This article aims to examine the relationship between image and narrative by means of Peirce’s first trichotomy of qualisign-sinsign-legisign or, for the purposes of the current argument, image-diagram-metaphor. It is argued that narrative, as an extended metaphor, can be examined in three modes: in the image; schematically, in the imagination; and allegorically or in a thought experiment, through hypothetic interpretation. The article outlines two kinds of diagrammatic reasoning emphasized by Peirce: corollarial deduction in which the image is ‘literally seen’ and (...) the reasoning steps are manifest in its conclusion; and theorematic deduction where the conclusion in a diagram is subject to a hypothesis which transforms the image into something new. Demonstrating the breadth of diagrammatic reasoning with reference to the 2018 film, The Shape of Water, the article seeks to explore how allegory and diagram are mutually cooperative, based on three ontological modes: the expressive, the cognitive, and the symbolic. Its primary focus, then, is not so much on the story events of the narrative, as the way that they are visualized and characterized as the fairy story unfolds. It is suggested that the interpreting activity involved in allegory and diagram ties interpretation to metacognition, ultimately (re)recognizing the image in The Shape of Water in an attempt to ascertain the meaning of love. (shrink)

The first-person access to the self has been widely recognized by philosophers. But a competing idea arises, challenging the first-person givenness, from those who argue that self-interpretation and self-knowledge are acquired through the third-person perspective. I argue that these two dichotomous perspectives of the self can be mediated by the second-person perspective through dialogical semiosis of narrative. Peirce’s semiotic perspective on the self emphasizes the role of a semiotic subject that participates in sign processes as an interpreting agent. In this (...) sense, the concept of self is acquired through semiosis of narrative and at the same time it is interpreted in narrative world, taking the role of character. It is character which makes a person identifiable as a person, since character is not substance but quality as a recognized pattern or type through time, which becomes a habit of act and thought, thus forming personal identity. Within this context, I argue that from the first-person perspective a deliberate subject of self as “subjective I” and from the third-person perspective a dynamic object of self as “objective I” are mediated by the relationship between self and other as an imaginary relation in narrative world, just like an imaginary line of identity, connecting word with thing. From the second-person perspective, oneself as another forms teridentity (co-identity) in textual world. I shall illustrate the interlock between the semiotic self and narrative identity through Peirce’s semiotic approach to the self and Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, analyzing the filmic narrative text of Burning (2018). (shrink)

By means of Peirce’s categorial method, this paper explores the selfhood identified in sign activity from two dimensions of semiotic agency: the practical and the theoretical. The paper considers the intelligibility of aesthetic value co-existing with Thirdness and the ethical implications of narrativity in selfhood. Peirce’s phenomenological category of Firstness, as a poetics of possibility, interplays with Secondness, of actuality, in the experience of the sense of other and the self in narrative. Then Thirdness mediates the sense of other with (...) the sense of the self, seeking generality of feeling. As a vital matter in the conduct of moral life, the survival value of not solely enhancing survival which characterizes aesthetic behavior in the human animal, the role of sentiment in morality, and the poetics of the will with its moral capacity in narrative semiosis, are investigated in the paper. Thus, a pragmatic inquiry into the self, along with a developmental approach, will illustrate three phases of the self: aesthetic behavior in the biosemiotic self; value-driven dynamics in the agentive self; and ethical implications in the narrative self. The analysis will take the Korean science fiction film, Jung-E, as a case study to illustrate the two dimensions of semiotic agency. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 197-211.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 185-196.

This paper is dedicated to the potentiality of symbol-mediated interpreting activity where application of Peircean symbol as mediator and interpretant is elaborated for the purpose of examining a subject's thought-activity in a triadic semiotic system. A functional approach to symbols with a pragmatic attitude is a prerequisite to seeing how semiotic structure and mind are interrelated. In so doing, three layers of investigation proceed: symbol's definition, symbolic structure in the interpretive structure of mind and mediational structure of sign, and symbol's (...) function in the interpreter's role and the sign's dialogic interaction. Then, the paper draws attention to the act of interpretation in connection with the matter of understanding for communication. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 208 Seiten: 155-165.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 208 Seiten: 167-176.

This article examines how a semiotic model can show symbolic mediation between sign-event and life-event through symbol-mediated interpreting activity, introduces the Vygotskyan concept of symbol, and thus contributes to overcoming the demarcation between dyadic and triadic conception of symbol Three types of semiotic model are introduced: a representational semiotics, an indicative semiotics, and an activity-semiotics. The three systems are correlated in a triad and, in particular, activity semiotics is positioned as Peircean symbol in a Third, mediating representational structure with indicative (...) structure. In relation to mediation and interpretation, a dialogic process of sign relations is discussed: icon, index, and symbol, through which indexical signs are emphasized, enabling the symbolic structure to be dynamic. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.