Semiotics and programming languages

Zemanek, Heinz

doi:10.1145/365230.365249

Cited by 53 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The earliest mention of this topic was a brief four-page article appearing in Communications of the ACM (Zemanek 1966), which emphasized the importance of semiotic analysis of programming languages. During the subsequent years, there has been evidence of a growing interest in semiotics both on the part of those concerned with computer science and on the part of those applying information technology in the humanities.…”

Section: A Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is despite the fact that the earliest mention of the importance of applying semiotics to computing by Zemanek in Communications of the ACM who specifically emphasized this point (Zemanek 1966). This is because programming languages are for programmers and thus require certain expertise in the engineering domain.…”

Section: Semiotics Applied To Programming Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Semiotics of Computing: Filling the Gap Between Humanity and Mechanical Inhumanity

Tanaka-Ishii

2015

International Handbook of Semiotics

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This chapter aims to overview the frontier of application of semiotics to computing and discuss its signification, milieu, and future. Such an overview of the semiotics of computing suggests future paths that could form a research domain under the name of computational semiotics. Research in this domain could reveal the advantages and disadvantages of human signs in comparison to mechanical signs, so that machines could be designed better to support human semiosis. At the same time, such comparison could also provide better understanding of the nature of signs and sign systems as an epistemological tool.Before overviewing the current train of thought on this topic, I first examine the signification of the semiotics of computing. The marriage of computing and semiotics would bring signification to both fields, as shown intuitively in Fig. 44.1 and also as explained in the following two subsections. Formalization of Semiotics Through ComputingThe purpose of semiotics, in general, is to explain signs and sign systems and describe their general characteristics and structure, and thus, to establish a methodology for their explanation. Underlying these considerations is the question of the meaning of meaning, or how signs convey meaning. The object of semiotic analysis has traditionally been sign systems for human interpretation: natural language, text, communication, code, symbolic systems, sign language, and various art forms.This means that such semiotic studies must be conducted without a clearly delineated separation between the sign system to be analyzed and that used for its study.

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Section: A Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Semiotics Applied To Programming Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semiotics of Computing: Filling the Gap Between Humanity and Mechanical Inhumanity

Tanaka-Ishii

2015

International Handbook of Semiotics

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“…If Sign (9) is seen as personal tagging, its Replica is also a personomy, Sign (4), of a special kind. Since this is the most complex sign in the context of social tagging, we find that system designers are often concerned about methods of classification, such as social classification, collaborative categorization, mob indexing, and ethno-classification [28]. Seen as a system, the function of social tagging is restricted to the logical reasoning process as set up by its designers.…”

Section: Sign (9) -{Informational Symbolic Type}mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social tagging, online communication, and Peircean semiotics: a conceptual framework

Huang

Chuang

2009

Journal of Information Science

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One of the recent Web developments has focused on the opportunities it presents for social tagging through user participation and collaboration. As a result, social tagging has changed the traditional online communication process. The interpretation of tagging between humans and machines may create new problems if essential questions about how social tagging corresponds to online communications, what objects the tags refer to, who the interpreters are, and why they are engaged are not explored systematically. Since all reasoning is an interpretation of social tagging among humans, tags, and machines, it is a complex issue that calls for deep reflection. In this paper, we investigate the relevance of the potential problems raised by social tagging through the framework of C. S. Peirce's semiotics. We find that general phenomena of social tagging can be well classified by Peirce's ten classes of signs for reasoning. This suggests that regarding social tagging as a sign and systematically analyzing the interpretation are positively associated with the ten classes of signs. Peircean semiotics can be used to examine the dynamics and determinants of tagging; hence, the various uses of this categorization schema may have implications for the design and development of information systems and Web applications.

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“…The study of languages can be partitioned into 'syntax', 'semantics' and 'pragmatics'; Heinz Zemanek (b1920) applied this terminology to programming languages in [Zem66]. The valid strings of a language and some suggestion of their structure are defined by its syntax.…”

Section: Language Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The early search for tractable ways of reasoning about programs

Jones

2003

IEEE Annals Hist. Comput.

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This paper traces the important steps in the history-up to around 1990-of research on reasoning about programs. The main focus is on sequential imperative programs but some comments are made on concurrency. Initially, researchers focussed on ways of verifying that a program satisfies its specification (or that two programs were equivalent). Over time it became clear that post facto verification is only practical for small programs and attention turned to verification methods which support the development of programs; for larger programs it is necessary to exploit a notation of compositionality. Coping with concurrent algorithms is much more challenging-this and other extensions are considered briefly. The main thesis of this paper is that the idea of reasoning about programs has been around since they were first written; the search has been to find tractable methods.

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Semiotics and programming languages

Cited by 53 publications

References 4 publications

Semiotics of Computing: Filling the Gap Between Humanity and Mechanical Inhumanity

Semiotics of Computing: Filling the Gap Between Humanity and Mechanical Inhumanity

Social tagging, online communication, and Peircean semiotics: a conceptual framework

The early search for tractable ways of reasoning about programs

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