Although literature suffers modifications, gaining new momentum and forces, it is and will always be an irreplaceable way for men to get to know themselves and their relationship with the world. Words, as the primary matter of literature, are a double sign where the signified (meaning) is the mental configuration that constitutes the internal component of the sign and the signifier is the auditory part. Each word, an indivisible sign, is what creates a piece of literature, its verbal message, its imaginary world, and its aesthetic values. Literary words remain open to the reader in its signifying richness, where the linguistic sign carries multiple meanings, rather than one exclusive meaning. A verse can have a literal meaning but that verse is only one part of the whole meaning and that whole meaning is polyvalent because literary language preserves and transcends, at the same time, the literality of words. That is why we say that literary language is metaphorical by nature, since it describes things in an indirect manner rather than a direct way; it creates a plurality of meanings and its function is, instead of reproducing, representing. Symbolic language allows us to reinvent the objective world; therefore, the representative function is essential in men’s life because it entails a particular character independent of signification. That particular language is what makes the representation of the real world and the dreamt one possible, by the means of literature.
This research is an interdisciplinary study that intersects disability, literature, anxiety, trauma, and symbols (semiotics). This research specifically aims to narrate anxious and traumatic poems written by people with disabilities through Group Literary Therapy and Semiotics. This research used qualitative methods; data were collected through in-depth interviews with 57 participants with disabilities and documentary analysis. The study utilized three therapeutic writing sessions: free-writing, in-depth writing, and dialogue-writing. Key findings include: (1) 46% of participants experienced emotional abuse-related trauma, which significantly influenced their writing; (2) participants found expressing traumatic experiences in writing to be therapeutic; and (3) during the dialogue-writing session, some participants were reluctant to engage in verbal storytelling due to embarrassment, preferring written expression. In relation to symbols, people with disabilities use symbolic language in their poetry as a form of anxiety and trauma.
This paper is aimed to find out effective exercises for acquisition irony by adult learners of English as foreign language with the level of comprehension B1 and reveal possible relations between features of ironical mechanisms and easiness/difficulty of comprehension. Being complicated pragmatic phenomenon stored in the level of so-called social cognition and produced accordingly to personal characteristics, irony partly depends on cultural peculiarities and puts significant difficulty for acquisition even for native speakers not to mention learners of foreign language. To achieve research goal, we used multi-staged methodology, including data collection, implicature analysis and conceptual mapping of collected data, creation retentive and productive exercises and their evaluation, conduction of final test and its evaluation, and analysis of relations between features of irony mechanism and its comprehension by students. Analysis of results of created exercises and final test showed that while some exercises were noticeable easy (multiple choice and matching pairs) or hard (filling gaps without words and phrases in boxes) for students, they were not efficient enough for irony comprehension, while exercises with middle level of difficulty, such as matching parts of sentence and filling gaps by words and phrases in boxes, provided high efficiency. Also, mocking irony was more frequent and better comprehended by students than expressing dissatisfaction ones. Finally, ironical expressions with conceptual contradiction between said and expected were comprehended better than these with implicature based contradictions. Hence, acquisition of such difficult phenomena as irony can be achieved efficiently by usage of exercises with suitable level of difficulty.
Women’s embodied experiences are shaped by both biological and socio-cultural dimensions of the body. In design studies, the work of women designers offers distinctive perspectives grounded in lived and bodily experience. This study examines how women’s embodiment is reflected in the architectural works of Novi Kristinawati, positioning design as a site of embodied meaning-making and socio-cultural negotiation. Using a qualitative interpretative approach, the research applies multimodal analysis informed by social body theory. Design is Southern Semiotic Review Issue 23 2026 (i) Page 419 Women’s Embodiment as Semiotic Practice: A Multimodal Analysis of Spatial Meaning in Novi Kristinawati’s Design by S. Agustin, A. Saidi, I. Damajanti, H. Ahmad understood as an assemblage of interrelated semiotic modes operating through representational, interactive, and compositional metafunctions. In-depth interviews complement the visual analysis by situating the works within experiential and contextual frameworks. The findings reveal that Kristinawati’s designs express embodiment as relational, caring, and functionally flexible, articulated through multisensory spatial strategies. These works challenge conventional notions of femininity as decorative or subordinate, demonstrating that design knowledge emerges from women’s embodied experience, where biological and social bodies are inseparable.
This study explores the integration of Peircean semiotic frameworks into visual communication strategies for urban heritage preservation, focusing on the Imam Reza Holy Shrine in Mashhad, Iran. Employing qualitative methods and an interpretive approach, the research investigates how semiotics enhances cultural sustainability by analyzing visual materials—specifically, 100 hand-drawn images by primary school children aged 7–13. Peirce’s triadic model of representamen, object, and interpretant guides the exploration of how children, as cultural interpreters, perceive and reconstruct symbolic urban landmarks. These visual representations reveal how young minds process both external imagery (such as logos and photos) and internal cognitive-emotional frameworks, generating implicit cultural narratives. To deepen the analysis, Glasser’s Choice Theory is applied, which posits that all behavior aims to satisfy five basic psychological needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun. Children’s drawings are thus interpreted not only as artistic outputs but as behavioral expressions embedded in emotional and cultural meaning. The Imam Reza Shrine becomes a psychologically and symbolically significant object within each child’s internal “quality world.” Findings indicate that while children often reproduce recognizable architectural symbols such as domes and minarets, they frequently omit human figures and environmental context. These choices reflect a combination of mediated graphic simplification and personal reinterpretation. By merging semiotic and psychological perspectives, this study offers original insight into the communication of urban heritage and contributes to culturally responsive strategies in visual communication. It aims to foster more sustainable and emotionally meaningful connections between cultural narratives and younger generations.
