Résumé Cet article soutient qu’une notion de « pertinence » inspirée par Alfred Schütz est nécessaire pour expliquer le partage du sens tel qu’il s’opère au quotidien dans le langage et par-delà. A la différence de l’approche naturaliste de Sperber/Wilson, une phénoménologie schützéenne de la pertinence permet, grâce à sa portée et à son accent sur la dimension sociale, d’appréhender le fondement de la coordination du sens dans des contextes toujours nouveaux. Néanmoins, pour réaliser ce potentiel, il faut dépasser la théorie inachevée de Schütz. Selon lui, notre expérience et nos actions sont structurés par les « types ». Ils sont le lien entre le sens des signes et le sens qui constitue le contexte de leur usage. J’argumente qu’à la différence des « règles » hypothétiques (Searle, Habermas), les types reposent sur une double dynamique. (1) Les êtres humains ont une tendance à suivre des schémas typiques de sens fermés. (2) D’autre part, ils ont une tendance à s’écarter des types qui renvoie à une « ouverture active » du sens. Le sens qui sera pertinent pour un individu dans une situation concrète résulte de l’interaction de ces deux tendances qui s’opposent tout en étant la condition l’une de l’autre.
Abstract This study explores how sounds from the past now inaudible but once part of daily urban life can be interpreted within the framework of acoustic heritage. Focusing on historical soundscapes without direct audio recordings, the research draws on archival documents, visual materials, written records, and oral histories. Using Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic theory, it treats these materials as signs that symbolically represent lost urban sounds. The interpretive process is further informed by R. Murray Schafer’s soundscape theory, particularly the concept of soundmarks – sounds that carry special meaning for a community or place. The case study centers on Atpazarı Square in Ankara, a site historically associated with crafts, trade, and social life. Through historical analysis and semi-structured interviews with current users of the square, the study gathers remembered or imagined sounds tied to the space. While it acknowledges the speculative nature of this approach, the research suggests that visual and textual sources can offer valuable insights into past auditory experiences. Ultimately, the study discusses the potential of a conceptual and interdisciplinary framework for engaging with the sonic dimensions of urban heritage where direct audio evidence is absent.
Abstract Biosemiotics suggests that every vital relation is, in fact, a semiotic relation. Consider the case of a virus “selecting” the “correct” cellular receptor to enter a cell. This behavior does not imply the existence of preferences, consciousness, or subjectivity; rather, the virus “selects” a receptor by excluding all other possibilities through specific semiotic relationships. To avoid the common risk of vitalism – the fallacious assumption that living entities are endowed with an original, mysterious subjectivity – we must interpret the phenomenological field as the direct result of these peculiar semiotic, yet entirely natural, relationships. In this perspective, meaning is a product of semiosis, not its starting point. A virus, like any other natural entity, discovers itself as a phenomenological entity by entering into semiotic relationships that internally generate a biological “sense.” By prioritizing a biosemiotic analysis over qualitative phenomenology, we can develop a robust, naturalistic theory of meaning. This approach allows us to ground the phenomenological aspects of living entities firmly within a naturalistic framework, avoiding the pitfalls of vitalism while explaining how biological “sense” arises as a necessary, natural consequence of semiotic interaction within the broader phenomenological field.
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.
