본 논문은 주자가 사용했던 상징부호들을 추적해가면서 기존에 주목하지 않았던 주자 천도론의 주제를 새롭게 구성하려는 의도를 지니고 있다. 주자의 천도론 속에서 도입된 상징은 의인화의 형태를 띠거나 우리가 대자연 속에서 쉽게 접할 수 있는 동물의 형태로 가시화되어 있다. 가시화되어 있는 상징은 대부분 정체성보다는 ‘동태성’의 특징을 지니고 있다. ‘사람과 말’의 상징은 사람의 역할이 지니는 비중의 대소 여부에 따라 상이한 해석으로 발전하게 되었다. ‘사람과 말’의 상징은 吳澄에 의해서 ‘활시위와 활’의 상징으로 이해되었고, 曹端에 의해 ‘活人과 말’로 상징으로 이해되었으며, 退溪에 이르러서는 ‘사람과 말’의 상징이 약화되어 ‘理의 (...) 體用’이론으로 대체되었다. ‘시냇물의 유행’은 도가 만물을 통해 발현하는 도체유행을 상징하고 있으며, 이 상징은 ‘體相用’의 구조를 지닌다. 형이상자인 본체는 작용을 지니고 있는데, 이 작용은 ‘형체’를 통해서 또는 ‘형체와 함께’ 유행발현한다. 따라서 ‘시냇물’은 도체가 형상을 입어 발현하는 형태이므로 ‘도체유행’ 자체를 상징한다. ‘솔개와 물고기’의 상징은 솔개가 하늘로 비상하고 물고기가 연못에서 뛰어노는 기상은 천도의 운행이 지닌 역동적인 세계관을 상징하는 동시에 사람이 수양을 통해 다다른 도체유행의 경계를 상징하고 있다. 명대의 薛瑄과 우리나라의 퇴계는 모두 이 상징이 지니는 수양의 경계를 강조하였고, 특히 퇴계는 이 도체유행을 ‘敬’ 공부를 통해서 다다를 수 있는 하나의 경계로서 이해하였다. 이 상징들은 그 의미가 ‘천명의 유행’과 ‘도체의 유행’의 영역 안에서 드러나고 있다는 점에서 천도론의 역동적인 세계관을 대표하고 있다. ‘사람’, ‘시냇물’, ‘솔개’, ‘물고기’는 천도유행의 능동성, 주재성, 역동성, 발현성, 가시성, 자연스러움을 포괄한다. (shrink)

Signs evolve on colective inconsciousness.

This essay presents a phenomenological analysis of the functioning of symbols as elements of the life-world with the purpose of demonstrating the interrelationship of individual and society. On the basis of Alfred Schutz''s theory of the life-world, signs and symbols are viewed as mechanisms by means of which the individual can overcome the transcendences posed by time, space, the world of the Other, and multiple realities which confront him or her. Accordingly, the individual''s life-world divides itself into the dimensions of (...) time, space, the social world and various reality spheres which form the boundaries or transcendences that the I has to understand and integrate. Signs and symbols are described as appresentational modes which stand for experiences originating in the different spheres of the life-world within the world of everyday life, within which they can be communicated, thereby establishing intersubjectivity. Schutz''s theory of the symbol explains how social entities – such as nations, states or religious groups – are symbolically integrated to become components of the individual''s life-world. The following paper reconstructs Schutz''s concept of the symbol as a crucial component of his theory of the life-world, which is seen as an outstanding phenomenological contribution to the theory of the sign and the symbol in general. (shrink)

Research in archaeology and anthropology on the evolution of modern patterns of human behavior often makes use of general theories of signs, usually derived from semiotics. Recent work generalizing David Lewis’ 1969 model of signaling provides a better theory of signs than those currently in use. This approach is based on the coevolution of behaviors of sign production and sign interpretation. I discuss these models and then look at applications to human prehistoric behavior, focusing on body ornamentation, tools, (...) and other artifacts. (shrink)

We are far removed, in this section of the Encyclopedia on memory, from the mnemotechnic icons described by Francis Yates in The Art of Memory and much closer to Augustine's advice about how to remember and to psalmodize Scripture. Memory, for Hegel, is the learning by rote of names, or of words considered as names, and it can therefore not be separated from the notation, the inscription, or the writing down of these names. In order to remember, one is forced (...) to write down what one is likely to forget. The idea in other words, makes its sensory appearance, in Hegel, as the material inscription of names. Thought is entirely dependent on a mental faculty that is mechanical through and through, as remote as can be from the sounds and the images of the imagination or from the dark mine of recollection, which lies beyond the reach of words and of thought[…]No wonder, then, that Hegel's Aesthetics turns out to be a double and possibly duplicitous text. Dedicated to the preservation and the monumentalization of classical art, it also contains all the elements which make such a preservation impossible from the start. Theoretical reasons prevent the convergence of the apparently historical and the properly theoretical components of the work. This results in the enigmatic statements that have troubled Hegel's readers, such as the assertion that art is for us a thing of the past. This has usually been interpreted and criticized or, in some rare instances, praised as a historical diagnosis disproven or borne out by actual history. We can now assert that the two statements "art is for us a thing of the past" and "the beautiful is the sensory manifestation of the idea" are in fact one and the same. To the extent that the paradigm for art is thought rather than perception, the sign rather than the symbol, writing rather than painting or music, it will also be memorization rather than recollection. As such, it belongs indeed to a past which, in Proust's words, could never be recaptured, retrouve. Art is "of the past" in a radical sense, in that, like memorization, it leaves the interiorization of experience forever behind. It is of the past to the extent that it materially inscribes, and thus forever forgets, its ideal content. The reconciliation of the two main theses of the Aesthetics occurs at the expense of the aesthetic as a stable philosophical category. What the Aesthetics calls the beautiful terms turns out to be, also, something very remote from what we associate with the suggestiveness of symbolic form.Paul de Man, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, is the author of Blindness and Insight and Allegories of Reading and is currently completing a book tentatively titled The Resistance to Theory. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Political Allegory in Rousseau", "The Epistemology of Metaphor", and "A Letter". (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

European prehistoric decorative art abounds in motifs that are not humble decorative elements but seem to be significant signs. Circles, concentric circles with or without a dot in the centre, circles divided into four, six or eight equal segments (sun/star-crosses) and often round decoration complexes filled with different spiral motifs are generally considered sun symbols by archaeologists. It is predominantly accepted that sun cults dominated the belief system of the European Bronze Age. These symbols can be found as a single (...) sign on many artifacts, especially luxury ones like weapons, jewels and fine pottery. Although they were widespread in Europe in the Bronze Age the Carpathian Basin has an outstanding collection of such archaeological material. A detailed comparative study of atmospheric optic phenomena and Bronze Age symbols revealed similarities between many abstract symbols and manifestations of atmospheric phenomena in the sky. The investigation resulted in the assumption of the significance of such symbols in Bronze Age visual culture. The study attempts to identify, present and reveal the role of simple as well as the more complex celestial symbols in the relationship between prehistoric people and their environment based on this argument. (shrink)

Many secret signs and symbols area associated with the Yoruba as we have it amongst many tribes in Nigeria. Some of these signs and symbols have deep meanings and have connotations amongst the tribe. They form the everyday language of the people and a thorough understanding of them is key in their relationship with one another as a people. The objective of this study is to express the cultural connotations of selected symbols in relation to the Yoruba people of Nigeria. (...) The study hinges on the theories of Mimesis, Structural Formalism and Semiotics. This was validated through ethnographic study of symbols such as art, architecture, clothing, body marks and decorations among others to discover deep and hidden information about cultural beliefs and assumptions among the people under study. Pertinent literatures were reviewed, interviews were conducted, information was sourced from the internet and personal experience was explored. The study points out to the fact that a lot of deep and secret meanings are attached to the selected signs and symbols. The paper concludes that meanings expressed are generally accepted by a host of the Yoruba people; however, there could be slight differences in belief system from one locality to another. The paper had contributed to the pool of knowledge by bringing unknown and hidden meanings of selected signs and symbols of the Yoruba people to limelight. The paper recommends that signs and symbols commonly used in communication among the Yoruba people of Nigeria should incorporated into the curricula of schools; especially Yoruba as a subject and taught to preserve the tradition from extinction. It is also recommended that folklores, mythology and oral tradition be encouraged among younger generation so as to preserve cultural values. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 208 Seiten: 167-176.

The sociology of symbolic power, as put forth by Pierre Bourdieu, treats the relations between behavior and socio-cultural structure. Bourdieu comprehends culture as a form of capital that follows certain laws of accumulation, exchange, and operation, and emphasizes that its symbolic form plays an important role in establishing and maintaining power structures.1 Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital comprises a variety of resources such as language capabilities, general cultural consciousness, aesthetic symbols, educational information, and level of education.2 His analysis (...) of cultural capital reveals three different processes of its formation.3 First, education fosters its formation, internalizing it through the.. (shrink)

This article analyses the use of signs (in a semiotic sense) in the analysis of Teresa of Avila's book, The Interior Castle. It takes one through the various levels of the castle, which stands as a sign for contemplation. Exploring Avila's creative use of imagery and language, it focus on what these signs (as pertaining to American semiotics and Charles S. Peirce) come to signify within Teresa's mental construction of the castle as a road to pure contemplation, in the (...) Catholic tradition. (shrink)

This paper considers the extent to which the earliest stages of learning about systems of inscription requires not just individual mental effort, but effort that is distributed across a wide physical and intellectual environment. It is particularly concerned with how children under the age of three learn about notational systems, including writing, and examines parallels with the evolution of written systems. It considers the position that children gain knowledge incrementally over the early months and years of life, supported by a (...) commonly accepted view that learning is a mental activity in which knowledge accumulates hierarchically in the minds of individual children, starting with smallest parts of the system. The paper presents evidence to the contrary, suggesting that the early learning of inscriptional systems is associated not just with individual minds, but with social and cultural cognition that is dispersed across minds, bodies, tools, and material environments. It presents data and evidence from a small study of the sign-making of children under the age of three that indicates that children of this age already use notations purposefully in the construction of signs that are intentional, multimodal, and unbounded, and that already have features associated with conventional systems of inscription. In their early sign-making they use certain underlying principles of symbolic reference associated with conventional systems, including the use of ‘generic’ structures derived from social, bodily, and material experience. Central to this process are networks of interactions between co-participants, tools, materials, and the physical environment. (shrink)

In mathematics education, students' difficulties with negative numbers are well known. To explain these difficulties, researchers traditionally refer to obstacles raised by the concept of NEGATIVE NUMBERS itself throughout its historical evolution. In order to improve our understanding, I propose to take into consideration another point of view, based on Vygotsky's principles, which define a strong relationship between signs such as language or symbols and cognitive development. I show how it is of great interest to consider students' difficulties with negatives (...) in the light of the use of symbols, in particular the minus sign. I describe the results of an empirical study about students' strategies in solving arithmetical equations with negatives. My analysis shows that the problems raised by the presence of negatives in the equations are attributable to students' very restricted and often inadequate use of the minus sign, which prevents them from finding a negative solution or making sense of it. (shrink)

In our research and teaching we explore the value and the place of rhetoric in education. From a theoretical perspective we situate our work in different disciplines, inspired by major ‘turns’: linguistic, cultural, anthropological/ethnographic, interpretive, semiotic, narrative, literary, rhetorical etc. In this article we engage in the discussion about what all these turns might entail for education by elaborating on what it implies to read the world as a ‘text'—as is central in a semiotic approach—and by introducing new rhetoric in (...) general, and the work of the literary critic and rhetorician Kenneth Burke in particular, as a possible theoretical and methodological resource. We illustrate its application in the analysis of a fictional narrative. Our aim is to explore how an understanding of education as rhetoric can be integrated into the teacher education curriculum. (shrink)

Historically the words representation and symbol have had overlapping meanings, meanings that usually disregard the role played by the interpreter. Peirce’s theory of signs accounts for these meanings and also for the role of the interpreter. His theory draws attention to the static and dynamic nature of signs. Sign interpretation can be viewed as a continuous dynamic and evolving process. The static and dynamic nature of signs helps us understand the teaching–learning activity as a process of interpretation on the (...) part of teacher and students. The paper attempts to explain the classroom interpretation process on the part of the actors involved using the Peircean theory of signs. (shrink)

This text provides a lively introduction to the developments in philosophy of language in this century, and to the way these have impinged upon religious language. Included is the relevance of analytical philosophy of language, but the text also covers important historical debates about religious language that have had increasing impact upon biblical studies and theology.

This paper attempts to illustrate a process of analysis that will hopefully open a path to more complete and useful definitions of sign and symbol. It applies a form-content analysis to the metaphysical properties of these two concepts. The objective is to locate criteria necessary and sufficient to derive formal definitions for these terms. Wittgenstein’s concept of “forms of representation” is analyzed and applied to the topic. Criteria are outlined that determine the appropriateness of the sign and symbol (...) to be applied as labels. Criteria of definition are then developed using gesture, metaphor, and several other example types to illustrate the use of the criteria in distinguishing between sign and symbol. The structural organization of these two concepts proved to be especially complex and led to what some readers may find somewhat obscure. It is not our intention to be purposefully obscure. (shrink)

A symbol is defined as a species of sign. The concept of a sign coincides with Skinner's (1938) concept of a discriminative stimulus. Symbols differ from other signs in five respects: (1) They are stimuli which the organism can both respond to and produce, either as a self-directed stimulus (as in thinking) or as a stimulus for another individual with a predictably similar response from the recipient in each case. (2) they act as discriminative stimuli for the same (...) kind of object for all members of the verbal community within which they function as a symbols; (3) they acquire their properties by virtue of arbitrary social convention rather than any natural and intrinsic connection between the sign and what it is a sign of; (4) competent members of the verbal community can both produce the appropriate symbol in response to a naturally occurring sign of the presence of the object or a sample of the kind of object which the symbol stands for and select the appropriate object when presented with the symbol; (5) they form stimulus equivalence classes of the kind demonstrated in the matching-to-sample task (Sidman, 1971; Sidman and Tailby, 1982) both with other symbols having the same meaning and, more important, with the naturally-occurring non-symbolic signs of the presence of the object or kind of object which the symbol stands for. (shrink)