The viability of theories of contemporary organizations is assessed from pragmatic and semiotic points of view. Contemporary research on organizational semiotics has focused on the problem of how to bring the notion of information to bear on semiotic accounts of social organizations. In this paper, the theoretical and conceptual elements involved in this endeavor are analyzed. Two notions stand out: the meaning of information and the idea that organizations are sign-theoretic systems. It is argued that the social level proposed in the previous literature is superfluous over and above the semantic and pragmatic levels. There is a sense in which social constructionism is not the right pillar to support the semiotic account. The proposed conceptual changes are likely to be beneficial to the practices of real information systems design. Hence, these changes advance the applications of semiotics to economics and other social sciences that are shaped by the foundations for sociotechnological information systems.
The present paper explores the development of Lotman's cultural semiotics from the point of view of the history of ideas. Focusing on the notion of "semiotic monad," coined by Lotman in 1989 as the "minimally functioning structure" of culture, in the first part of the paper we will explore the origin of this unique term. We will present as its main source a 1967 epistolary between British historian Arnold Toynbee and Soviet Orientologist Nikolaj I. Konrad, where the term 'monad' is referenced in relation to the notion of 'culture'. In the second part of the paper, we will reconstruct Konrad's influence on Lotman's theory of culture and translation.
Résumé Le présent article étudie le roman Calcutta de Shumona Sinha sous le double point de vue de la sémiotique de la traduction et de la sémiotique de la ville, en partant de la notion de traduction en filigrane qui désigne un texte publié en tant que texte original mais généré par le biais d’une traduction réalisée psychiquement par son auteur pour mettre en scène un contexte linguistique, historique et culturel ayant ses racines dans d’autres coordonnées spatiales que celles de la langue utilisée. Ainsi, dans le contexte linguistique et culturel où il est présenté, le texte se lit comme une traduction. Il s’agit donc d’une expression translingue qui représente un espace étranger dans sa singularité. Effectivement, Shumona Sinha écrit en français, mais son texte nous dévoile des réalités lointaines appartenant à son pays d’origine, le Bengale-Occidental et plus particulièrement à sa ville natale, Calcutta. L’article examine le caractère de traduction en filigrane de son roman Calcutta et s’engage à l’analyse de la reproduction xénographique de cette métropole dans le roman éponyme de Sinha.
Résumé Ce travail s’intéresse aux stratégies de marque dites house of brands élaborées par David A. Aaker et Jean-Noël Kapferer afin d’en interroger la pertinence et d’en augmenter la cohérence. Cette analyse structurale, détaillée et critique, se fonde sur une double approche: elle examine, d’une part, l’articulation au plan de l’expression de ces stratégies (visibilité des marques intégrant ces stratégies), d’autre part, leur cohérence au plan du contenu (intentions stratégiques et valeurs véhiculées). Cette double lecture, fondée sur une grille d’analyse sémiotique post-greimassienne, met en lumière certaines tensions conceptuelles, des recoupements questionnables et des distinctions insuffisamment justifiées dans les typologies existantes. Sur cette base, l’article propose une architecture renouvelée des stratégies house of brands , structurée selon deux grandes classes: les stratégies house of fame , dans lesquelles la marque-mère (dite souveraine) accompagne activement sa marque déléguée sur le marché (dite adjointe), et les stratégies holding company , où la marque adjointe évolue de manière plus autonome. Quatre types de relations stratégiques sont ainsi distingués selon le degré de présence de la marque souveraine et l’autonomisation de la marque adjointe: stratégie de profit ( leveraging strategy ), de caution ( endorsing strategy ), de support ( empowering strategy ) et de loisir ( opening strategy ). Chaque configuration donne lieu à une désignation spécifique de la marque adjointe ( subbrand , super brand , master brand , wild brand ). Cette contribution entend montrer en quoi une analyse sémiotique, structurale et catégorielle, peut contribuer à clarifier certains problèmes de sens et de classification dans les domaines du marketing et du brand management.
Résumé L’apprentissage d’une deuxième langue diffère largement de celui de la langue maternelle, impliquant souvent un passage par la langue maternelle. Les méthodes d’apprentissage reposant principalement sur les connaissances de la langue maternelle, telles que la traduction directe, peuvent poser obstacle à un apprentissage précis et nuancée de la deuxième langue. La recherche se consacre en grande partie à l’étude des facteurs cognitifs afin de développer de nouvelles méthodes d’apprentissage des deuxièmes langues. Nous proposons d’ajouter une perspective complémentaire: une analyse sémiotique de ces méthodes. Cette approche nous permettra d’identifier comment optimiser les méthodes qui atténuent le recours à la langue maternelle, comme l’enseignement avec des images. En combinant les dimensions cognitive et sémiotique, nous élaborons une méthode innovante d’apprentissage qui se passe de la nécessité d’une traduction via la langue maternelle. La systématisation de cette approche dans le cadre pédagogique pourrait faciliter l’apprentissage au-delà de la période critique.
Résumé Avec les outils théoriques existants, la resémiotisation complète d’un même phénomène perceptuel semble un processus peu évident à décrire intégralement. Cet article vient proposer un modèle permettant une description précise de ce processus. Dans une perspective peircienne y est proposé un système permettant de décrire ce qui advient lorsqu’un même phénomène engendre, sur une période donnée, plusieurs sémioses de types et de contenus distincts. Se distinguant de la sémiose illimitée et de sa chaîne d’interprétants, ce qui est ici nommé « resémiotisation d’un phénomène » est un processus au cours duquel le seul phénomène lui-même donne lieu à des sémioses de natures différentes. Le modèle proposé pour décrire ce processus repose sur l’identification de traits communs partagés par chaque dyade que l’on peut former avec deux types de signes de la deuxième trichotomie peircienne (icône, indice, symbole), chaque trait commun entre deux types de signes en excluant un troisième. On trouve par exemple un trait commun reliant exclusivement icône et indice qui vient exclure nécessairement tout symbole. Ce système de traits communs dyadiques au sein de la triade peircienne des signes permet de modéliser la manière dont certaines caractéristiques élémentaires s’ajoutent, se maintiennent ou disparaissent d’une sémiose à l’autre, alors que ces sémioses ne sont reliées qu’au niveau de l’expérience phénoménologique. Il est ainsi montré la façon dont même une resémiotisation complète d’un phénomène préserve toujours des éléments de sa précédente sémiose.
Considérée comme un catalyseur d’affects au cours des interactions, l’(in)discrétion peut nous révéler l’alternance entre accord et conflit à l’égard de la protection mutuelle de la face , notamment si cela implique l’espace privé ou intime. En effet, si la discrétion semble assurer un respect des vulnérabilités, l’indiscrétion affecte le seuil mobile, mais toujours présent, de l’irritation des frontières identitaires. Cependant, l’indiscrétion n’est pas toujours dévalorisée, car elle peut apparaître comme un calcul stratégique pour restituer une incarnation sensible aux masques qui protègent les rôles institutionnels, à tel point qu’elle peut fonctionner comme une arme pour démystifier l’hypocrisie qui habite la société et révéler des comportements reprochables. En ce sens, notre contribution voudrait enquêter sur la déclinaison de l’(in)discrétion selon les rôles actantiels joués et les topiques qui y sont localement associées à partir des trois volets : la présence, l’observation et l’énonciation, tout en profitant des textes littéraires (ex. : France et Chine) afin d’attester respectivement les délicatesses de la discrétion et la rudesse possible de l’indiscrétion. En tout cas, le fait de vivre ensemble ne peut pas être réduit à la société formelle et à ses lois, et alors l’(in)discrétion dessine les marges d’une éthique de contact .
Ever since the introduction of the concept of affordance, a debate has continued about how this concept captures the diversity of action possibilities triggered by our environment. One facet of this debate concerns the individual specificity, hence societal diversity, regarding how affordance changes as life changes, such as when we get older. Affordance, or action possibility actualized in the moment someone perceives it, is a dynamic relation between perceiver and environment, and as we grow older changes appear with regard to mobility, strength, and perception. In a routine fashion, we tend to regard such an "age-shift" as bringing decline of the range of action possibilities for the individual - this, even though affordance also can be seen as a repertoire that can be altered, as corporeal adjustment to the demands of spaces and objects in modernization of everyday life. The dynamics of affordances in general show a modal range of possibilities and necessities, and a semiotic view on affordance is presented here that acknowledges this range of possibilities and relates it to existential perspectives. Such a modalized view of affordance contributes not only to affordance theory as such, to the semiotics of agency, and to studies of aging as a societally urgent project but becomes also a way to approach design of lived environments that more sufficiently meet the ever-changing existential needs.
Inspired by Vidal and Campbell's conceptualization of experiential translation, this study serves as an extension based on Li and Xu's foray, which considers translation as a semiotic flourish transcending the limitation of language. Building upon the cultural functionality proposed by the above research, this study is grounded in the outward turn proposed by Sussan Basnett, situating translation within lived experiences and historical specificities, where multifaceted Loong-related artefacts become vectors of ideology, witnesses of decolonization, and relics of semiotic circulation. This study reintroduces visual rhetoric into the analysis by proposing a new framework - Translational Rhetoric of Multimodal Experience (TRME) - accompanied by a replicable methodological manual. TRME synthesizes experiential translation with semiotic and intermedial translation theory, primarily developed by Kobus Marais, and visual rhetoric by Sonja Foss. Given the radical interdisciplinary trend, this study aims to transform the definition of translation from an equivalence-based, linguistic paradigm into a self-organizing, emergent, corporeal process, where semiotic/artistic footprints remain and will always be translatable.
This paper explores the figure of the Umar & egrave;ll, an elderly person traditionally portrayed as idly observing construction sites, as a semiotic lens through which to examine contemporary representations of aging in digital culture. Originating from a regional dialect in Bologna, Italy and popularized through online media, the Umar & egrave;ll has evolved from a local stereotype into a transmedial cultural phenomenon that reflects broader social attitudes toward old age, usefulness, and visibility. Drawing on cultural semiotic frameworks, the study reveals how online representation and circulation of older adults both reinforce and transform ageist narratives. It argues that while the Umar & egrave;ll initially embodies the paradox of the elderly as simultaneously present yet excluded, digital media also open spaces for resemiotization, where older adults can reclaim agency through storytelling, memory-sharing, and intergenerational dialogue. Building on this premise, the paper discusses the EUFACETS project and its mobile application SAY as a humanistic response to the limitations of current digital design for older users. This approach allows elders to digitize and narrate pre-digital photographs within secure family circles, transforming social sharing into a collective act of meaning-making. In conclusion, the paper proposes the Digital Narrative Elder as a new cultural figure who no longer merely observes but actively contributes to the digital semiosphere, continuously reshaping its meanings and expanding the semiotics of aging in the contemporary world.
This paper explores the changing semiotics of soju, a Korean alcoholic drink, as it moves across cultural borders and becomes re-localized in Melbourne, Australia. Soju is conceptualized as a culturally defined boundary object - an item that is indexically tied to a specific culture that is recognizable across contexts but still able to accommodate different practices. The study analyzes how soju, while undergoing a process of universalization and regionalization, acts as an authenticator of an emergent, globalized Korean cultural identity. The universalization of soju involves an erasure of the "original" semiotics that index specific local practices, and a shift towards the semiotics of palatability, evident in the dominance of flavor, the use of English language, and iconography. This universalization is accompanied by a regionalization of soju, as observed in its emplacement in public spaces, signifying its association with a specific national identity. The paper examines how, through these changing semiotics, culturally defined boundary objects are used to authenticate an idea of cultural identity, albeit one significantly changed in a new, superdiverse context. The study concludes by discussing the chronotopic nature of authenticity, highlighting how the perceived authenticity of soju depends on individuals' familiarity with its original context and practices.
This article examines Shumona Sinha's novel Calcutta from the dual perspectives of translation semiotics and city semiotics. It starts from the notion of watermark translation, whereby a text is published as an original but was actually generated through a translation in the author's mind, portraying a linguistic, historical, and cultural context rooted in spatial coordinates other than those of the language used. Thus, in the linguistic and cultural context in which it is presented, the text gives the reader the impression of reading a translation. It is therefore a translingual expression representing a foreign space in its singularity. Although Shumona Sinha writes in French, her text reveals distant realities belonging to her country of origin, West Bengal, and more specifically, her hometown of Calcutta. This article analyses the nature of watermark translation in Calcutta and the xenographic reproduction of this metropolis in Sinha's eponymous novel.
This paper constructs an intersemiotic translation model based on Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics. The model incorporates semiosis, object (immediate and dynamic), interpretant (immediate, dynamic and final), scientific reasoning (induction, deduction, abduction), and ten classes of signs. It aims to demonstrate that semiosis serves as the inherent mechanism of translation. The process of semiosis generates a hierarchy of meanings through sign growth, which aligns with Peircean fallibilism and synechism.
This study explores the visual and discursive representation of trans identities in selected Nigerian and South African newspapers, with a comparative focus on two prominent figures: Bobrisky, a popular Nigerian gender nonconforming individual, and Lehlogonolo Machaba, South Africa's first openly transgender Miss South Africa contestant. Drawing on Machin and Mayr's Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), the study examines how image composition, headline language, and associated narratives shape public perceptions of gender nonconformity in selected Nigerian and South African newspapers. Through a close reading of news images and accompanying texts, the study identifies contrasting ideological framings. While Bobrisky's visibility is often marked by criminalization, moral panic, and spectacle, Machaba is framed through discourses of novelty, respectability, aspiration, and cultural legitimacy. The analysis reveals how media contexts in Nigeria and South Africa reproduce or resist cisnormative gender norms, and how trans visibility is conditioned by intersecting factors such as law, national identity, media ideology, and aesthetic codes. The study argues that visual as well as textual representations function not only as a site of recognition but also of regulation, determining the ideological boundaries within which trans identities are seen, accepted, or excluded in African media discourse.
A practical topic of debate regarding the commonalities and differences between "the iconic" as a semiotic category and "cultural icons" is the manipulation of digital (moving) images, either by their author(s) or by some users. Such manipulations have become popular as part of the phenomenon known as "astroturfing." Should this manipulation of digital content be understood as compatible with the ethos of Eco's theory of the "open work"? The iconic dimension of any image (even when modified) may remain open to "new echoes" the more an image, photograph or artifact is being "duly appreciated" (Eco). By discussing some examples of images used for astroturfing and as commercial advertisements, I argue that there is, however, the risk that iconicity of such a work may be subordinated to indexicality, according to the intention of the one modifying it to influence public opinion.
Aging can be regarded as one of the most significant innovations of our time. Over the past one hundred years, global life expectancy has increased by thirty-six years, meaning that humanity is living longer and, consequently, experiencing aging more fully. Contemporary narratives, however, tend to describe aging as the linear outcome of advances in healthcare, medicine, and lifestyle. Yet, as a widespread social phenomenon, aging resembles less a linear trajectory than a complex, unpredictable, chaotic process. This study applies chaos theory to the social sciences to examine the non-linearity of later life through ethnographic and sociological analysis. Observations of a small group of older adults reveal the Silver Age as a generative phase in which individuals reinterpret their environments and technologies. Rather than a one-directional force acting upon older users, digital innovation becomes a site of mutual transformation, giving rise to new temporalities and "ages within age." Within this context, the EUFACETS project was conceived as a multidisciplinary exploration of aging and technology. Its outcome, SAY (Souls Are Young), developed through ethnography, participatory design, and semiotic analysis, invited older adults to digitize analog photographs and enrich them with personal narratives. By fostering slow, reflective engagement, SAY demonstrates how older adults actively reshape digital media, reaffirming the Silver Age as an "eternal new."
Female aging is a unique cultural phenomenon intertwining universal biological mechanisms, the phenomenological experience of bodily transformation, and semiosis regarding age experience. Throughout their lives, women undergo significant changes in physicality, wherein aging emerges as a natural progression rather than a decline. In numerous traditional cultures, the transformations associated with female corporeality often remain obscured, and their visibility is frequently suppressed due to prevailing taboos surrounding the demonstration of aging. Consequently, the process of aging is traditionally mediated by overt cultural indicators that are intrinsically linked to social attributes such as age, marital status, and engagement in communal practices. Conversely, modern culture is beginning to challenge and reassess the taboos associated with aging, which, in certain respects, renders the phenomenon of female aging itself a subject of taboo. The digital era has dismantled the rigid boundaries of physicality, thereby augmenting the social engagement irrespective of age, and urging a re-evaluation of both the parameters of aging and the conceptualization of aging itself. This leads us to a pivotal inquiry about resemiotization of female aging nowadays and in future. In what ways do specific contemporary cultural representations transcend the taboos established by traditional societies? This research aims to explore the cultural manifestations of aging within Eastern European cultural context, particularly through the lens of advertising, to better understand these evolving narratives.
In this article, we argue that semiotic guerrilla warfare between two dominant discourses - the discourse of power, as shown in official statements, and the discourse of professional crisis, expressed by health professionals - leads to ignoring the voices and experiences of the most vulnerable. Older adults, in particular, become passive objects rather than active subjects of meaning, and lose their interpretive presence in shaping public meanings. The St. Pantelimon Hospital case, from this perspective, shows a breakdown in cooperative interpretation and highlights a deeper divide in public discourse between professional responsibility and institutional power. Drawing on Eco's theory of interpretation and Kristeva's patient-centered interpretive model, the article proposes a framework for interpretive cooperation and benevolent listening as the foundations of a more human-centered medical culture.
Harbin is a city in Northeast China that rose to prominence as a result of the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway in a context of Russian imperial expansion. Affectionately known as "the Moscow of the East," Harbin's history, architecture, food, and language bear strong Russian/Soviet influences. Given the joint Chinese and Russian/European influences, Harbin represents a dynamic, hybridized, and liminal space. Adopting the conceptual lenses of "chronotope" and "polyphony," this study explores the linguistic and semiotic landscape of the famous Saint Sophia Cathedral (an Eastern Orthodox church) and Zhongyang Street/Central Street (a Russian-style pedestrian street) in Harbin. Historically, these areas once featured highly Russified linguistic/semiotic landscape, which later saw significant de-Russification as many Russians left and a Chinese identity was emphasized. In recent decades, Russian linguistic and semiotic elements are deliberately foregrounded and strategically employed in a context of tourism, commerce, and business. Drawing on a corpus of photographic data, the study examines the combination and orchestration of multilingual signs (i.e., Chinese, English, and Russian), investigates issues of translation, and explores how the multilingual signs, various architectural styles (of Russian/European origins), various products (e.g., Russian-style khleb, kvass, and Matryoshka dolls) and spatiotemporal elements give rise to dynamic semiotic assemblages. Its findings reveal how such multimodal and multisemiotic ensembles construct a sense of authenticity and exoticness and importantly contribute to the commodification of Harbin. These lead to a diverse and cosmopolitan image, a hybrid East-meets-West urban identity and a layered urban palimpsest. This interdisciplinary study contributes to scholarship in multilingualism, linguistic/semiotic landscape, the commodification of language, multimodal discourse analysis, urban studies, urban geography, and sociolinguistics.
This article sets out the historical and conceptual development of a new musical pedagogy named Harmony Signing, and the influences that prompted its invention. It represents the first attempt to explain Harmony Signing as a distinct semiotic system. Two factors contributed to the inception of this project: the intention to help primary age children to compose chorally for each other where they had limited existing experience of music notation; and the desire to explore in present-day practice application of the theory of Darwin and subsequent commentators that music preceded speech in human vocal development. For Darwin, examining the human condition from the perspective of animal origins and a capacity for expression and emotion shared both with ancestor species and unrelated phyla, vocal communication held pride of place as a means of social interaction, mate attraction, and defense against predators. Such communication would have been multi-modal, and strongly reliant on the effectiveness of group cooperative behavior. This evolutionary perspective played a significant part in shaping the framework through which the pedagogy developed. Harmony Signing offers a means of learning music liberated from dependence on verbal explanation. Through the employment of a repertoire of hand gestures, teachers and their students can lead activities that embrace improvisation and composition in real time. Harmony Signing thus permits the transmission of aural culture, its representation in the individual, and its exercise within the bonded social group.
