Search results for "Semiotics"
showing 10 items of 438 documents
Modality and Uncertainty in Data Visualizations: A Corpus Approach to the Use of Connecting Lines
2020
In data visualizations, connecting lines may have various semiotic functions, including the semiotic potential of indicating modality and uncertainty. The goal of this article is to find out how this semiotic potential is realized in current best practices of data visualizations and what conventions exist for the visual manifestations of these functions. This issue is addressed by using a corpus-based approach and a two-level analysis method within a social semiotic framework. First, the article offers a theoretical discussion on how the concepts of modality and uncertainty interrelate. Second, a method for investigating how these concepts are visualized at different levels is presented. Th…
The love boat. La crociera come eterotopia
2023
On a cruise, spatial coordinates are suspended (orientation with respect to the land and to the labyrinthine plan of the ship is lost), the temporal dimension (time is marked by the palimpsest of daily activities rather than by clocks), and the actor's characteristics (with the alteration of some of the identity traits of the subjects involved). The passenger experiences on the voyage an 'other' self, one that in some ways cannot be revealed within everyday life. And the boat becomes the place in which a series of paradoxes are realised: the realm of the freedom, but also a form of holiday slavery in which everything is capillarily foreseen beforehand; a space in which apparent luxury is ma…
Minestre siciliane e un osservato speciale: la minestra di tenerumi
2020
Questo capitolo prende in esame una famiglia di pietanze che ha ampia diffusione in Italia e in Sicilia, quella delle minestre. Il termine minestra, di difficilissima traduzione, raccoglie piatti talvolta molto diversi tra loro fino ad accomunare, nei ricettari meno recenti, tutti i primi piatti italiani. Nel capitolo sarà approfondito il problema della vaghezza semantica del termine e prenderemo in esame una delle minestre siciliane più note: la "minestra di tenerumi", caratterizzata dalla presenza di un ingrediente autoctona, la cucuzza lunga con le sue foglie. La presenza di quest'ingrediente contribuisce a stabilizzare l'identità del piatto, da un lato, e a sancirne la tipicità e, dunqu…
Come si fa una cucina regionale. Semiotica del gusto e gastrosfera siciliana
2020
Questo capitolo affronta il tema della cucina regionale in chiave semiotica e introduce un caso di analisi specifico: la gastronomia siciliana. Dopo una breve ricostruzione degli studi storici, antropologici e sociali che si sono occupati dell'argomento, il capitolo procede alla composizione di un corpus di ricettari siciliani che sarà oggetto di analisi nel resto del volume. In chiave semiotica, il genere testuale del ricettario regionale costituisce uno dei principali veicoli di costruzione e circolazione delle cucine regionali e rappresenta, oltre che un oggetto di analisi complesso e sfidante, anche uno strumento di costruzione politica della regionalità: il ricettario seleziona e filtr…
Pasta alla Norma: il piatto perfetto
2020
Il capitolo ricostruisce la genesi culturale di uno dei piatti più rappresentativi e universalmente apprezzati della cucina siciliana: la pasta alla Norma. Questo piatto si presta come un caso esemplare di studio del "mito delle origini", ossia di mito alimentare che condensa, nelle proprie strutture semantiche, il suo valore sociale stesso. Il capitolo approfondisce l'intertestualità tra pietanza e aneddoto, la particolare composizione figurativa ed estesica del piatto, oltre che le condizioni culturali che ne determinano il valore di "perfezione". The chapter reconstructs the cultural genesis of one of the most representative and universally appreciated dishes of Sicilian cuisine: pasta a…
Artefacts of Cognition: the Use of Clay Tokens in a Neo-Assyrian Provincial Administration
2014
The study of clay tokens in the Ancient Near East has focused, for the most part, on their role as antecedents to the cuneiform script. Starting with Pierre Amiet and Maurice Lambert in the 1960s the theory was put forward that tokens, or calculi, represent an early cognitive attempt at recording. This theory was taken up by Denise Schmandt-Besserat who studied a large diachronic corpus of Near Eastern tokens. Since then little has been written except in response to Schmandt-Besserat's writings. Most discussions of tokens have generally focused on the time period between the eighth and fourth millennium bc with the assumption that token use drops off as writing gains ground in administrativ…
Presenting “pissis girls”: Categorisation in a social media video
2015
In Finland, a social category called “pissis girls” has evolved into a cultural concept, used widely in various discourses concerning young women. In the paper, the empirical focus is on how, in the context of a viral video disseminated in social media, a group of young girls are presented as representatives of this category. The video, called ÄM IRK, is a short edited clip of an emergent interaction between young men and girls meeting by chance in a park. Drawing on the notions of membership categorisation, cluster of indexes and indexical field, “enoughness” and authentication, the paper investigates how the edited video, through the means of de- and recontextualisation of the emergent in…
Kieślowski, the mysteries of screens and God
2019
The computer seems like a privileged personage in Decalogue 1 (Dekalog, jeden, 1987/88, prem. 1989, dir. K. Kieślowski): it is used by Paweł and his father to solve mathematical questions about Miss Piggy, to calculate the durability of the ice on the pond, to know what Mum is doing, and to control domestic devices. For Kieślowski the computer is not just a gadget: Krzysztof ’s lecture describes its potential and its possible autonomy. Independent from man (the computer switches itself on), it becomes his rival: Kieślowski proposes a critical interpretation of the computer as a new idol, promising unlimited memory and knowledge. A similar preoccupation can be found in the Black Mirror serie…
From witnessing to recording – material objects and the epistemic configuration of science classes
2012
Drawing on concepts developed in actor-network theory and postphenomenology this article shows how material objects in the science classroom become part of epistemic configurations and thus co-shape science education. An ethnographic study on epistemic objects in science education is the basis for the analysis of two of these objects: experimental arrangements and the blackboard. While experimental arrangements configure students as witnesses of the fascinating otherness of material objects, the blackboard enacts students as recorders of semiotic representations. In the interplay of these socio-material enactments scientific knowledge receives its authority in the classroom. The perspective…
Los fundamentos de la visualidad de la Templanza. Formación de su tipología iconográfica hasta el siglo XIV
2020
La Templanza, como una de las Virtudes Cardinales, ha sido objeto de reflexión por parte de los pensadores desde la Antigüedad, cuando se sentaron las bases de este concepto. A pesar de la ausencia de unos claros precedentes visuales, la Templanza configuró su visualidad en el medievo al igual que sus compañeras. Dicha ausencia motivó una gran variedad de concreciones icónicas de esta virtud mediante diferentes y numerosos atributos. Las famosas “iconologías” no recogen la mayoría de estos atributos y tipos iconográficos, al igual que la bibliografía. Por este motivo, proponemos un estudio diacrónico de la visualidad de la Templanza desde sus orígenes hasta el siglo XIV, atendiendo al signi…