There has been much debate in the history of philosophy aimed at determining what it is, exactly, that makes a person who and what she is. Varying theories have offered a wide range of concepts in pursuit of the answer to this question. Some thinkers, such as B.F. Skinner, have claimed that it is observable behavior patterns that determine who and what a person is. Yet other thinkers, such as Carl Jung, have attributed unconscious motivators as being determinative in deciphering who and what a person is. Jung claims that it is the conscious and unconscious working together that determines who and what a person is. The purpose of this thesis is to discover evidence that supports or disproves the theory of self in which the unconscious and conscious work together to determine who and/or what a person is. This is done by semiotically analyzing the Visual Products (VP) of Visual Product Producers (VPP) who were or are afflicted with Bipolar Disorder. This thesis consists of the semiotic analysis of selected works by Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, and myself (Michael Main). Semiotic analysis studies how meanings are generated as opposed to what meanings are generated. It should be noted that semiotics was used strictly as a method of analysis and not as a guiding philosophy. In examining how the works of the selected VPPs generate meaning, it is hoped that evidence is produced that proves or disproves the theory of who or what a person is as determined by the interaction of the conscious and unconscious.

In utilizing Kristeva's psychoanalytic discursive theory of identity-formation within literary symbolic structures, my thesis seeks to follow the ontological processes involved in identity and signification in “subversive” signifying practices. Specifically, I'm interested in the ways modern poetry (such as Elizabeth Bishop) defies traditional patriarchal discourse as dominant literary devices while embracing plurality and inherent virtues of the female voice. My project will trace Kristeva's semiotic/psychoanalytic evolution from linguistic models of the signifying process, to particulars of her psychoanalytic/linguistic theories, and finally, will attempt to construct a space within modern poetry, where it can be said, the subject (poet) remains on trial/in crisis, and poetic expression reveals the “jouissance” or unspoken voice of repression. Bishop's poetry constantly questions reality, knowledge, sexuality and the self. I strive to expose how Bishop's poetry performs Kristeva's theory of the self in writing; her poetry puts at the core of the self a sense of loss in her attempts to express herself in language. I offer close readings of “The Fish,” “Questions of Travel,” and “One Art,” to show how Bishop's self exposes the unconscious process of poetic activity. Kelly Oliver articulates Kristeva's contributions to linguistics and psychoanalysis quite succinctly, “When we learn to embrace the return of the repressed/the foreigner within ourselves, then we learn to live with, and love, others” (14). / Master of Arts

Gender is a constantly debated subject, especially within the world of sports. The representation of athletes in the media is dominated by the males. It is often that the athletes are portrayed on the basis of their sex and gender. With the extreme skiing being a new and modern sport, should it not be autonomous from gender? This study aims to examine whether and if so how the cover design differ between female and male extreme skiing athletes and how it affects the professional skiers. A semiotic analysis was used on the covers of the Swedish skier’s magazine Åka Skidor and interviews were held with some of Sweden’s professional extreme skiers using a hermeneutic approach. The theoretical framework used for this study was poststructuralism, poststructuralist feminism and gender theory. The semiotic analysis showed that there is in fact a difference in both representation and how the skiers are portrayed on the covers of Åka Skidor. The interviews that were held resulted in three themes to answer the aim of this study. They were; the climate of extreme skiing, extreme skiing in media and the future of extreme skiing. The skiers had acknowledged that there is a difference between females and males when it comes to media representation and how they are portrayed. Although the explanation for this differs between the skiers they all mentioned the power of sponsors and sponsorship. However; the issue with athletes being portrayed and represented different based on their gender is not important enough to debate within the world of extreme skiing today. Therefore, it can be concluded that extreme skiing will probably not be autonomous from gender in the near future.

L’enjeu et la motivation de cette recherche est de rendre une dignité théorique à toutes ces pratiques qui revendiquent une appropriation, ne serait-ce que exclusivement sémiotique, de l’espace urbain. En consonance avec la démarche de Michel De Certeau, même le concept d’art a été analysé en tant que forme d’expression quotidienne. La street art a été interrogée en tant que pratique de traversée de l’espace et en tant que style de spatialisation : le produit c’est toujours un certain effet-espace qui sous-tend un certain effet de présence. L’exigence de ce travail c’était de faire un portrait de la ville à partir de micros narrations créatives qui la racontent comme par exemple l’intervention de Banksy sur la West Bank Barrier en Palestine, les inscriptions des pixadores brésiliens, les traversées des traceurs du Parkour, et les portraits affichés par JR. La street art c’est une narration possible de la ville, qui, comme un tatou sur la peau, en racontent les moments difficiles, en célèbrent les éléments d’identification, en souvient l’histoire (même celle des villes lointaines) dans une dialectique continue entre soi et Autre. D’un point de vue méthodologique, nous sommes partis de l’analyse des cas pour interroger certaines problématiques sémiotiques à l’aide de la réflexion sur les interactions et les styles de vie d’Éric Landowski, celle sur les pratiques et les formes de vie de Jacques Fontanille et celle sur l’ethno-sémiotique de Francesco Marsciani. L’analyse du phénomène a été nourri par la contribution des autres sciences sociales ayant déjà réfléchi sur l’espace et sa représentation artistique, et tout particulièrement l’anthropologie. / The issue and the motivation of this research is to give a theoretical dignity to all these practices that claim an appropriation of the urban space, even out of its semiotic meaning. In consonance with Michel De Certeau approach, even the concept of art has been analyzed as an everyday form of expression. The street art has been examined either as a space-crossing practice either as a style of spatialization: the altogether product is a space-effect which underlies a certain effect of presence. The goal of this work is to obtain a portrait of the city from a series of creative micro-narrations that illustrate it, as, for example, Banksy’s intervention on the West Bank Barrier in Palestine, the inscriptions of the Brazilian pixadores, Parkour tracers’ city crossings, the portraits posted up in the city by JR. The street art is a possible way of narration of the city, as a tattoo on the skin, it tells the hard moments, celebrates the identification elements, recollects the history (even for the far cities) with a continuous dialogue between itself and the Other. From a methodological point of view, we started from case analyses to question certain semiotic issues with the help of Eric Landowski’s thoughts about interactions and lifestyles, Jacques Fontanille’s ones about life practices and forms, Francesco Marsciani’s reflections on ethno-semiotics. The analysis of the phenomenon has been enriched by the contribution of other social sciences which had already pondered on the concept of space and its artistic representation, anthropology among the others.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:15:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Provin Sbabo.pdf: 1962876 bytes, checksum: aaa8f5ada5e971040d430b8b1e23c747 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-06-03 / This research examines the soundtrack and the syncretic elements, responsible for the meaning of jingles. What role these elements play in relation mainly to the persuasive function and assignment meaning of the message proposal? This is the main question of this research. The prominent position and the function of these components in the advertising are indicators of the importance of this study, investigated based on semiotic theories and theories of musical melody, arrangement, composition and harmony. Unifying the semiotic and musical elements, we seek therefore to identify the means used and the patterns that are able to explain the persuasive gains that advertising acquires in jingles. The semiotic analysis has its basis in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, because his classifications of signs enable accurate reading of mixtures between text, image and sound in jingles. We also use the greimasian discursive semiotics and tensive semiotics, marked by Luiz Tatit, because it is a work that brings important contributions to musical semiotics. Music theorists are also triggered to unravel, in the jingle, their musical structures, such as arrangement, melody, harmonic field, etc. The corpus of research is the campaign developed by the company PA Publicidade, produced by Conspiração Filmes and composed by Panela Produtora, to the Pão de Açúcar Group, with the participation of the singer Clarice Falcão, because it is a series of intersemiotics jingles both aired on television and Internet, and the company have aimed exclusively jingles to your online channel / Esta pesquisa examina a trilha musical e os elementos sincréticos, responsáveis pelo sentido, dos jingles publicitários. Que papel esses elementos desempenham no que tange, principalmente, à função persuasiva e à atribuição de sentido da mensagem proposta? Esta é a questão central desta pesquisa. A posição de destaque e a função desses componentes nas peças publicitárias são indicadores da importância desse estudo, investigado com base em teorias semióticas e teorias musicais de melodia, arranjo, composição e harmonia. Unificando os elementos semióticos e musicais, busca-se, portanto, identificar os meios utilizados e os padrões gerados que sejam capazes de explicitar os ganhos persuasivos que a publicidade adquire nos jingles. As análises semióticas tem sua base na obra de Charles Sanders Peirce, pois suas classificações de signos possibilitam a leitura acurada das misturas entre o texto, a imagem e o som nos jingles. Também utilizamos a semiótica discursiva greimasiana e tensiva, pautada por Luiz Tatit, pois se trata de uma obra que traz contribuições importantes para a semiótica da canção. Teóricos da música também são acionados para desvendar, no jingle, suas estruturas musicais, como arranjo, melodia, campo harmônico, etc. O corpus da pesquisa é a campanha desenvolvida pela empresa PA Publicidade, com produção da Conspiração Filmes e composição da Panela Produtora, para o Grupo Pão de Açúcar, com participação da cantora Clarice Falcão, por se tratar de uma série de jingles intersemióticos veiculados tanto na televisão quanto na internet, e pela empresa possuir jingles voltados exclusivamente ao seu canal online

This intersectional study explores how the social constructed categories gender and ethnicity interact with each other in photos picturing Swedish athletes. The studies empirical material is collected from the sport section of the biggest Swedish tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet, and was published during the period 23rd of November, 2012 to 23rd of November, 2015. The photos has been analyzed with a semiotic analysis which establishes that there are discriminating differences in how the athletes are being portraited. The most comprehensive differences are found between the groups ethnical Swedish men and ethnical non-Swedish women.

The Moche fineline painting corpus contains hundreds of representations of winged figures, but these have never been analyzed as a group. This thesis is an investigation of these winged figures, focusing on iconographic methodology. I have identified and categorized representations of birds (ducks, the Falconidae family, owls,hummingbirds, vultures and condors, etc.), mammals (bats) and insects (dragonflies) in the fineline paintings. Special attention has been paid to genus and family, including the attributes and behaviors of these animals. This has yielded several important observations about how the Moche represented and linked winged figures. In the second part of this thesis I use semiotic analysis to consider winged figures as symbols rather than naturalistic representations. I also examine anthropomorphic winged figures, and analyze the interpretive possibilities and the implications of these interpretations. / text

Problem statement and purpose of the study: The picture and the visual presentation have an increased importance in news media today. Which means that politicians visual frames can have a great impact on the readers and therefore on the outcome of an election. The purpose of this study is to examine the visual framing of the american presidential candidates of the 2016 election, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, to see if there is any sign of stereotyping or personalising, and if the candidate’s gender matters. Women and men have been framed differently by the news media in the past. Men has often been portrayed as the normative politician, while women been portrayed as the female politician. Method: This essay is written by a qualitative method and is the result of semiotic analysis of 16 pictures from the swedish newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. Eight of the analyzed pictures show Donald Trump and the other eight show Hillary Clinton. We analyzed the pictures by denotation and connotation. Main result: Our results showed some significant differences in the visual framing of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump is portrayed as an more threatening and serious manner while Hillary Clinton’s framing shows a more emotional and encouraging politician. We also found stereotyping in the visual framing, but not so much personalising. The two candidates gender was for the most part clear in the framing. Hillary Clinton’s frames were those of a woman and Donald Trump’s those of a man. There were differences in the two newspapers visual framing, but they were not as clear as the ones between Trump and Clinton.

The aim of this essay is to analyse how three female main characters, of Astrid Lindgrens work,are represented in certain series and movies. The study examines the three main characters from a gender perspective using theories such as representation, stereotyping and “The female voice”. The analysis comes to the conclusion that the three main characters do not follow the norms of a patriarchal society. This conclusion is proven through a method using a three stage model with elements of semiotics. The paper also examines how the differences and the similarities between the characters appear in the series and the movies and how the series and movies have been affected by Lindgrens voice. The purpose with this study is to contribute to new research about Lindgrens work and give the audience a reason to look at her work from a gender and social- related perspective.

The study employed Ernest (2006) Theory of Semiotic Systems to investigate the use of and exposure to multiple representations in a 10th grade algebra II suburban high school class located in the southeastern region of the United States. The purpose of this exploratory case study (Yin, 2014) was to investigate the role of multiple representations in influencing and facilitating algebra II students’ conceptual understanding of piece-wise function, absolute-value functions, and quadratic functions. This study attempted to answer the following question: How does the use of and exposure to multiple representations influence algebra II students’ understanding and transfer of algebraic concepts? Furthermore, the following sub-questions assisted in developing a deeper understanding of the question: a) how does exposure to and use of multiple representations influence students’ identification of their pseudo-conceptual understanding of algebraic concepts?; b) how does exposure to and use of multiple representations influence students’ transition from pseudo-conceptual to conceptual understanding?; c) how does exposure to and use of multiple representations influence students’ transfer of their conceptual understanding to other related concepts? Understanding the notion of pseudo-conceptual understanding in algebra is significant in providing a tool for examining the veracity of algebra students’ conceptual understanding, where teachers have to consistently examine if students accurately understand the meanings of the mathematical signs that they are constantly using. The following data collection techniques were utilized: a) classroom observation, b) task based interviews, and c) study of documents. The unit of analysis was students’ verbal and written responses to task questions. Three themes emerged from the analysis of in this study: (a) re-imaging of conceptual understanding; (b) reflective approach to understanding and using mathematical signs; and (c) representational versatility in the use of mathematical signs. Findings from this study will contribute to the body of knowledge needed in research on understanding and assessing algebra students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics. In particular the findings from the study will contribute to the literature on understanding; the process of algebraic concepts knowledge acquisition, and the challenges that algebra students have with comprehension of algebraic concepts (Knuth, 2000: Zaslavsky et al., 2002).