The Object as Symbolic Code. Structural and Semiotic Approaches

2014 ◽  
pp. 57-83
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich

‘The art of free society’, A.N. Whitehead declares in his essay on symbolism, is fundamentally dual. It consists of both ‘maintenance of the symbolic code’ and a ‘fearlessness of [its] revision’. This tension, on the surface paradoxical, is what Whitehead believes will prevent social decay, anarchy, or ‘the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows’. Bearing in mind Whitehead’s own thoughts on the nature of symbolism, this chapter argues that the figure of the creature has been underappreciated in his work as a symbol. It endeavors to examine and contextualize the symbolic potency of creatureliness in Whitehead’s work, with particular attention directed toward the way the creature helps him to both maintain and revise an older symbolic code. In Process and Reality, ‘creature’ serves as Whitehead’s alternate name for the ‘individual fact’ or the ‘actual entity’—including (perhaps scandalously, for his more orthodox readers) the figure of God. What was Whitehead’s strategic motivation for deploying this superfluous title for an already-named category? In this chapter, it is suggested that his motivation was primarily poetic (Whitehead held the British romantic tradition in some reverence) and so, in this sense, always and already aware of its rich symbolic potency.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tae-Sik Kim

This study aimed to demonstrate how South Korean news media routinized and sensationalized the face mask amid two recent public health crises: the fine-dust crisis and the COVID-19 epidemic. News media appropriated the mythologized meaning of the face mask as a symbol of individual safety during the two crises. This study analyses news articles to answer three questions: (1) How was wearing the face mask mythologized as a routinized practice in days of uncertain risk? (2) How was the face mask politicized as a mythologized sign indicating China as an external threat? and (3) How was the face mask politicized as a symbolic code of the government’s responsibility for the crisis? Once signified as the primary means of individual protection in the context of Korean risk society, the face mask became politicized amid the shortage of the face mask. Placed in the context of the recent disastrous crises in Korea, China was identified as the culprit not only in the epidemic but also in the shortage of the face mask. The meaning of China as an external threat was continuously strengthened when the South Korean government opted out of the entry ban on Chinese citizens. The last analytic part presents how news media politicized the epidemic by associating the face mask crisis with the Korean government.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-239
Author(s):  
Gagan Deep Kaur

This article describes the process of transforming a symbolic code into weave actions of weavers in Kashmiri carpet weaving and how a trade-specific language features crucially in this transformation. The designs in Kashmiri carpet weaving are encoded in a symbolic code, called talim, which the weavers decode while weaving the design. This transformation from code-to-weave is achieved by subjecting the code to various interpretative frameworks, that is, modality and linguistic, and weaving actions are aligned in accordance with them. The transformation remains similar in single and multi-weaver settings, with an exception that, in the latter, the code is read aloud in practice-specific trade language among the team of weavers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 98-108
Author(s):  
Akhyar Rosidi

This study aims to describe the youth’s social expectations of the nasyid text Ya Fata Sasak by T.G.K.H. Muhammad Zainuddin Abdul Majid. The research method used is semiotic that is qualitative interpretive with content analysis techniques that focus to the research on the latent content of nasyid text Ya Fat Sasak as data research on the latent content of the nasyid Ya Fata Sasak research. This technique is carried out by copying the nasyid Ya Fata Sasak manuscript to Indonesian, reading, writing, and coding into five codes of Rolands Barthes such as hermeneutic code, action code, symbolic code, semantics code, and referential code. So the social expectations of the Sasak youth are defined. The result of this research shows that Sasak youth have equal opportunities with other young people in Indonesia to expect both individually and collectively. Every social expectation carried  out by Sasak youth is certainly related to the interest of the people, nation and the state which is realized through the strengthening of critical and independent discourses to  maintain  their  idealism,  such  as  building self-confidence (character building) and carrying out social and religious values as brotherhood and unity, managing natural resources that can be utilized optimally, participating in various competitions of contestations, and instilling a spirit of nationalism as the one of foundations for maintaining and advancing the Indonesian people.


Author(s):  
Nestor Sanchez

Abstract The topic of dynamics has been somehow reshaped by computational power. The areas of computer algebra and symbolics now allow us to deal with a more involved analytical manipulation of equations. At the same time, the everyday increasing power of numerics put into our hands new tools to solve old problems. In this case, we reformulate the problem of the dynamics of a three body multibody system by using symbolic manipulation of the Newtonian equations, to produce a set of differential equations that can be solve with standard codes. This treatment should produce not only the same results as the numerical approach, but it allows us to use the analytical equations to expand the analysis into design, control and stability. The paper shows the process to build the symbolic code using Maple language, or any algebraic manipulator. The proper equations will be derived to solve for the unknowns angles {ψ,ϕ,θ}, in terms of the prescribed quantities {α(t),β(t),γ(t)t}, and initial conditions. This procedure gives a good idea about the nonlinear response of the satellite to the control parameters. The size of the equations obtained is large. However, considering the type of analysis that could be done with a set like this and the capacity of large computers, it will pay off the extra effort. The codes that could be used for further analysis would find folds, branch points, period doubling bifurcations, Hopf bifurcations, torus bifurcations, by changing the parameters of the governing equation. A large number of important applications will develop in this area in the near future.


Gesture ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota Dutsch

In his Institutio (11.3.85–88), Quintilian divides all human gestures into “imitative” and “natural,” with natural gestures forming a symbolic code comparable to spoken language. This language of gesture would have included hand movements equivalent to adverbs, pronouns, nouns, and verbs. Such symbolic gestures, spontaneously accompanying words, were the only ones that Quintilian recommended for the orator. The actor’s gestures, dependent as they were on the lines spoken — and not on the actor’s thoughts and feelings — could not be spontaneous. The gestures made on stage were imitative of the various categories of the natural (i.e. symbolic) gestures, or of actions of everyday life.


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