Semiotic process implied in phenomena associated with high dilutions

This article is an attempted sketch for a semiotic perspective about the HD phenomena, from their production, signification and meanings to possible fields of research. On the grounds of classic semiotic notions, it is proposed the model of “iconic transmission” which posits HD signs as icons. As a working hypothesis, it might be useful to explain the anomalous aspects of HD, which fall outside the scope of traditional science grounded on the notion of matter.

(De)coupling race and language: The state listening subject and its rearticulation of antiracism as racism in Singapore

Harmonious multiracialism is one of Singapore's national values, yet race in Singapore is almost always precariously managed. In 2019, race once again became the centre of public debate when a government-sanctioned advertisement featured a Chinese Singaporean actor ‘brownfacing’ as an Indian Singaporean, incurring public outcry. Local entertainers Preeti and Subhas Nair responded with a rap music video that criticised the advertisement and included the line ‘Chinese people always out here fucking it up’, which drew flak from the government and the Chinese community in Singapore. This article considers the state's response to the antiracist practices of the Nair siblings, and the subsequent labelling of their behaviour as racist. The article also introduces the concept of the state listening subject and describes its role in the semiotic process of rearticulation to elucidate how the Singaporean state selectively (de)couples race and language to maintain the national racial order. (Raciolinguistic ideology, multiracialism, rearticulation, state listening subject, race, Singapore, antiracism)*

An exploration of discoursal identity: The rhetoric of narrative writing

The paper aims at disclosing the process of writer identity enactive construal in narrative writing. Three constituent parts of identity discoursal construction in the narrative are social semiotics as a reflection of the social environment, cultural identity theory as the embodiment of cultural choices and preferences, and pragmatics (Charles S. Peirce). The following research questions have been formulated: (1) What is the nature of identity construction? (2) What rhetorical factors influence identity construal in narrative discourse? By providing a step-by-step analysis of thematic structure, the paper conducts a discourse analysis of narrative episodes in terms of Agent, Process, and Medium triad (Halliday, 1973), reflecting the mechanisms of reader’s manipulation with information as a dynamic semiotic process of interpretation, limited by a final interpretant.

Signs as borders and borders as signs

This article focuses on bordering as a fundamental semiotic process of human psychological functioning. First, we discuss similarities between semiosis and bordering and explore their relationships. In the perspective of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics, psychic life is a process of purposeful production and interpretation of signs, carried out through cycles of culturally guided, selective internalization and externalization. Signs and borders are not only entities “out there”: they emerge in the purposeful movement of the organism in the course of future-oriented action in everyday life. Second, we discuss borders in mind and society as particular types of signs, through which humans regulate their own and others’ conduct. Finally, we propose a general genetic law of bordering development: borders are first conceived as tools created and established by humans as interpsychic activities. Later, the sign is internalized and begins to regulate psychological functioning. It also becomes a psychological tool for dealing with other humans and with the environment.

The semiotic dominants of initiation physicality

The purpose of the article is to investigate the semiotic dominants of physicality in initiation practices, conditioned by both external and internal representations of human beings. The methodology is based on the use of psychoanalytic, structural-semiotic, philosophical-anthropological, and cultural-historical methods. Scientific novelty. The application of the structural-semiotic approach allows us to reconstruct the symbolic system of physicality as a text having an internal structure and to suggest ways of deciphering this text. The semiotic dominants of initiation physicality on the example of hair, hairstyle, mask, and various manipulations with the body are considered, characteristics of their filling are given. Conclusions. Examples of the semiotic dominants of initiation physicality prove that initiation is represented through the prism of a semiotic process in which physicality is a sign and the context and conditions of its expression are initiations. This theory of sign systems provides an opportunity to interpret the human experience as an interpretive structure in which the way a person uses a sign or acts through initiation practices determines the approach to a perfect image. Models of modern man's behavior are based primarily on the attainment of bodily perfection with the help of hairstyle, makeup, tattooing, piercing, aesthetic methods of surgery, etc. This process is an unconscious means of copying the actions of an archaic person who has used tattoos, scarring, and other manipulations of the body in rituals and rituals of initiation. A promising direction for further research is the detailed study of initiation physicality in contemporary cultural space as an appropriate model of positioning the individual in a society, which proclaims the requirements for manipulation and transformation in order to conform to the image of the body formed by that society.

The Semiotics Analysis on the Environment in “The Journey to Atlantis” Picture Book

This study aimed (1) to describe the semiotic process of environment symbols in The Journey to Atlantis, (2)to generate the meaning of identified symbols which are shown through verbal and non-verbal contained in The Journey to Atlantis. This is a descriptive qualitative study trying to identify and analyze semiosis process of environment symbols, and describe the found verbal and nonverbal symbols in Elisabetta Dami’s The Journey to Atlantis Picture Book using semiotic theory by Charles Sanders Peirce (1991). The data for the finding and analysis were taken from Elisabetta Dami’sThe Journey to Atlantis (2012) Picture Book. The study shows that there are 40 icons in form of words and 36 onomatopoeia as verbal symbols, and 40 picture decribe Atlantis environment and 18 color as nonverbal symbols which are related to the environment.

ARTISTIC CREATION AND THE SEMIOTIC PROCESS: “CREATION” AND “DISSOLUTION” OF REALITY

This paper is mostly a conjectural attempt to account for a deeper psychological aspect of visual artistic creation and to combine that insight with the current semantic and semiotic approaches to the dissolution of the visual signs that exist in the form of a drawing or a painting. Our view offers an insight into a psychological account of bodily uncertainty and anxiety, attempting to describe the corresponding emotional states that artists experience.

Distance and Social Ties in the « Burqa Affair »: Spatial Arrangements and Regimes of Visibility

This study develops a semiotics analysis of the « burqa affair » on French national press and observes how this public debate interrogates the problematic of the distance (physical, social and symbolical) between the secular and religious subjects in view of the question of social ties (recognition and appreciation). The analysis of the prohibitionist discourse in such debate brings into light the importance of the face in the republican conception of social ties and the primacy of the figure of transparency inside republican regime of visibility. This republican translation of the social cohesion configures a spatial problematic since it generates a semiotic process that redefines the concept of “public space” and consecrate it in the terms of 2010 law. The reconfiguration of distance that results from the mediatisation of the “burqa affair” carries, in return, some significant effects over the practical and symbolical modalities of social ties, notably the relation between oneself and the others, and raises important questionings about the meaning of contemporary public spaces and places.

Semiotics Analysis in Tupan Cafe Menus

This study attempts to explain and describe the semiotic process and the message implied in Tupan Cafe menu. Semiotics approach from Pierce is applied to identify and analyze the data which focus on Representament, Object, and Interpretant. The method of this study is descriptive qualitative because the writer collected the data in the form of written words which produces descriptive information. There are six Tupan Cafe menus that were analyzed in this study. Those are the menus;Classic Orange Panacotta, Legendary Volcano & Pitbull, Trilogy Chicken ala Cordon Bleu, Crisp Fried John Dory Cheese, Coffee V60, and Bloody Jean. The writer is interested in analyzing them because those menus have hidden message that sometimes the viewers can not understand the message of menus well. The results of the study showed that all the menus have an aim to persuade the readers to know the meanings of the menus although the signs in each menu are different.

Critical Latinx Indigeneities and Education: An Introduction

Indigenous Latinx children and youth are a growing population that has been largely invisible in U.S. society and in the scholarly literature (Barillas-Chón, 2010; Machado-Casas, 2009). Indigenous Latinx youth are often assumed to be part of a larger homogenous grouping, usually Hispanic or Latinx, and yet their cultural and linguistic backgrounds do not always converge with dominant racial narratives about what it means to be “Mexican” or “Latinx.” Bonfil Batalla (1987) argued that Indigenous Mexicans are a población negada—or negated population—whose existence has been systematically denied as part of a centuries-long colonial project of indigenismo (indigenism) in Mexico and other Latin American countries. This systematic denial in countries of origin often continues once Indigenous people migrate to the U.S., as they are actively rendered invisible in U.S. schools through the semiotic process of erasure (Alberto, 2017; Urrieta, 2017). Indigenous Latinx families are often also overlooked as they are grouped into general categories such as Mexican, Guatemalan, Latinx, and/or immigrants. In this issue, we seek to examine the intersections of Latinx Indigeneities and education to better understand how Indigenous Latinx communities define and constitute Indigeneity across multiple and overlapping colonialities and racial geographies, and, especially, how these experiences overlap with, and shape their educational experiences.