Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 14 Issue 1

Issue of Chinese Semiotic Studies

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available February 17, 2018

Frontmatter

Page range: i-v

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February 17, 2018

Sign Markup Language in a Multimodal Context

Cognitive mechanisms and memes

Linda Jianlin Chen, Jianbin Huang

Page range: 1-11

Abstract

The process of “telling through words” and “understanding by insight” of a language are closely related to high-context and low-context cultures. Various concepts and knowledge systems constitute a hierarchy of cognitive domain networks. Bilingual and multilingual sign markup language can be seen everywhere in a multicultural setting, which is full of cognition, construal, and variation in the process of cross-cultural communication under the multilingual context. Sign markup language is presented in a multimodal discourse form, such as business language, advertising language, commercial logos, slogans, or propagation language. It contains known and unknown information and foreground and background cultures, changing with technological knowledge and history development. The cross-cultural cognitive research of sign markup language in a multimodal context is increasingly important, especially in today’s society undergoing the development of economic globalization, high-speed information, urban internationalization, and data digitization. Based on instances of sign markup language, the present paper will apply the theory of memes in sign markup language to analyze and put forward the cognitive mechanism used in multimodal contexts.

February 17, 2018

Brand Personification as Bonding

A sociosemiotic analysis of three packaging cases

Shukun Chen, Jing Lin

Page range: 13-39

Abstract

Brand personification has been well investigated in marketing literature. However, it is still rarely studied from the semiotic perspective, which offers a lens to research how the semiotic resources of products could be designed to personify the brand. Under the framework of systemic functional sociosemiotics, brand personification is theorized as a semiotic process of bonding, referring to the shared coupling of value and character. Two primary choices of bonding strategies are proposed: appreciation/judgment and affect. The source and target of appreciation/judgment are labeled as Appraiser and Appraised while those of affect are labeled as Emoter and Trigger . It leads to further considerations of how to construe the character as Appraiser, Appraised, Emoter, and/or Trigger. Then, the paper, drawing on visual and verbal grammars founded on systemic functional sociosemiotics, proceeds to illustrate how semiotic resources are co-deployed to realize these bonding strategies via a close analysis of three packaging cases of a company, Uni-President . This study provides theoretical backup for the brand personification in marketing and serves as a useful guideline for brand personification design, in particular, multimodal communication in packaging.

February 17, 2018

Roman Jakobson in Retrospect

Unvarnished remembrances of a stiff-necked student

Michael Shapiro

Page range: 41-56

Abstract

An aperçu of the early years (1961–1965) in the life of a working scholar with a lasting record of achievement that touches on many details in the fraught relations between Roman Jakobson and the author, one of his most outstanding students. The account of these peripeteia, framed in cultural as well as biographical terms, provides an unusual insight into the sociology of knowledge as it pertains to the development of linguistics and semiotics in the twentieth century.

February 17, 2018

Passion and Narration in the Contemporary Arab Novel

Modeling and Passionate Devices in al-Hayy al-Latini by Suhayl Idris

Benghenissa Nacer eddine, Benghenissa Imène

Page range: 57-69

Abstract

In this article, we propose to explore an aspect of semiotics that has been slow to emerge as a central issue in narrative semiotics. A substantive debate has recently begun today on the achievements and prospects of Greimas’ semiotics of inspiration. Without claiming to have a theoretical range, this article proposes to cast a semiotic light on one of these questions to show the transition from passion to modal. For instance, it demonstrates that the “terror” that is the subject of our analysis can be translated as an additional state between “wanting” and “not-able-to-not-do,” going beyond “the competence to do,” as related by its dictionary definition, to defining other states of passion as a “disposition” or a “feeling that leads to.” What occurs when this passionate state is embedded into a definite narrative? To approach this practical aspect of the question, we have chosen the contemporary Arab novel al-Hayy al-Latini (Latin Quarter) by Suhayl Idris, focusing on a sequence entitled “manipulation and terror.”

February 17, 2018

Toward a Pedagogy of Firstness

Aesthetic education as Firstness experience

Cary Campbell

Page range: 71-102

Abstract

This paper examines how the Peircean category of Firstness can illuminate pre-cognitive and pre-interpretative aspects of learning. This study can be understood as part of a broader edusemiotic project currently gaining momentum (cf. Semetsky (ed.) 2010, 2017; Stables and Semetsky 2014; Olteanu 2015). I explore various iterations of Peirce’s thought, from his early Lowell Lectures (1866) to what Strand (2013) has called his “rhetorical turn” following the introduction of the concept of semiosis in 1883. My contention is that engagement in arts-based processes is educationally useful in inducing and cultivating reflection on those primary aspects of consciousness that are often neglected by formal educational programs. My aim here is to explore what stimulates engaged absorption and examine how this can be applied to form an “education of inquiry” informed by Peirce’s pragmatism, which places contemplation on this pre-interpretative realm of meaning in a central role. In conclusion, the paper will show how an understanding of Firstness is necessary for understanding Peirce’s aesthetics, and thus his ethics, which depends upon the “habits of feeling” emerging from Firstness. Thus, we can understand how the cultivation of a “pedagogy of Firstness” is foundationally an ethical educational program.

February 17, 2018

Continua and clustering processes

The connection between the idea of form and the question of continuity in Peirce’s thought

Julia Ponzio

Page range: 103-119

Abstract

Peirce’s definition of topology is strictly related to the connection models of the parts of continua. In the last part of his life, Peirce elaborated his topological analysis of continuity in order to answer some important questions which arose in his early works. This paper demonstrates that it is very important to connect the topological analysis of continuity with the questions it tries to answer. If not connected to the basic questions topology tries to answer, topological analysis may appear as the search for a hidden structure that keeps reality together, something to which reality must be traced back to be understood. This hidden structure is the continuum conceived as a precondition that justifies the unity of reality. By contrast, if we reconnect Peirce’s idea of continuum to the questions it attempts to answer, the continuum appears no longer as the condition of possibility for the relations that constitute the unity of reality. On the contrary, it appears as a form whose formation itself is conditioned by relations.

February 17, 2018

Semiotics and/as Education

An interview with Inna Semetsky

Inna Semetsky, Cary Campbell

Page range: 121-128

Abstract

Inna Semetsky has written extensively on the philosophy of education, semiotics, and the art of Tarot, often in the same breath, drawing upon the thought of Charles Peirce, John Dewey, Carl Jung, and Gilles Deleuze, among others. Over the last decade she has launched a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry called edusemiotics (or educational semiotics) that uses semiotics to conceptualize the foundations of learning and education. In this interview Cary Campbell discusses with Semetsky: some of the details of the edusemiotic program (what it is, and purports to do); her work and collaboration with the late philosopher John Deely; her involvement in Tarot (as an active reader and a scholar of the subject); and her career of writing and research at large.

Corrigenda

April 25, 2018

Corrigenda to: Semiotics and/as Education: An interview with Inna Semetsky

Inna Semetsky, Cary Campbell

Page range: i-i

About this journal

Objective

Chinese Semiotic Studies (CSS) is a peer-reviewed academic journal sponsored by the International Institute of Semiotic Studies of Nanjing Normal University and the Chinese Semiotic Research Center of the Chinese Association of Linguistic Semiotics.

As the only international semiotics journal in China appearing in English, CSS is a unique outlet for Chinese scholars to be heard in global academia, affording an expanded and constructive dialogue between Chinese and non-Chinese semioticians on China-related subject matters and beyond.

Each issue contains three thematic sections: (i) Chinese Cultural Signs and Sign Theories, (ii) Western Cultural Signs and Sign Theories and (iii) Interactions between Chinese and Western semiotics.

Topics

Chinese semiotics
Linguistic studies
Area studies
Asian studies

Article formats
Original Research Articles, Review Articles, and Book Reviews.