The Semiotics of Cultural Texts

Winner, Irene Portis; Winner, Thomas G.

doi:10.1515/semi.1976.18.2.101

Cited by 26 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…What is more, culture as an overall paradigm must, by necessity, include literary texts and these can be interpreted only within the much more general framework of cultural paradigms (cf. Lotman 1975Lotman , 1988DeJean 1977;Portis Winner, Winner 1976). It is obvious then, that this realm of research tradition (the Russian Formalist School, Czech Structuralism, the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics and their permanent reinterpretations in ever newer critical metatextscf.…”

Section: Text and Culture From The Perspective Of The Set Aim Of The mentioning

confidence: 99%

Text dynamics: Renewing challenges for semiotics of literature

Kroó

Тороп

2018

SSS

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Abstract. The paper examines the problem of textual/cultural dynamics linked to the issue of semiotic literariness, to be further investigated by the authors in later papers on literary semiotics. This scientific project aims to get closer to reaching an adequate disciplinary identification for semiotics of literature and a relatively precise definition of the status of this field in relation to semiotics of culture. The first step for the project is to reveal the interrelationhip between text and culture using the notion of dynamics that can be reconstructed from a historical perspective through some essential components of Formalist and Structuralist theory (Tynyanov's 'function' , Jakobson's 'dominant') and also works by Lotman (the 'text-culture' relationship) and Bakhtin ('dialogue'). The notions of inclusiveness/integration, distancing and hierarchization, leading to transformation, are interpreted in some detail in the context of these theories. On these grounds, three basic categories of the analysability of textual/cultural dynamics are set up with the indication of further aspects of the dynamic function: (1) mediation; (2) transposition; (3) temporality-spatiality. The suggested classification and the implied conceptual segmentation are expected to contribute to a synthesis between "Structuralist" and Peircean theoretical and methodological orientations in semiotic literary studies. This also reveals the need for a coexistence of approaches (a) moving from particular cultural fields (literary culture tradition) towards general semiotics of culture, and (b) returning from universal transfield concepts to literary

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Section: Text and Culture From The Perspective Of The Set Aim Of The mentioning

confidence: 99%

Text dynamics: Renewing challenges for semiotics of literature

Kroó

Тороп

2018

SSS

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“…Lotman began to perceive cultural behavior as text, not just linguistic behavior. "Text" includes the non-verbal sphere as well as language as quoted in Portis-Winner and Winner (1976), and it became a fundamental significant unit of cultural semiotic systems. Lotman agreed with Jakobson's position on the priority of dialogue which generates language on which the idea of semiosphere is based.…”

Section: Dialogic Anthropology and Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Facing emergences: Past traces and new directions in American anthropology (Why American anthropology needs semiotics of culture)

Portis-Winner

2009

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This article considers what happened to American anthropology, which was initiated by the scientist Franz Boas, who commanded all fields of anthropology, physical, biological, and cultural. Boas was a brave field worker who explored Eskimo land, and inspired two famous students, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, to cross borders in new kinds of studies. After this florescence, there was a general return to linear descriptive positivism, superficial comparisons of quantitative cultural traits, and false evolutionary schemes, which did not introduce us to the personalities and inner worlds of the tribal peoples studied. The 1953 study by the philosopher David Bidney was a revelation. Bidney enunciated and clarified all my doubts about the paths of anthropology and his work became to some extent a model for a narration of the story of American anthropology. In many ways he envisaged a semiotics of culture formulated by Lotman. I try to illustrate the fallacies listed by Bidney and how they have been partially overcome in some later anthropological studies which have focused on symbolism, artistry, and subjective qualities of the people studied. I then try to give an overview of the school started by Lotman that spans all human behavior, that demonstrates the complexity of meaning and communication, in vast areas of knowledge, from art, literature, science, and philosophy, that abjured strict relativism and closed systems and has become an inspiration for those who want anthropology to encompass the self and the other, and Bahtin’s double meaning. This paper was inspired by Bidney as a call to explore widely all possible worlds, not to abandon science and reality but to explore deeper inner interrelations and how the aesthetic may be indeed be paramount in the complexities of communication.

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Disemia

Herzfeld

1982

Semiotics 1980

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The Semiotics of Cultural Texts

Cited by 26 publications

References 10 publications

Text dynamics: Renewing challenges for semiotics of literature

Text dynamics: Renewing challenges for semiotics of literature

Facing emergences: Past traces and new directions in American anthropology (Why American anthropology needs semiotics of culture)

Disemia

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