Reimagining semiotics in communication

Semiotics, in - or as an approach to - communication studies has had mixed fortunes. On the one hand, it has been supposedly superseded by interpretational and more reader-centred research. On the other hand, it has lingered on as a perspective in which signs and texts have been taken as empirical phenomena that demand to be studied regardless, as well as an outlook that comprises nonverbal as well as verbal signification. Yet, in both cases, the kind of semiotics envisaged by communication and media studies is often a throwback to a fashionable heyday when superficial understandings of semiotics were standard in heavily-used textbooks (Fiske 1982; Dyer 1982; Hartley 1982; etc.). The contribution on semiotics for the volume Reimagining Communication will review these traditional perspectives on semiotics localised in communication study but will mainly propose an emerging perspective for the field (Self 2013). In particular, this contribution will outline the ways in which semiotics is a steadfast anti-psychologism characterized by its concern with the suprasubjectivity of the sign relation. It will be shown that this nevertheless comprises cognizance and incorporation of matters central to the communication process: interpretation and the vagaries of context. It will suggest that contemporary semiotics, with its perspective on communication across species and in machines, heralds new vistas for communication study beyond the realms of anthropocentrism

Codes and coding: Sebeok’s zoosemiotics and the dismantling of the fixed-code fallacy

The concept of code has a long and varied history across the sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. In the interdisciplinary field of biosemiotics it has been foundational through the idea of code duality (Hoffmeyer and Emmeche 1991); yet it has not been free from controversy and questions of definition (see, for example, Barbieri 2010). One reason why code has been so central to modern semiotics is not simply a matter of the linguistic heritage of semiology and the work of Jakobson who straddled both semiology and semiotics. Rather, it has been the programmatic reconceptualization of code which is woven through the work of modern semiotics’ founder, the father of both biosemiotics and zoosemiotics, Thomas A. Sebeok. A biologist manqué, a communication theorist influenced by cybernetics and a semiotician deriving from the ‘major tradition’ of Peirce, arguably Sebeok’s most systematic considerations of code were offered in his essays on zoosemiotics, largely from his 1963 coining of the term onwards. This article principally revisits the 1972 collection of Sebeok’s zoosemiotic essays and suggests that his particular observations in respect of analogue and digital codes and their relation to evolution in the world of animals harbours an opportunity to rethink and potentially resolve, through an ethological lens, current controversies regarding the status of code

Narrative

A bibliographical essay on the topic of narrative, particularly with relation to issues in communication

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A review of Neocybernetics and Narrative by Bruce Clarke (2014

Discussion: integrationism, anti-humanism and the suprasubjective

The pressure to take at least partial or temporary residency on the high moral ground is quite considerable in our profession. One might cite standards and commitment to truth in research or provision of the best possible guidance for students as key humanist motivators. For those who have had a ‘humanist’ education or who clearly see the human virtues of learning, there is the temptation to intuitively applaud humanism and, certainly, it is difficult to renounce it in toto. To do so is to court suggestions that you are somehow ‘against’ humans, a nihilist or, worse, a pessimist. It is to be a debaser of all that is good and of value in either the human essence or, for the more philosophically circumspect, in human interaction. Very few state that they are against humanism, and very many profess that they are definitely humanists of one sort or another. It is part and parcel of being nice, the bandwagon of positivity that may or may not complement academic considerations. Of course, in the arts, politics and social life, there have been movements in the past century or so that have putatively renounced humanism, often for greater or lesser rhetorical effect. The movement of this kind that influenced me in my formative years was punk rock – a strategic, but strongly felt, renunciation of the unholy alliance of the establishment in general, business in particular and the music business especially. As a subculture, it was particularly successful – irrespective of later outcomes – in challenging a tired socio-political consensus in the United Kingdom (and the West). It brought into serious question a set of unquestioned values – for example, regarding race, gender, sexuality, respectability, diversity and tolerance – that have been comprehensively co-opted since by social democratic governments. And it effectively outlawed ‘progressive rock’. The other formative influence I should mention here is reading Althusser as an undergraduate. Even though Althusser’s work was now open to question as the news broke that he had murdered his wife, his theoretical anti-humanism overturned everything I had considered to be common sense, even in the postpunk environment

Deely, John Nathaniel (1942-)

An encyclopedia entry on John Deel

Realism

This chapter will address the relation of crime fiction and realism. Realism is an issue in crime fiction because the threat of crime in fiction differs so greatly from the corresponding threat in real life. The demand on creative writing means, firstly, that the depiction of crime for entertainment purposes largely needs to eschew the banality of real life crime. Secondly, the prevalence of certain crimes in fiction – particularly murder – far exceeds that of real life. This is particularly the case in respect of the typical locations of crime fiction such as Mayhem Parva or Midsomer, on the one hand, or the mean streets, on the other. Contemporary real life murder is much more frequent in war zones and domestic environs. The chapter will demonstrate how debates about realism in crime fiction have arisen particularly as subgenres have abutted each other and, particularly, as practitioners of crime fiction started, along with commentators, to write about their craft. Pivotal, in this respect, is the set of arguments about realism which arose between the hard-boiled and ‘cozy’ schools of crime fiction in the 1930s. In order to investigate such debates in a little more depth, the chapter will define realism with reference to classical theories which have been applied to fiction across different media. These will include the formulations of Jakobson, Lukacs, Bazin, Barthes and the ‘classic realist text’ thesis. It will consider the following issues in relation to crime fiction: • What is understood to be ‘the real’ • What the literary movement of ‘realism’ entails • What the demands of veracity and fidelity to fact are in creative writing • How verisimilitude involves a more mutable relation to ‘the real’ through doxa (Todorov). It will also consider the different dimensions of realism in crime fiction, including realist prose, psychological realism and historical realism. It will be argued that while realism is increasingly subject to the vagaries of (multi)culture, geography and political context in the contemporary period, there are some enduring demands on crime fiction. It is proposed that the 500-1,000 word case study will focus on a crime fiction text whose consumption in the social media age played out some of the classic questions of crime fiction realism (correspondence to historical events, psychological in/consistency, non-veracious glamour, the prevalence of murder) along with some more contemporary ones (politically correct or wishful assignation of character roles). The text in question is the BBC hit of the Autumn 2018 schedules, Bodyguard

Observership, 'knowing' and semiosis

This article asks how future semiotic research, particularly with a biosemiotic orientation, will incorporate a theory of observership. The article take its cue from Sebeok's (1986, 1991a, 1991b) comments on John Archibald Wheeler's conception of the 'participatory universe' and attempts to explicate the relevance of Wheeler's (1994, 1998) philosophy of science for semiotics. The article argues that the quantum view of observership aligns with that of semiotics in that both envisage observation as a field of modification. The article seeks to contribute to recent key debates in the field on 'knowing' sciences on relation and cybersemiotics It develops some of the themes foreshadowed towards the end of an earlier article outlining a future orientated observership in contrast to a vis a tergo perspective

What the humanities are for - a semiotic perspective

In the wake of both 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008, the humanities have been offered as constituents of higher education which, if more prominent and more strenuously promoted, might have prevented both events. At the same time, the humanities have undergone an assault from governments in the West, with massively reduced or wholly cut funding as part of an attempt to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in universities. The response from parts of the humanities to these government initiatives has been strident, insisting that a thriving humanities or liberal arts curriculum is crucial to democracy, ethics and citizenship, and that the humanities should be an essential ingredient of science and business education. Contemporary semiotics’ deployment of the concept of Umwelt demonstrates that the contribution the humanities might make to theory, practice and social life remains indispensable. Yet this contribution is of a rather different character to that portrayed in the traditional defence of ’humanistic’ study. Indeed, the example of semiotics reveals that the humanities themselves are regularly misconceived