A Response to Stuart Hall: Towards a Creative Decoding

The three positions of decodings proposed by communication theorist Stuart Hall have become a starting point for contemporary cultural studies. He insists that receivers of cultural products are not necessarily passive but can be ‘oppositional’. Media scholar John Fiske has further advanced the theory, suggesting that receivers can turn to be ‘producerly’ in their reception of cultural products. The present paper sheds light on the possibility of a more active, even creative position on the part of receivers, particularly in relation to popular songs and other interactive texts. Receivers of cultural products are powerful others to the ‘producing elite’. Jürgen Habermas’s idea of ‘com-subjectivity’ provides a theoretical foundation for the validity and desirability of such ‘creative decoding’.

An Inquiry into the Semiotic Thought of Laozi

Tao Te Ching, the masterpiece of Laozi the renowned philosopher of Pre-Imperial China, plays an important role in Chinese history. Laozi’s philosophy centres on such concepts as ming (names), li (rituals), and dao (the way). Ming, originally developed as a result of human beings’ endeavours to understand the world in which they live and to bring order to their society, has degenerated into the sources of evils and the reason for turbulence when people stop at nothing for fame and fortune; Li, an effective and efficient means for the kings of West Zhou Dynasty to maintain social stability, has become but a collection of empty sign vehicles with the disintegration of rituals and music; Dao concerns Laozi’s metaphysical reflection on the origin of the universe and its ultimate laws. Ming and li are but artificial restraints imposed on human intelligence whereas dao provides the way out. Therefore, to lead a simple and natural life, it is advisable to eliminate ming and li, and worship dao. In semiotic terms, this means that desemiotisation is the solution to the crisis.

The ‘Neutral’ – the Semiotic Paradigm of Sinogram

Redefining Roland Barthes’ term ‘The neutral’ as ‘the neutrality and dissolution of the dualistic opposition’, this paper argues that Chinese characters are quasi-characters, quasi-signs, and neuter. The unique paradigm of Chinese characters is revealed by comparing the neuter phenomena of ‘centrifugalisation’ and ‘centripetalisation’ between pictures and characters, thus highlighting the significance of such a paradigm to contemporary semiotic studies.

The Semiotics of the Medical Face Mask: East and West

After a concise survey of the state of the art on the semiotics of the mask and on studies in humanities and social sciences about medical face masks, the essay provides anecdotic evidence about differences in the semiotics of medical face masks in Europe and in the ‘Far East’, especially Japan, China, and Korea; it proposes a semiotic grid for decoding the phenomenology and meaning of the medical face mask; it concludes with some general observations on the change of the meaning of the face during the current pandemic.

2018 Annual Report of Chinese Semiotic Studies

By analysing semiotic papers, works and academic conferences from 2018, this paper aims to describe the development of Chinese semiotics. During this year, the study of semiotics in China further advanced in the fields of Marxist semiotics, communication semiotics, cultural semiotics, ecological semiotics and art semiotics. Overall, theoretical explorations and the integration of applications became development trends in semiotics. Further, the traditional concept of semiotics gained new interpretations through the introduction of new methods and ideas. In turn, the ‘meaning’ attribute of semiotics provided a unique analytical perspective for cutting-edge topics such as artificial intelligence and ecological environments.