Seminars
CCS Seminars
(Those announced in English will be held in English, the others in Swedish.)
April 2010
- 7/4 15:15-17:00, H135b (Observera veckodagen)
John Michael Krois, Berlin
Picture Acts and the Body Schema
Pictures have traditionally been interpreted to be copies of objects and to possess a form shaped according to ideas in the artist's mind. The theory of picture acts attributes autonomy to pictorial objects. This derives from a spatial organization shared with the viewer's body: the body schema. The talk explains this theory of the beginning of depiction.
- 8/4 13:15-15:00, H428B
Ingar Brinck, CSS
Contexts of language diversity
March 2010
- 4/3 13:15-15:00, H428B
Göran Sonesson, CCS
Hur mycket innehåller en hällristning?
Om semiotiken som metakritik av arkeologin. Arkeologer verkar ofta se lite för mycket i förhistoriska bilder - som om de trodde att vi delade väldigt mycket värld med våra gamla artfränder. Några principer för att undvika övertolkning.
- 11/3 15:15-17:00, H428B
Mikael Ranta, Stockholm
Berättelser i och genom bilder - och övriga ting – Reflektioner utifrån ett narratologiskt och kognitionsteoretiskt perspektiv.
Narratologiska studier har ofta varit fokuserade på lingvistiska strukturer som bedöms vara paradigmatiska exempel på narrativitet, medan bildtecken (som t.ex. ikoner eller indexikala tecken) har rönt mindre uppmärksamhet. I min presentation avser jag däremot att lyfta fram några grundläggande och vanligt förekommande former av (åtminstone implicit) narrativitet i såväl bilder som icke-bildmässiga objekt. En utgångspunkt i min framställning utgörs av hypotesen (influerad av kognitionsteoretiska överväganden, t.ex. av Roger Schank) att kognitiva processer på ett fundamentalt plan inkluderar mental lagring och återvinning av handlingsscheman (m.a.o. narrativa strukturer) som kan förekomma på olika abstraktionsnivåer. Dessa mentala scheman inkluderar dels mer eller mindre stereotypiserade handlingssekvenser, dels inventarie- och spatialbaserade sceniska representationer. Som förberedande läsning är följande tänkbart:1. Abstract på engelska:http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AdXMYDSzx5OaZGY1dDIzcmtfMzdna3ZiMnZnaA&hl=en (New window)
2. Föredrag 15th Internat. Congress of Aesthetics, Tokyo 2001:
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9XMYDSzx5OaNmE2MWQ0OTEtMTFiMC00MjUyLWFiNjEtZDM0YTk5NGFmZWVi&hl=en (New window)3. Göran Sonesson:Mute narratives. New issues in the study of pictorial texts (New window). In Interart Poetics. Acts of the congress “Interart Studies: New Perspectives”, Lund, May 1995. Lagerroth, Ulla-Britta, Lund, Hans, & Hedling, Erik, (eds.). Rodophi, Amsterdam & Atlanta 1997; 243-252
- 18/3 13:15-15:00, H428B
Alf Hornborg, Arthur Holmer, Junichi Toyota & Love Eriksen
Reconstructing pre-Columbian ethnolinguistic processes in Amazonia
This CCS subproject combines anthropological theory with linguistic and geographical methods to examine how linguistic data from Amazonia can reflect processes of ethnic identity formation (ethnogenesis) in the pre-Columbian past. A point of departure is that the use of language is a sign or marker of ethnic identity in ways similar to the use of material culture. By tracing geographical patterns of distribution of different linguistic features, the project hopes to reconstruct prehistoric patterns of interaction leading to the expansion and differentiation of the Arawakan linguistic family. It will look at properties of Arawakan and non-Arawakan languages within given geographical areas, hoping to identify (1) cases where geographically close languages appear to diverge more than would be expected from random change, and (2) cases where they converge due to areal influence. In both cases, it would be possible to relate linguistic change to ethnogenetic processes.
- 25/3 15:15-17:00, H339
Brady Wagoner, Åhlborg/Cambridge
Striving after meaning: how psychologists have struggled to put culture in mind.
This talk will explore what psychology can contribute to our understanding of meaning and its relationship to psychological processes. To do this, it will draw heavily on a number of pre-WWII holistic psychologies --including those of Sir Frederic Bartlett, Lev Vygotsky, and Ganzheitpsychologie-- as well as recent work in cultural psychology. The argument will be made for a situated concept of meaning that synthesizes personal and collective ways of relating to the world.
February 2010
- 4/2 13:15-15:00, H428B
Göran Sonesson, CCS
From Mimicry to Mime by way of Mimesis. Reflections on a General Theory of Iconicity (Part I)
Within the framework of Peircean philosophy, iconic signs have always been taken for granted. In other quarters, on the contrary, their existence has been called into question: by philosophers such as Bierman and Goodman, as well as semioticians such as Eco and Lindekens. In a series of works, starting with Sonesson (1989), I have tried to rehabilitate the idea of iconicity, at least in the case of pictures, without identifying it with “tautology”, as Barthes (1964) did, or with “frozen mirrors”, as was recently suggested by Eco (1999), in a work which constituted a radical volte-face in relation to his earlier views. In the rresent article, I will refrain from spelling out my criticism of Goodman, Bierman, Eco, and others (Cf. Sonesson 1989, 1993, 1995, 2000a), but will instead formulate my findings as a positive theory, and then go on to consider some further problems.
- 11/2 13:15-15:00, H428B
Göran Sonesson, CCS
From Mimicry to Mime by way of Mimesis. Reflections on a General Theory of Iconicity (Part II)
- 18/2 13:15-15:00, H428B
Felix Ahlner and Jordan Zlatev, CCS
Cross-modal iconicity: A cognitive semiotic approach to ”sound symbolism”
Is the relationship between the expression and content poles of the linguistic sign fundamentally arbitrary, as it is typically claimed, following the famous dictum of the “father of modern linguistics” (cf. Lyons 1968), Ferdinand de Saussure, or is there some kind of ‘natural connection’ between the two? This question dates back to antiquity, but – we would claim – is still not satisfactorily resolved. Even the most committed proponents of the arbitrariness dictum recognize the existence of onomatopoetic words, but tend to regard these as ‘primitive curiosities’, existing outside and alongside the language system proper. The alternative viewpoint, commonly known as ‘sound symbolism’ (Hinton, Nichols and Ohala 1994), has gained ground during the last few decades. For example, a result that has been replicated a number of times is that when both adults and children (without autism) are given two fictive words like bouba and kiki and asked to decide which one denotes a roundish and which a pointy figure, they agree up to 95% that bouba suits best the roundish one (e.g. Ramachandran and Hubbard 2001). How are we to explain this, and is it possible to find a dialectical synthesis that could help resolve the debate between ‘arbitrariness’ and ‘sound symbolism’? This is the main question that we address in this article.
- 25/2 2010, 15:15-17:00 H135b
Ludovic de Cuypere, Ghent
Linguistic iconicity: What is is really?
In the wake of John Haiman’s pioneering research on linguistic iconicity (Haiman 1980, 1983, 1985), there has been a vast accumulation of studies arguing for iconicity in language. Indeed, iconicity has become a popular explanatory concept in different subfields of linguistic research, ranging from phonology to morpho-syntactic constructions and language change. Despite this growing empirical “evidence”, however, no overall consensus exists on what is the exact place of iconicity in linguistic theory. Opponents of iconicity maintain that iconicity merely in the eye of the beholder and that iconicity has therefore no explanatory value (cf. Bouissac 2005, Haspelmath 2008). In this talk I want to explore why it appears impossible for proponents and opponents of linguistic iconicity to come to unequivocal conclusions. Based on a close reading of Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of semiotics, in particular his triadic division of signs into icons, indexes and symbols, I argue that one of the main reasons for this lack of consensus has to do with metatheoretical problems related to the concept of iconicity itself. Following Göran Sonesson’s work in pictorial semiotics (e.g. Sonesson 1993), I suggest that a distinction be made between similarity and iconicity. An iconic sign is then defined as a sign whose functioning is determined by a similarity relation between the sign and the object it refers to. But the question is then how to know that it is actually the similarity between the sign and its object that determines its functioning? Maybe, as is claimed by the opponents, iconicity is merely coincidental? If not, then how is iconicity related to language? I contend that iconicity may indeed be involved in language, but only on a secondary level. Linguistic signs or constructions are are accordingly defined as fundamentally symbolic (i.e.arbitrary or conventional) signs. Iconicity is involved when a similarity relation between a sign and its referent adds extra meaning to the sign. The notion “extra meaning” will be elaborated by means of E. Coseriu’s (1985) theory of linguistic competence. Furthermore, building on E. Coseriu (2001 [1983]) theory of language change, I will additionally argue that iconic language structures are actually the result of iconically motivated language use.
Bouissac, P. 2005. "Iconicity or iconization? Probing the dynamic interface between language and perception". In Outside-In - Inside-Out. Iconicity in Language and Literature 4, C.
Maeder, O. Fischer and W. J. Herlofsky (eds.), 15-37. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Coseriu, E. 1983. "Linguistic change does not exist". Linguistica nuova ed antica, I: 51-63.
Coseriu, E. 1985. "Linguistic Competence: what is it really? " The Modern Language Review, 80 (4): xxv-xxxv.<
Haiman, J. 1980. "The iconicity of grammar: isomorphism and motivation". Language, 56 (3): 515-540.
Haiman, J. 1983. "Iconicity and Economic Motivation". Language, 59: 781-819.
Haiman, J. 1985. Natural Syntax: Iconicity and Erosion, Cambridge: CUP.
Haspelmath, M. 2008. "Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries". Cognitive Linguistics, 19 (1): 1-33.
Sonesson, G. 1993. "Pictorial semiotics, perceptual ecology, and Gestalt theory". Semiotica, 99 (3/4): 319-399.
January 2010
- 21/1 15:15 - 17:00, H428bDiagrams as signs of cognition
Frederik Stjernfeldt, University of Århus
Diagrammatical reasoning plays a central role in the mature version of Peirce's semiotics and pragmatism. This lecture outlines Peirce's doctrine of diagrams as a theoretical framework, also for current cognitive semiotics.<
- 27/1 15:15-17:00, H428b
Differences between young and old languages
Peter Bakker, University of Århus
In my talk I will discuss two types of young languages, and contrast them with “mature" languages. Creole languages are phylogenetically young, as all known creoles have developed only within the past few centuries. And twin languages are ontogenetically young, as twins are sometimes reported to create their own private languages. Both groups show striking similarities, and both types differ systematically from mature languages.
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Last modified: March 9, 2010