The Dialogical Reality of Meaning (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Dialogic Reality of Meaning
The American Journal of Semiotics, 2003
This paper offers a non-representational alternative to semiotic notions of meaning as the designatum of signs, the content of messages, or what a text is about. It derives from considerations of how things -artifacts and objects of nature -could mean something to somebody. Rather than treating things as signs of themselves and thereby undermining the two-world ontology of semiotics, it explores the cultural roles that artifacts acquire in the lives of their users and when questions of their meanings arise and how they are answered in conversation. The paper presents a dialogical conception of meaning, which relies on Bateson's recognition of the importance of multiple descriptions, Wittgenstein's "seeing as", theories of embodied narratives, and bricolages involving technology.
The Meaning of Things: Toward a Theory of Discursive Inter-Artifactuality
This paper explores the question of “what do objects mean,” i.e., the cultural significance of objects, first by explicating a preliminary object-oriented theoretical framework, referred to as “Inter-Artifactuality,” and then by using the framework to very briefly discuss structures of meaning in two very different collections of artifacts: a museum-based collection of Roman pottery and the contents of a Nabataean tomb. The impetus for the development of this theoretical framework originates in the fundamental ontological and epistemological issues that lurk beneath the challenge of interpreting and describing archaeological material: 1) what is an artifact; 2) how does an artifact relate to other artifacts; and 3) how can we derive certain knowledge about a culture from its artifacts? The framework presented here answers, in short, that 1) an artifact can only be defined by virtue of its simultaneous inter-relationship and interaction with other materials, i.e., its “Inter-Materiality;” 2) an artifact relates to other materials through specific modes of inter-relationship or interaction, i.e., “Material Agency;” and finally 3) we may not be able to derive certain knowledge about cultures from artifacts. What we can derive from artifacts are artifactual discourses about and among artifacts themselves, certain non-artifactual materials, and both artifactual and non-artifactual modes of inter-relation and interaction, what I refer to collectively as “Discursive Inter-Artifactuality.”
Cultural Semiotics and Meaning Attribution to Artefacts
Multimodal Artefact Analysis in Ancient Studies. Investigating intersemiotic relations in pictorial and verbal communication in ancient Egypt, the Near East and beyond, 2021
Cultural semiotics (also called semiotics of culture) investigates the role of signs and sign systems in human culture. Influential theories in this area have been developed by Roland Barthes, Juri Lotman and Roland Posner, among others. While traditionally meaning had primarily been located in signs and sign systems such as language, images, or religious symbols, cultural semiotics has developed various approaches that connect the material aspects of cultures with the layers of meaning and interpretation that permeate our cultures. They complement the more specific approaches to artefact semantics developed in archaeology, anthropology, and art history, by outlining the general principles explaining how meanings are attributed to human-made (or even natural) objects, making them into signs. The contribution first presents Roland Posner’s semiotic theory of culture. While this theory offers a precise terminological approach to cultural processes, it offers only limited insight into artefact semantics. This gap is filled by an approach developed by the author which postulates a range of different but interacting principles for meaning attribution. The semiotic theory of artefact semantics considers both processes on the social level (e.g. artefact meanings based on function or defined by convention) and individual meaning attribution (e.g. objects acquiring meaning through our lived experience).
Semiotica, 2011
Based on two studies of different meaning-making phenomena, post-it notes and furniture, this paper highlights the role of materiality in everyday s emiosis. A perspective on the semiotics of material artifacts is adopted, in which the "social" in combination with the specific affordances of materials are crucial for meaning-making. Partially in opposition to a Saussurean view of the semiotic sign, it is argued that materiality in itself contributes to meaning-making, through discourses and activity types. This paper contributes to the theoretical and the methodological dialogue between social semiotics and other approaches in the wider field of semiotic research.
The Semantics of Artefacts. How We Give Meaning to the Things We Produce and Use
Image. Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Bildwissenschaft (Themenheft: Bildtheoretische Ansätze in der Semiotik), 2012
Broadly defined, every result of a human action is an artefact. In a narrower sense, the term is used for material things resulting from human actions; in this sense, all artefacts together form the realm of material culture. Although meanings play an important role in our daily interaction with artefacts, they have never been treated in a comprehensive and systematic fashion. In design theory, cultural semiotics, anthropology, and archaeology, different approaches to the semantics of artefacts have been taken. The article draws on these findings to build a generalized approach to artefact semantics that concentrates on the processes in which artefacts are connected with meanings (cf. section 3). In section 4.1, seven principles of semantization are proposed: semantization through (1) frame connection, (2) style, (3) iconicity, (4) individual experiences, (5) cultural allusions, (6) connection to social groups, (7) specific contexts. These principles explain semantization as causal process depending on certain conditions. In section 4.2, a notation system for representing processes of semantization is proposed that combines logical and semiotic notation. For each of the seven principles of semantization, the proposed notation and one example are given.
Beyond Semiotics: Text, Culture and Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Im/materialities: things and signs
Link to paper: https://semioticreview.com/ojs/index.php/sr/article/view/9/10 There has been a sustained and forceful call in recent anthropological accounts to engage more critically with the tangible materiality of the world, and especially a demand to take into account the ability of things to resist or exceed the discursive frameworks within which humans situate them. In this shift away from questions of subjectivity and interpretation, there is often an attendant downplaying of the semiotic. We resist this dualistic framing of semiotics in opposition to material things, and suggest that we should think more carefully about the assumption that subjectivity, interpretation and semiotics should be pushed aside in order to explore the nonhuman. Here we construe semiotics more broadly, recognizing a more encompassing field that engages explicitly with the non-representational, drawing upon a Peircean heritage. Rather than putting questions of representation to one side in order to focus on the peculiar characteristics of things, in this issue we situate representation within a wide-ranging field of sign-making and sign-perception, in which the concrete characteristics and qualities of sign relations are fully recognized. This is to put representation in its place as one of many forms of sign-relation, and similarly to situate human ways of knowing within a world of knowing actors, humans and nonhumans alike.
Exploring aethetics, design, and experience in the age of semiotic technology
Human technology, 2018
Where there is technology, there is semiotics. Semiotics refers to the science of signs; the study of symbols, markings, and their meanings in the way people interpret them. The human and, arguably, animal worlds are literally littered in signs, both natural (Eco, 1976; Peirce, 1958, p. 172) and artificial (i.e., intentional; de Saussure, 1916/1983). How these are understood and studied depends on the context, purpose, and individual. The built and designed human world can be equated to a massive sign system, in which every form, color, quantity, material, and logic has a communicative function. Architecture, for example, is a classic realm of technology in which form, style, material, and scale have been systematically used to impose societal hierarchy and order upon those who encounter it (Crouch, 1999). Architecture, as with any form of art, design, or technological form, communicates the logic, the values, and the actions of the times. In other words, from a technological perspective, designs are only available at certain periods of time if they serve a purpose, whether functionally through operation or from the perspective of societal ideologies and systems, through style. What is more, the physical nature in which they are realized is also instrumentally linked to public, political, and historical discourses that reinforce their meaning and significance in relation to the public that receives them (Crouch, 2010). When considering contemporary consumption, and that of information technology, this is particularly evidenced in regard to brand value, for instance. That is, bountiful significance and meaning can be obtained from design form through analyzing the technological items' forms, materials, scale, style, and functions as compositions. The meaning derived from these elements, in connection to brand recognition, act in a very similar way to that of architecture over the centuries. That is, messages inherent in the technology shape people's lives through molding their behaviors and exposing them to aesthetic compositions that contribute to formulating peoples' worldviews and norms.