Abstract This paper explores the inter-semiotic analysis of the ideational meaning in images generated by the text-to-image AI tool, Bing Image Creator. It adopts Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design as its theoretical framework as the original grounding of the framework in systemic functional grammar (SFG) ensures a solid theoretical basis for undertaking analyses that involve the incorporation of textual and visual components. The integration of an AI generative model within the analytical framework enables a systematic connection between language and visual representations. This incorporation offers the potential to generate well-regulated pictorial representations that are systematically grounded in controlled textual prompts. This approach introduces a novel avenue for re-examining inter-semiotic processes, leveraging the power of AI technology. The paper argues that visual representations possess unique structural devices that surpass the limitations of verbal or written communication as they readily accommodate larger amounts of information in contrast to the limitations of the linear nature of alphabetic writing. Moreover, this paper extends its contribution by critically evaluating specific aspects of the Grammar of Visual Design.
摘要 本文探讨了由文本到图像的人工智能工具必应图像生成器生成的图像中表意意义的跨交际分析。本文采用 Kress 和 Van Leeuwen 的《视觉设计语法》（Grammar of Visual Design）作为其理论框架，因为该框架以系统功能语法（SFG）为原始基础，为进行包含文本和视觉成分的分析奠定了坚实的理论基础。在分析框架中融入人工智能生成模型，可以将语言和视觉表征系统地联系起来。这种结合提供了在受控文本提示的基础上系统地生成规范的图像表征的可能性。这种方法利用人工智能技术的力量，为重新审视跨交际过程提供了一条新途径。本文认为，视觉表征拥有独特的结构装置，超越了口头或书面交流的局限性，因为与字母书写的线性局限性相比，视觉表征可轻松容纳更大量的信息。此外，本文还对《视觉设计语法》的具体方面进行了批判性评估，从而进一步扩大了其贡献。
{"title":"An inter-semiotic analysis of ideational meaning in text-prompted AI-generated images","authors":"Arash Ghazvineh","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the inter-semiotic analysis of the ideational meaning in images generated by the text-to-image AI tool, Bing Image Creator. It adopts Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Grammar of Visual Design as its theoretical framework as the original grounding of the framework in systemic functional grammar (SFG) ensures a solid theoretical basis for undertaking analyses that involve the incorporation of textual and visual components. The integration of an AI generative model within the analytical framework enables a systematic connection between language and visual representations. This incorporation offers the potential to generate well-regulated pictorial representations that are systematically grounded in controlled textual prompts. This approach introduces a novel avenue for re-examining inter-semiotic processes, leveraging the power of AI technology. The paper argues that visual representations possess unique structural devices that surpass the limitations of verbal or written communication as they readily accommodate larger amounts of information in contrast to the limitations of the linear nature of alphabetic writing. Moreover, this paper extends its contribution by critically evaluating specific aspects of the Grammar of Visual Design.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139526495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bent Sørensen, Martin Thellefsen, Torkild Thellefsen
Abstract In the field of philosophy of technology, the concept of mediation is central to understanding how technology shapes human experience and behavior. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to the understanding of technological mediation, in particular how and why it is possible. Technological mediation occurs within a mediation space between the technological realm and the user realm. In the technological realm, technology regularizes events and actions, while in the user realm, the user interprets the significative potential of the technology. This interpretation process is identical with use and involves the formation of user habits, which are constrained by technological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors. To provide a theoretical framework for our analysis, we propose the Semiotic Model of Technological Mediation (SMTM), which draws on Charles Peirceʼs semiotics. To illustrate our argument, we focus on assistive technology and provide a recurring example of the Medimi®Smart, a digital, comprehensive system for medication handling.
{"title":"Assistive technologies and habit development: a Semiotic Model of Technological Mediation","authors":"Bent Sørensen, Martin Thellefsen, Torkild Thellefsen","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0029","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the field of philosophy of technology, the concept of mediation is central to understanding how technology shapes human experience and behavior. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to the understanding of technological mediation, in particular how and why it is possible. Technological mediation occurs within a mediation space between the technological realm and the user realm. In the technological realm, technology regularizes events and actions, while in the user realm, the user interprets the significative potential of the technology. This interpretation process is identical with use and involves the formation of user habits, which are constrained by technological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors. To provide a theoretical framework for our analysis, we propose the Semiotic Model of Technological Mediation (SMTM), which draws on Charles Peirceʼs semiotics. To illustrate our argument, we focus on assistive technology and provide a recurring example of the Medimi®Smart, a digital, comprehensive system for medication handling.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139251131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper examines categories and functions of interactive and interactional textual elements used in the contractual discourse of selling/purchasing 100 shares of the Suez Canal Company in 1947. The exchanged documents between the involved parties, the Egyptian (buyer) and the American (seller), are analyzed using Metadiscourse Analysis (MDA) as an approach to analyzing the textual resources used in the selected corpus. Game Theory is also used in conjunction with MDA to allocate the strategic behaviors of the players within the competitive contextual surroundings of the selected discourse. The analysis explains the structural constructions of the correspondences exploring how interactional relations between the participants are linguistically crafted. The analysis of the contract discourse is argued to contribute to econo-linguistics by examining how MDA and Game Theory can be integrated to construe/construct discourses about economics. The article concludes that metadiscourse resources enable the discourse of contracts to maintain a dialogic interactional language between the seller and the buyer. This interaction assimilates a game where the author and the reader (or players) exchange moves strategically to reach the target payoff. Thus, it can be argued that integrating MDA and Game Theory benefits econo-linguistics in highlighting hidden agendas and understanding interactive and interactional meanings in the discourse.
{"title":"A top-secret game: metadiscourse analysis of the contractual discourse of purchasing 100 shares of the Suez Canal Company in 1947","authors":"May S. El-Falaky","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines categories and functions of interactive and interactional textual elements used in the contractual discourse of selling/purchasing 100 shares of the Suez Canal Company in 1947. The exchanged documents between the involved parties, the Egyptian (buyer) and the American (seller), are analyzed using Metadiscourse Analysis (MDA) as an approach to analyzing the textual resources used in the selected corpus. Game Theory is also used in conjunction with MDA to allocate the strategic behaviors of the players within the competitive contextual surroundings of the selected discourse. The analysis explains the structural constructions of the correspondences exploring how interactional relations between the participants are linguistically crafted. The analysis of the contract discourse is argued to contribute to econo-linguistics by examining how MDA and Game Theory can be integrated to construe/construct discourses about economics. The article concludes that metadiscourse resources enable the discourse of contracts to maintain a dialogic interactional language between the seller and the buyer. This interaction assimilates a game where the author and the reader (or players) exchange moves strategically to reach the target payoff. Thus, it can be argued that integrating MDA and Game Theory benefits econo-linguistics in highlighting hidden agendas and understanding interactive and interactional meanings in the discourse.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134993516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author of more than thirty-five books and the winner of prestigious literary prizes, such as the Booker Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Governor General’s Award. Her influence on Canadian literature and contemporary literature as a whole is phenomenal. Nevertheless, little is known with respect to how Atwood represents animals covering the full range of her novels. This paper reports on the analysis of animal representations in Atwood’s seventeen novels through Python programming and close reading under the framework of a new semiotic research finding, a pan-indexicality model within the context of literature and the environment. This study investigates the frequencies of animal vocabulary in the seventeen novels, the changes of animal representations in her novels before 1990s and after 1990s, and the implication of the ever-changing animal representations during the fifty years. This paper concludes that nonhuman animal descriptions in Atwood’s novels of 1970s and 1980s run at a high level and decrease in her novels of 1990s, while scientific animal descriptions increase in her novels of 2000s and 2010s. Nonhuman animals in her novels of 1970s and 1980s are instrumentalized as a vehicle for indigenization and national individuation from the United States, and scientific animals in her novels of 2000s and 2010s are instrumentalized in the service of environmental apocalypticism. This study suggests that the pan-indexicality model can be employed to understand the meaning of signs in literature and the environment from the perspective of authorial intention, with reference to authors’ encyclopedic knowledge, personal experience, social, and cultural background information.
{"title":"Animal representations in Margaret Atwood’s novels: a study based on pan-indexicality model","authors":"Jing Zhu, Jiying Kang, Chunyun Duan","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0026","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author of more than thirty-five books and the winner of prestigious literary prizes, such as the Booker Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Governor General’s Award. Her influence on Canadian literature and contemporary literature as a whole is phenomenal. Nevertheless, little is known with respect to how Atwood represents animals covering the full range of her novels. This paper reports on the analysis of animal representations in Atwood’s seventeen novels through Python programming and close reading under the framework of a new semiotic research finding, a pan-indexicality model within the context of literature and the environment. This study investigates the frequencies of animal vocabulary in the seventeen novels, the changes of animal representations in her novels before 1990s and after 1990s, and the implication of the ever-changing animal representations during the fifty years. This paper concludes that nonhuman animal descriptions in Atwood’s novels of 1970s and 1980s run at a high level and decrease in her novels of 1990s, while scientific animal descriptions increase in her novels of 2000s and 2010s. Nonhuman animals in her novels of 1970s and 1980s are instrumentalized as a vehicle for indigenization and national individuation from the United States, and scientific animals in her novels of 2000s and 2010s are instrumentalized in the service of environmental apocalypticism. This study suggests that the pan-indexicality model can be employed to understand the meaning of signs in literature and the environment from the perspective of authorial intention, with reference to authors’ encyclopedic knowledge, personal experience, social, and cultural background information.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135091951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Following Per Aage Brandt’s “Towards a cognitive semiotics” (2011), culture as a cognitive-semiotic model allows us to look into the interrelation of cognition and signs through the act of interpretation of culture. Thus, culture characterized as habits of feeling, attention, thought, and action plays a role of modeling in the lifeworld. Regarding cultural evolution, culture also has a feature of practice of habit-taking for transformation through dialogic relations of semiosis from Peirce’s semiotic perspective. This paper argues for narrative modeling which enables habit-taking in feelings by way of analogical reasoning in a form of parable as cognitive process. A story in a form of qualia as a model for thought is embodied in narrative modeling to be enactive by a storytelling agent. Therefore, narrative modeling reveals the process of thought through habit-taking in feelings of empathy and sympathy to a feeling of an idea as a person. This leads to an act of understanding other mind, sharing the meaning and value of a story for enhancing sensibility and cultural literacy for cultural evolution. This journey of story-making and story-telling by way of narrative modeling shows a trajectory for a quest for meaning and value which will be found between “you” and “I”.
继勃兰特(Per Aage Brandt)的《走向认知符号学》(toward a cognitive semiotics)(2011)之后，文化作为一种认知符号学模型，使我们能够通过对文化的解释来审视认知与符号的相互关系。因此,文化特征的感觉,习惯的关注,认为,“生活世界”的建模和行动中发挥作用。在文化演化方面，从皮尔斯的符号学角度看，文化也具有通过符号学的对话关系进行转化的习惯实践特征。本文提出了一种叙事模式，通过比喻形式的类比推理作为认知过程，使情感习惯形成。一个以感质形式作为思维模式的故事，体现在叙事模式中，由讲故事的主体激活。因此,叙事模型揭示了思维过程通过habit-taking移情和同情的感觉的感觉作为一个人的想法。这导致一种理解其他思想,分享故事的意义和价值增强感性文化进化和文化素养。这种通过叙事模式进行的故事制作和故事讲述的旅程显示了在“你”和“我”之间寻找意义和价值的轨迹。
{"title":"Narrative modeling and cultural literacy in the storyworld: a quest for meaning","authors":"Yunhee Lee","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0031","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Following Per Aage Brandt’s “Towards a cognitive semiotics” (2011), culture as a cognitive-semiotic model allows us to look into the interrelation of cognition and signs through the act of interpretation of culture. Thus, culture characterized as habits of feeling, attention, thought, and action plays a role of modeling in the lifeworld. Regarding cultural evolution, culture also has a feature of practice of habit-taking for transformation through dialogic relations of semiosis from Peirce’s semiotic perspective. This paper argues for narrative modeling which enables habit-taking in feelings by way of analogical reasoning in a form of parable as cognitive process. A story in a form of qualia as a model for thought is embodied in narrative modeling to be enactive by a storytelling agent. Therefore, narrative modeling reveals the process of thought through habit-taking in feelings of empathy and sympathy to a feeling of an idea as a person. This leads to an act of understanding other mind, sharing the meaning and value of a story for enhancing sensibility and cultural literacy for cultural evolution. This journey of story-making and story-telling by way of narrative modeling shows a trajectory for a quest for meaning and value which will be found between “you” and “I”.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135192006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language, but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese. The loss of Chinese morphology can be explained by the ideographic nature of Chinese characters: the Chinese language has been evolving in a way that stabilizes the pronunciation of each character. The effects of writing systems on language evolution can be widely observed from world languages, while writing per se has been evolving along the path of phonetization driven mainly by borrowings instead of conscious linguistic analysis. In history, language never picked writing systems based on linguistic features; instead, writing systems affect the evolutionary paths of languages: single signs of a writing system stabilize the basic units of the language.
{"title":"Has Chinese always been an analytic language? Effects of writing on language evolution","authors":"Liulin Zhang","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language, but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese. The loss of Chinese morphology can be explained by the ideographic nature of Chinese characters: the Chinese language has been evolving in a way that stabilizes the pronunciation of each character. The effects of writing systems on language evolution can be widely observed from world languages, while writing per se has been evolving along the path of phonetization driven mainly by borrowings instead of conscious linguistic analysis. In history, language never picked writing systems based on linguistic features; instead, writing systems affect the evolutionary paths of languages: single signs of a writing system stabilize the basic units of the language.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135431362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The article focuses on the Hebrew prototypes terms (PTs) of white in the Old Testament – light, milk, and snow. The aim is to explore the worldview of Hebrew to reveal the original messages of the Bible. The translation is an essential tool that shows which translation elements (the word and its root derivatives) are symmetrical, asymmetric, and dissymmetric to Hebrew due to the different worldviews of languages. The method is interdisciplinary and includes several theories and approaches. Original is Almalech’s methodology for tracking all verbal options to signify color: Basic color term (BCT), prototype term (PT), rival terms to prototype (RT), and terms for the basic feature of the prototype (TBFP). Semiotic osmosis is also an original element of Almalech’s methodology and has a place in the study of colors in the Bible. The phenomenon is observed when Hebrew PT is translated with the BCT, Hebrew TBFP is translated with BCT in the Indo-European language, e.g., darkness is translated with black , fresh is translated with green . In the case of light, semiotic osmosis is when a quality of light is perceived as synonymous with light, e.g., brilliance is synonymous with light in Hebrew, English, Bulgarian, and other languages. The importance of light in religious systems, regional culture, and natural features are taken into account. Almalech’s semiotic approach to color, i.e., treating them as a sign communication system, involves the insisting that a distinction must be made between verbal and visual color because of their different potential to have primary and secondary (figurative and cultural) meanings. The substance of the language sign (sound is a mechanical wave) is physically different from the visual sign (electromagnetic wave). Almalech considered prototypes to be the cognitive interface between verbal and visual colors. Therefore, semiotically understood, color is a cultural unit that contains verbal and visual colors, complemented by social, religious, and folkloric use of primary and secondary color meanings.
{"title":"Cultural unit white – prototype terms","authors":"Mony Almalech","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article focuses on the Hebrew prototypes terms (PTs) of white in the Old Testament – light, milk, and snow. The aim is to explore the worldview of Hebrew to reveal the original messages of the Bible. The translation is an essential tool that shows which translation elements (the word and its root derivatives) are symmetrical, asymmetric, and dissymmetric to Hebrew due to the different worldviews of languages. The method is interdisciplinary and includes several theories and approaches. Original is Almalech’s methodology for tracking all verbal options to signify color: Basic color term (BCT), prototype term (PT), rival terms to prototype (RT), and terms for the basic feature of the prototype (TBFP). Semiotic osmosis is also an original element of Almalech’s methodology and has a place in the study of colors in the Bible. The phenomenon is observed when Hebrew PT is translated with the BCT, Hebrew TBFP is translated with BCT in the Indo-European language, e.g., darkness is translated with black , fresh is translated with green . In the case of light, semiotic osmosis is when a quality of light is perceived as synonymous with light, e.g., brilliance is synonymous with light in Hebrew, English, Bulgarian, and other languages. The importance of light in religious systems, regional culture, and natural features are taken into account. Almalech’s semiotic approach to color, i.e., treating them as a sign communication system, involves the insisting that a distinction must be made between verbal and visual color because of their different potential to have primary and secondary (figurative and cultural) meanings. The substance of the language sign (sound is a mechanical wave) is physically different from the visual sign (electromagnetic wave). Almalech considered prototypes to be the cognitive interface between verbal and visual colors. Therefore, semiotically understood, color is a cultural unit that contains verbal and visual colors, complemented by social, religious, and folkloric use of primary and secondary color meanings.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135303484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Poetry is often seen as the ultimate challenge for a literary translator. Why it is so and how in reality translators manage to accomplish this feat remain to be explored. This article contributes a new way of understanding poetry translation by re-theorizing the practice with reference to the concept of blank-sign. In the light of the blank-sign, we see poetry as a genre rich with meaning-charged blank-signs and poetry translation as a “blank-filling” endeavour to seek relevance for the poem in the target sociocultural context while craftily leaving its overall poetic “blankness” intact for meaningful reading and contemplation. We illustrate this idea with the Spanish translation of two contemporary Chinese poems, with a focus on discussing the challenges with regard to communicating the culture-laden images and the intertextual connections in the original poem. Based on our preliminary findings, we highlight the value of the study of blank-signs in poetry translation and the need for translators to draw insights from cross-linguistic analysis to inform their practice. This semiotic account offers insights into how poetry translation can be alternatively conceptualised and has implications for practitioners involved in poetry and translation.
{"title":"Filling in the blank: towards a semiotic account of poetry translation","authors":"Chunxia Zhou, Ningyang Chen","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Poetry is often seen as the ultimate challenge for a literary translator. Why it is so and how in reality translators manage to accomplish this feat remain to be explored. This article contributes a new way of understanding poetry translation by re-theorizing the practice with reference to the concept of blank-sign. In the light of the blank-sign, we see poetry as a genre rich with meaning-charged blank-signs and poetry translation as a “blank-filling” endeavour to seek relevance for the poem in the target sociocultural context while craftily leaving its overall poetic “blankness” intact for meaningful reading and contemplation. We illustrate this idea with the Spanish translation of two contemporary Chinese poems, with a focus on discussing the challenges with regard to communicating the culture-laden images and the intertextual connections in the original poem. Based on our preliminary findings, we highlight the value of the study of blank-signs in poetry translation and the need for translators to draw insights from cross-linguistic analysis to inform their practice. This semiotic account offers insights into how poetry translation can be alternatively conceptualised and has implications for practitioners involved in poetry and translation.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84795690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper examines the signifying mechanism of gift-giving in ancient China from the perspective of semiotic rhetoric, aiming to answer the question of what can be regarded as li (roughly meaning ceremony, rite, courtesy, or gift) or, in other words, how the social meaning of gifts is constructed in giving semiosis. It describes four dominant rhetorical devices that existed in ritual and non-ritual gift exchanges in ancient China. The ritual gift tended to adopt simile and conceit as its meaning-construction device, becoming a symbolic good beyond ‘thingness’ and thus fulfilling the sociocultural function of ritual. Non-ritual giving activity made use of semiotic metonymy and synecdoche as a strategy of ‘indirectness’ to maintain the relationship between the giver and receiver in daily communications.
{"title":"Semiotic rhetoric of gift giving in ancient China","authors":"Xingzhi Zhao, Chenru Xue","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines the signifying mechanism of gift-giving in ancient China from the perspective of semiotic rhetoric, aiming to answer the question of what can be regarded as li (roughly meaning ceremony, rite, courtesy, or gift) or, in other words, how the social meaning of gifts is constructed in giving semiosis. It describes four dominant rhetorical devices that existed in ritual and non-ritual gift exchanges in ancient China. The ritual gift tended to adopt simile and conceit as its meaning-construction device, becoming a symbolic good beyond ‘thingness’ and thus fulfilling the sociocultural function of ritual. Non-ritual giving activity made use of semiotic metonymy and synecdoche as a strategy of ‘indirectness’ to maintain the relationship between the giver and receiver in daily communications.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89304110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1515/lass-2023-frontmatter3
{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-frontmatter3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-frontmatter3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135587774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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