Semiotic management of communicative situations: New people(s) and old methods

How to explain the existence of totalitarian communities in the light of hegemonic ideologies that have been oftentimes, and also quite recently, condemned (Nazism, communism, Stalinism, religious radicalism)? How, in the globalizing world, do information islands emerge where people live in isolated semiotic realities? How is it possible to manipulate the masses, proceeding from denounced reasoning and policies? Why can people be subject to regimes typologically similar to those that destroyed their physical and semiotic past? These are issues the article approaches, trying to see logic in the management of semiotic realities through communicative situations, specifically as to how different types of objects in the latter are constructed. Metaneeds used in the construction of semiotic realities indicate the value-based structure of macrosignifieds as elementary units in culture cores. The use of macrosignifieds and skilful manipulation with metaneeds make it possible to create novel semiotic species in closed sociocultural systems that are based on unilateral semiotization of the surroundings and function by autocommunicative feedback loops. The examples given are derived from one of the most elaborate experiments in the creation of New Man and closed semiotic realities – from the territory of the former Soviet Union and the contemporary Putinized Russia

From systematic semiotic modelling to pseudointentional reference

Societies as open social systems work through semiotic modelling systems. We view their relevance for shaping primary and secondary needs, as well as metaneeds that are conditioned in social systems. Through conditioning in socialization, semiotic reality can be naturalized up to a level where we can start speaking about not only unconscious, but also unintentional semiosic activity. By that, the very realm of indexicality will be questioned. If indexicality is conjoined with unintended referentiality, then unintentional semiosis means the blurring and fusion of realities far beyond the so-called simulacral semiotic spaces. It is especially acute in the context of the development of technological availabilities where the physical, the semiotic, and the purely virtual reality merge. That quite novel phenomenon is exemplified by semiotic insularization. What follows is that it is hard to define the research object, for the subject is fading away, the real and the virtual are intermingling also in terms of their inhabitants (biological humans, computer users, avatars, virtual identities). Thus the pragmatic dimension of semiotics is gradually becoming lost. Also, the referential reality is moving farther from the informational space created and represented in “traditional” discursive flows, rather becoming based on pseudoreferential clues of meaning making

The Art of Utopia and the Real City: Basic Principles

Anti Randviir: The Art of Utopia and the Real City: Basic principlesKeywords: function of utopia, city, sociocultura l systems, utopianlogic, semiotic realitySummary:The article addresses semiotic topics connected with utopia and the utopian. Even though the argument is based on the widely analysed text  by Thomas More, it still targets the fundamental semiotic techniques and principles applied in Utopia that has established the universal logic for the utopian discourse ever since 1516. Simultaneously it will be evident that it is worthwhile to raise the question of the legitimacy of describing certain cultural production as utopian in the light of More’s highly singular prototypical text. The utopian discourse and consciousness is often an issue tied with the urban context and the city. The article will question such an association because of the status and functioning of the utopia as launched by More. Except from extremely particular specimens, urbanity in its sociocultural dimension in a specific time-space probably cannot be, and is not useful to be discoursed in utopian terms.The semiotic interpause is hard to achieve in the context of the physical environment. Yet this is the point where the utopia, the city, the society and the utopian come together. Thus it might be useful to review the notion of utopia in its connection with quite practical development of the (urban) sociocultural life in which even the status of objects in communicative situations is being continually re-defined.CV:Anti Randviir (PhD) is a semiotician. He is currently a senior researcher at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu. His publications have mainly treated various issues in the field of sociosemiotics, semiotics of space and city

Transdisciplinarity in objects: Spatial signification from graffiti to hegemony

Contemporary sociosemiotics is a way to transcend borderlines between trends inside semiotics, and also other disciplines. Whereas semiotics has been considered as an interdisciplinary field of research par excellence, sociosemiotics can point directions at transdisciplinary research. The present article will try to conjoin the structural and the processual views on culture and society, binding them together with the notion of signification. The signification of space will illustrate the dynamic between both cultures and metacultures, and cultural mainstreams and subcultures. This paper pays attention to the practice of sociocultural semiotisation of space and territorialisation by diverse examples and different sociocultural levels that imply semiotic cooperation between several members of groups that can be characterised as socii. We analyse territorialisation by graffiti, by furnishing spatial environment through artistic manners, by shaping the semiotic essence of cities through naming, renaming and translating street names, by pinning and structuring territories with monuments, by landmarking and mapping cultural space through individualisation of cities. We will see how principles of semiotisation of space are valid on different levels (individual and social, formal and informal, democratic and hegemonic, cultural and subcultural) and how these principles form a transdisciplinary object of study as ‘semiotisation of space’, and how space can be regarded as a genuinely transdisciplinary research object. Individual, culture, and society are connected in such an object both as constituents and as a background of study

On spatiality in Tartu–Moscow cultural semiotics: The semiotic subject

The article views the development of the Tartu–Moscow semiotic school from the analysis of texts to the study of spatial entities (semiosphere being most well known of them). It comes to light that ‘culture’ and ‘space’ have been such notions in Tartu–Moscow School to which, for instance, the ‘semiosphere’ does not add much. There are studied possibilities to join Uexküll’s and Lotman’s basic concepts (as certain grounds of Estonian semiotics) with Tartu–Moscow School’s treatment of culture and space through the notion of ‘semiotic subject’. Such an approach allows to see transdisciplinarity, which has come to issue only during the last decade, already in the first conceptions of Tartu–Moscow School where transdisciplinarity revealed itself in the symbiotic use of ‘culture’ and ‘space’

Vähktõvega ambulatoorsete patsientide informatsioonivajadus ja informeerimine - küsitlusuurimus Põhja-Eesti Regionaalhaigla onkoloogia -ja hematoloogiakliinikus

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5240390*es

A cross examination of electron transfer rate constants for carbon screen-printed electrodes using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and Cyclic Voltammetry

Heterogeneous electron transfer rate constants of a series of chemical systems are estimated using Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), and critically compared to one another. Using aqueous, quasi-reversible redox systems, and carbon screen-printed electrodes, this work has been able to quantify rate constants using both techniques and have proved that the two methods sometimes result in measured rate constants that differ by as much as one order of magnitude. The method has been converted to estimate k0 values for irreversible electrochemical systems such as ascorbic acid and norepinephrine, yielding reasonable values for the electron transfer of their respective oxidation reactions. Such electrochemically irreversible cases are compared to data obtained via digital simulations. The work is limited to finite concentration ranges of electroactive species undergoing simple electron processes (‘E’ type reactions). The manuscript provides the field with a simple and effective way estimating electron transfer rate constants for irreversible electrochemical systems without using digital software packages, something which is not possible using either Nicholson or Laviron methods

The voltammetric applications and frequency-dependent properties of screen-printed electrodes and carbon nanomaterial electrodes

This thesis reports the voltammetric applications and fundamental frequency-dependent properties of carbon-based electrode materials. A range of electrochemical systems hasve been investigated, and new materials have been electrochemically characterised, which will be of use to the field of electrochemistry. In Chapter 3 of this thesis, different graphenes were utilised as electrode composite materials, and their electrochemical behaviour was de-convoluted. It was found that surfactant-free graphenes were useful for the detection of guanine in terms of a reduced activation potential, which is thought to be derived from a pi-pi adsorption mechanism. The oxygen reduction reaction was also focussed upon and it was found that the type of graphene utilised did not affect the electrochemical mechanism in the respective reactions, but the peroxide yields changed. This could have dramatic ramifications for users choosing carbon materials as catalyst supports. Screen-printed electrodes were applied to novel systems including theophylline and creatinine, finding that their use as portable sensors was viable in two ways. For theophylline, a direct oxidation mechanism was useful for the detection of the medicine, while in the case of creatinine, an indirect detection method was found to be effective as creatinine is not electrochemically active. In Chapter 5, the first graphene screen-printed electrodes were developed and characterised. The result was two graphene screen-printed electrodes, with differing electrochemical properties, both of which could be used for different applications. Finally, Chapter 6 focusses upon whether electrochemical impedance spectroscopy is useful for screen-printed electrodes and carbon modifications. The work in this thesis finds that a synergy could potentially be formed, and in particularly, has found that it would be wise to operate screen-printed electrodes around +0.2 V due to this being the point where there is no net charge at the electrode surface under standard conditions