On Learning Interpreted Languages with Recurrent Models

Can recurrent neural nets, inspired by human sequential data processing, learn to understand language? We construct simplified datasets reflecting core properties of natural language as modeled in formal syntax and semantics: recursive syntactic structure and compositionality. We find LSTM and GRU networks to generalise to compositional interpretation well, but only in the most favorable learning settings, with a well-paced curriculum, extensive training data, and left-to-right (but not right-to-left) composition.

Jeden świat. Reklama społeczna w dobie pandemii

The article is an excerpt from a wider research project carried out by the author in October– December 2020, concerning advertising materials used by WHO and selected countries (Poland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa) in social campaigns during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This text presents one case study – a campaign used in Poland, comparing its messages with WHO advertising materials. The main thesis was taken from the thought of Ivan Krastev, who claims that the pandemic made everyone realize that all people are inhabitants of “One World” in the face of a global threat. The entire study used the triangulation of two research methods – case study and compositional interpretation by Gillian Rose. Roman Jakobson’s model of linguistic communication was used to examine the verbal layer of messages. In the linguistic layer of the messages, their considerable persuasiveness was assumed. In the visual layer, due to the simplicity of the form, it is limited to the compositional modality, with particular emphasis on colors and iconic signs. The text shows how important a role in communication, especially in times of a pandemic, is played by social advertising campaigns. Paradoxically, a pandemic that threatens humanity may also open up new, comparative areas of research on the effectiveness of mass communication means used in some countries, which can be successfully used in others.

The prosody of French ambiguous multiple negative sentences.

While it has long been assumed that prosody can help resolve syntactic and semantic ambiguities, empirical evidence has shown that the mapping between prosody and meaning is complex (Hirschberg & Avesani, 2000; Jackendoff, 1972). This paper investigates the prosody of ambiguous French sentences with multiple potentially negative terms that allow two semantically very distinct interpretations—a single negation reading involving so-called negative concord (NC), and a double negative reading (DN) with a positive meaning reflecting a strictly compositional interpretation—with the goal to further research on the role of prosody in ambiguities by examining whether intonation can be recruited by speakers to signal distinct interpretations of these sentences to hearers. Twenty native speakers produced transitive sentences with potentially negative terms embedded in contexts designed to elicit single-negation or double-negation readings. Analysis regarding the F0 and the duration of the utterances revealed distinct prosodic profiles for the two readings, confirming previous evidence that speakers can produce characteristic acoustic cues to signal intended distinctive meanings (Kraljic & Brennan, 2005; Syrett, Simon, & Nisula, 2014). Our results reveal that NC readings feature a focused subject and a deaccented object, in contrast to DN readings where both the subject and the object were independently focused. They do not relate DN to contradiction but link negative meaning with focus on French negative concord items (NCI). The paper discusses the implications of these findings for theoretical approaches to NC and outlines further questions for the syntax-prosody interface of these constructions.

The Visual Semiotics of Fragrance Branding: Exploring Jean Paul Gaultier's "Le Male"

This major research paper (MRP) examines the visual semiotics of Jean Paul Gaultier’s “Le Male” fragrance for men and how this brand appeals to gay male audiences. It seeks to address the following questions: How do product packaging, print advertising, and video advertising use visual semiotics to appeal to gay male audiences? What image of masculinity is being communicated? And how is gay male desire being commoditized? To answer these questions the study examined three artefacts through a compositional interpretation and a visual semiotic analysis: the fragrance bottle, a print advertisement, and a video commercial. The research demonstrates that “Le Male” appeals to gay male audiences through three strategies: (1) sexual objectification of the male body; (2) use of gay iconography, especially depictions of homoeroticism among sailors and homage to the illustrated erotica of Tom of Finland; and (3) gay-coded visual polysemy. Furthermore, it depicts attractive men with ambiguous sexual orientation as objects of worship. Jean Paul Gaultier’s “Le Male” integrates the idealized male form into its cologne bottle design, print and video advertisements. Its carefully crafted homoerotic fantasies resonate with a queer aesthetic, but do so within a minimal set of superficial values reflected in the fleetingly beautiful body. This study is relevant to how professional communicators can weave a coherent, visual story through a deeper understanding of rhetorical signs and symbols that resonate with specific subcultures. Findings from this MRP will be discussed along with suggestions for the brand to retain its success among gay consumers. The study also initiates further research in the areas of empirical confirmation, feminist gaze theory, intercultural theory, and multi-sensory branding.

The Visual Semiotics of Fragrance Branding: Exploring Jean Paul Gaultier's "Le Male"

This major research paper (MRP) examines the visual semiotics of Jean Paul Gaultier’s “Le Male” fragrance for men and how this brand appeals to gay male audiences. It seeks to address the following questions: How do product packaging, print advertising, and video advertising use visual semiotics to appeal to gay male audiences? What image of masculinity is being communicated? And how is gay male desire being commoditized? To answer these questions the study examined three artefacts through a compositional interpretation and a visual semiotic analysis: the fragrance bottle, a print advertisement, and a video commercial. The research demonstrates that “Le Male” appeals to gay male audiences through three strategies: (1) sexual objectification of the male body; (2) use of gay iconography, especially depictions of homoeroticism among sailors and homage to the illustrated erotica of Tom of Finland; and (3) gay-coded visual polysemy. Furthermore, it depicts attractive men with ambiguous sexual orientation as objects of worship. Jean Paul Gaultier’s “Le Male” integrates the idealized male form into its cologne bottle design, print and video advertisements. Its carefully crafted homoerotic fantasies resonate with a queer aesthetic, but do so within a minimal set of superficial values reflected in the fleetingly beautiful body. This study is relevant to how professional communicators can weave a coherent, visual story through a deeper understanding of rhetorical signs and symbols that resonate with specific subcultures. Findings from this MRP will be discussed along with suggestions for the brand to retain its success among gay consumers. The study also initiates further research in the areas of empirical confirmation, feminist gaze theory, intercultural theory, and multi-sensory branding.

No escape from categorization: an insider’s view of compounds

There has been a surge of syntactic research on compounding, joining a large literature on the nature of roots and phase theory. In an attempt to probe into the syntactic domain for idiosyncratic interpretation and to account for lexical integrity effects, some recent studies on compounding have argued that root compounds are made up of two free acategorial roots directly merged in syntax, without undergoing categorization. The main goal of such an approach is to extend the phase domain in order to maintain two uncategorized roots awaiting further Merge operations. When a category head is merged on the top of this compounded structure, it will trigger its Spell-Out, and as a result, both roots will be identified as a single syntactic object for the purposes of movement and binding, and will be assigned a fixed, non-compositional interpretation. In this article, we argue that categorially non-individuated roots are not legitimate LF and PF objects, alongside Panagiotidis (2011, 2014, 2015). Consequently, any syntactic object made up of two or more uncategorized roots will induce formal crashing at the interfaces. We claim that root categorization cannot be analyzed neither as a matter of parametric variation, nor as an optional derivational step. Additionally, we propose that lexical integrity effects can be straightforwardly accounted if we assume that the unifying characteristic of compounds is the presence of a category head merged on the top of two categorized roots. Finally, we claim that non-compositional domains are not determined by categorization. Rather, non-compositionality is assigned at LF, through a set of LF instructions associated with roots in a particular syntactic environment.

Visual literacy in consumption: consumers, brand aesthetics and the curated self

Purpose This paper aims to consider the visual literacy mobilized by consumers in their use of brand aesthetics to construct and communicate a curated self. Design/methodology/approach The research surveyed a range of visual material from Instagram. Specifically, the goal was to use “compositional interpretation”, an approach to visual analysis that is not methodologically explicit but which, in itself, draws upon the visual literacy of the researcher to provide a descriptive analysis of the formal visual quality of images as distinct from their symbolic resonances. The research also incorporates 10 phenomenological-type interviews with consumers. Consistent with a phenomenological approach, informants were selected because they have “lived” the experience under investigation, in this case requiring them to be keen consumers of the Orla Kiely brand. Findings Findings indicate that consumers deploy their visual literacy in strategic visualization (imaginatively planning and coordinating artifacts with other objects in their collection, positioning and using them as part of an overall visual repertoire), composition (becoming active producers of images) and emergent design (turning design objects into display pieces, repurposing design objects or simply borrowing brand aesthetics to create designed objects of their own). Research limitations/implications This research has implications for the understanding of visual literacy within consumer culture. Engaging comprehensively with the visual compositions of consumers, this research moves beyond brand symbolism, semiotics or concepts of social status to examine the self-conscious creation of a curated self. The achievement of such a curated self depends on visual literacy and the deployment of abstract design language by consumers in the pursuit of both aesthetic satisfaction and social communication. Practical implications This research has implications for brand designers and managers in terms of how they might control or manage the use of brand aesthetics by consumers. Originality/value To date, there has been very little consumer research that explores the nature of visual literacy and even less that offers an empirical investigation of this concept within the context of brand aesthetics. The research moves beyond brand symbolism, semiotics and social status to consider the deployment of abstract visual language in communicating the curated self.

The Metaphysics of Representation

What is representation? How do the more primitive aspects of our world come together to generate it? How do different kinds of representation relate to one another? This book identifies the metaphysical foundations for representational facts. The story told is in three parts. The most primitive layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of sensation/perception and intention/action, which are the two most basic modes in which an individual and the world interact. It is argued that we can understand how this kind of representation can exist in a fundamentally physical world so long as we have an independent, illuminating grip on functions and causation. The second layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of (degrees of) belief and desire, whose representational content goes far beyond the immediate perceptable and manipulable environment. It is argued that the correct belief/desire interpretation of an agent is the one which makes their action-guiding states, given their perceptual evidence, most rational. The final layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of words and sentences, human artefacts with representational content. It is argued that one can give an illuminating account of the conditions under which a compositional interpretation of a public language like English is correct by appeal to patterns emerging from the attitudes conventionally expressed by sentences. The three-layer metaphysics of representation resolves long-standing underdetermination puzzles, predicts and explains patterns in the way that concepts denote, and articulates a delicate interactive relationship between the foundations of language and thought.

Virtual Dark Tourism

This study looks at some primary points in the discourse of virtual dark tourism (VDT) formation. Derived from the spectrum of sound branding (SB), virtual reality (VR), coupled with augmented reality (AR), the case is used as a tool to support the claims of VDT. Findings suggest viewpoints for making death sites exclusive, and offer valuable clues to the design of VDT formation as an option to include death sites as market offerings of dark tourism. Guided by social constructionist research philosophy, coupled with semiology and compositional interpretation, the analysis offers valuable clues to position sites built around the narratives of death. Not only does it verify elements of unique and emotional selling propositions in the typology of death sites, but it also signifies the emerging state of the art on the nexus between VDT and SB. Specifically, dark themed songs coupled AR are used as tourism drivers for designing Trunyan Cemetery, Bali. Overall, this review shows preliminary designs for prototype death sites. Several issues and directions for future research are discussed.

Visual Style of 21 Intelectual Property Right (IPR) Certified Lasem Batik Motifs as the Expression of Cultural Hybridity

The problem in this research derived from the fact that many Lasem batik entrepreneurs nowadays had limited knowledge of the novel characteristics of Lasem batik and hardly aware of its geographical indication. The research objective was to identify how the cultural hybridity of Chinese-Javanese culture and Lasem geographical environment were reflected by both the Tionghoa Peranakan-descent and Javanese-descent artists through the visual signs in the batik design. The purposive samples used were 21 Lasem batik motifs made by Tionghoa Peranakan-descent and Javanese-descent entrepreneurs which already IPR-certified. The method used was a compositional interpretation by interpreting each batik motif composition according to its content (subject matter), color, spatial organization, and expressive content (the combined effect of subject matter and visual form). The finding reveals that Lasem visual style hybridity is generally visible in: (1) the use of Chinese subject matter combined with Javanese motifs, (2) the use of Chinese subject matter combined with local Javanese isen-isen (texture), and (3) the rich use of red (from Chinese batik visual style) combined with brown (from Javanese batik visual style). This finding can be used as a reference guide for latter Lasem batik entrepreneurs to maintain the particular characteristics of Lasem batik while developing other batik motifs innovation.