The semiotic dimension of contemporary pragmatics

Contemporary Pragmatics has the semiotic features from the respects of disciplinary naming, the means of development, and theoretical source to research object and method. It is not only an independent linguistics and language science, but also an interdisciplinary field and paradigm. This paper is to explore the semiotic features and dimensions of Pragmatics for tracing back the origin and the theoretical resources from semiotic perspective, and to define its research scope and clarify the connotation of its conception. As Semiotics has a triad dimension of semiosis, one of which is the “pragmatic dimension”. Therefore, contemporary pragmatics includes at least three semiotic dimensions: scientific semiotics, linguistic semiotics and social semiotics. The semiotic analysis of Pragmatics could be conducive to clarify and fix the semiotic and philosophical origin, definition, disciplinary connotation and meaning of Pragmatics, which is also theoretically helpful for clarifying the concepts for the study of philosophical pragmatism, pragmaticism, semiotics, semantics and syntax. Key Words: Semiotic, Pragmatics, Pragmaticism

Anthropomorphizing Technology: A Conceptual Review of Anthropomorphism Research and How it Relates to Children’s Engagements with Digital Voice Assistants

Abstract‘Anthropomorphism’ is a popular term in the literature on human-technology engagements, in general, and child-technology engagements, in particular. But what does it really mean to ‘anthropomorphize’ something in today’s world? This conceptual review article, addressed to researchers interested in anthropomorphism and adjacent areas, reviews contemporary anthropomorphism research, and it offers a critical perspective on how anthropomorphism research relates to today’s children who grow up amid increasingly intelligent and omnipresent technologies, particularly digital voice assistants (e.g., Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri). First, the article reviews a comprehensive body of quantitative as well as qualitative anthropomorphism research and considers it within three different research perspectives: descriptive, normative and explanatory. Following a brief excursus on philosophical pragmatism, the article then discusses each research perspective from a pragmatistic viewpoint, with a special emphasis on child-technology and child-voice-assistant engagements, and it also challenges some popular notions in the literature. These notions include descriptive ‘as if’ parallels (e.g., child behaves ‘as if’ Alexa was a friend), or normative assumptions that human-human engagements are generally superior to human-technology engagements. Instead, the article reviews different examples from the literature suggesting the nature of anthropomorphism may change as humans’ experiential understandings of humanness change, and this may particularly apply to today’s children as their social cognition develops in interaction with technological entities which are increasingly characterized by unprecedented combinations of human and non-human qualities.

5. Modernist revolts

‘Modernist revolts’ traces the turn-of-the-twentieth-century rise of what philosopher John Dewey called a “new intellectual temper”: modernism. It was at this time that the idea of the intellectual enters American English as a term to identify a new type of modern professional thinker. To be an intellectual meant accepting responsibility to help other Americans accept a modernizing world of social change and dissonance while finding new grounds to negotiate their differences. The modernist thought they advocated came in a variety of forms: from new religious thought and philosophical pragmatism to progressivism and cultural pluralism.

Forest Governance: Hydra or Chloris?

Many forest-related problems are considered relevant today. One might think of deforestation, illegal logging and biodiversity loss. Yet, many governance initiatives have been initiated to work on their solutions. This Element takes stock of these issues and initiatives by analysing different forest governance modes, shifts and norms, and by studying five cases (forest sector governance, forest legality, forest certification, forest conservation, participatory forest management). Special focus is on performance: are the many forest governance initiatives able to change established practices of forest decline (Chloris worldview) or are they doomed to fail (Hydra worldview)? The answer will be both, depending on geographies and local conditions. The analyses are guided by discursive institutionalism and philosophical pragmatism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Introduction to Critical Modesty

The Introduction examines Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go to explore how the modest and minor mode of thinking practiced in it might be broadened to an emerging set of contemporary fiction, criticism, and theory. Drawing on the work of philosophical pragmatism, the Introduction argues that modesty as a temperament in novels entails the principle that fiction holds no special position outside the world from which to speak about it, and therefore, it frames novelistic expression as a process of thinking. Crucially, recognizing the novel as a process of thinking with the world requires a reciprocal critical modesty in which we understand critical work as something that happens in collaboration with the novel rather than to it. Critical modesty is not a theory or method to be applied but a temperament sourced from the ways texts model their own relations. Thus, the Introduction offers an account of the book’s key terms that follow from the ways that novelists and critics practice critical modesty.

El pragmatismo de Deweyan y el desafío de institucionalizar la justicia en circunstancias transitorias

For the past thirty years, the Transitional Justice (TJ) research program has been undergoing a period of transition, simultaneously expanding and consolidating; in one sense, expanding its scope to encompass the measurement of TJ’s impact and the redefinition of ‘transitional’ to include societies afflicted by deep social and economic injustice; and in a second sense, consolidating its practical approach to the promo-tion of democracy and peace, by developing best practices for institutionalizing TJ. While there have been advances in designing new TJ mechanisms and remedying the concept’s under-theorization, little comparative progress has been made, to date, in offering a guiding framework for TJ’s push to institutionalize. The thesis of this article is that philosophical pragmatism, specifically Deweyan pragmatism, offers a bevy of resources —a virtual tool-kit— for scholars and practitioners wishing to design TJ-friendly institutions within transitional societies.

Cuando la paz depende de los objetos cotidianos

This article draws on philosophical pragmatism to examine the growing “new materialist” and “socio-natural” sensitivities in international peacebuilding processes. There has been a shift from the idea of liberal peace, in which international organizations tried to impose liberal and democratic transitions in societies affected by conflict, towards interventions that promote inclusive peace processes and put a premium on the material elements of the everyday. In turn, these processes are much more experimental, uncertain and unpredictable. The pragmatism of James and Dewey is useful both to understand the limitations and criticisms of liberal peace, as well as to anticipate the opportunities and risks that are taken when peace depends on everyday objects.

Philosophical pragmatism, pragmatic agency, and the treatment of evidence in social work

From the influential evidence-based practice (EBP), to the increasingly persuasive evidence-informed practice (EIP), in the last decades, the field has sought to adequately allocate scientific evidence within social work’s practice. While this development suggests a move away from positivism, it is less clear towards where. Thus, this article advances classical pragmatism as a plausible philosophy of science for the treatment of evidence to account for this transition and the way forward. Pragmatism regards humans and their contexts as part of a continuity, constantly changing each other, always becoming. As such, it challenges what counts as ‘evidence’ and demands healthy awareness and criticism of preferences and biases, whether personal or contextual, in the self and in the subjects of interest. This opens up the door to plurality, to harness practical reason to solve practical problems, turning indeterminate situations into determinate ones, thereby generating warranted assertions.