Traditional Chinese woodblock New Year pictures face the danger of being marginalized and disappearing in the context of industrialization and technological development. It is, therefore, imperative to conduct research on traditional New Year pictures to address this challenge. This thesis analyses the content of New Year pictures from four representative bases (Yangliuqing, Taohuawu, Wuqiang, and Mianzhu) in China. The semiotic perspective is selected as a theoretical framework. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of representative New Year pictures, this study identifies commonly used signs in New Year pictures and explores their meanings from the perspectives of connotation and myth. The study also examines the construction relationship between the signifier and the signified of the signs. These findings preliminarily construct the semiotic system for Chinese woodblock New Year pictures. Furthermore, the analytical framework provides an innovative quantitative research approach to the study of traditional New Year picture signs, contributing to the current research on the New Year pictures’ semiotic system. In previous studies, quantitative methods have never been applied to the study of New Year pictures, nor have they been widely used in other similar folk art forms. Distant reading methods from the field of digital humanities open new frontiers in the study of folk art. While visual art may be better suited for traditional close-up reading, computational methods can help capture the overall characteristics of art from a macroscopic perspective.

The present thesis focuses on semiotic aspects of note-taking in consecutive interpreting, in particular with respect to the process of semiosis and factors influencing the interpreters' conception of their notes. Chapter 1 mentions the basic features of note-taking in order to trace its semiotic characteristics in the following parts of the thesis. In Chapter 2, the notes as a specific semiotic system are briefly discussed within the framework of the second Peircean trichotomy of signs (cases of iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity are demonstrated) and in terms of their function, productivity and spatial settings. After these general considerations, Chapter 3 introduces the main theoretical approaches to the technique of note-taking (principally those of the Geneva and Heidelberg schools) including the issues of the languages involved in interpreting or the nature of signs. As the accent is on the process of semiosis (apprehension of signs by interpreters, generating signs according to the meaning of the speech and searching for the motivation for the interpreters' concrete choices of signs and their form), the chapter lists some basic signs and methods well- tested by practitioners. The signs are also analysed in terms of their origin and possibilities of expansion (composition, derivation...

[pt] Este trabalho desenvolve uma visão sobre a construção de identidades no contexto de práticas discursivas vivenciadas na formação de oficiais combatentes do Exército Brasileiro. Tais práticas evidenciam a representação dos sistemas simbólicos que dão forma a esta ecologia e às identidades suscitadas em seus participantes. As principais fontes de análise utilizadas foram textos interpretados como a materialização de um discurso de ordem social superior - o discurso pedagógico, produzidos durante exercícios de adestramento de tropas combatentes para o cumprimento de sua missão constitucional. Considerando-se que a língua carrega o potencial de produzir as ordens de significado que o dispositivo pedagógico está tentando controlar e distribuir, uma análise da organização funcional das práticas pedagógico-discursivas selecionadas, baseada no ferramental da Gramática Sistêmico-Funcional de Halliday (1985), principalmente no que tange à metafunção ideacional da linguagem e à transitividade, evidenciou que as escolhas lexicogramaticais, semânticas, fonológicas e entoacionais instanciadas constituem-se de sistemas semióticos não arbitrários de construção e representação do mundo. Essas escolhas funcionam produzindo significados particulares no âmbito da formação militar combatente, ideologicamente compartilhados e apropriados pela comunidade de prática estudada, facilitando processos de formação e representações sociais. As análises trouxeram à tona a crença de que o imaginário, o simbólico e o mítico marcham na mesma cadência que a racionalidade pretendida pelo discurso pedagógico enquanto veiculador de uma verdade e fator de construção de identidades no cotidiano das práticas discursivas que emergem nesta academia militar. / [en] This dissertation focuses on discourse, understood as an ideological practice of meaning and as a practice evocative of social identities at an institution of undergraduate military education. A particular view is developed on the identity construction process in the context of discursive practice enunciations taking place along the education of combatant officers of the Brazilian Army. Such practices reflect the representation of the symbolic systems which contribute to the shaping of this ecology and of the identities evoked from its members. The main source for analysis comprises texts interpreted as the materialization of a superior social order discourse - pedagogic discourse, produced during military maneuvers aiming at skilling combatant troops to accomplish their constitutional mission. Considering that language carries the potential of producing the orders of meaning which pedagogic discourse tries to control and distribute, the functional organization of the pedagogic-discursive practices was analyzed. Based on Halliday´s (1985) Systemic-Functional Grammar, with special focus on the ideational metafunction and transitivity, these analyses support that choices of lexicogramatical, semantic, phonological and intonation patterns build nonarbitrary semiotic systems of construction and representation of the world. These choices function producing particular meanings in the military combatant educational scope, besides being ideologically shared and appropriated by the studied community of practice, enabling social formation and representation processes. The analysis has risen the belief that the imaginary, the symbolic and the mythical march in the same cadence as that intended by the pedagogic discourse, medium which materializes the truth and factor of identity construction during the daily discursive practices that flourish at this military academy.