Ferruccio Rossi-Landi: language, society and semiotics

The work of Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, which began in the fifties and ended in the mid-eighties, ranged through philosophy and linguistics to semiotics. My essay aims to provide a systematic presentation of the contribution of RossiLandi’s work, taking into account the various theoretical stages that led him to conceive and study language from such an original point of view. Through his "homological schema", material and linguistic production are conceived to be the result of a single process that is particular to human beings and that can best be understood in terms of work and trade. The essay focuses particularly on the critical debate that surrounded Rossi-Landian theory, presenting some of the objections of the scholar’s contemporaries together with his reactions to them, as well as touching on more recent interpretation

Semiótica e ideología: modelos, remociones y perspectivas

The relationship between semiotics and ideology can be approached through a particular study of the history of ideas. In this essay we try to draw a parallel between a semiotics which was engaged in the analysis of sociality and the reflection on ideology typical of the seventies. The discipline of semiotics has subsequently shifted to a more philosophical and linguistic reflection, abandoning some of previous themes. What is happening in recent years, especially with some socio-semiotic trends, it is a return to a more empirical social analysis, but has not followed, in our opinion, an adequate reconsideration of the ideological level of the various types of texts and social discourses

Pubblicità e memoria mediale: appunti in itinere

The essay aims at relating the outcomes of a multidisciplinary research project focused on the relationship between a specific kind of social discourse, such as advertising, and the concept of “media memory”. Through the analysis of concrete examples of commercials, we have tried to outline a composite field of studies ranging from semiotic studies on individual and cultural memory, to the role mass media play in defining a collective memory, up to the processes of interpretation that the reader/user activates to understand texts which create a network of references to our past

Thresholds, boundaries, limits: Ideological analysis in the semiotics of Umberto Eco

This essay traces the evolution of Umberto Eco’s thinking from a particular point of view, that of his reflections on ideology and ideological discourse. The reason for this choice is that ideology is one of the themes that is associated with the mature phase of Eco’s work, generally regarded as beginning with the Trattato di semiotica generale (1975, A Theory of Semiotics). Moreover, by examining ideology it is possible to piece together a complex path of intellectual reconsiderations and redefinitions involving both the discipline of semiotics and the broader cultural context. To tackle this topic it is in fact necessary to refer both to the general ambit of Eco’s semiotics and the historic and cultural context in which these studies originated

Semiótica e ideología : modelos, remociones y perspectivas

En este ensayo trazamos un paralelo histórico-temporal entre la afirmación de una semiótica empeñada en el análisis de lo social y la reflexión sobre la ideología típica de los años Setenta. La disciplina semiótica fue sucesivamente moviéndose hacia una reflexión mayormente filosófica-lingüística, abandonando algunas temáticas propias de la fase precedente. Últimamente con la socio-semiótica, retorna un punto de análisis más empírico de lo social y una reconsideración del nivel ideológico de las varias formas discursos sociales.In this essay we want to trace a historical-temporal parallel between the affirmation of a semiotic committed to the analysis of the social and the reflection on the typical ideology of the Seventies. Semiotic discipline was successively moving towards a largely philosophical-linguistic refection. In recent years, especially with some fringes of the socio-semiotics, is the return to a more empirical point of analysis of the social

Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing

Advertising communication plays a rather particular role in semiotic studies in the second half of the 20th century. The first pioneering studies of advertising messages, in particular those of Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, date to the 60s, and were carried out for the most part using the tools of classical rhetoric. Following a period in which semiotics displayed a relative lack of interest in advertisements, in the 80s advertising texts were used as examples in applied narratological analysis by Jean-Marie Floch and others. This occurred at the same time as the so-called “passion turn of semiotics”, which stressed that the passions and emotions present in texts are crucial issues in textual semiotics, and it also seemed to offer fresh perspectives for the analysis of advertising communication. The passion turn took account of the evolution of advertising itself: it should in fact be evident that modern-day advertising is less and less interested in telling stories and more and more in conveying passions and emotions. The effectiveness of an advert tends to be closely bound up with the presentation of sensations associated with a given product or brand. Recently, semioticians have begun to study more general features of advertising and marketing discourse

Introduzione. L'inattualit\ue0 della televisione

Introduzione al numero 11 della rivista Ocula intitolato: "Good bye TV: appunti sulla televisione di fine decennio

Storia della semiotica e metodologia

Introduzione alla Sezione "Storia della semiotica e metodologia" del Volume intitolato: "Il metodo semiotico Questioni aperte e punti fermi", curato da Giuditta Bassano e Piero Polidoro

Il testo e il corpus: opportunità e limiti dell’analisi semiotica in pubblicità

Il mio saggio è dedicato alle problematiche metodologiche che emergono nell’analisi della pubblicità, con particolare attenzione alle nuove forme pubblicitarie. A partire dalla mia esperienza didattica e di ricerca, ho cercato di mostrare le opportunità fornite dallo sguardo semiotico, ma anche alcuni limiti, legati alla nostra pratica di analisi e al nostro armamentario concettuale se si vuole analizzare un genere testuale che si sta evolvendo verso forme testuali inusuali, sempre più ibride e transmediali. In questa prospettiva ho discusso in particolare la differenza teorica tra corpus e testo, sempre meno appropriata per comprendere la nostra pratica analitica nell’ambito pubblicitario.The essay investigates the methodological issues emerging from the analysis of advertising, with particular attention given to its new forms. Moving from my research and teaching activity, I attempted to show the analytical opportunities offered by a semiotic gaze, yet even some of the limitations as well. Indeed, such an approach may not offer all the answers to the scholar who intends to investigate an object, such as advertising, which is constantly changing and evolving in more and more hybrid and transmedial forms. Within this particular perspective, I analyze here the theoretical difference between ‘corpus’ and ‘text’, which I believe is ever so inappropriate in understanding our analytical practice regarding the advertising object

Quale era l’effetto previsto? Su due conversazioni con Umberto Eco

Un ricordo di Umberto Ec