La semiótica en los estudios comunicacionales desde una perspectiva sistémica (original) (raw)

Teoría, métodos y política: una confrontación entre la Semiótica y los cultural studies

2004

The essay tries to outline, in brief the main differences, along with the main possible intersections, between the Anglo-Saxon field of research labeled as cultural studies and semiotics, as they have been conceived and are nowadays conceived and practiced in the Italian context. Sketching very briefly some concepts, along with some of the epistemological bases on which these two critical practices are founded, the essay tries to discuss moving from structuralism (semiotics) to post-structuralism (CS) as a change in the very conception about what a theory, a methodology, and critical (political) thinking is. What is then needed, therefore, is not so much an (im)possible translation between semiotics and cultural studies, but a reflection and a possible fruitful revision of common concepts, such as that of interpretation and discourse.

Concepção sistêmica do mundo: vieses do círculo intelectual bakhtiniano e da escola semiótica da cultura

Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso, 2013

Como concepções teóricas que se organizam para promover um entendimento dos sistemas de signos da cultura podem ser perspectivadas pelo diálogo que respeita controvérsias? Esta é a questão de fundo orientadora do ensaio que examina vieses do dialogismo em confronto com premissas da semiótica da cultura. Sem relativizar a crítica que sustenta a inferioridade do método semiótico, procura-se examinar como, no campo conceitual, os pontos de vista apenas tangenciam a latitude da linguagem como problema semiótico da cultura a partir de uma concepção sistêmica.

Between the Semiotic and the Ideological / Entre o semiótico e o ideológico

2015

This paper aims to present and discuss the importance of the articulation between semiotics and ideology as an original and founding feature of the thinking of the Brazilian linguist, José Luiz Fiorin. Among his many published works, which show and analyze this constitutive relation, for this paper we have chosen his first two works-Linguagem e Ideologia [Language and Ideology] and O Regime de 1964: Discurso e Ideologia [The 1964 Regime: Discourse and Ideology]. At the end of the 1980s, those books initiated, as their titles show, this author's coherent understanding of language in consonance with life and, especially, with values in tension that rule the social and cultural life of a community. This pioneering position within the different fields of knowledge of which it is part, particularly the Greimasian Semiotics, offers and inspires, from those two publications on, theoretical and practical paths for the development of research in semeiotics and ideology researches that enables relevant interpretation of a Brazil that was under a truculent dictatorship.

Introduction: Semiotics and history revisited

The introductory article offers a general frame for the special issue of Sign Systems Studies, discussing the emergence of semiotics of history as a new discipline or approach in the humanities. It presents an overview on the attempts of joining the history and semiotics in the Western world since the early 1980s, with a special focus on the United States, and examines the contribution of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics to the semiotic study of history, paying the main attention to the work of Juri Lotman and Boris Uspenskij. Finally, a survey of the articles that make up the special issue dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Boris Uspenskij is presented.

Semiotics and Discourse Studies

In this paper, I would like to discuss the contribution that post-structuralist semiotics has brought to the analysis of academic discourse. The semiotic model was developed initially for the analysis of tales and myths. It has been gradually extended to various forms of fiction (novels, short stories), and then, according to " a growing degree of complexity and abstraction " , to all " forms of social production of meaning " (GREIMAS; LANDOWSKI, 1979, p. 5). This is the project stated in the first pages to a book entitled Introduction to Discourse Analysis in Social Sciences, published by Greimas and Landowski in 1979. The generalized extension is based on a typology of discourses that has been illustrated by specific analyses published in the 1980s (BASTIDE, 1981; BASTIDE; FABBRI, 1985; LANDOWSKI, 1986; BORDRON, 1987). One may consider that the research project led by Greimas and Landowski is thus located at the farthest point of development and initial application of the model and it is therefore a test for the narrative hypothesis. In doing so, the semiotic approach took the risk of being confronted with other models of analysis, such as they were elaborated in theoretical frameworks resulting from rhetoric (renewed in the 1950s by Chaim Perelman and his school), pragmatics (cf. PARRET 1983; 1987), sociology of knowledge (from the founding work of Berger & Luckmann, 1966), or as they relate to other theoretical currents in the language sciences (particularly, in France, the Althusserian discourse analysis). For the discourse in social sciences, these models offer two advantages over that of semiotics: on the one hand, it seems that the theoretical postulates on which they are worked out are more directly in accord with this type of discourse; on the other hand, they can count on a solid tradition of studies to ensure the sustainability of the results. Nevertheless, the model of semiotic analysis is original and it has also an advantage: it is general. I will put forward the benefits of this generality.

Epistemological discussion on the current status of semiotics in its institutionalization process

DEGRES-REVUE DE SYNTHESE A ORIENTATION SEMIOLOGIQUE, 2024

It is fascinating to observe the evolution of semiotics, which was once considered a passing trend but has now matured into a multifaceted discipline with significant interactions across various fields. The fact that semiotics, focusing on interpreting all types of signs and elucidating their production processes and underlying motivations, has reached this stage is not surprising. Semiotics, which initially interacted with literary studies to develop itself, test its limits, and put forward a systematic and reliable analytical reasoning model, today interacts with various fields of science. Due to this characteristic, semiotics is an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and even a meta-disciplinary domain or an intermediary sphere. However, despite the passage of decades, it is evident that there is still no clear definition of what semiotics is. Therefore, there will be no clear idea about what semiotics is not when it is not known what it is. This quite confusing dialectic has been in existence for a long time. Whether this situation regarding the definition of semiotics is a unique qualitative feature of semiotics or a blurring of ideas caused by different types of views is debatable. This situation of semiotics has the potential to be the subject of discussion in many more studies in different contexts. In the first part of this study, a discussion on the identity of semiotics will be made. The discussion will elucidate whether semiotics is amid an identity crisis and its reasons. In the second part, the interaction of semiotics with other knowledge domains, the role of this interaction in determining its boundaries will be discussed in the context of some descriptive features used for it, and an evaluation will be made on the general situation that emerged in the conclusion.

Theory and Methodology of Semiotics: The Tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure

2020

In Model 14 of the previous chapter, we encountered cultural networks, consisting of cultural relations between the agents activating them. From a semiotic perspective, such relations include linguistic communication and the communication of goods, but Bourdieu founds these semiotic fields on class relations by adding the material interests of the agentsin simple words, to acquire profitthus bringing forward the material aspect of society as an explanatory factor. The agents communicate by using semiotic systems, but these systems have not been created ex nihilo; they are themselves products of social interaction, and this interaction also has the same double aspect, semiotic and extrasemiotic, in fact is founded, according to Bourdieu, on the latter. Thus, the issue of communication leads us to that of the social origin of semiotic systems. The issue of the foundations of semiotic systems led the Paris School to contradictory positions, because it tried to protect the semiotic relevance. The Paris School is aware of a domain that escapes the scope of the Tartu-Moscow School, namely the social sciences. In the entry on sociosemiotics in the first volume of their Dictionary, Greimas and Courtés (1979: Sociosémiotique) start by stating that there is no doubt that language can be correlated with the traditional social classes (the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the people), but in modern industrial societies the criteria for social stratification shift to forms of living (vestimentary and culinary behaviour, dwelling, etc.), which are signifying practices appertaining to the domain of non-linguistic semiotics. According to Greimas and Courtés, seen from this angle, the correlation of semiotics with the social sciences would no longer result in an interdisciplinary sociosemiotics, that is, the bringing together of two heterogeneous fields, but would remain pure semiotic intertextuality (a position that raises the question of the correlation of language with "the traditional social classes", which presumably would require an interdisciplinary perspective). Similarly, the authors argue that, given that communication activates the complex articulation of semiotic systems undertaken by competent subjects, enunciation can be better studied through the utterance than through random sociological variables. They choose methodological coherence over interdisciplinarity. The two options above are clearly presented in the second volume of the Dictionary (Greimas and Courtés 1986: Sociosémiotique). The authors state that the current stage of research reveals two tendencies. The first is to accept that

15th World Congress of Semiotics. Semiotics in the Lifeworld Thessaloniki_Book_of_abstracts

2022

Semiotics, collective and politics. The case of people Applied semiotics have been practicing the analysis of political discourse for a very long time, and more recently the analysis of political practices and interactions, but without the political dimension being considered as a structuring element of the theoretical and methodological organon of semiotics. Politics, in this case, would be just one object of study among others, such as advertising, photography, literature or electronic social networks. Yet another approach is possible, which targets politics as a semiotic problematic, and not just as an object of study; in other words: a political dimension integrated into the global architecture of semiotics. Therefore, we must choose an epistemological horizon and an entry point that allows such integration. This horizon will be that of anthropology, a semiotic anthropology that teaches us and insists that the political dimension of our societies, our civilizations, our daily worlds begin with the choice of a collective reference actant. This collective reference actant will be our entry point: what is it made up of? how is it constituted? how and why is it maintained? what are the possibilities and limits of its metamorphosis? what repositories is it on the initiative of and is it carrying? what is the nature of its interactions with the individual actants that compose it? with other collective actants? Etc. Today, for example, it seems to go without saying in intellectual and academic circles (cf. the popularity of the actor-network theory) that the relevant collective actants, those who can refer to, facing the challenges of our common future, must necessarily be heterogeneous, and include non-humans as well as humans, machines as living beings, natural elements (a river, a mountain) as much as technical or cultural artefacts. But no one can ignore that this perspective is both fundamentally political because it because it challenges the hierarchical and sectoral organization of our societies and our daily lives, and semiotic, because it deeply reconfigures the way in which we conceive our categories of analysis, in particular that of actant or that of values systems, or even the global hierarchy of our conceptual system. The main part of this conference will be devoted, first, to gradually laying down the theoretical and methodological elements which thus make it possible to integrate a political dimension into the semiotic organon, and then to examine the consequences for a type of collective actant which today constitutes a particularly problematic type of collective actant, namely the "people." Bionote Jacques FONTANILLE, born in 1948, is emeritus professor of semiotics at the University of Limoges, and honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is also Honorary President of the International Association of Visual Semiotics, and Honorary President of the French Association of Semiotics. Jacques FONTANILLE was President of the University of Limoges from 2005 to 2012. From 2012 to 2014, he was Advisor and Chief of Staff of the French Minister of Higher Education and Research. He is the author of over two hundred and seventy scholarly publications, in the fields of theoretical semiotics, literary semiotics, visual semiotics, rhetoric and general linguistics, semiotics of practices and biosemiotics. Most of his books have been translated in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Korean, Arabic, etc. He was visiting professor or guest lecturer in eighty American, European, Asian, and African universities. Most of his former PhD students now hold faculty positions at universities in Europe