Videogame analysis: a social-semiotic approach

The relevance of videogames in the contemporary cultural ecosystem and their social impact make it necessary to develop theories and analytical models to understand the expressive potential of videogame design, and how videogames work as texts, giving shape to certain values, behavioural patterns and ideological visions. To do so, it is crucial to build a bridge between game studies and contemporary semiotics. Thus, with this aim, we present in this paper an analysis model for studying videogames as texts that combines theoretical and methodological elements from social semiotics and procedural rhetorics, a specific branch of game studies. Our model is based on four levels: the narrative, ludo-narrative, system-gameplay and designer-player dimensions. As a case study, the model is applied to the videogame The Last of Us.     

Semiotising the student perception of learning outcomes in British higher education

This article presents a semiotic analysis of the student perception of learning outcomes in British higher education. It centres on three annotated images in Frank Furedi’s article “The Unhappiness Principles”, published in Times Higher Education in 2012. Drawing upon Peircean semiosis and iconicity, it provides a rhetoric-infused interpretation of the word–image complementarity exhibited in student participants’ written commentaries on the three images. This leads to a dialectical view of formative and summative assessment, in which process and product create each other through the same continuum of learning and teaching. In highlighting intellectualism as central to the ethnography of university life, this article argues that learner autonomy and the potential for transformation is deemed essential to the student experience in higher education.     

Carpool Karaoke: deconstructing the directly lived experience of hearing oneself singing

The various ways whereby spatial conditions afford to monumentalize culture and to appropriate geographically demarcated places in terms of individual and collective meaning structures has been amply documented in urban cultural studies. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how cultural identity is produced against the background of musical temporality. By way of a phenomenological inquiry into the staged spectacle of James Corden’s (the host of CBS Network’s Late Late Show) Carpool Karaoke, this paper addresses the issues of directly lived experience and authenticity as facets of cultural identity. By critically discussing the assumptions of self-presence and auto-affectivity while singing and listening to one’s sung voice against the background of pre-recorded songs, the notion of directly lived musical experience is put to the test. Furthermore, by examining the dramaturgical scaffolding of Carpool Karaoke, the analysis points to wider implications for post-modern cultural studies in terms of an identified ironic reversal of modernist universal criteria of legitimacy in favor of a celebration of post-modern being-with inauthentically. The analysis of the selected Carpool Karaoke corpus utilizes a resourceful blend of phenomenological method, semiotics and interpretive videography while challenging embedded orthodoxies in the extant literature.     

“We have to tell our own story”: semiotics of resisting negative stereotypes of Nigeria in the heart of Africa nation branding campaign

This study examines the semiotic resources deployed in resisting negative stereotypes of Nigeria in the international community, particularly representations of the country in the Western media. Data for the study were drawn from Nigeria’s Heart of Africa nation branding campaign. The study applies the discourse-historical approach (DHA) pioneered by Ruth Wodak of the Vienna School of CDA. DHA attempts to integrate much available knowledge about the historical sources and the background of the social and political fields in which discursive events are embedded. Further applying Reisigl and Wodak's presentation of the discursive strategies normally oriented towards understanding texts related to nations and national identities, among others, the study reveals that in appropriating the semiotic resources in the campaign, the discourse producers have predilection for the discursive strategies of mitigating negative attributes which the out-group intensifies, and highlighting positive attributes which the out-group seemingly under-reports in its representations of Nigeria. Notwithstanding the rhetorical dynamics of the semiotic resources, the study concludes that enduring national image management thrives on creating new images and associations lived by a country’s citizens rather than tries to refute old ones.     

Social semiotics and platform studies: an integrated perspective for the study of social media platforms

ABSTRACT

The development of web 2.0 was powered by web services that are software systems designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It was the choice of standards enabling such interactions that favored communication among different systems and their mash ups. Facebook was the first social networking site to launch a service for developers that exposed its web services and the correlated APIs (application programming interfaces). This choice allowed programmers to create tools that could live within Facebook and turned the social networking site into a platform by enacting its programmability. In order to investigate the possibilities and the constraints offered by social media platforms, there seems to arise the necessity to integrate the analysis of frontend texts (such as posts or comments) and of social media communicative properties with the exploration of an underlying layer constituted by the network of relationships created within an application ecosystem and developed by using web services. The aim of the paper is to present a multi-layered approach to the study of social media platforms that combines the emerging subfield of Semiotic Technology with Platform Studies. The model is here applied to the analysis of Facebook Login Service.     

现代视觉文化的符号学解读--评罗兰·巴尔特的《神话学》

罗兰·巴尔特是法国20世纪符号学的主要代表人物,其符号理论,主要集中于《神话学》一书中,《神话学》实际上是从传播符号的角度对中产阶级或资产阶级意识形态所做的批判。解读这一文本,对于理解巴尔特的符号理论,解读现代视觉文化具有直接的意义。     

符号学和逻辑学的关系

符号学是一个跨学科的新兴研究领域,是一门交叉性的学科。符号学和逻辑学研究的新进展证明两者之间具有不可分割的互动关系。阐释两者的关系有助于推动符号学与逻辑学的发展。     

Caesareans and Cyborgs

This paper argues that cyborg perspectives offer real possibilities for the debate around enforced caesareans and the search for a language to encompass embodied maternal subjectivity. It is suggested, with reference to the fictional narrative of Star Trek, that cyborg figures have the power to disrupt the liberal subject and the body in legal discourse, not least because the plethora of cyborgs challenges simple conceptions of connections/disconnections between bodies. Feminist readings of case law relating to enforced caesarean sections have raised questions about the notion of autonomy at the heart of liberal legalism, have argued that law is complicit with white male techno-medicine's approach to childbirth and focused upon the pregnant woman's lived experience of pregnancy. The recent Court of Appeal decision in St George's Healthcare N.H.S Trust v. S., Regina v. Collins and Others, ex parte S., where the pregnant woman's self-determination was upheld, provides a good opportunity to confront both the liberal story and the idea of connectedness between mother and unborn child. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

亨利·列斐伏尔的社会空间理论

社会空间是一种社会性的产品,空间产品相对过剩会产生经济危机。空间实践、空间表述、表述空间构成社会空间的三元辩证组合或者三元辩证法,第三项不是前两项的简单叠加,而是对它们所假定的完整性进行拆解和重构之后,形成的一种开放的选择项。社会空间包含着复杂的符号体系,空间三元组合类似于符号学的能指、所指、意指三项组合。身体是社会空间的生产主体,社会空间的生产从身体开始,处于异化状态的身体受权力、符号、知识三位一体控制。只有生产出社会主义差异空间,身体才能获得完全解放。当前全球经济危机的实质是城市化危机,中国正处于城市化危机的起始阶段。     

心灵计算理论与具身认知的哲学反思

具身认知的思想不是凭空提出的,它是在反对认知科学中主流的计算主义的基础上产生的,因此,在探讨具身认知之前,我们要对计算主义和相关的联结主义有足够的了解。具身认知反对表征和计算,对联结主义抱有同情,但是具身认知最近的发展也表现出一些和计算主义及联结主义关系不大的特征,而这些特征并非具身认知的本质特征。