper, I explore Peirce’s initial conception of metaphysics as developed in his “Treatise on Metaphysics” (1861–2: W 1.57–84). Peirce claimed therein that the idea of metaphysics was three-fold, with its three perspectives consisting of its definition, object, and method. Since Peirce defined metaphysics as the “philosophy of primal truths” (1861: W 1.59), I initially focus on elaborating upon what these “primal truths” are and illustrate…
Ivo Osolsobě on General Semiotics in the Czech Tradition
This paper attempts to reconstruct Ivo Osolsobě’s criticism of the notion that the Prague Linguistic Circle stood for or did, in fact, introduce general semiotics to Czechoslovakia. In the first part, it presents the wider context of the origins of Osolsobě’s critique. In the second part, it discusses the definition and analysis of the main reasons for this criticism (which included a close connection with language and a lack of reflection on bas…
Peirce, Dewey, and the Aesthetics of Semioethics
This essay interrogates the aesthetic ground of Ponzio and Petrilli’s 2003 concept “semioethics” as activated by what they call a “logic of otherness”. I take my lead from Charles S. Peirce’s assertion that “Ethics, or the science of right and wrong, must appeal to Esthetics for aid in determining the summum bonum" (1903: CP 1.191). Given that Peirce’s esthetics, depicted as the first of his normative sciences, “ought to repose on phenomenology” …
Semioethics and the Average Life
The Aryan Race of Animals
This article analyses the role of colour in the representation of animals in Nazi propaganda. It demonstrates that colour, as applied to animals, was a communicational strategy of paramount relevance in setting boundaries and creating differences between the Nazis and their enemies. Drawing on propaganda studies, colour studies, and representational zoosemiotics, it semiotically investigates visual items published from 1923 to 1945. The results s…
Agency as Semiotic Fabrication
This text shows that Latour’s methodological displacement of the theory of sign into the realm of the general semiological narrative itself truncates his own theory of sign from its essential part, which is a tradition derived from the work of C. S. Peirce. This reduction of the general theory of sign is not just a matter of the given theoretical and methodological jargon or arbitrarily chosen expressions; it also has binding ontological supposit…
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Thinking at the Edges
The field of semiotic studies requires borders to function as a discipline but as a living science it is essential that those borders be unheeded. When Charles Peirce opened the modern field of semiotic studies he understood that he was an intellectual pioneer preparing the way for future semioticians. Peirce’s decision to equate semiotics with logic would likely seem bizarre to most professional logicians today yet his decision followed naturall…
Semiotics and Philosophy
Semiotics has not been warmly welcomed as an area of research concentration within philosophy, especially not within philosophy in the English empirical tradition. But when we consider that much of the focus of semiotic research is signification, reference, and representation, it seems evident that semiotic questions are as old as reflective thought itself. A look at how these questions have been treated throughout the history of philosophy sugge…
De-Sign as a Destiny of Negation
Boundaries and borders are undefined and ambiguous paradoxical phenomena, but there is a prevalent repudiation of their ephemerality and transitoriness. Crossing unaccustomed boundaries and traversing untried borders can be achieved by understanding the boundless scope of design and semiotics. Since the idea of design and the doctrine of signs are not restricted by either the humanities or sciences, De-sign (fusion of design and signs) is a bound…
Design in the Time of Covid-19
During 2020, humanity is facing an unprecedented event, the COVID-19 pandemic. Societies around the world have been shaken, and human capacities challenged. The effects are of superlative proportions in all human activity, highlighting the systemic condition of life. In order to demonstrate that people can perform Design Thinking for producing innovations, thanks to semiosis, analysis of cases from a pragmatist perspective are developed in this p…
Designed Environments, Mimesis and Likeness
This paper attempts to understand the trajectories of “designed artifacts”, built or produced in the post war periods and its implications for the human body, material, ecology, and mimesis. Has Architecture gradually distanced itself from the body as an authoritative figure in its practice? Is it being seen more and more as an autonomous art, away from the complex web of social and political concerns? There seems to be a rationale to focus on th…
Peirce on Practical Reasoning
It is generally agreed that what distinguishes practical reasoning from more thoughtful reasoning is that practical reasoning properly results in action rather than in conceptual conclusions. There is much disagreement, however, about how appropriate actions follow from practical reasoning and it is commonly supposed that the connection between reasoning and action can neither be truly inferential nor strictly causal. Peirce appears to challenge …
Signs of National Identity in the Graphic Design of Cypriot Print Advertisements
The current study seeks to identify signs of national identity through the design of commercial print advertisements in the Republic of Cyprus. Based on semiotic analysis of socio-cultural perspectives, the paper explores the relationship between images and texts, not only in terms of nonverbal and verbal messages, but also through typography and layout. In doing so, it also focuses on a case study of print advertisements designed for Laiko Kafek…
From a Bubbling Swirl of Signs
De-sign is an activity that is a result of semiotic and design processes combined to give a desired outcome. It is an outcome brought about by the conscious mind. But a De-sign outcome can be either tangible or intangible. Intangible results can lead to either an objective or a purely objective product. In other words, it can be a physical result or an imaginative state of mind. This paper explores the latter process of De-sign and how it relates…
On the Edge of the Unknown
The present paper intends to discuss the process of design and its peculiar location at the threshold between the unknown (the insecure place with unknown order) and already established, well-accepted knowledge. The process of design is known for its catalyzing possibilities, often suggesting connections between conceptions, ideas, and solutions to problems by linking an initial formulation with the innovative and upcoming development of a projec…
Semiotics and the Suburbs
On Peirce’s Earliest Conception of Metaphysics
In this paper, I explore Peirce’s initial conception of metaphysics as developed in his “Treatise on Metaphysics” (1861–2: W 1.57–84). Peirce claimed therein that the idea of metaphysics was three-fold, with its three perspectives consisting of its definition, object, and method. Since Peirce defined metaphysics as the “philosophy of primal truths” (1861: W 1.59), I initially focus on elaborating upon what these “primal truths” are and illustrate…
Ivo Osolsobě on General Semiotics in the Czech Tradition
This paper attempts to reconstruct Ivo Osolsobě’s criticism of the notion that the Prague Linguistic Circle stood for or did, in fact, introduce general semiotics to Czechoslovakia. In the first part, it presents the wider context of the origins of Osolsobě’s critique. In the second part, it discusses the definition and analysis of the main reasons for this criticism (which included a close connection with language and a lack of reflection on bas…
Peirce, Dewey, and the Aesthetics of Semioethics
This essay interrogates the aesthetic ground of Ponzio and Petrilli’s 2003 concept “semioethics” as activated by what they call a “logic of otherness”. I take my lead from Charles S. Peirce’s assertion that “Ethics, or the science of right and wrong, must appeal to Esthetics for aid in determining the summum bonum" (1903: CP 1.191). Given that Peirce’s esthetics, depicted as the first of his normative sciences, “ought to repose on phenomenology” …
Semioethics and the Average Life
The Aryan Race of Animals
This article analyses the role of colour in the representation of animals in Nazi propaganda. It demonstrates that colour, as applied to animals, was a communicational strategy of paramount relevance in setting boundaries and creating differences between the Nazis and their enemies. Drawing on propaganda studies, colour studies, and representational zoosemiotics, it semiotically investigates visual items published from 1923 to 1945. The results s…
Agency as Semiotic Fabrication
This text shows that Latour’s methodological displacement of the theory of sign into the realm of the general semiological narrative itself truncates his own theory of sign from its essential part, which is a tradition derived from the work of C. S. Peirce. This reduction of the general theory of sign is not just a matter of the given theoretical and methodological jargon or arbitrarily chosen expressions; it also has binding ontological supposit…
People and Words Reciprocally Educate Each Other
Jaspers on Communicology
Precarity and Insecuritas, between Fear of the Other and Apprehension for the Other
The sense of precarity is specifically human. It accompanies the consciousness that “what is” is in becoming and can stop being. All lifeforms live through signs, but we humans are also endowed with a capacity for metasemiosis. As semiotic animals, we have self-consciousness, feel responsibility, and feel apprehension: we are consciously aware of our subjection to precarity. G. Semerari called it insecuritas, in relation to both self and others. …
Transcendentalist Encounters with a Universe of Signs
The Semiotic Square Applied to Silence
The semiotic square is a tool developed by Algirdas J. Greimas and François Rastier that adapts rules based on binary logic. Its logic is established by looking for the complementary opposite of an initial term and then studying the contradictory terms of this pair. As an analysis tool, it has been applied to numerous wide-ranging fields. Dennis Kurzon applied the semiotic square to silence in his Discourse of Silence, but the study did not offer…
The Indeterminacy of Reality and the Fallibility of Science
According to Charles Sanders Peirce, a thing does not need to be fully determined to be real. It becomes known to us as real in a process of indeterminate inference. We acquire knowledge of the real through cognition as a not-fully-determined sign, and because of this, our knowledge about the world is always fallible. Theories do not need infallibility in order to be established—they are accepted in a provisional manner, and this acceptance is a …
Multiple Perspectives in Semiotics, Illustrated with Tagmemic Analysis of Tic-Tac-Toe
A semiotic analysis of tic-tac-toe illustrates the use of multiple perspectives in human understanding of signs. Tagmemic theory is a semiotic framework that pays explicit attention to multiple perspectives. It can generate multiple complementary analyses of the same semiotic system. We illustrate using the game of tic-tac-toe. Our analysis illustrates how three distinct perspectives or views (particle, wave, and field) can be applied to the sam…
Representing Existential Danger
A Dynamic Model of Delimited Infinite Semiosis
Although it is broadly accepted that semantic interpretation depends on various kinds of conditions, it is still a big challenge to provide an account of meaning that clarifies how the plurality of meaning structures can be stabilized. In this paper, we analyze the ambiguity of interpretive processes, proposing a model that schematizes the mechanisms that can lead to the arrest of so-called unlimited semiosis. Although we elaborate our analysis m…
Philosophy (34 works) · Epistemology (27 works) · Semiotics (24 works) · Aesthetics (17 works) · Linguistics (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Mathematics (10 works) · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education (10 works)