Observing wildlife through the eyes of Nils Lindahl Elliot (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ecosemiotics: Signs in Nature, Signs of Nature
Coca, Juan R.; Rodríguez, Claudio J. (Ed.). Approaches to Biosemiotics. (25−39). Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad Valladolid. (Biosocial World: Biosemiotics and Biosociology ; 1)., 2023
The paper gives a synthetic overview of the current state of ecosemiotic research and proposes some new theoretical as well as applicational research vistas for the research field. Modern ecosemiotics has merged investigations of human interpretations of the environment and the semiotic activity of other species. In the era of the Anthropocene, humans are often the ones who determine the conditions of semiotic existence for other species. Furthermore, the symbol systems that humans use for interpreting the natural world form an integral part of such conditions. This paper therefore seeks for shifts in the existing symbolic systems that might help to relate to the environment as a semiosis based and regulated phenomenon. In more detail, it will explore the possibilities of dialogical approaches to support such a relation. Although several textual approaches to nature can be considered as potentially hegemonic and supporting the right of humans to treat nature from the grounds of ownership, this article will suggest that the perspectives on communication and dialogue offered by authors such as Mikhail Bakhtin may help to provide the necessary shifts of interpretation. Moreover, these kinds of interpretational grounds suggest ways for bridging the recognition of more-than-human semiotic relations with certain conservation ethics and practices of nature conservation.
On the Cultural Sociology of Wildlife Observation
Observing Wildlife in Tropical Forests, Vol. 1: A Geosemeiotic Approach, Chapter 8, 2019
The following paper offers a cultural sociological account of wildlife observation amongst tourists visiting tropical forests. The account is part of a transdisciplinary, geosemeiotic approach which articulates sociological with semeiotic phenomenological (Peirce), and ecological-geographic perspectives.
On the Cultural Geography of Wildlife Observation
Observing Wildlife in Tropical Forests, Vol. 1: A Geosemeiotic Approach, Chapter 12, 2019
The following paper offers a cultural geographic account of wildlife observation amongst tourists visiting tropical forests. The account is part of a transdisciplinary, geosemeiotic approach that articulates geographic with ecological, socio-anthropological and philosophical perspectives on wildlife observation.
Semiotic study of landscapes: An overview from semiology to ecosemiotics
Sign Systems Studies, 2011
The article provides an overview of different approaches to the semiotic study of landscapes both in the field of semiotics proper and in landscape studies in general. The article describes different approaches to the semiotic processes in landscapes from the semiological tradition where landscape has been seen as analogous to a text with its language, to more naturalized and phenomenological approaches, as well as ecosemiotic view of landscapes that goes beyond anthropocentric definitions. Special attention is paid to the potential of cultural semiotics of Tartu–Moscow school for the analysis of landscapes and the possibilities held by a dynamic, dialogic and holistic landscape definition for the development of ecosemiotics.
Ecosemiotics and the Semiotics of Nature
Sign systems studies, 2001
At the interface between semiotics and ecology, ecosemiotics is the study of environmental semioses, ie, the study of sign processes which relate organisms to their natural environment. Ecosemiotics or ecological semiotics is related to several other ecosciences ...
UN-making. Semiotics, ecology and the institutions of “Nature”
World Congress of Semiotics (IASS/AIS). Panel: Earth, health, life & death, the world in perspective: extension of the semiotic domain, constitution, and mutations of meaning. Thessaloniki, Aug 30th - Sept 3rd – Final Program , 2022
Elaborating from some features of ecological discourse as deployed by UN platforms (Tassinari 2019), we will propose an interpretation of what ecology does to semiotics – (un)making some of its assumption – and what semiotics could do with ecology – (un)making its paralysing effects (Marrone 2010). Ecological discourse, we argue, doesn’t concern the crisis of a specific object, “Nature”, but it manifests as an “epistemological crisis” (Stengers, Prigogine 1971; Serres 1990; Latour 1991, 1999, 2015, 2017) that cast upon social actors a sort of “dark competence” (having to, but not being able of knowing, wanting or doing). This crisis shall help us rethink the epistemological landscape of semiotics (cf. Greimas 1966, Fabbri 1998; Marrone 2021) where, we argue, neither “nature” nor “culture” should have any place. We will show, however, that ecology poses specifically semiotic problems (Paolucci 2021): it deals, for instance, with a continuous displacement of the threshold of “non-pertinent”; what was considered external, unnecessary, and therefore rendered invisible (CO2, soil depletion, pollution, risks), seem to return on the frontline of meaning with disruptive semantic effects on what we once held carelessly dear (fossil fuels, natural “resources”, sovereignty). With its ability to distinguish values from their object of placement (Greimas 1966; Greimas 1983), and describe modulation of modes of existence (Souriau 1955; Fontanille, Zilberberg 1998; Paolucci 2020), semiotics may help to imagine a redistribution of values placed on technologies and “resources” (Bonnet, Landivar, Monnin 2021) that facilitate ecological conflict resolution and foreshadow emerging ecological classes (Latour, Schultz 2022).
Biosemiotics
In this paper, I present an argument that quantitative behavioural analysis can be used in zoosemiotic studies to advance the field of biosemiotics. The premise is that signs and signals form patterns in space and time, which can be measured and analysed mathematically. Whole organism sign processing is an important component of the semiosphere, with individual organisms in their Umwelten deriving signs from, and contributing to, the semiosphere, and vice versa. Moreover, there is a wealth of data available in the traditional ethology literature which can be reinterpreted semiotically and drawn together to make a cohesive biosemiotic whole. For example, isolated signals, such as structural elements of birdsong, are attributed meaning by an interpreter, thus generating new ideas and hypotheses in both biology and semiotics. Furthermore, animal behaviour science has developed numerous test paradigms that with careful adaptation, could be suitable for use within a Peircean tripartite m...