Signs of Anthropomorphism: The Case of Natural History Television Documentaries

This article employs Peirce's triadic concept of the sign, and Deleuze's theory of the image-movement to propose a social semiotic account of the ways in which visual signs in British and US natural history anthropomorphicise 'nature'. Peirce's semiotic is employed to critique both realist and relativist accounts of anthropomorphism. Although there may be a causally indexical relation between photographic signs and object, the fact that all signs are constituted by a three-way relationship between sign, object, and interpretant means that natural history documentaries, like the scientific texts that purportedly inform them, are ineluctably anthropomorphic. Deleuze's account of the image-movement is employed to explain why, far from being a dispassionate capturing of 'any-instants-whatsoevers', natural history image-movements organise movement in ways that are mediated by the semiotics of the natural history genre. As such, image-movements also constitute a form of anthropomorphism.     

Check Out My Moves

Building on earlier assessments of visual representation in air and missile defenses, and on investigations of the role of representation and perception in warfare more generally, this article offers a semiotic analysis of the signifying practices and processes that are a necessary part of America's Ballistic Missile Defense systems. The argument is made that missile defense – a range of projects aimed at protecting the United States by intercepting enemy missiles in flight – provides a recurrent site of contestation of the image. To illustrate this, examples of the use and testing of missile defense technology to date are analysed from a broadly social semiotic perspective, with specific emphasis on the concepts of signs, codes and modality. Taking this approach indicates that, in the supposedly routine process of representing “threats” in a visual format, even the most sophisticated missile defense systems in use today still encounter severe difficulties, with potentially deadly consequences. This potential for misperception is itself an inherent part of the process of coding and decoding spatial data, represented in a visual format involved herein, which raises significant questions about the vision of nuclear security promised by ballistic missile defense.     

Re-Semiotizing the South African Democratic Project: The African Renaissance

This article reviews the relationship between the semiotic implications of the emerging concept of the African Renaissance, and the historical trajectory of semiotic studies in South Africa. Linked with the residual ideological territories occupied under the rubrics of ‘semiotics’ and/or ‘semiology’ are the ways these discourses have been re-articulated or re-presented within the politics of the post-apartheid era. As a concept of the ‘post’, therefore, the semiotic implications of a projective strategy like the African Renaissance require more than the mindless dyadism of linguistic semiology. The article sketches the outline of the case for a radical appropriation of the semiotics embedded in C.S. Peirce's pragmatism as a way of constituting the reality of ‘Renaissance’ concepts in terms of a Task. The place of semiotics within the broader philosophical and analytical programme is illustrated by means of a table that links semiotics, pragmatism, and radical theory. The table indicates how the issues discussed in this article can be seen to fall under a schema that foregrounds Peirce's realization that aesthetic and ethical concepts are prior to those based purely on logic. As such, therefore, the article suggests that topics in social or cultural semiotics are more readily amenable to semiotic interpretation and analysis under a pragmatic rather than a linguistic methodological regime.     

New Region,New Story: Imagining Mobile Subjects in Transnational Space

This paper investigates the changing relations between citizens and Europe's internal borders by seeing these relations as objects of governmentality of mobilities. It focuses on the particular discursive space of one transnational ‘corridor in the making’, studying how, through practices of visioning and strategy-making, governmental actors make new transnational governmental territories by breathing life into the imagined mobile subjects of these future territories. These mobile subjects play a central part in the politics of emergent transnational governmentalities and in legitimising potential border-crossing infrastructures. In a case study of the COINCO project (Corridor of Innovation and Co-operation), linking Oslo, Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Malmö and Berlin, it is shown how deconstructing imagined mobile subjects reveals the will to power over mobility and sheds light on how governmental practices are remaking European borders.     

“David Byrne really does love PowerPoint”: art as research on semiotics and semiotic technology

This article presents a reading of David Byrne's Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, an art work created with MicroSoft's presentation software PowerPoint, as an instance of creative research on semiotics and semiotic technology. It reveals commonalities and differences between Byrne's ideas about PowerPoint and related ideas from linguistics and semiotics, and is intended as a contribution to research on PowerPoint, and on semiotic technologies generally, as well as to efforts aimed at developing criteria for evaluating art as research on semiotics.     

Social media as semiotic technology and social practice: the case of ResearchGate’s design and its potential to transform social practice

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the need for critical approaches to social media by bridging the focus on language and other semiotic resources that characterises discourse studies with the broader perspective on social media as social, cultural, economic and technological constructs that dominates media and cultural studies. Specifically, we propose a model for analysing how social media as semiotic technologies, that is, technologies designed to enable and constrain meaning-making, may transform social practices. By incorporating Van Leeuwen’s [2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis. London: Oxford University Press] framework for the critical analysis of discourse and social practice, the model extends the social semiotic approach developed in recent critical multimodal studies of software such as PowerPoint to social media, which function primarily to provide platforms for and commodify social practices, rather than to offer rich arrays of semiotic resources for creating multimodal texts and artefacts. Using the academic social network site ResearchGate and the practice of research peer review, we illustrate the model’s capacity to account for the ways the design of social media platforms – through the semiotic resources they make available and the ways these are presented – enables and constrains their users’ ability to perform key social practices and has the potential to transform these practices.     

Semiotic technologies: a case study of discipline-based practices and pedagogy

This paper examines semiotic technologies, both in terms of the resources they harness and the practices developed around their use. It draws on data collected as part of an ethnographic investigation into the meaning-making practices deployed within civil engineering study. The data is used as a case study for examining semiotic technologies as socially situated resources for disciplinary practices. Using a multimodal social semiotic approach, we argue that technologies are not self-evident, and that their use constitutes specific social practices that require development in the classroom. In order to deploy technologies in pedagogically effective ways, we need to understand the semiotic resources they draw on (including embodied resources). Awareness that technologies are not neutral or value-free, but are socially situated and ideologically laden, may enable meta-level understanding of the discipline, thus creating the possibility for improved pedagogical practices.     

Brands as semiotic molecular entities

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of how brands are a phenomenon endowed with signs and meanings. From the background of Peirce's process of representation a model is developed that characterises brands as a network with three semiotic dimensions. Signs of brands spread out in the markets and establish relations of dependence between different elements. Brands can be defined through the wholeness of these semiotic elements and their relations, resembling a molecule. Thus, it is proposed that brands can be regarded as tridimensional molecule-shaped networks of semiotic elements that evolve through continuous processes of representation. The implications of the model are discussed and the article ends with suggestions for future research.     

Semiotics of pride and profit: interrogating commodification in indigenous handicraft production

This study investigates the shifting terrain of pride, profit and power relations in minority language communities under contemporary globalisation. While “pride” associates linguistic-cultural heritage with identity and preservation, “profit” views these as sources of economic gain. In contemporary late capitalism, “pride” seems to be increasingly giving way to “profit”. Arguing that this transformation needs to be interrogated in terms of complexity and that a detailed, multilayered semiotic analysis can open a privileged window for such an inquiry, this study combines critical multimodal discourse analysis and an ethnographic approach to analyse processes of semiotic commodification in handicraft production in the indigenous minority language community of the Sámi in northern Lapland. The investigation focuses on the activities of an innovative Sámi artist and entrepreneur, and within these a range of paper notebooks, which are, although designed by the Sámi artist and sold in her handicraft shop in Lapland, produced by women living at the border of Thailand and Laos. The investigation illuminates two critical shifts: how the move towards profit can open up space to contest the ownership of pride within an ethnic community. Second, how this move makes way for new, globalised modes of production of ‘indigenous handicrafts’ and creates global vectors of power, engaged in both empowerment and exploitation, in the production of both pride and profit. The study thereby contributes to the understanding of the increasingly complex power relations and the ambivalence and multiple effects of practices constituting the apparent shift from “pride” to “profit”.     

Social distance and the multimodal construction of the Other in sectarian song

This paper introduces the concept of “tonal gravity” through a multimodal analysis of a YouTube video to demonstrate how multimodality is key to the construction of “Rule Britannia” as a sectarian song. The analysis focuses upon the multimodal semiotics of social distance which has been a key concept in sociological and anthropological traditions in recent times. This concept offers a means to understand the social semiotic relationship between Self and Other in multimodal discourse. Following previous work in social semiotics and music studies which examine how visual composition, music and the voice have constructed social distance or expressions of intimacy, I introduce the concept of tonal gravity which extends the metaphors of semiotic space in previous work in the musical mode, to account for a fuller understanding of how music helps narrate the multimodal Self and Other. This is introduced via a close multimodal analysis of “Rule Britannia” as a Rangers Football fan video which is only transformed into a sectarian text through multimodal collocation where different semiotic resources in various modes act in combination to produce a dominant Self actively prejudiced against a low Other.     

Mutant Enunciations: Feminist Practices and the Anoedipal

Feminist theory and practice, and in particular Julia Kristeva's theory of the semiotic in language and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger's explication of the matrixial, provide a basis from which to extend the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari concerning domains of signification that operate beyond the Oedipal structure. In the first part of this paper, I will discuss some relationships that may be traced between the ideas of these theorists and processes in creative practice that have the potential to constitute an alternative stratum of subjectivity not wholly dependent on Oedipalisation. This will be followed by a brief analysis of two paintings by West Australian artist Linda Banazis incorporating what I have termed the ‘X Function', an additional and transversal system to those outlined in Michael O'Toole's (1994) model of semiotic analysis of visual texts. The X Function provides a means of mapping nomadic or non-Oedipal currents, those ‘non-discursive' or resistant dimensions of texts which deny fixity or closure of interpretation.     

“It makes it legit”: local semiotic perceptions of the linguistic landscape in a market in Soshanguve,South Africa

This article explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of a semi-informal market in a South African township called Soshanguve. The fieldsite is situated in an area that is characterized by diversity and longstanding multilingualism. An ethnographic approach draws on the semiotic reading of the LL by a participant whose analysis of the multilingual commercial signage provides insight into local perceptions on language use and materiality. The study focuses on the participant’s analysis of the indexicality of African languages and traders’ names used in the LL that is in general dominated by English. Furthermore, the use of Sepitori (mixed language) in the signage will be explored for the first time. Findings contribute to disentangle and expand the notion of luxury and necessity. More specifically, we suggest that these concepts can be extended to include the notions of sponsorship and mediation, which can potentially involve reinterpreting the process of production, use and perception of the materials in signage.     

Build your nation in 5′25″: social constructions of Italy in official and user-generated videos on YouTube

This article focuses on the differences between the official video clip of a song dedicated to the nation and the remakes uploaded on social media by anonymous users. It argues that social media act as the semiosphere boundary, on which, for Lotman [2005. “On the Semiosphere.” Sign Systems Studies 33 (1): 205–229] central dominant texts and peripheral structures meet to generate new meaning. The work draws on Lotman's semiosphere, on nation-building, and on the bottom-up construction of reality of social media. Methodologically, semiotic analysis is applied to the images of all the videos. Results show that the peripheral elements theorised by Lotman adapt to and renew the language of the centre. In fact, they adopt the same structure of the official video but expand, revitalise and deconstruct the sedimented versions of Italy that it offers. As in Lotman, the periphery challenges the dominant hierarchy. Finally, all the videos agree on relegating the woman to a secondary role.     

Exploring construction project design as multimodal social semiotic practice

ABSTRACT

The semiotic nature of design and engineering communications has often evaded direct interrogation; specifically the representation of requirements using multiple semiotic modes. This paper explores the semiotic character of requirement representation in the construction project design and engineering process by mobilising a social semiotic analytic framework to reveal how project artefacts (e.g. drawings; digital imagery; physical objects) are multimodal resources that critically affect stakeholder engagement and interpretation. The focused empirical study from a hospital construction project reveals the motivations and effects of multimodal and semiotic communicative choices of different parties (e.g. client; architect; engineer; design consultant) engaged on the same project; the representation (or not) of requirements via various semiotic modes being a social and political process. The contribution of the paper is in revealing the semiotic character of requirement representation and the relevance of semiotic-informed enquiry for an industry continuing to develop new technologies (e.g. virtual reality; BIM – building information modelling) for design and construction work.     

Embodiment and meaning: moving beyond linguistic imperialism in social semiotics

Social semiotic approaches to multimodality have tended to take language as the model for other modalities even when their professed aim is to move away from it. This kind of “linguistic imperialism” causes problems for theorising the relationship between the two basic semiotic planes of expression and interpretation in different modalities, and how the affordances of the expression plane relate to the meanings of the interpretation plane in each case, as well as in understanding the particular role of language in multimodal texts. The current paper brings together insights from semiotics, sociology of music and philosophy of language, as well as critiques of social semiotic approaches, in order to argue that the missing element in accounts of semiotic systems like language and music is the fundamental role played by embodiment in both these systems.     

Studying social media as semiotic technology: a social semiotic multimodal framework

ABSTRACT

How do we study social media technology? While social semiotics provides an extensive toolkit for analysing multimodal texts and semiotic practices, the study of social media as semiotic technology poses a significant challenge to existing research methodologies. In this article, we present a social semiotic framework that allows us to describe in analytical details the multimodal meaning potentials offered by digital social media technology and connect these to multimodal text-making and semiotic practices while underscoring the role of technology. Our framework is organized around seven interrelated and inherently informed dimensions: (1) multimodality, (2) practice, (3) the social, (4) medium, (5) the material, (6) the historical, and (7) the critical. This framework could pertain to most types of semiotic technologies, but will here be developed for accounting for social media technologies, and its viability will be illustrated with examples from Instagram. By developing this framework, we aim at elaborating the theoretical basis and analytical tools of social semiotics, and thereby contributing to bringing forward increased understanding of how social media technology enables making, enacting and managing meaning.