Neste trabalho, apresentamos os resultados de uma pesquisa que aproxima a teoria semiótica e a literatura. Tal estudo consistiu na análise de um texto literário: o conto Menina a caminho, de autoria do escritor brasileiro contemporâneo Raduan Nassar. Para compreendermos o processo de construção de sentidos engendrado no referido texto, ancoramo-nos na teoria semiótica de linha francesa, ou greimasiana. Por meio do instrumental oferecido por essa teoria, pudemos compreender os mecanismos e efeitos de sentido articulados pelo enunciador do conto que, dentre outros fatores, são os responsáveis pela elevada qualidade estético-literária de seu texto. / In this dissertation, we present the results of a research that approaches the semiotic theory and literature. The study chooses as its subject the short-story Menina a caminho, from the Brazilian contemporary author Raduan Nassar. In order to make explicit the building of the text meaning, we have as approach the French semiotic theory. Through the tools offered by this theory, we can understand the means and meaning effects produced by the short-story enunciator that are responsible for the high aesthetic and literary quality of his text.

Orientador: Jean Cristtus Portela / Banca: Rubio José Ferreira / Banca: Carolina Tomasi / Banca: Marina Célia Mendonça / Banca: Matheus Nogueira Schwartzmann / Resumo: Esta pesquisa buscou compreender como se articula a construção de uma identidade nacional (brasileira), entre os anos de 1893 e 1900, período das disputas territoriais entre Brasil e França, na fronteira do Estado do Amapá com a Guiana Francesa. Para tanto, inscreve-se nos estudos semióticos greimasianos e estabelece diálogo com a geografia, particularmente acerca dos conceitos de território e fronteira e seus correlatos. Nesse diálogo, o ponto em comum entre as duas áreas é o território como construção, humana e linguística. Olhando para a construção do Território Contestado, como ficara conhecida a região disputada entre brasileiros e franceses, procurou-se observar, no conjunto de textos analisados, as diferentes práticas instauradas no espaço, bem como a relação dos sujeitos com ele, visto que é nessa relação que o território ganha vida, a partir das distintas práticas espaciais que lhe sobrevêm. Nesse sentido, as relações do Um com o Outro, nesse espaço, implicam movimentos, dinâmicas que desenham e dão contorno à forma própria do território: a perseverança. Como produto da enunciação, o território assume a forma de um acontecimento sensível e observável, atravessado, nessa construção, pela tensividade que o funda. Desse modo, compreende-se o processo de construção do território no conjunto de enunciados de onde ele emerge, tomando o enunciado como o produto resultante da enunciação, lugar em que as marcas de identidade do território se inscrevem, e a relação entre sensí... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research sought to understand how the construction of a national identity (Brazilian) is articulated between the years of 1893 and 1900, a period of territorial disputes between Brazil and France on the border of the State of Amapá with French Guiana. Therefore, it subscribes to semiotic greimasian studies and establishes a dialogue with geography, particularly about the concepts of territory and frontier and its correlates. In this dialogue, the common ground between the two areas is the territory as human and linguistic construction. Looking at the construction of the Contested Territory, as the disputed region between Brazilians and French had become known, it was sought to observe, in the set of texts analyzed, the different practices established in space, as well as the relation of the subjects with it, since it is from this relation that the territory comes alive from the different space practices that come to it. In this sense, the relations of the One with the Other, in this space, imply movements, dynamics that draw and shape the territory's own form: the perseverance. As a product of enunciation, the territory takes the form of a sensible and observable event, crossed in this construction by the tensivity that founds it. Thus the process of territorial construction is understood in the set of statements from which it emerges, taking the statement as the product resulting from enunciation, where the marks of identity of the territory are inscribed, and the relat... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Résumé: Cette thèse a cherché à comprendre comment s'articule la construction d'une identité nationale (brésilienne) entre 1893 et 1900, période des conflits territoriaux entre le Brésil et la France, à la frontière de l'État d'Amapá et de la Guyane Française. Pour ce faire, il s'inscrit aux études sémiotiques greimasiennes et établit un dialogue avec la géographie, en particulier sur les concepts de territoire et de frontière et leurs corrélats. Dans ce dialogue, le point commun entre les deux zones est le territoire en tant que construction humaine et linguistique. En regardant la construction du Territoire Contesté, comme on connaissait la région disputée entre Brésiliens et Français, on a cherché à observer, dans l'ensemble des textes analysés, les différentes pratiques établies dans l'espace, ainsi que la relation des sujets avec lui, puisque c'est à partir de cette relation que le territoire prend vie, des différentes pratiques spatiales qui s'y développent. En ce sens, les relations de l'un avec l'autre, dans cet espace, impliquent des mouvements, des dynamiques qui dessinent et donnent forme à la forme propre du territoire: la persévérance. Produit de l'énonciation, le territoire prend la forme d'un événement sensible et observable, traversé dans cette construction par la tensivité qui le fonde. De cette manière, nous comprenons le processus de construction de territoire dans l'ensemble des énoncés dont il émerge, en prenant l'énonce comme le produit résultant de l'énonciatio... (Résumé complet accès életronique ci-dessous) / Doutor

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / There is increasing awareness among linguists that discourse analysis inevitably involves analyses of meanings arising from the combination of multiple modes of communication. The evolving multimodal pedagogic environment for teaching English as a foreign language (henceforth EFL), among other communicative contexts, calls for a social, semiotic, and linguistic explanation. Situated within the theoretical landscape of social semiotics and in the pedagogic context of EFL education, the present study aims to elucidate how linguistic and visual semiotic resources are co-deployed to construe interpersonal meaning in multimodal textbooks. The data drawn upon are eighteen EFL textbooks for primary and secondary schooling, published by People’s Education Press between 2002 and 2006. The research design consists of three complementary sub-studies. First, it investigates the ways in which the semantic regions of ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION can be modelled in multimodal texts, with special reference to the interplay of voices in textbook discourse. The second sub-study analyzes how verbal and visual semiotic resources are co-deployed to construe the ‘emotion and attitude’ goal highlighted in curriculum standards, with a particular focus on verbiage-image relations. Third, it extends the linguistic concept ‘modality’ to multimodal discourse, exploring coding orientation in texts for different educational contexts and between different constituent genres. The main findings of this thesis are as follows: (1) A range of multimodal resources (i.e. labelling, dialogue balloon, jointly-constructed text, illustration and highlighting) are identified as enabling editor voice to negotiate meanings with reader voice and character voice. It is found that the way in which an ENGAGEMENT value can be scaled is strongly associated with the intrinsic property of the given multimodal resource. The interaction between multiple voices is closely related to contact, social distance, and point of view. (2) It is shown that images play an essential role in realizing attitudinal meanings. Together with verbal APPRAISAL resources, visual semiotic features work to position the readers in ways that align them to set pedagogic goals, guiding them in completing jointly-constructed texts. Moreover, an attitudinal shift from an emotional release to a more institutionalized type of evaluation can be identified as students advance through the school years. (3) It is argued that what counts as real in multimodal texts is socially defined and specific to a given communicative context. The nature of pedagogic discourse should be taken into account when visual displays are produced for pedagogic materials. The implications of this study include both theoretical and pedagogic aspects。Theoretically it adapts and extends APPRAISAL analysis to multimodal discourse, exploring the intersemiotic complementarity and co-instantiation in construing global evaluative stance. This semiotic exploration, in return, suggests ways in which discourse analysis may help textbook users better understand and interpret the multimodal features. With the affordances as well as limitations of semiotic resources made explicit, we may have one step further towards a comprehensive and critical understanding of multimodal construal of interpersonal meaning in pedagogic materials.

The investigation of semiosis calls for an interdisciplinary approach. A realist logical framework emphasising the triadic nature of semiosis is the optimal foundation for critically examining and integrating aspects of quantitative psychology, the interpretative-qualitative tradition in the social sciences, structuralist semiotics, and functional-contextual semiotics. While several aspects of each of these fields can be successfully integrated into a psychosemiotic model, each also suffers from key conceptual flaws which need to be addressed as a prerequisite to an interdisciplinary approach. The structuralist school of semiotics—and the functionalist approaches that have evolved from it—show problematic tendencies to reduce the triadic relationship of semiosis to relationships within systems of signifiers. On the other hand, mainstream schools of psychology, with their narrow commitment to the operationalisation and quantification of variables, leave little room for the qualitative concept of semiosis. Moreover, the phenomenon of intentional action, which is crucial in understanding semiosis, is ignored or marginalised in both mainstream psychology and the qualitative-interpretative traditions of the social sciences. Mainstream psychology marginalises intentional action in favour of observable behaviour. The qualitative-interpretative tradition marginalises intentional action in favour of situational conventions governing action. In the psychosemiotic model that emerges from an engagement with these problems, semiosis is an intentional action that can be investigated in a scientific framework where the contextual factors of culture, social structure and social situation are taken into account. The descriptive and explanatory powers of the psychosemiotic model can be illustrated with analyses of specific cases of semiotic action in social and cultural contexts. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD (Philosophy))

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 444-467). Also available on the Internet.

In this case study a secondary school and its art education is studied. Pupils and the art teacher are interviewed and observations are made in school and out of school. The study is based on socio-cultural theory, media ecology and semiotics. In this school manual and digital media each share about 50 percent of the time available for art. It is shown that it is the teaching method – the change from a dialogic to a multivoiced method – that enables the embedded use of digital media. Arguments for digital media in art are that they are time-saving, promote aesthetic aspects and will put an end to the process of traditional education where the teacher is reduced to being a conveyor of information. The computer lab is no option for an embedded art education. On monitors and in exhibitions pupils are surrounded by other pupils´ works, which promotes a desire among them to improve their creativity, and a local art culture is developed in a cumulative process. / Skolämnesparadigm och undervisningspraktik i skärmkulturen – bild, musik och svenska [“School subject paradigms and teaching practice in the screen culture – art, music and Swedish”].

This dissertation applies to the study of adaptation principles of rhetoric, transtextual analysis and visual semiotics. It posits that adaptations are imitations-with-variations and that rather than existing in binary, one-to-one correspondence with their models, adaptations and their models accrue semiosis, forming large “megatexts.” These megatexts are composed of networks of associations that have meaning and change according to their contexts. Adaptation analysis becomes a matter of reading associations and textual linkages, or “reading through” the accrued texts. Eurhythmatic analysis, an analytical strategy drawn from both ancient and modern rhetoric, accounts for these variations while emphasizing the material contexts out of which variations emerge. This project uses these rhetorical strategies to address issues particular to new media adaptations, such as the nature of authorial ethos and identity in a marketplace of competing adaptations and collaborative creation. It examines the process of rhetorical identification that occurs in video game adaptations which ostensibly claim the same model, yet vie for legitimacy – children squabbling for the birthright of the recognized heir. Finally, this thesis examines the new adaptive possibilities opened up by the DVD anthologizing process whereby diverse texts are brought under a titular umbrella. These texts and the navigational overlays designed to constrain and control them, blur the otherwise clear boundaries between adaptation and model, between inside and out. In transtextual terms, this distinctive adaptive form is an internal hypertext, or an adaptation situated on the threshold that distinguishes the paratext from the hypertext.

This dissertation applies to the study of adaptation principles of rhetoric, transtextual analysis and visual semiotics. It posits that adaptations are imitations-with-variations and that rather than existing in binary, one-to-one correspondence with their models, adaptations and their models accrue semiosis, forming large “megatexts.” These megatexts are composed of networks of associations that have meaning and change according to their contexts. Adaptation analysis becomes a matter of reading associations and textual linkages, or “reading through” the accrued texts. Eurhythmatic analysis, an analytical strategy drawn from both ancient and modern rhetoric, accounts for these variations while emphasizing the material contexts out of which variations emerge. This project uses these rhetorical strategies to address issues particular to new media adaptations, such as the nature of authorial ethos and identity in a marketplace of competing adaptations and collaborative creation. It examines the process of rhetorical identification that occurs in video game adaptations which ostensibly claim the same model, yet vie for legitimacy – children squabbling for the birthright of the recognized heir. Finally, this thesis examines the new adaptive possibilities opened up by the DVD anthologizing process whereby diverse texts are brought under a titular umbrella. These texts and the navigational overlays designed to constrain and control them, blur the otherwise clear boundaries between adaptation and model, between inside and out. In transtextual terms, this distinctive adaptive form is an internal hypertext, or an adaptation situated on the threshold that distinguishes the paratext from the hypertext.

This study compares how newspaper yearbooks and current upper secondary school history textbooks represent the Cold War between the years 1985-1991. As earlier research, this multimodal study focuses discourses and images. In addition I examine the usefulness of mediatization as illuminating tool in this context. For these aims, I have constructed a three-step model, in which concepts from mediatization theory are operationalized, and combined with Theo Van Leeuwen’s social semiotic theory. This thesis compares 356 representations from two yearbooks to 16 ones from three textbooks. At present, historical images are neither addressed nor regulated in the national curriculum, yet both educators and researchers within the field of education address them. The contribution of this paper is hence to shed light on the complexity of images, which shows how their meanings, including degree of mediatization, depend on context. Thereby I add a new aspect to multimodal literacy research.