| 1. |
- Andrén, Mats
(författare)
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The social world within reach: Intersubjective manifestations of action completion.
- 2012
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - 2235-2066. ; 4:1, s. 139-166
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This is a study of the intersubjective recognizability of the “proper” accomplishment of children’s actions, and in particular of how the status of actions as properly completed is often actively made recognizable through speech and various modulations of bodily movement. In addition to analyzing how children do this in a number of cases, it is also argued that these manifestations of action completion often are strongly dependent on typified conventional knowledge, and that conventionality on the side of the signified is a neglected issue in research on gesture. The data consists of video recordings of four Swedish children between 24–30 months of age who interact with their parents at home. The analysis is framed in ideas about intersubjectivity and action drawn in particular from Alfred Schutz and Adam Kendon, but also others, and these theoretical syntheses are themselves a substantial part of the contribution of this paper.
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| 2. |
- Atã, Pedro, et al.
(författare)
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Iconic semiosis and representational efficiency in the London Underground Diagram
- 2014
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 1662-1425 .- 2235-2066. ; 7:2, s. 177-190
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The icon is the type of sign connected to efficient representational features, and its manipulation reveals more information about its object. The London Underground Diagram (LUD) is an iconic artifact and a well-known example of representational efficiency, having been copied by urban transportation systems worldwide. This paper investigates the efficiency of the LUD in the light of different conceptions of iconicity. We stress that a specialized representation is an icon of the formal structure of the problem for which it has been specialized. By embedding such rules of action and behavior, the icon acts as a semiotic artifact distributing cognitive effort and participating in niche construction.
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| 3. |
- Atã, Pedro, et al.
(författare)
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Multilevel poetry translation as a problem-solving task
- 2016
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 1662-1425 .- 2235-2066. ; 9:2, s. 139-147
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Poems are treated by translators as hierarchical multilevel systems. Here we propose the notion of 'multilevel poetry translation' to characterize such cases of poetry translation in terms of selection and rebuilding of a multilevel system of constraints across languages. Different levels of a poem correspond to different sets of components that asymmetrically constrain each other (e. g., grammar, lexicon, syntactic construction, prosody, rhythm, typography, etc.). This perspective allows a poem to be approached as a thinking-tool: an 'experimental lab' which submits language to unusual conditions and provides a scenario to observe the emergence of new patterns of semiotic behaviour as a result. We describe this operation as a problem-solving task, and exemplify with Augusto de Campos' Portuguese translation of John Donne's poem 'The Expiration.'
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Larsson, Andreas, Ph.D, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Analysing the elements of a scene : An integrative approach to metaphor identification in a naturalistic setting
- 2022
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - Berlin/Boston : Mouton de Gruyter. - 1662-1425 .- 2235-2066. ; 15:2, s. 223-248
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper addresses the challenges of exploring metaphor use in a naturalistic environment. We employed an integrative approach to the analysis of metaphor in video-recorded classroom observations of a teacher lecturing on computer programming. The approach involved applying the Procedure for Identifying Metaphorical Scenes (PIMS) and the Metaphor Identification Guidelines for Gesture (MIG-G) both individually and jointly. Our analysis of the data shows that the teacher primarily uses metaphors that evoke experiences of manipulating physical objects while using his hands to add spatiality to these ‘objects’. Furthermore, it indicates that specific gestures may serve as ’anchoring-points’ for larger scenes, enabling the speaker to form a scene in which to place smaller concepts. Throughout the analysis, our integrative approach to metaphor analysis provided opportunities to both support and refute results from each of the procedures employed. Moreover, the PIMS procedure has both served as an efficient tool for identifying central concepts of a scene and a way to validate the results of the gesture analysis. We suggest that this integrative approach to metaphor may be used to provide clues about the embodied motivation of a metaphor at an individual level.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Lenninger, Sara
(författare)
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Foreword
- 2024
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - 2235-2066. ; 17:1, s. 1-5
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 10. |
- Lenninger, Sara
(författare)
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Psychologism in the study of children's semiotic development
- 2024
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : De Gruyter Open Ltd.. - 2235-2066. ; 17:1, s. 157-171
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This essay discusses the notion of 'semiotic development in child development' and highlights potential concerns for 'psychologism' when semiotics turns into cognitive semiotics. The notion of 'semiotic development in child development' indicates a transdisciplinary approach involving both semiotics, the general study of meaning and signs, and child psychology. This, however, invites the criticism of committing the fallacy of psychologism. Piaget was aware of this dilemma when developing his theory of the semiotic function as a united capacity in children's cognitive development. Sonesson's proposal of a general definition of signs in meaning-making is suggested to, at some points, meet the dilemma with psychologism in studies of children's semiotic development. Starting from a phenomenological point of view in semiotics and integrating Piaget's theory on cognitive development and meaning-making meet the study of subjectivity in intersubjectivity. On the one hand, the sign as a theoretical object is not reducible to any given psychological process or processes; on the other hand, sign meaning can only exist if there are beings (consciousnesses) capable of grasping and using signs.
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| 11. |
- Lenninger, Sara
(författare)
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The metaphor and the iconic attitude
- 2019
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Ingår i: Cognitive semiotics. - : Mouton de Gruyter. - 2235-2066. ; 12:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper discusses visual metaphors and aspects of similarity in relation to metaphors. The concept of metaphor should here be understood as a semiotic unit that is also a sign (cf. Ricœur, P. 1986. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.). This implies that not all semiotic units are signs, but also that not all signs are typical metaphors. The metaphor is a particular kind of sign because of its making use of the openness present in similarity relations. Metaphorical meaning making is related to a quality of vagueness in iconic sign relations. Furthermore, a notion of iconic attitude is proposed as a designation of subjective and intersubjective perspectives that might be taken on meanings founded on similarity. The iconic attitude mirrors the flexibility of thought and responds to the potentiality of vagueness in iconic sign relations; but, at the same time, the iconic attitude works as a stabilizing factor for meaning. Moreover, this attitude is crucial for the specification of the similarity relation in an actual sign experience with an iconic ground.
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| 12. |
- Lenninger, Sara
(författare)
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The metaphor and the iconic attitude
- 2019
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : De Gruyter Open Ltd.. - 2235-2066. ; 12:1, s. 1-11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper discusses visual metaphors and aspects of similarity in relation to metaphors. The concept of metaphor should here be understood as a semiotic unit that is also a sign (cf. Ricœur, P. 1986. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.). This implies that not all semiotic units are signs, but also that not all signs are typical metaphors. The metaphor is a particular kind of sign because of its making use of the openness present in similarity relations. Metaphorical meaning making is related to a quality of vagueness in iconic sign relations. Furthermore, a notion of iconic attitude is proposed as a designation of subjective and intersubjective perspectives that might be taken on meanings founded on similarity. The iconic attitude mirrors the flexibility of thought and responds to the potentiality of vagueness in iconic sign relations; but, at the same time, the iconic attitude works as a stabilizing factor for meaning. Moreover, this attitude is crucial for the specification of the similarity relation in an actual sign experience with an iconic ground.
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| 13. |
- Mendoza-Collazos, Juan Carlos
(författare)
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On the importance of things : A relational approach to agency
- 2020
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 13:2
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Recension (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present review is conceived to be a contribution from the double perspective of a semiotician and a designer to the current debate on the extended mind and on distributed cognition, focusing on the role of things (artefacts, material culture) for the emergence of agency in animate beings. The theory of material engagement as conceived by Lambros Malafouris was formally introduced seven years ago, proposing an idea of boundless cognition and reformulating key notions such as agency, intentionality, and mental representations, philosophically framed with the help of approaches such as postphenomenology (; ). There is much to commend about a non-hierarchical, interdependent relationship between the world and living organisms — and more specifically between material things and human beings. Nevertheless, a balanced review of the notion of “material agency” is still called for. In this review, I show that an asymmetry can be introduced into the relationship between artefacts and human beings without committing the “sin” of anthropocentrism.
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| 14. |
- Mouratidou, Alexandra, et al.
(författare)
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The body says it all: non verbal indicators of choice-awareness
- 2024
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - 2235-2066.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent work in cognitive science argues for the illusory nature of conscious will and considers occasional “blindness” to manipulations as indicative of our lack of awareness in choice making (e.g., Dennett, 1996; Johansson et al., 2013; Wegner, 2018). This claim is based upon the tendency of experimental participants not to detect such manipulations, and the similarity between verbal justifications to choices participants had and had not made. Using a cognitive-semiotic framework, and relying on previous research, we argue that such conclusions are problematic, as they underestimate the embodied and intersubjective character of human meaning making. We support this through a novel approach to the investigation of choice awareness and manipulation detection by going beyond language into other bodily sign and signal systems that involve different degrees of awareness from both the producer’s and the interpreter’ side.We report on a study where 41 participants were first asked to choose from pairs of photographs of human faces the one they found most attractive and then to justify their choices, without knowing that for some of the trials they were asked to justify a choice that they had not made. Participants’ verbal responses were categorized according to the type of trial and detection into (i) non-manipulated, (ii) detected-manipulated, and (iii) non-detected manipulated trials. Further, participants’ bodily expressions for each of the trials were assessed on the basis of a tentative cline from signals to signs including five different Categories of Bodily Expression (CBE): Adaptors, Torso, Head, Face and Hand expressions. We found notable differences in participants’ responses to different trials, in at least three aspects: (a) duration, (b) rates of occurrence of the five CBEs and (c) variety of how those were used. Thus, despite whether the detection of the manipulation was verbally expressed, it was manifested in participants’ longer time of assessing the assumed choices, increased rates of bodily expressions, and engagement of more parts of their bodies during the non-detected than actual choice trials. Our findings speak against one of the tenets of claims against our reliability as conscious agents: the homogeneity between participants’ verbal reports justifying choices they made and choices they did not, with assumptions of “confabulation” even when choice manipulation is not involved (e.g., Johansson 2006). In contrast, we argue for a degree of awareness of the manipulations, even in verbally “non-detected” manipulations, and even if this awareness is not focal, but a matter of pre-reflective, marginal consciousness manifested in the use of participants’ bodily expressions, such as adaptors.
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| 15. |
- Naidu, Viswanatha, et al.
(författare)
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Holistic spatial semantics and post-Talmian motion event typology : A case study of Thai and Telugu
- 2018
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 11:2, s. 1-27
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Leonard Talmy’s influential binary motion event typology has encountered four main challenges: (a) additional language types; (b) extensive “type-internal” variation; (c) the role of other relevant form classes than verbs and “satellites;” and (d) alternative definitions of key semantic concepts like Motion, Path and Manner. After reviewing these issues, we show that the theory of Holistic Spatial Semantics provides analytical tools for their resolution. In support, we present an analysis of motion event descriptions by speakers of two languages that are troublesome for the original typology: Thai (Tai-Kadai) and Telugu (Dravidian), based on the Frog-story elicitation procedure. Despite some apparently similar typological features, the motion event descriptions in the two languages were found to be significantly different. The Telugu participants used very few verbs in contrast to extensive case marking to express Path and nominals to express Region and Landmark, while the Thai speakers relied largely on serial verbs for expressing Path and on prepositions for expressing Region. Combined with previous research in the field, our findings imply (at least) four different clusters of languages in motion event typology with Telugu and Thai as representative of two such clusters, languages like French and Spanish representing a third cluster, and Swedish and English a fourth. This also implies that many other languages like Italian, Bulgarian, and Basque will appear as “mixed languages,” positioned between two or three of these clusters.
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| 16. |
- Rédei, Anna C.
(författare)
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Dialogue and the “miracle of language” : The early and late Bakhtin
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - 2235-2066.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This essay begins with a brief account of the French linguistic structuralism and very briefly some aspects of the post-structuralist critique of it, here represented by Lacan and, Deleuze, and Guattari as a response to it. Against this backdrop, the purpose of the essay is to show a critique of structuralism that came earlier than the post-structuralist one, namely that of the Russian philosopher of the dialogic speech and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin in the 1920s. The concept of the dialogical word has had a major influence in cultural semiotics, literary – and film studies and existential psychotherapy. A second purpose of this essay is to briefly show in what way the ethics of the dialogical word is important in the latter, in existential psychotherapeutic work. Translations from Swedish and French are mine.
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| 17. |
- Sandin, Gunnar
(författare)
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Art, pictoriality and semiotics - A reflection on Göran Sonesson's contribution to art theory
- 2024
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - 2235-2066. ; 17:1, s. 87-101
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This reflection on Göran Sonesson's writings and theoretical engagement in art is also a survey of a set of semiotic concepts related to this area. As a semiotician Sonesson wrote about varying sub-genres like fine art, photography, film and architecture. The reflection is also a personal recollection - as a colleague, friend and participant in the Lund circle of semiotics - of ideas and discussions highlighting the relation between semiotics, art theory and artistic practice. This reflection captures a couple of notions of importance in Sonesson's contributions to semiotic theory relating to pictoriality, art and culture, such as "secondary iconicity", "projected Ego, Alter and Alius", "sedimentation of impressions", "picture subject and picture object", etc. The reflection ends in stating the importance of the specifically Lifeworld-based semiotic contribution by Sonesson to art theory, a contribution perhaps yet to be fully appreciated, and how this contribution also corresponds with how practicing artists reach out to, but also goes beyond, the art world itself.
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| 18. |
- Sauciuc, Gabriela-Alina
(författare)
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The Role of Metaphor in the Structuring of Emotion Concepts
- 2013
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - 2235-2066. ; Vol. V:1-2, s. 244-267
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) is one of the most prolific frameworks in the study of emotion concepts. Following the seminal work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and subsequent work by Kövecses (1986, 1990) and Kövecses and Lakoff (1987), an impressive number of studies in cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics have sought to document and confirm the claim that conceptual metaphor (CM) structures affective concepts. I attempt a brief overview of CMT claims about and CMT-inspired research on emotion concepts. I continue by presenting a study based on data collected in six languages, to assess the role of CM in the structuring of emotion concepts. I introduce the procedure, the corpus, and the analyses that have been carried out, including a detailed discussion of the considerations that informed the coding decisions applied to the corpus in a tentative quantitative analysis. Finally, I highlight a series of difficulties and controversies raised by CMT-driven analysis of emotion concepts that could be employed in hypothesis-driven experiments to test conceptual processing claims made within CMT.
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Sonesson, Göran
(författare)
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New considerations on the proper study of Man - And, marginally, some other animals
- 2009
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066. ; 4, s. 133-168
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Order to differentiate the semiotic capadties of animals and human beings we need to understand more exactly wfaat these properties are. Instead of identifymg all vehicles of meaning with signs, we certainly have to spedfy the notion of sign, but it will also be necessaty to provide an inventory of other kinds of meaning, staiting out from perception, and going through a number of intermediate notions such as affordances, markers, and surrogates before reaching signs and sign systems. This essay proposes a phenomenological description of a few kinds of meaning, which is not meant to be exhaustive, but still should give an idea of the complezity of the task. It suggests that not only the setting up of semiotic levels and hierarchies of evolution and development, but even, to some extent, the comparison of the capadties of anitnak and human beings must go band in hand with advances in phenomenological observations.
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| 21. |
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| 22. |
- Sonesson, Göran
(författare)
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The elusory kingdoms of the mind : Glosses on José Luis Caivano's paper
- 2015
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 8:2, s. 141-153
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Peirce's best idea, and the one least implemented by himself and his followers, is that of an ethics of terminology. Using this ethics as a tool, we suggest that many Peircean terms are in fact misleading, or, as he said himself at the end of his life, "injurious."From the point of view of cognitive semiotics, there is no reason to abide by Peirce's definition of semiosis, but, taking up the two quotes offered by Caivano, we demonstrate that they lead to different results, one being phenomenological and the other formalist. We go on to suggest that Peirce himself cannot have believed in the first definition, because then there could be no point in fallibilism and the community of scholars. In fact, we claim that what the different definitions of the "kingdoms"of nature show is precisely that human beings can liberate themselves from their Umwelt and adopt the scientific world-view, and this is also what we have to do when analysing semiosis itself.
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| 23. |
- Sonesson, Göran
(författare)
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Translation and other acts of meaning : In between cognitive semiotics and semiotics of culture
- 2014
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 7:2, s. 249-280
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- If translation is an act of meaning transaction, semiotics should be able to define its specificity in relation to other semiotic acts. Instead, following upon suggestions by Roman Jakobson, the Tartu school, and, more implicitly, Charles Sanders Peirce, the notion of translation has been generalized to cover more or less everything that can be done within and between semiotic resources. In this paper, we start out from a definition of communication elaborated by the author in an earlier text, characterizing translation as a double act of meaning. This characterization takes into account the instances of sending and receiving of both acts involved: the first one at the level of cognition and the second one at the level of communication. Given this definition, we show that Jakobson's "intralinguistic translation"is, in a sense, the opposite of translation and that his "intersemiotic translation"has important differences and well as similarities to real translation. We also suggest that "cultural translation"has very little to do with translation proper except, in some cases, at the end of its operation. Peirce's idea of exchanging signs for other signs is better understood as a characterization of tradition.
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| 24. |
- Sonesson, Göran
(författare)
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Two models of metaphoricity and three dilemmas of metaphor research
- 2019
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066. ; 12:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Starting out from classical metaphor theory, I consider two models, the Overlap model and the Tension model-the difference between which may not have been spelled out in that tradition. Although the latter has an Aristotelian pedigree, it may be less generally valid than the Overlap model, at least if the requirement for tension is placed very high. The metaphors distinguished by Lakoff and Johnson, like the catachresis of classical rhetoric, fulfils the Overlap model, but in a petrified form, as is shown by the fact that both may, in the same way, be awakened from their slumber by some modification or addition to the sentence. What Lakoff and Johnson, later on, call primary metaphors, however, does not really correspond to any of these models. They are quite literally extensions of human embodiments. Thus, they are actually diagrams, in the sense in which Peirce opposes them to metaphors. We go on to discuss similarities and differences between verbal and pictorial metaphors, arguing that some metaphorical configurations are more apt to work in pictures and others in language, although there are also some configurations which are common to both.
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| 25. |
- Stampoulidis, Georgios, et al.
(författare)
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A cognitive semiotic exploration of metaphors in Greek street art
- 2019
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066. ; 12:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cognitive linguistic and semiotic accounts of metaphor have addressed similar issues such as universality, conventionality, context-sensitivity, cross-cultural variation, creativity, and “multimodality.” However, cognitive linguistics and semiotics have been poor bedfellows and interactions between them have often resulted in cross-talk. This paper, which focuses on metaphors in Greek street art, aims to improve this situation by using concepts and methods from cognitive semiotics, notably the conceptual-empirical loop and methodological triangulation.In line with the cognitive semiotics paradigm, we illustrate the significance of the terminological and conceptual distinction between semiotic systems (language, gesture, and depiction) and sensory modalities (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste). Thus, we restrict the term multimodality to the synergy of two or more different sensory modalities and introduce the notion of polysemiotic communication in the sense of the intertwined use of two or more semiotic systems.In our synthetic approach, we employ the Motivation and Sedimentation Model (MSM), which distinguishes between three interacting levels of meaning making: the embodied, the sedimented, and the situated. Consistent with this, we suggest a definition of metaphor, leading to the assertion that metaphor is a process of experiencing one thing in terms of another, giving rise to both tension and iconicity between the two “things” (meanings, experiences, concepts). By reviewing an empirical study on unisemiotic and polysemiotic metaphors in Greek street art, we show that the actual metaphorical interpretation is ultimately a matter of situated and socio-culturally-sensitive sign use and hence a dynamic and creative process in a real-life context.
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| 26. |
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| 27. |
- Tseng, Chiao-I
(författare)
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Contextualising screen violence: An integrative approach toward explaining of the functions of violent narrative events in audiovisual media
- 2018
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066. ; 11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article aims to examine the narrative impacts and social influences of screen violence in audiovisual media. It suggests an integrative approach to synthesising the recent research findings in different disciplines such as cognitive science, media studies, neuroscience, and social semiotic theories. Based on the theoretical synthesis of narrative effects and persuasive functions, this paper establishes a method for analysing the contextualisation of violent events. In particular, the analytical method focuses on the two main narrative mechanisms for contextualising violent events, justifications of characters' motivations for using violence and depictions of consequences. This article will apply the method to elucidate how different kinds of contextualisation yield different types of narrative impacts, persuasive potentials, and the ways in which social, political, and ideological issues can be learnt. Furthermore, a typology of characters' motivations is also provided, which are often used for justifying the characters' violent actions in audiovisual narratives. This paper also unravels how genre expectations are closely related to narrative functions of screen violence, particularly how genre shapes the viewers' prediction and interpretation of violent events. Finally, the methods for motivation analysis of violent narrative events are extended to examine a particular genre of interactive audiovisual texts-empathy games.
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| 28. |
- Vastenius, Anu, et al.
(författare)
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The influence of native language word order and cognitive biases in pictorial event representations
- 2016
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 9:1, s. 45-77
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ever since Goldin-Meadow, S., C. Mylander, W. C. So, and A. Özyürek. 2008. The natural order of events: How speakers of different languages represent events nonverbally. PNAS 105: 9163–9168. proposed that there is a preferred order in sequential non-verbal event representations (Actor > Patient > Act), apparently independent of the default word order in one’s native language, the topic has been the focus of much cognitive-semiotic research. After providing a partial review of the field, we describe an empirical study investigating the order of pictorial repre- sentations of motion events using a design that emphasized the linearity of the representations to a greater extent than Goldin-Meadow et al. (2008). Speakers of Swedish (default word order: Actor > Act > Patient, or SVO) and speakers of Kurdish (default word order: Actor > Patient > Act, or SOV) participated in the study. Unlike earlier studies, we found an effect of native language word order. The Swedish speakers preferred to place the Patient picture after the Act picture, especially after first describing the stimuli verbally. In contrast, the Kurdish speakers preferred Act after Patient both with and without verbalization. The results of the study suggest that any cognitive or communicative biases for particular constituent order in non- verbal representations are likely to be modulated by linguistic word order, at least in populations reliant on written language in their daily lives.
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| 29. |
- Zlatev, Jordan
(författare)
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Image schemas, mimetic schemas, and children’s gestures
- 2014
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 7:1, s. 3-29
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mimetic schemas, unlike the popular cognitive linguistic notion of image schemas, have been characterized in earlier work as explicitly representational, bodily sturctures arising from imitation of culture-specific practical actions (Zlatev 2005, 2007a, 2007b). We performed an analysis of the gestures of three Swedish and three Thai children at the age of 18, 22 and 26 months, in episodes of natural interaction with caregivers and siblings in order to analyze the hypothesis that iconic gestures emerge as mimetic schemas. In accordance with this hypothesis, we predicted that the children’s first iconic gestures would be (a) intermediately specific, (b) culture-typical, (c) falling in a set of recurrent types, (d) predominantly enacted from a first-person perspective (1pp) rather than performed from a third-person perspective (3pp), with (e) 3pp gestures being more dependent on direct imitation than 1pp gestures and (f) more often cooccuring with speech. All specific predictions but the last were confirmed, and differences were found between the children’s iconic gestures on the one side, and their deictic and emblematic gestures on the other. Thus, the study both confirms earlier conjectures that mimetic schemas “ground” both gesture and speech, and implies the need to qualify these proposals, limiting the link between mimetic schemas and gestures to the iconic category.
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| 30. |
- Zlatev, Jordan
(författare)
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Meaning making from life to language : The Semiotic Hierarchy and phenomenology
- 2018
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The paper rethinks a proposal for a unified cognitive semiotic framework,The Semiotic Hierarchy,in explicitly phenomenological terms, following above all the work of Merleau-Ponty. The main changes to the earlier formulation of the theory are the following. First, the claim that a general concept of meaning can be understood as the value-based relationship between the subject and the world is shown to correspond to the most fundamental concept of phenomenology:intentionality, understood as “openness to the world.” Second, the rather strict nature of the original hierarchy of meaning levels made the model rather static and one-directional, thus resembling an old-fashionedscala naturae. Reformulating the relationship between the levels in terms of the dynamical notion ofFundierungavoids this pitfall. Third, the phenomenological analysis allows, somewhat paradoxically, both a greater number of levels (life, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, sign function, language) and less discrete borders between these. Fourth, there is an intimate relation between (levels and kinds of) intentionality and normativity, making the normativity of language a special case. Fifth, to each level of meaning corresponds a dialectics of spontaneity and sedimentation, with corresponding normative structures (e.g., habits, emotions, conventions, signs and grammar) both emerging from and constraining, but not determining, subject-world interactions. Sixth and finally, the analysis follows the basic phenomenological principle to examine the phenomena without theoretical preconceptions, and without premature explanations. This implies a focus on human experience, even when dealing with the “biological” level of meaning, with the possibility of extending the analysis to non-human subjects through empathy. The intention is that this phenomenologically interpreted version of the Semiotic Hierarchy may serve as a useful tool against any kind of meaning reductionism, whether biological, mental, social or linguistic.
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- Zlatev, Jordan
(författare)
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The semiotic hierarchy: life, consciousness, signs and language
- 2009
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Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - 2235-2066. ; 4, s. 169-200
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article outlines a general theory of meaning, The Semiotic Hierarchy, which distinguishes between four major levels in the organization of meaning: life, consciousness, sign function and language, where each of these, in this order, both rests on the previous level, and makes possible the attainment of the next. This is shown to be one possible instantiation of the Cognitive Semiotics program, with influences from phenomenology, Popper’s tripartite ontology, semiotics, linguistics, enactive cognitive science and evolutionary biology. Key concepts such as “language” and “sign” are defined, as well as the four levels of The Semiotic Hierarchy, on the basis of the type of (a) subject, (b) value-system and (c) world in which the subject is embedded. Finally, it is suggested how the levels can be united in an evolutionary framework, assuming a strong form of emergence giving rise to “ontologically” new properties: consciousness, signs and languages, on the basis of a semiotic, though not standardly biosemiotic, understanding of life.
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