Saturday, June 24, 2006

Semiotics: Beginners: Want an excellent orientation to the field of semiotics?

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Originally published on May6,2k6 on refWrite page 3.
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If you are mystified by the term "semiotics" and want to know more about the science of signs - which embraces subfields like that which studies symbols (not the same thing, mind you), or like gestures, or broader "body language" phenom such as facial expressions, or footprints left in the sand as signs of a previous preence of a certain kind, or alphabets (eg, English script) vs hieroglyphics (ancient Egyptian writing system) vs ideographs (classical Chinese characters) - if any of that, then you will enjoy taking a look at Semiotics for Beginners.

Semiote Analytics, by Anaximaximum

Or: the various punctuation marks in this text - hyphen used as dash, capital letters and periods, colon, parentheses. And then there's that little dot in the upper lefthand corner which I've invented to space the body of text at a better distance from the headline of each of my blog-entries.

So you see, there are numerous levels of signifying realities, and the whole process of signification envelops human life and culture.

Semiotes are units of signification, whether you focus on a single character in a word; for instance, the "x" in "index" when pluralized transforming into the "c" in "indeces;" or a complete massive novel like Tolstoy's War and Peace. Under the moniker Owlhoot, a character / colleague / familiar has published a website needing a thoro update, but still may be of interest, called Writtles. There, the intent was/is to lay the groundwork for a recption of a multivalent semiotics within reformational Christian phliosophy, in the tradition of Herman Dooyeweerd and DHTh Vollenhoven. But the current citation may be just your cup of tea (metaphor). Now, metaphor is topic to be addressed in its own write, or should / could / would that be "wr+t" or "r+t" or "wright? - Anaximaximum

semiotics, semiotician, semiotes, writtles, punctuation, languagebody

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