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LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS S : T EMIOTICS HEORY A AND PPLICATIONS No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services. LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS Additional books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website under the Series tab. Additional E-books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website under the E-books tab. MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS – TECHNOLOGIES, POLICIES AND CHALLENGES Additional books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website under the Series tab. Additional E-books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website under the E-books tab. LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS S : T EMIOTICS HEORY AND APPLICATIONS STEVEN C. HAMEL EDITOR Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York Copyright © 2011 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers‘ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Semiotics : theory and applications / Steven C. Hamel. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-61761-229-9 (eBook) 1. Semiotics. 2. Semiotics--Philosophy. 3. Language and education--Social aspects. 4. Discourse analysis--Social aspects. 5. Culture--Semiotic models. I. Hamel, Steven C. P99.S39423 2010 302.2--dc22 2010027151 Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York CONTENTS Preface vii Chapter 1 Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling Through Analyzing Changes in the Material Culture of Schools 1 Kostas Dimopoulos Chapter 2 Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis 37 Tahir Wood Chapter 3 Language, Emotion, and Health: A Semiotic Perspective on the Writing Cure 65 Louise Sundararajan, Chulmin Kim, Martina Reynolds and Chris R. Brewin Chapter 4 Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology and its Implications for Psychological Research 99 Agnes Petocz Chapter 5 How Israelis Represent the Problem of Violence in Their Schools: A Case Study of a Discursive Construction 149 Douglas J. Glick Chapter 6 The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely*: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness 171 Morten Tønnessen Chapter 7 A Semiotics Discourse Analysis Framework: Understanding Meaning Making in Science Education Contexts 191 Kamini Jaipal Jamani Chapter 8 Semiotic Constraints of the Biological Organization 209 Abir U. Igamberdiev Chapter 9 Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy: Review of Stefanowitsch, Anatol, Gries, Stefan Th. (eds.) 223 Zhiying Xin vi Contents Chapter 10 The Role of Sign Vehicles in Mediating Teachers‘ Mathematical Problem Solving 233 Sinikka Kaartinen and Timo Latomaa Chapter 11 Interaction and Interactivity: A Semiotic Commentary 247 Jan M. Broekman Chapter 12 Multimodal Stylistics – The Happy Marriage of Stylistics and Semiotics 255 Nina Nørgaard Index 261 PREFACE Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches: Semantics, Syntactics, and Pragmatics. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis. This book discusses the theory and application of semiotics across a broad spectrum and has gathered current research from around the globe. Chapter 1 - The objective of this chapter is to present how changes in the material culture of schools can signify the transition from modern to post modern schooling. The material culture of schools is perceived here as consisting of the architecture of the corresponding buildings as well as of the material objects (i.e. furniture and equipment) within these buildings. We draw on the key notions of classification and framing borrowed from the seminal work of Basil Bernstein in the field of sociology of education which translate relations of power and control respectively. Classification examines the relations between categories, whether these categories are between institutions, social groups, discourses, or practices. By definition, strong classification formulates well-defined boundaries, whereas weak classification results in blurred or more permeable boundaries between such categories. In other words strong classification is predicated on the rule ‗things must be kept apart‘ while weak classification on the rule ‗things must be put together‘. In this chapter we are especially interested in exploring the symbolic boundaries which are inscribed in the form of material boundaries in the design of school space between categories like: a) school as an institution and its social environment, b) different social groups acting within it, c) different knowledge domains (subjects) and d) different practices. Framing refers to the controls on communication that take place within school. If the material culture of a school promotes explicitly regulated use or to put it differently the criteria for competent use of school space are both explicit and specific, framing is strong. Framing is weak in the case that such regulation is either absent or covert. The notions of classification and framing become operational on the basis of an inventory of multiple semiotic resources signifying symbolic boundaries and potential uses and communications within the school space. The relevant semiotic choices are typified into two distinct registers, one corresponding to modern (characterized by strong classification and framing) and the other to post modern viii Steven C. Hamel (characterized by weak classification and framing) schooling. The two registers are illustrated by reference to specific case studies. Finally, potential implications for structuring learners‘ identities as well as for policy making will be discussed. Chapter 2 - The paper will start from the assumption that semiotics today has advanced well beyond the early insights of Peirce and Saussure, both of whom looked at signs rather atomistically and in a decontextualised manner. Furthermore these thinkers tended to view the icon, index and symbol as different kinds of signs. Such views are untenable today. Firstly, it needs to be shown what the nature of contextualisation entails, as a shift from signification to cognitive semiosis. This implies both intertextuality and intersubjectivity as a result both of the evolution of the species and the further evolution of its culture. Highly evolved culture is made up of a complex of implicit and explicit intertextual relations, resulting in increasing levels of abstraction that demand concretisation through the hermeneutic activity of a constantly transforming subjectivity. This needs to be theorised so as to show up the nature of the symbolic order, which nevertheless incorporates the iconic and indexical within itself. This incorporation means that the iconic-indexical dynamics of zoosemiotics retain a presence within symbolic human semiosis. It will be shown that this insight is prefigured as the ‗animal kingdom of the spirit‘ in Hegel‘s Phenomenology and that this raises the possibility of a more fully realised symbolic realm in the further evolution of culture. This possibility flows from the fact that human subjectivity may be expanded to a greater consciousness of the iconic-indexical animality that is embedded in the symbolic order. This cannot mean an evasion of the iconic-indexical realm but a greater awareness of it to be achieved through powers of reflectivity. Chapter 3 - The writing cure, otherwise known as expressive writing, is widely accepted as an effective intervention. Hundreds of studies have shown that writing about one‘s thoughts and feelings for 3 days, with at least 15 minutes a day, has beneficial effects on physical and mental health. Yet, after more than two decades of research, there remains a large gap between evidence and explanation for the phenomenon. The problem, we suggest, lies in the general neglect to gain a deeper understanding of the basic building blocks of the writing cure, namely language. This vacuum can be filled by Peircean semiotics. Peirce‘s triadic circuitry of the sign is explicated and applied to the development of a taxonomy of expressions of self and emotions. This taxonomy has been implemented by a pattern matching language analysis program, SSWC (Sundararajan-Schubert Word Count) to test our theory- based predictions of the health consequences of language use. Two empirical studies of the writing cure that utilized SSWC for textual analysis are presented as demonstration of the heuristic value of applied semiotics. The writing cure has had an impressive track record since its first introduction by Pennebaker (Pennebaker, 1985; Pennebaker and Beall, 1986) in the eighties. For the past two decades, hundreds of studies have shown that writing about one‘s thoughts and feelings has beneficial effects on physical and mental health (Frattaroli, 2006). But why? What is it about language that its utilization for emotion expression has consequences for health? This question has never been addressed by the extant theories of the writing cure (e.g., Bootzin, 1997; King, 2002; Pennebaker, Mayne, and Francis, 1997). An explanation that seems to have the most empirical support (Frattaroli, 2006) is emotion exposure theory (Sloan and Marx, 2004), which by considering language use as an instance of exposure therapy tells us more about the latter than language per se. Another widely accepted explanation is narrative structure (Smyth, True, and Souto, 2001), which claims that verbal expression facilitates the