Semiotic Ideologies

Massimo Leone is Professor of Philosophy of Communication, Cultural Semiotics, and Visual Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Italy, part-time Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Shanghai, China, associate member of Cambridge Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge, Director of the Institute for Religious Studies at the “Bruno Kessler Foundation”, Trento, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Caracas, Venezuela. He has been visiting professor at several universities across five continents. He has authored fifteen books, edited more than sixty collective volumes, and published more than six hundred articles in semiotics, religious studies, and visual studies. He is the winner of a 2018 ERC Consolidator Grant and of a 2022 ERC Proof of Concept Grant. He is also editor-in-chief of Lexia, the Semiotic Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy, co-editor-in-chief of Semiotica (De Gruyter), and co-editor of the book series “I Saggi di Lexia” (Aracne), “Semiotics of Religion” (De Gruyter), and “Advances in Face Studies” (Routledge).

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Diagrams, Tables, and Figures



Part 1: From Language Ideologies to Semiotic Ideologies

1 Introduction and Synthesis

 1 Introduction

 2 A Theory of Modish Usages

 3 The Origins of the Concept of “Semiotic Ideology”

 4 Beliefs and Assumptions

 5 The Semiotics of Language Ideologies

 6 Meta-syntax

 7 Meta-pragmatics

 8 Meta-semantics

 9 Conclusions

 10 A Summary of the Ensuing Chapters



2 Research Methodology

 1 Introduction

 2 Cultures, Brains, and Maths

 3 Fractals and Semiotic Resemblance

 4 Semiospheric Symmetries

 5 A Typology of Symmetries in the Semiosphere

 6 Conclusions



Part 2: The Coordinates of Meaning-Making

3 Semiotic Ideologies of Agency

 1 Introduction

 2 The Energy of Motivation

 3 Objective, Subjective, and Inter-subjective Motivation

 4 Indexical Motivation

 5 Iconic Motivation

 6 Promoting Motivation

 7 Demoting Motivation

 8 Motivational Rhetorics

 9 Conclusions



4 Semiotic Ideologies of Time

 1 Introduction

 2 Temporal and Aspectual Cultures

 3 Non-verbal Aspectuality

 4 Towards a Cultural Semiotics of Temporal and Aspectual Ideologies

 5 Ideologies of the Past

 6 Ideologies of the Future

 7 Ideologies of the Present

 8 Conclusions



5 Semiotic Ideologies of Space

 1 Introduction

 2 The Semiotics of Invisible Frontiers

 3 Invisible Frontiers and the Task of Social Scientists

 4 Ethno-semiotics as a Seismometer of Invisible Frontiers

 5 Invisible Frontiers in an Italian Tramway

 6 Invisible Frontiers in an Italian Post Office

 7 Conclusions



Part 3: The Dynamics of Meaning-Making

6 Semiotic Ideologies of Perception

 1 Introduction

 2 The Cognitive Physiology of Déjà Vu

 3 The Semiotics of Déjà Vu

 4 The Recognition of the Unseen

 5 The Signification of Singularity

 6 The Necessity of Imperfect Memory

 7 Hallucinating

 8 Towards the pan-mnemonicon

 9 Conclusions



7 Semiotic Ideologies of Relation

 1 Introduction

 2 Semiotic Ideologies of Connection and Mystical Stereotypes

 3 The Meaning of Connectedness

 4 Expansions and Contractions

 5 Ontologies and Phenomenologies of Connectedness

 6 Agencies of Connectedness

 7 Grounds of Connectedness

 8 Semiotic Ideologies of Connectedness

 9 Conclusions

 8.1 Semiotic Ideologies of Generation: Causation

 1 Introduction

 2 Three Kinds of Randomness

 3 Random Networks

 4 Semiotic Randomness

 5 Semiosis Unchained

 6 Semiosis in Chains

 7 Semiosis and Semiosphere

 8 Interpretive Scales and Meta-habits

 9 Inhabited and Uninhabited Semiosis

 10 Over-complexification, Over-simplification, and Significance

 11 Conclusions

 8.2 Semiotic Ideologies of Generation: Motivation

 1 Introduction

 2 Being, Mind, and Sign

 3 Reflexes, Signs, and Symptoms

 4 Interpreting Interpretants

 5 Faking Indexicality

 6 Indicality and Indexicality

 7 Conclusions

 8.3 Semiotic Ideologies of Generation: Cognition

 1 Introduction

 2 The Ultimate Nature of Scripts

 3 Scripting Rhetorics

 4 Script Ideologies

 5 The Populist Script in Education

 6 The Contagion of Cognitive Populism

 7 The Subversion of Scripts

 8 The Infrastructure of Cognitive Populism

 9 The Masochist Script of Irony

 10 The Masochist Hero

 11 The Quest for a New Script

 12 Examples as Narrative Gradients

 13 Kitsch Dandies and Kitsch Jihadis

 14 Conclusions



Part 4: The Mechanisms of Meaning-Sharing

9 Semiotic Ideologies of Interpretation

 1 Introduction

 2 A View from Distance

 3 Semiotics under Scrutiny

 4 Moving Forward

 5 The Purpose of Literature?

 6 Conclusions



10 Semiotic Ideologies of Observation

 1 Introduction

 2 Modes of Existence of the Observer Actant

 3 The Anorexic Observer Actant

 4 The Deep Ideological Roots of a Semiotic Confrontation

 5 An Oscillatory Model of Cultural Change

 6 Transparency and Opacity in the Juridical Observer Actant

 7 The Circuit of the Veil

 8 Counterbalancing Trends

 9 Conclusions: Fashion as a General Semiotic Framework



11 Semiotic Ideologies of Mediation

 1 Introduction

 2 The Gestural Common Sense

 3 Gestural Normativity and Meta-normativity

 4 Sprezzatura

 5 The Cognitive Economy of Semiosis

 6 Semiosis and Technology

 7 Diagrams and Schemes

 8 Loss of the Indexical Aura and Disintermediation

 9 The Aura of the Face

 10 Facial Stereotypes and Schemes

 11 Reenchanting the Face

 12 A Paradoxical Thirst for Uniqueness

 13 The Market of Indexicality

 14 Conclusions



Part 5: Making and Unmaking Sense

12 Semiotic Ideologies of Orientation

 1 Introduction

 2 Public Hermeneutics Endangered

 3 Topological Relativism

 4 Extreme Features

 5 Deontic Meta-discourses

 6 Extreme Rationales

 7 The Semiotic Danger of Extremism

 8 Extreme Agencies

 9 The Conundrum of Cultural Change

 10 Internal Dynamics of Semiospheric Changes

 11 Reversing the Big Question

 12 The Metaphysics of Fashion



13 Semiotic Ideologies of Memory

 1 Introduction

 2 Nostalgia at Home

 3 The Invention of Nostalgia

 4 Types of Urban Nostalgia

 5 The Dialectics of Ersatz and Phantom

 6 Conclusions

 14.1 Semiotic Ideologies of Identity: Sameness

 1 Introduction

 2 Reproduction as Triadic Relation

 3 Nature and Culture in the Semiotic Ideologies of Reproduction

 4 A Different Sense of Reproduction

 5 Paradoxes of the Copy

 14.2 Semiotic Ideologies of Identity: Selfness

 1 Introduction

 2 In Praise of Ignorance

 3 A Blind Literary Date

 4 Digital Literary Dating

 5 Conclusions

 14.3 Semiotic Ideologies of Identity: Otherness

 1 Introduction

 2 Encountering the Other

 3 A Typology of Unfamiliarity: Otherness, Extraneousness, Unawareness

 4 From Otherness through Extraneousness to Unawareness: Chinese Examples

 5 Conclusions



15 Conclusion

Bibliography 363

Index 387