Magister Artium - MA / This study investigates the ever-changing trends in visual texts and images used during HIV-prevention campaigns in South Africa. The aim is to evaluate and analyse the effect of multimodal texts used in HIV/AIDS campaigns on the understanding and interpretation by the target group, and thus gauge their effectiveness. Using a text-based multimodal approach (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996/2006; Martin and Rose, 2004), the study takes into account variables such as socio-economic status, literacy levels, language and cultural differences of readers to evaluate the efficacy of loveLife campaigns to disseminate the HIV/AIDS prevention message. This study focuses on the choice of images and words, and whether they cohere to make a meaningful message. The study analyses how the design features, including images, colour and words, impact on the interpretation of the message and also how the design acts as an aid or barrier to the process of decoding the message. The choice of a two-pronged approach combining multimodality and a text-based (discourse) analyses often favoured by those working in systemic functional linguistics is that it enables the researcher to account for social context, economic, linguistic, cultural and behavioural factors that play a role during the decoding phase. / South Africa

This study presents an investigation into the process of constructing an autobiographical self within the genre of the autobiographical picture narrative, and explores this process both in terms of a theoretical study of this concept as well as an interpretation of a number of photographs. The interpretation entails a reading of selected autobiographical picture narratives by the artist-photographers Maggie Taylor and Lori Nix by means of a method derived from visual social semiotics. Specifically, the semiotic reading focuses on Taylor and Nix’s photographs Twilight swim (2004) and Ice Storm (1999), respectively, after which the researcher’s own autobiographical photograph entitled Fennel and coriander is read by means of the same methodological approach. The semiotic reading is guided by five salient characteristics of the autobiographical picture narrative, namely fabrication and reality, autobiographical memory, socio-cultural relevance, commonalities in female narration and narrative function. Harrison’s (2003) visual social semiotic framework (which reflects the work of social semioticians Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2002) was augmented in light of the five salient characteristics in order to construct an appropriate methodological framework. A comparative reading of the works by Taylor, Nix and the researcher reveals that although each of the artistphotographers followed a peculiar and unique approach in constructing the autobiographical picture narrative, parallels can be established in terms of various central concepts, as is evident from the semiotic reading. In particular, the role of memory and the interpretation of autobiographical elements emerged as common denominators. The process of constructing an autobiographical memory therefore provides the narrator-photographer with the options of escaping into and not from memory, thus allowing for unique possibilities in terms of interpretation, fantasy and construction.

Literature in semiotics lacks consideration of the elements in symbols that communicate specific concepts. Prohibition was the concept chosen for study. Potential prohibitors were represented by line configurations superimposed on background symbols. Seven prohibitors coupled with symbol backgrounds to form 49 experimental symbols were studied through a symbol inventory. Prohibitors constituted the independent variable, while dependent variables were verbal responses by 105 college students to the experimental symbols. Two hypotheses were tested: a) Prohibitors differ in effectiveness in communicating prohibition and b) Prohibitors differ in frequency of distortion of symbol meaning. Chi square analyses and comparisons of proportions showed diagonal lines most frequently elicited prohibition responses. A chi square analysis displayed no significant relationship between prohibitors in distortion of symbol meaning.

Orientador: Jean Cristtus Portela / Banca: Alexandre Marcelo Bueno / Banca: Matheus Nogueira Schwartzmann / Resumo: A presente pesquisa tem por objetivo avaliar o padrão dos editoriais do século XIX em um contexto semiótico. Seu surgimento, suas semelhanças e diferenças com o editorial atual, e seu papel dentro daquele contexto político e social como formador de opinião e representante de um público, descrevendo e definindo esse público representado. A análise orientou-se especificamente para o estudo da enunciação, da veridicção e das características do gênero apresentadas no texto editorial do período republicano. Como resultado, observamos que o gênero surgiu em um contexto de diversidade de gêneros jornalístico de difícil identificação, manteve-se formalmente em linhas gerais até os dias de hoje como texto não assinado que expressa uma posição institucional e utiliza suas estratégias de persuasão e convencimento de acordo com sua própria posição diante dos fatos, em sintonia com a posição de seu enunciatário, sem colocar em evidência procedimentos de explicitação da informação. / Abstract: The present research aims to evaluate the pattern of nineteenth century editorials in a semiotical context. Its emergence, its similarities and differences with the current editorial, and its role within that political and social context as opinion maker and representative of an audience, describing and defining this audience represented. The analysis focused specifically on the study of enunciation, veridiction and gender characteristics presented in the editorial text of the brazilian republican period. As a result, we have found that the genre emerged in a context of journalistic genre diversity that was difficult to identify, has been formally maintained until the present days as an unsigned text that expresses an institutional position and uses its strategies of persuasion according to its own position in front of the facts lined up with the position of its enunciate without putting in evidence procedures of information explicitation. / Mestre

In the semiotic movement of our minds we find evidence of influences from previous events, histories, and arguments. So, we find influence of memory. Memory influences the normatively defined measure for thinking correctly. The same measure is inherent in evaluations of one’s character and the possibilities of one’s actions, given one’s character. If we as a species have labored to diligently carve a plethora of theoretical frameworks from which we have developed differing possible futures, then, the freedom to chisel a new form seems plausible no matter how well cemented our acquisitions of language or logic seem to be. My purpose in this dissertation is to draw out the notion of memory in C.S.Peirce’s philosophy. I aim to do this so that a new way of understanding identity may emerge. This project analyzes Peirce’s three categories as phenomenological descriptors and as semiotic tools, explicating the process of memory building. In doing this, I go into considerable detail clarifying and making use of the categories and their degenerate forms to bring together a stable role for memory in Peirce’s philosophy. Along with providing exegesis of Peirce’s work, I also build simultaneously a picture of reality as the human mind moves through it by way of interpreting it. Two important correlates to this movement for Peirce are perception and time. I consider both these in relation to memory and as operative in and defined by Peirce’s mature semiotics. By way of conclusion I hope to provide an account of how perception and the active constitution of thought deliver a sense of identity, which depends crucially on memory. It is as an active interpreter of signs that the human mind finds semblance of its character and purpose within the larger context of its interactions. Inquiring about the world requires memory for an intuition (in Peirce’s sense) of one’s self. The upshot of this analysis is that it provides a theory of identity that is grounded in a relational ontology and addresses the nomadic possibilities of one’s self-expression and discovery, while at the same time acknowledging the deep hold of a history of habits.This provides the possibility of one’s individual self-memory to emerge and be communicable within a culture of ideas. The implication here is to carve a responsible space for perceptual freedom— the interpreter by the very act of thinking and perceiving is always connected and responsive to the world she understands. This dynamic and interrelational self has more to offer in terms of how identity is able to grow beyond the dogma and tradition of its past without the seemingly inherent violence involved in the growth of one’s ideals. I believe that oppressive structures of meaning are deeply weaved into our own sense of self via our memories of both ourselves and our communities.Parsing this relationship and its dominance requires a philosophical understanding of how this relationship is constructed and Peirce can give us this structure semiotically in what I understand to be the work of memory.

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This qualitative study provides a semiotic perspective on cyberterrorism and its opportunity to cause maximal damage while using terrorist propaganda. The very definition of cyberterrorism refers to Internet use, technology, and computer-based networks against critical infrastructures. The application of Stamper's Semiotic Ladder - morphological, empirical, syntactical, semantic, pragmatic and social world - to the various methods of propaganda utilized by cyberterrorists will uncover aspects on the transition from traditional to modern methods of attack, cyberterrorist communication, and the recruitment of new members to their cause. Additionally, this research focused on the role of the media in the equation of planning by propaganda to the fruition of an attack. Interviews were collected from ten participants during 30-60 minute segments. Based on the data, five themes emerged: (1) Acknowledgement of the Existence of Cyberterrorism, (2) Postmodern Propaganda and Publicity, (3) Detrimental Effects on Targets, (4) Media Implications , and (5) Communicative Messages. This provides readers with an organized order to the data and provides a way to progressively detail cyberterrorism, with a specific focus on the actual effects of their semiotic intents on targets, on the public, and on the world at large or what is being conveyed. Ultimately, the themes that emerged follow Stamper's Semiotic Ladder, starting with surface level understanding of cyberterrorism and work up to the global impact of cyberterrorism on various aspects of culture, beliefs, and expectations.

by Zhang Ning. / Thesis (M.Ph.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1988. / Bibliography: leaves 131-142.

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people�s emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space.