Some Notions in CS Peirce ’ s Semeiotic North-American pragmatist

2019

Our thesis here is that creative artists are cognitive cyborgs 1 and one of their most decisive implants is intersemiotic translation. Intersemiotic translation is a default procedure in creative arts. Artists such as Gertrude Stein, Georges Braque, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Morton Feldman and Augusto de Campos are among many notable examples of artists in the last century who relied on translation between different semiotic systems to scaffold the creative transformation of artistic conceptual spaces. They are cognitive cyborgs because they have regulated and augmented their creative activity by coupling themselves to various tools and material structures. This is a new approach in the domain of intermediality that brings together premises from Peircean semiotics and distributed cognition. This approach is part of intermedial studies because it is interested in modelling relations between different media and also bec...

IN: International Handbook of Semiotics, 2015

Intersemiotic translation was defined by Roman Jakobson (2000 [1959]: 114) as ‘transmutation of signs’ – ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non verbal sign systems’. Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequence in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premisses: (i) intersemiotic translation is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis); (ii) intersemiotic translation is a deeply iconic dependent process. We exemplifly our approach by means of literature to dance intersemiotic translation and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of intersemiotic translation.

In this article we approach a case of intersemiotic translation as a paradigmatic example of Boden's 'transformational creativity' category. To develop our argument, we consider Boden's fundamental notion of 'conceptual space' as a regular pattern of semiotic action, or 'habit' (sensu Peirce). We exemplify with Gertrude Stein's intersemiotic translation of Cézanne and Picasso's proto-cubist and cubist paintings. The results of Stein's IT transform the conceptual space of modern literature, constraining it towards new patterns of semiosis. Our association of Boden's framework to describe a cognitive creative phenomenon with a philosophically robust theory of meaning results in a cogni-tive semiotic account of IT.

Proceedings of the 10th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS) , 2012

The phenomenon of intersemiotic translation represents a special creative domain of language procedures because involves a radical change in habits interpretation and new forms of sign manipulation. The phenomenon was firstly defined by Roman Jakobson as transmutation of signs – «an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non verbal sign systems». Despite its theoretic relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in general explanatory levels (conceptual modeling), as well as from the point of view of the logic of the semiotic processes involved in it. Here we propose an approach based on Charles S. Peirce’s pragmatic philosophy of sign and Stanley Salthe’s hierarchical structuralism, and suggest a preliminary division in classes and modalities of translations with examples involving literature and contemporary dance. We defend a perspective according to which translations involve iconic relationships (analogical mappings) between multi-structured semiotic systems.

2010

Mind, Culture, and Activity: An International Journal, 2014

The ontological resonance between Peirce and Vygotsky is an area of increasing interest within cultural-historical activity theory, arguably deserving of considered scrutiny and elucidation. Premised on conceptual pluralism and variance in sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspectives, this article proposes a Peirce–Vygotsky synergy for multimodal analysis. Following a discussion of its theoretical basis, the logical fusion of deduction and abduction is designated to authorise this synergy. Through the word-image complementarity in a storybook, it exemplifies how this synergy can afford a profound account of semiotic mediation. Exploratory as it is, the article accentuates the Peirce–Vygotsky confluence in research into communication and representation.

The Series: Semiotics, Communication and Cognition, Volume 14, Paul Cobley & Kalevi Kull (eds.), 2014

If translation is an act of meaning transaction, semiotics should be able to define its specificity in relation to other semiotic acts. Instead, following upon suggestions by Roman Jakobson, the Tartu school, and, more implicitly, Charles Sanders Peirce, the notion of translation has been generalized to cover more or less everything that can be done within and between semiotic resources. In this paper, we start out from a definition of communication elaborated by the author in an earlier text, characterizing translation as a double act of meaning. This characterization takes into account the instances of sending and receiving of both acts involved: the first one at the level of cognition and the second one at the level of communication. Given this definition, we show that Jakobson's " intralinguistic translation " is, in a sense, the opposite of translation and that his " intersemiotic translation " has important differences and well as similarities to real translation. We also suggest that " cultural translation " has very little to do with translation proper except, in some cases, at the end of its operation. Peirce's idea of exchanging signs for other signs is better understood as a characterization of tradition.

APPROACHES TO SEMIOTICS, 1996

If translation is an act of meaning transaction, semiotics should be able to define its specificity in relation to other semiotic acts. Instead, following upon suggestions by Roman Jakobson, the Tartu school, and, more implicitly, Charles Sanders Peirce, the notion of translation has been generalized to cover more or less everything that can be done within and between semiotic resources. In this paper, we start out from a definition of communication elaborated by the author in an earlier text, characterizing translation as a double act of meaning. This characterization takes into account the instances of sending and receiving of both acts involved: the first one at the level of cognition and the second one at the level of communication. Given this definition, we show that Jakobson's " intralinguistic translation " is, in a sense, the opposite of translation and that his " intersemiotic translation " has important differences and well as similarities to real translation. We also suggest that " cultural translation " has very little to do with translation proper except, in some cases, at the end of its operation. Peirce's idea of exchanging signs for other signs is better understood as a characterization of tradition.