David Machin and Tom Griffiths  

Abstract: It has been argued that categories of popular music are difficult to pin down but can be defined by sets of discourses about what that music means, whether it is, for example, authentic, gritty, aggressive, or soulful. But there have been no systematic analyses of the discourses realised by the music itself. Musical motifs in melody, kinds of instruments, arrangements, rhythm, distortion, etc., all have meaning potential that in combination allows them to signify particular discourses associated with music and society. In this paper we apply semiotic theory to explore the idea of developing a phrase book of meaning potentials for one category of music that came out of Indie music in the early 1990s, Britpop.

Sabrina Mazzali

Introduction Excerpt: In the following we aim at showing, first, how the use of images for the illustration of literary texts actualises the “understanding by seeing” maxim and, second, how not only perception, but also interpretation and inferential reasoning come into play. Accordingly, in the central part of this paper we first present a semiotic typology of images highlighting the different semiotic relationships they hold with the text and, second, we describe some problems of interpretation that images of different classes of this typology can entail. We develop those issues on the basis of concrete examples of pictures drawn from “The World of Dante” (from now on, WD), an online hypertextual transposition of Dante’s Divine Comedy providing a rich illustration of the Inferno, in which only images are used in order to comment on the literary text. The central part is preceded by two paragraphs, one devoted to the framework concept of the “understanding by seeing” maxim and one to characteristics of images as analogical signs. It is precisely from these characteristics that we derive the problems of interpretation that hinder an “automatic” actualization of the “understanding by seeing” maxim.

Jan Voss

Abstract: This article analyses the computer’s potential to mediate between different sign systems. The digital sign system standing in the centre has potential which by far exceeds the possibility to transmit information over high distances in very short time, for example via email. It is rather a universal and independent sign system that can hold information designed for various channels of perception with the potential to re-code the information for other channels of perception. Therefore, digital signs and suitable output devices make it possible to listen to a picture! The detailed description and analysis of the production process of a certain piece of music called 'fourteen' exemplifies possibilities of trans-coding and shows more possibilities of mediation. But, it is not only the digital sign system itself that enables us to aestheticise an idea and make it sound, vibrate, shine, freeze, ...

Nick Haeffner

Merja Bauters

Abstract: The term “media” is problematic, because it is used in several ways depending on the discipline and on the goal of the discourse. For example, in media engineering the meaning of the term media shifts between technical applications of transformations and designation of the data by the channels processing the data—like visual, olfactory, tactile, and other channels. Another way to understand the notion of media is through its ability to present the world by means of signs. In this light the term “sign” is too narrow and could be replaced by the term “medium,” as Peirce has noted. Here, media have been understood as an equivalent to signs, as something more fundamental than technical media.
Following Peirce, we can assume a sign as a medium that tends to represent its object-correlate as a source of an effect, which is the Interpretant. The process of mediation, or in other words, sign action (semiosis), is active all the time. From this perspective, there are no “new media”; rather there is a continuous process of mediating and interpreting signs. Signs can be perceived either by visual, olfactory, tactile, acoustic senses or by mental processes, because there are also ideal signs carried in the mind. Different signs emphasize different sensory channels and different technical artefacts to present them. Changes in technological means or dominance of some sensory channels may not change the actual mediation process. These changes may transform the result of the mediation process or the result may remain the same. In other words, the signs and the interpretations of them are in constant motion; the process of semiosis does not stop. It may be considered possible to halt but even in these seemingly halted moments semiosis still goes on undetected.

Pierpaolo Martino

Abstract: This article investigates the complex artistic experience of the British singer Morrissey from his early years with Manchester pop band The Smiths (1982–1987) up to his solo years (1988 and beyond), focussing on the artist’s capacity for engaging in complex dialogues with writers, film directors, and other cultural icons and texts from contemporary pop(ular) culture. In order to read Morrissey as a living sign and a living text—whose meaning is constructed in dialogical interactions with other signs and texts—this analysis relies on different semiotic approaches and categories such as Bakhtinian dialogism and carnival, (cultural) iconicity, intertextuality, and cultural (and intersemiotic) translation theory.