Your search for: subjects:"Culture Semiotic Models"

Signs in Society takes up Ferdinand de Saussure's challenge to study the "life of signs in society" by using semiotic tools proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce. Richard J. Parmentier explicates Peirce's fundamental semiotic concepts and evaluates their potential for cultural analysis. After ...

Signs in Society takes up Ferdinand de Saussure's challenge to study the "life of signs in society" by using semiotic tools proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce. Richard J. Parmentier explicates Peirce's fundamental semiotic concepts and evaluates their potential for cultural analysis. After considering the possibility of using complex semiotic processes, Parmentier examines the relationship between social action and theoretical discourse. Parmentier applies Peircean concepts in two ethnographic case studies based on fieldwork in Belau (Micronesia), one dealing with historical changes in the symbolism of mortuary exchange valuables and the other analyzing an instance of political oratory as a contextual performance. Then, using diverse data - from Melanesian mythology and Babylonian ritual to contemporary American "living history" museums and television advertising - Parmentier finds tropic innovation, formalized re-enactment, and controlling metalanguages in cultures across space and time. Finally, the author uncovers the pragmatic dimensions of the comparative work of philosophers of religion and locates strategies of naturalizing and conventionalizing discourse in both social reality and social theory. Throughout Signs in Society Parmentier focuses on links between text and context, linguistic and nonlinguistic signs, semiotic and metasemiotic levels, and elementary and complex semiotic phenomena. It demonstrates the effectiveness of semiotic theory in illuminating complex social and cultural practices.

Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems introduces a provocative new hypothesis in medico-social theory - the theory that immunity and disease are in part socially constituted. It argues that immune systems function not just as biological entities but also as symbolic concepts charged with ...

Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems introduces a provocative new hypothesis in medico-social theory - the theory that immunity and disease are in part socially constituted. It argues that immune systems function not just as biological entities but also as symbolic concepts charged with political significance. Bridging elements of psychology, sociology, body theory, immunology and medical anthropology, twelve papers from leading scholars explain some of the health-hazards of emotional and social pressure, whilst analysing the semiotic and social responses to the imagery of immunity.

Brummett addresses the question of how the aesthetic experience of machines can have rhetorical influence. He develops a theory of machine aesthetics, showing nine dimensions of the aesthetic experience of machines and machine-like objects or activities. He identifies three general types of machine ...

Brummett addresses the question of how the aesthetic experience of machines can have rhetorical influence. He develops a theory of machine aesthetics, showing nine dimensions of the aesthetic experience of machines and machine-like objects or activities. He identifies three general types of machine aesthetics: Mechtech, classical machine aesthetics based on hardware, gears, pistons, and so forth; Electrotech, high technology machine aesthetics based on the ability of electricity to put machinery on the human scale; and Chaotech, the aesthetic appeal of the decayed machine. In each case, rhetorical applications of the aesthetic are explored. A final critical application shows how the film Brazil warns its audience that fascism can be supported by simulations based on machine aesthetics.