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Vol. 3, No. 1
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Marcel Danesi
University of Toronto
Abstract: Adolescence is a period that is characterized,
above all else, by culture-specific behaviors. Teenagers speak,
act, dress, and think in certain ways that define them as a
recognizable age-based group within society. This paper will
present a semiotic categorization of adolescent behaviors, based
on relevant fieldwork, and then draw from them implications for
educating adolescents. The point is made that the life experiences
and sign systems of adolescents should form the point-of-departure
for any curricular framework in higher education. These also have
specific implications for teaching methodology.
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Igor E. Klyukanov
Eastern Washington University
Abstract: This
paper presents a theoretical analysis of language behavior as a
complex system, organizing experiences into meaningful structures.
The paper is grounded in the interactive perspectives of the
General Systems Theory on the nature of behavior and in the
Vygotskian semiotic perspectives on the relationship between
language and thought. In the analysis of language behavior the
genetic (historical) method of explanation developed by Vygotsky
is used. The nature of language behavior is revealed by examining
its origins and the stages it passes through in its development.
The paper examines three aspects of language behavior —
linguistic, semiotic, and teleological. Within each aspect three
stages of the development of language behavior are isolated:
word-utterance-text; pragmatics-semantics- syntactics, and
activity-action-operation. It is demonstrated that the true nature
of language behavior can be best explained in terms of continuity,
or overlapping of essences.
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John L. Rausch
John Carroll University
Rhonda L. VanMeter
Family Preservation Services, Columbia, South Carolina
Cheryl R. Lovett
University of Oklahoma
Abstract: This
study was designed to explore how adolescents at-risk came to
utilize artistic and semiotic means to interpret and express their
inner emotions. Twenty-five adolescents being served by a social
service agency participated in a year long qualitative study.
Interview excerpts are included to portray how the participants
related expressing their emotions through drawing, music, writing,
drama, and storytelling.
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C. Jeffrey Dykhuizen
Lakeland College Japan
Abstract: Scholars
of cultural diffusion assert that the meaning of a cultural
practice is altered as it moves from one culture to another. This
paper summarizes the results of a two-year cross-cultural research
investigation which compared the meaning that practitioners in
Japan and the United States generated for the Japanese martial art
aikido. Clear differences were found in the manner in which the
two groups structured their understandings of aikido. Of
particular interest was the usage of constructs connoting
aggression and harmony by the American participants. The study
discusses the role of several cultural factors influencing the
changes in meaning which occur during the process of diffusion, as
well as how these changes are a reflection of principles valued in
the receiving culture. Semiotic theory provided a framework which
facilitated the illumination of the relationship between the
factors effecting diffusion and the meaning-making outcomes.
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Roland Posner
Technical University of Berlin
Abstract:
This article proceeds from the analysis of a culture as a set of
individuals (society), who use a set of artifacts (civilization),
and apply sets of mentifacts (codes) in order t cope with reality.
It is claimed that each culture semioticizes reality by
introducing various types of codes and divides it thus into the
extracultural, the noncultural, the culturally peripheral, and the
culturally central. Culture change is described as a modification
of a culture’s interpretation of reality brought about by the
codes for the various reality segments becoming culturally central
or being pushed to the periphery of the culture. In this way, the
system of codes of each culture fulfills the function of a
collective memory for its members which formulates, ritualizes,
stereotypes, and grammaticalizes their experiences and thus lays
down patterns for the interpretation of reality by their
offspring.
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Therese Budniakiewicz
Indianapolis, IN
Abstract: In
this article I present Greimassian narratology for the
non-specialist, in encyclopedia style, and free from jargon. The
expansionist status of narratology since the 1990s as a
transdisciplinary pursuit, the increasing recognition of the
ubiquity of narrative, and the lack of agreement among
narratologists on a precise definition of the term, all suggest
that we start with Greimassian narratology where it first began,
with the initial text or object text, V. Propp’s Morphology of
the Folktale. It was inside this distinctly narrative domain, the
domain of the archetypal folktale, that the primacy of narrativity
was at first staged in a sharply focused way. I discuss the search
for isolating the minimal units of a narrative and specifying the
ways and principles in which these units combine: recurrent
episodic units, initial and final sequences, and the global
organization of the tale in terms of plot model and semantic
macrostruture.
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Linda J. Rogers
California State University, Monterey Bay
Abstract: The following
narrative is an example of an applied semiotic interpretation to
how individuals respond and, in this case rescript, a frightening
event. The analysis demonstrates that semiosis, the on-going
interpretive process that individuals participate in each day, can
provide a dialectical process that promotes healing. For Sarah, a
student waiting for a ride home, her unexpected and potentially
fatal ‘marking’ changed not only her plans but threatened to
change her. Sarah claimed agency by redefining her scars, opening
and changing the marks of danger into statements of self and
potential.
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Jørgen Dines Johansen
Odense University, Odense M, Denmark
Abstract: The objective of this
article is to expound on the role of instinct in the semiotics of
Peirce. It is first shown that Peirce uses his categorical
distinction between firstness, secondness, and thirdness on many
subjects including biology, physiology, neurology, and psychology,
and the use of the categories within these sciences is briefly
sketched. Next, his claim of continuity between nature and culture
is presented, and it is argued that the concept of habit is
instrumental in bridging this gap. An instinct, according to
Peirce, is defined as innate habit, and his classification of
different habits is expounded. Reasoning processes are singled out
for attention, and some of Peirce’s examples of reasoning
processes in the other species are mentioned. Common to all
reasoning processes is the making of inferences, and in the last
part of the article it is argued that the capability is related to
all three kinds of signs; icons, indices, and symbols.
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Paul E. Kehle
Illinois Wesleyan University
Donald J. Cunningham
Indiana University—Bloomington
Abstract: This paper begins by
considering the cognitive demands of problems in mathematical
modeling. These problems require more than a traditional emphasis
on mathematics as pure deduction, and are at the heart of the
current reform of mathematics education. Next, we articulate a
Peircean semiotic framework for describing, reflecting on, and
analyzing modeling behavior. The framework highlights various
inferential modes of cognitive activity, the sign systems these
modes operate on, and how inference and signs together underlie
all of our sense-making activities. Our theoretical exposition of
the framework is followed by an analysis of empirical data
demonstrating the framework’s use and value. Semiosis, or sense
making, is revealed as a very rich elusive process that is worthy
of pedagogical attention. What emerges from such theoretical and
empirical study is the important role that a reflexive quality of
attention plays in solving complex realistic problems.
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