Petrilli Susan. Sign Studies and Semioethics

De Gruyter Mouton, 2014. — xxii, 398 pages. — (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition). — ISBN: 978-1-61451-719-1; ISBN: 978-1-61451-522-7.This book examines the issues surrounding the problematic perpetuation of dominant sign systems through the framework of 'semioethics'. Semioethics is concerned with using semiotics as a powerful tool to critique the status quo and move beyond the reproduction of the dominant order of communication. The aim is to present semioethics as a method to engage semiotics in an active rethink of our ability as humans to affect change.Introduction. The semioethic turn in sign studies
Critical semiotics, structures and models
Signposts leading to semioethics: on signs, values and the non-neutrality of semiotics
The sign science and its developments
From “decodifiation semiotics” to “interpretation semiotics”
The relation between sign theory and value theory
Signifiance as a lead for signifis and semioethics
Humani nihil a me alienum puto
Insights into structure and structuralism
Structuralism and its range
Structuralism, dialogism and biosemiotics
Dialogism, communication and modelling from a global semiotic perspective
Criteria and diffrences in the interpretation of structure
Two conceptions of structure
Binarism and triadism in structuralist approaches to sign theory
Interpretive structures between signality and semioticity
The role of interpretation in the structural dimensions of semiosis
Critical structuralism, a pioneer bigradual approach to language
Limitations and preconceptions in the generative-transformational approach
Marxian proto-structuralism and the homological structures of verbal and nonverbal communication
Ontologic structuralism and methodologic structuralism
The human being, a semiotic animal, a structuralist animal
Human modelling, pu zzles and ar ticulations
Three modelling systems
Form and puzzle
Analogy and homology
Levels of articulation
Puzzles in logic
Modelling and the jigsaw puzzle
Modelling and primary iconism
Signifiation, logic, iconicity
Evolutionary cosmology, logic and semioethics
A universe perfused with signs
Logic and cosmology
Agape, the self and the other
Agape and abduction
Mother-sense, agapasm and logic
Defiitional aspects of abduction
Ubiquity of abduction, dialogism and translation
Abduction and genesis of the signifid world
Abduction and linguistic experience
Image, primary iconism and otherness
Iconicity, similarity and critique of representation
Image and similarity
Primary iconism
Image and the pragmatic instance in primary iconism
Signifying processes and the associative capacity
Signs of silence
Silence and responsive understanding
Toward a typology of silence: conventionality, indexicality and iconicity
Silence, iconicity and listening
Understanding, signifis and dialogism
Reading signifis as semioethics
Prefiurations of semioethics in signifis
Problems of language and terminology
Triadic highlights on meaning
Signifiance, modelling and translational processes
Geosemiosis, heliosemiosis, cosmosemiosis
“A new geneology of semiotics”
The objective character of misunderstanding. When the mystifiations of language are the cause
Signifis and the “maladies of language”
Ambiguity and the “panacea of defiition”
“Critique of imagery”: Toward a “signifial education”
“Universal language,” “common speech” and “common sense”
Critical common sensism and pragmaticism
Vagueness and generality
The live word, value and otherness
A case of chronotopic otherness
Philosophy of language as philosophy of the live word
The problem of interpretation, the linguistic conscience and signifiance
The sign in sociality, the human psyche and language
The human sciences, the artistic dimension of sign systems and the critique of language
Extralocalization, responsive understanding and translation
Dialogization, translation and the properly human
The centrality of translation for semiotics
Translational semiotics, life processes and ideology
Looking back to new frontiers in translation theory
Translation, communication and life
Communication, responsive understanding and freedom
Translatability versus untranslatability
Common speech and plurilingualism
Translation, alterity and responsibility
Translation and ideology, toward a semioethic turn in translation studies
Intermezzo. Humanism and antihumanism, responsibility without alibis and voluntarism
Translation, iconicity and dialogism
Dialogical otherness and translation
Similarity and intertextuality in interpretation/translation
Metaphor, modelling and translation
The paradox of translation, the same other
Metamorphoses of the text in translation
Translation, signs and meaning
Communication and expressibility across languages
Translating the untranslatable. On language as absence, equivocation and silence
The semiotic machine, linguistic work and translation
Semiosis in the interaction between humans and machines
Biosemiosis, translation and culture
Humans and machines at work, or sociality in translation
From global semiotics to semioethics
Extending semiotic horizons
Prolegomena for a theory of signs
Semiotic dimensions and new philosophical trends
Beyond the limits of nonreferential semantics
For nonsectorial pragmatics, sensible to values
Openings on global semiotics and semioethics
From the methodica of common speech to the methodica of common semiosis
Sidelights
Language and social reproduction
On language and work
From common speech to common semiosis, the homological method
Philosophical methodica, the science of signs and social reproduction
Considering together models, meaning and values
The correspondence between Morris and Rossi-Landi
Language and critique, a common quest
On language according to Rossi-Landi and Sebeok, more convergences
Global semiotics and the vocation for translation
Global semiotics as intersemiotic translation
Interpretation/translation, the criterial attribute of life
The self is a verb: to translate
The play of musement between reality and illusion
The task of the translator in semiotics and philosophy
Social symptomatology and semioethics
On the dual meaning of “global communication”
Translating today’s sense of malaise into symptoms of the destructive character of globalization
Communication and the other
Translating “semiotics” – a prerogative of humanity – into responsibility
Reading the present as the future perfect of semiosis alias life
To sum up looking ahead