John Maynard Smith's Typology of animal signals: a view from Semiotics

[Abstract] Approaches to animal communication have for the most part been quite different in semiotics and evolutionary biology. In this context the writings of a leading evolutionary biologist who has been also attracted to semiotics — John Maynard Smith — are an interesting exception and object of study. In my presentation I will focus on the use and adaptation of semiotic terminology in Maynard Smith’s works with reference to general theoretical premises both in semiotics and evolutionary biology. In developing a typology of animal signals, Maynard Smith employs the concepts of icon, index and symbol to denote distinct signal classes. He uses «indices» or «indexes» to express a signal type where the relation between signal properties and meaning is restricted because of physical characteristics. Such approach also points out the issue of motivatedness of signs that has had a long history in semiotics. In the final part of the paper the usage and content of the concepts of signal form and meaning in Maynard Smith’s writings will be analysed. It appears that in evolutionary biology the meaning of signal is a vague concept that may denote a variety of things from an animal’s specific physiological status to artificial theoretical constructs. It also becomes evident that in actual usage the concept of signal often includes references to the receiver’s activity and interpretation that belong rather to the characteristics of sign process. The positive influence of Maynard Smith’s works on semiotics could lie in paying attention to the role of physical necessities in animal communication. Physical constraints and relations seem to have a significant role also in semiotic processes although this is not always sufficiently studied or understood in semiotics

Towards an integrated methodology of ecosemiotics: The concept of nature-text

The aim of the article is to elaborate ecosemiotics towards practical methodology of analysis. For that, the article first discusses the relation between meaning and context seen as a possibility for an ecological view immanent in semiotics. Then various perspectives in ecosemiotics are analyzed by describing biological and cultural ecosemiotics and critically reading the ecosemiotic works of W. Nöth and K. Kull. Emphasizes is laid on the need to integrate these approaches so that the resulting synthesis would both take into account the semioticity of nature itself as well as allow analyzing the depiction of nature in the written texts. To this end, a model of nature-text is introduced. This relates two parties intertwined by meaning-relations — the written text and the natural environment. In support of the concept of nature-text, the article discusses the Tartu–Moscow semioticians’ concepts of text, which are regarded as broad enough to accommodate the semiotic activity and environment creation of other animals besides humans. In the final section the concept of nature-text is used to describe nature writing as an appreciation of an alien semiotic sphere and to elucidate the nature writing’s marginality, explaining it with the need to interpret two different types of texts

John Maynard Smith’s typology of animal signals: A view from semiotics

Approaches to animal communication have for the most part been quite different in semiotics and evolutionary biology. In this context the writings of a leading evolutionary biologist who has also been attracted to semiotics — John Maynard Smith — are an interesting exception and object of study. The present article focuses on the use and adaptation of semiotic terminology in Maynard Smith’s works with reference to general theoretical premises both in semiotics and evolutionary biology. In developing a typology of animal signals, Maynard Smith employs the concepts of icon, index and symbol to denote distinct signal classes. He uses “indices” or “indexes” to express a signal type where the relation between signal properties and meaning is restricted because of physical characteristics. Such approach also points out the issue of the motivatedness of signs, which has had a long history in semiotics. In the final part of the article the usage and content of the concepts of signal form and meaning in Maynard Smith’s writings are analysed. It appears that in evolutionary biology, the “signal” is a vagueconcept that may denote a variety of things from an animal’s specific physiological status to artificial theoretical constructs. It also becomes evident that in actual usage the concept of signal often includes references to the receiver’s activity and interpretation, which belong rather to the characteristics of sign process.  The positive influence of Maynard Smith’s works on semiotics could lie in paying attention to the role of physical necessities in animal  communication. Physical constraints and relations also seem to have a significant role in semiotic processes although this is not always sufficiently studied or understood in semiotics

Two decades of ecosemiotics in Tartu

Two decades of ecosemiotics in Tart

Journals of semiotics in the world

Hereby we provide a list of all semiotic journals currently published in the world, which includes 53 titles. From among these, 42 are printed on paper (among them six international journals on general semiotics, 16 journals specializing in some branch of semiotics, and 20 regional semiotics journals), while 11 appear only as electronic publications. All in all, these journals publish articles in 16 languages

Semiotic dimensions of human attitudes towards other animals: A case of zoological gardens

This paper analyses the cultural and biosemiotic bases of human attitudes towards other species. A critical stance is taken towards species neutrality and it is shown that human attitudes towards different animal species differ depending on the psychological dispositions of the people, biosemiotic conditions (e.g. umwelt stuctures), cultural connotations and symbolic meanings. In real-life environments, such as zoological gardens, both biosemiotic and cultural aspects influence which animals are chosen for display, as well as the various ways in which they are displayed and interpreted. These semiotic dispositions are further used as motifs in staging, personifying or de-personifying animals in order to modify visitors’ perceptions and attitudes. As a case study, the contrasting interpretations of culling a giraffe at the Copenhagen zoo are discussed. The communicative encounters and shifting per ceptions are mapped on the scales of welfaristic, conservational, dominionistic, and utilitarian approaches. The methodological approach described in this article integrates static and dynamical views by proposing to analyse the semiotic potential of animals and the dynamics of communicative interactions in combination

Introduction

This issue of Sign Systems Studies includes twelve papers on semiotics of resemblance. Readers competent in semiotics may argue that there is no such field as semiotics of resemblance and they would indeed be right. In this case, resemblance should be considered to be an umbrella term that covers various concepts, such as iconicity, iconic signs, similarity, analogy, categorization, metaphors, mimesis, mimicry, onomatopoeia, and others. These terms are used in different fields within and outside of semiotics. Accordingly, semiotics of resemblance should be treated as a possibility for establishing commonalities between different paradigms, from aesthetics to evolutionary biology and from theoretical semiotics to literary studies

La sémiotisation de la matière. Une zone hybride entre l’écocritique matérialiste et la biosémiotique

L’écocritique matérialiste s’intéresse au rapport entre matière et représentation. À cet égard, la biosémiotique et l’écosémiotique fournissent un cadre théorique apte à fonder une compréhension processuelle des relations signifiantes unissant les organismes et leur environnement. La théorie de l’Umwelt de Jakob von Uexküll et celle des affordances de James J. Gibson, mais également la typologie des signes de Charles S. Peirce et la sémiotique culturelle de Iouri Lotman constituent un ensemble théorique cohérent sur lequel l’écocritique matérialiste pourrait s’appuyer pour fonder un modèle conceptuel adéquat à son projet d’interprétation des textes et des pratiques culturelles liées à la nature. Afin d’instaurer un dialogue entre la biosémiotique et l’écocritique matérialiste, un modèle conceptuel décrivant le processus par lequel la matière devient sémiotisée est proposé dans cet article. En tenant compte, d’une part, de la capacité de la matière à produire des significations, mais également, d’autre part, de la façon dont les actions humaines modifient les propriétés sémiotiques de la matière, une zone hybride entre l’agentivité de la matière et la modélisation humaine devrait être considérée dans une perspective écocritique

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