This thesis outlines the three phases of cognitivism, which emerged in the first half of the 20th century as a reaction to the anti-mentalist tradition of philosophical thinking (represented by Charles S. Peirce and Charles Morris), and which was made possible in particular by the so- called linguistic turn in science (especially within analytic philosophy), which replaced mental units, regarded as non-scientific, with linguistic units, conceived as reflecting mental states and, moreover, allowing for adequate investigation. The thesis is largely guided by Thomas C. Daddesio's On Minds and Symbols, which is considered to be one of the first explicit attempts to formulate a cognitive-semiotic perspective, and wherein the author traces the previous development of the cognitive paradigm. Thus, first the factors that made the emergence of cognitivism possible are described, followed by an account of its development, which can be divided into two phases, as per Daddesio's model. This paper, however, goes beyond Daddesio's book and establishes a third phase, where cognitivism emerges as a separate field of inquiry within semiotics, i.e., cognitive semiotics. Within this development, the work traces in particular the transformation of the conception of the relationship between language and mind, which is...

Diploma thesis Elderly people in TV advertising focuses on advertising representation of the old age in Czech Republic and Lithuania. Since the old age is considered as a social construct, a theoretical part tries to describe the specifics of the theory of social constructivism in general, and then on the example of the old age. The next section of this paper outlines, based on a literature and a number of already published researches, character of the media and advertising representations of old age. The following section takes into account the advertising perspective from a different angle when describing current trends and approaches in marketing communications targeting the elderly or showing elderly people. In the practical part of this thesis, I describe the main characteristics of qualitative research together with research method, which is the semiotic analysis. The research sample includes selected TV advertisements from Czech and Lithuanian campaigns in which actors of older age appear. The analytical part aims to reveal the nature of advertising representations of old age, and attributes with which elderly people are associated. The conclusion presents research findings and framing tendencies of advertising representation of old age, and consequently the partial interpretation of each...

The diploma thesis focuses on the analysis of the selected protectorate and socialist propaganda posters from the forties and early fifties of the 20th century. The analyzed period ends with year 1953. This particular piece of work strives to set the whole subject in a larger theoretical framework. Furthermore the characteristic features of the given ideologies, the theory of semiotics and a brief description of the given historical period is also encompassed. Within the theory of semiotics the main inspiration is drawn from the works of Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce and Charles Morris. The most crucial source for the semiotic analysis is the book Mythology from Roland Barthes, especially its second theoretical part of Myth today, from which the methodological approach was gathered. The semiotic analysis allows one to uncover and expose the hidden meanings of texts. Ten posters were chosen in total for the analysis, five from the protectorate era and five from the late forties and early fifties. This was carried out in order to juxtapose pairs of images which portray the same motif or theme. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the applied semiotic components of the individual posters and then to compare the respective motifs and elements within the two ideologies and the extent to...

Tunes and sequences that introduce into media products (so-called idents or intros) do not serve only as interpunction dividers in the continuous broadcasting media flow. They are also a specific kind of media message that evolved gradually and become incorporated structurally as well as functionally among the typical and identifying phenomena of the media discourse. From the semiotic point of view, an intro is at the same time a sign of the media text and a text per se. In the media discourse, intros fulfill several functions: they help getting around the radio and television programme, they draw attention to various programme titles and they simultaneously co-create the identity of the respective broadcasting station's discourse. To fulfill said functions, they use set signs and sign systems. Purpose of this work is on the one hand to analyze sign and sign systems used in some representative examples of intros from the Czech media environment around the turn of the millennium, on the other hand to comparatively analyze said intros in a synchronous as well as diachronous perspective; by means of that, relations will be explained among various intros and their respective sign systems across the media discourse.

The aim of the diploma thesis "Testing of Marketing Communication" is to create a new marketing communication for generic product and to test the consumer´s perception of this communication. In this thesis, salt has been chosen as the generic product because it presents a very common commodity and people need and use the salt every day.

Youth in photographs in Mladý svět magazine (1959-1989) Jana Teplá Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyze the way youth was visually represented in the photographs in Mladý svět magazine and to find out whether and how this representation has changed during the period from 1959 to 1989 depending on the changes of discourse practices and socio-cultural practices. The study also aims to uncover how the discourse of news photographs has mingled with the discourse on youth in socialist Czechoslovakia. The specific objective of this research is to analyze the photographs of Czechoslovak youth on the front pages of the magazine with focus on the news values and the ideological messages they mediate. For the analysis of photographs were used mixed methods. Quantitative content analysis was applied to determine the news values, social semiotic analysis was applied to identify the ideological messages and oral history method was used for the extension of the contextual framework. The research part is divided into three periods of time with respect to changes in the wider socio-cultural context: the 1960s (January 1959 to December 1967), the period of the Prague Spring and shortly after the occupation by the Warsaw Pact troops (January 1968 to March 1969), and the period of "normalization" (April 1969 to...

Dissertation thesis Semiotics of schizophrenia aims to analyse manifestations of the symptoms of schizophrenia from the point of view of semiotics. The goal is to find common features of otherwise heterogeneous manifestations of schizophrenia and the features that make them abnormal. The method of the thesis is semiotic reduction, i.e. approach to phenomena as to sings and significations, which approach is based on the semiotic theory of Charles Peirce. The proposed thesis characterises symptoms of schizophrenia as a disorder of indexical relation between a sign-object and the group of signs of the Self. An object can be a voice or an image in the case of hallucinations, a proposition in the case of delusions, a rule of communication in the case of disorganization of speech or behaviour or a habitus in the case of negative symptoms. Abnormality of the manifestations of schizophrenia is due to a disorder of indexical relation between signs of the Self, which have features as indisprovability or basis for interpreting the world, and these objects. The author compares conclusions of the thesis with clinical studies and so called unifying theories of schizophrenia.

In this paper we present C. S. Peirce's take on the difference between science and practice in order to identify the role practice plays in his view of the universe. This take is based on a number of notions about the general nature of signs, inquiries, inferences and arguments, which we discuss. We then survey Peirce's classification of science, show the factors it is based on and examine the mutual relations of the various fields of scientific study. This lets us finally posit practice in the realm of qualities and reactions and show the limits of scientific inquiry into certain matters. We illustrate our findings on a number of examples.

This paper deals with design semiotics, focuses on product design (light design) from the perspectives of social semiotics (van Leeuwen, 2005; Kress a van Leeuwen, 2006), multimodality (Kress, 2010) and product design (Norman, 1988, 2004a; Monö, 1997), and perceive design as a multimodal process of choices as well as a result of materialization of meanings. The theoretical chapters are dedicated to definitions of particular approaches and terms, which are applied within the empirical parts afterwards. These rely on the theories mentioned above and the design phases established by Riley (2003, 2004), which we linked with given theoretical approaches (the discourse phase with social semiotics; the conception phase with multimodality and emotional design; the inception phase with multimodality; and the reception phase with social semiotics and product design). Semi-structured interviews were held with three designers engaged in light design - Jan Plecháč, Jakub Pollág and Karel Matějka. The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare practices of designers from their own perspectives, considering intended product meanings (purposes), used modes and highlighting different design levels. Key words Social semiotics, product design, emotional design, multimodality, materialization

This Master's thesis invites its readers into the realm of myths where various deities and mythical creatures dwell and spend their days creating the human world and different cultural artefacts. To find out more about this realm and its possible variations, the author of this Master's thesis has chosen to study myths of relatively distinct nations. Since the author is familiar with the local language and customs of Finns, Latvians and Czechs, the author's choice fell on the myths of the given nations. Since everything in the realm of myths is in constant flux, the only way to detect what was considered valuable in it by its inhabitants at some point in time was to pause this process. To do it, the author approached the myths through the method called transvaluation developed by James Jakób Liszka in his book "The Semiotic of Myth: A Critical Study of the Symbol" (1989). Although still not very familiar among folklore scholars, this method enabled the author to view myths as trilevel entities and detect in them various social constructs passed from generation to generation. As the readers will later see, the author was able, by approaching myths from the perspective of transvaluation, to reveal various norms encoded in them. Keywords: Finns, Latvians, Czechs, myths, Liszka, transvaluation,...