Dynamic Semiotics

Overview of Dynamic Semiotics

Semiotics and Cosmology

Signs in the heaven or our understanding of the cosmos with the help of signs are two major questions of a new field, which may be called “cosmological semiotics”. On the one hand the moving stars, the sun and the moon were since Neolithic times a domain of geographical, temporal and mythical orientation for human populations, on the other hand specific sign systems had to be designed for the understanding of cosmological processes and their presumed impact on human life.

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Cognitive Semiotics

Cognition refers to bodily processes (mainly in the brain) which give rise to perceiving, thinking and feeling. At least with the rise of consciousness (in man, possibly in some hominids) perception, thought and sentiment are based on symbolic capacities. Therefore all symbolic forms (language, myth, science; art, technology, laws etc.; cf. the symbolic philosophy of Ernst Cassirer and as a comment Sandkühler et al., 2003) have beyond their social and communicative functions a basis in the human body (embodiment, neural dynamics, etc.).

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Evolutionary Semiotics

Beyond animal communication and quasi-communication in the body and in primitive forms of life (bacteria) evolutionary semiotics concerns the transition to symbolic behavior and languages in a narrow sense. As all living humans descend from the Homo sapiens, the language capacity underlying all human languages must have been in place at that time. Further developments due to cultural dynamics have probably changed the functionality and variability of human languages which can be observed in the large range of human grammars today.

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Vestimentary Semiotics

Beyond the visual aspects of vestimentary signs (clothing, outfit, fashion) specific aspects are linked to the human body such as: covering/protecting/hiding versus uncovering/sexual appeal/hygiene/exposition to air and sun. Clothes can also be experienced via the senses of touch, weight and temperature. Moreover they presuppose specific technologies like: the preparation of furs, sewing, harvesting of specific plants, weaving etc. In some contexts they gain political and religious meanings and values as public markers of power or obedience.

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Visual Semiotics

Signs depend on the type of media, receptive organs and modes of production. The visual domain is linked to manual techniques of painting, drawing, molding/carving, construction. It involves the organs of vision (and the neural mechanisms of sight) and a good coordination with manual shape giving and coloring and is therefore clearly distinguished from the phonic communication (spoken language) involving the ear and the mouth (including the larynx and the control of breath).

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Literary Semiotics

Literature is mainly “language art”, although theatre and film apply other media beyond language (mimics, gestures, action on stage or in the film, music). Even printed literature has musical characteristics (in poetry); imagined actions, types of spatial organization, battle and motion patterns in the novel (cf. crime novels or fantasy novels) imply aspects of visual semiotics and dynamic semiotics.

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Semiotics of Film

On the stage and in action films, forces and force effects are a central concern, which asks for the application of dynamic semiotics (cf. Wildgen 2010b on action sequences and major force fields in the series of “James Bond” films, mainly in: Quantum of Solace). In the case of a written novel or script underlying the film (or theatre) the contrast between visual and written media and their adequate means of meaning construction and narration can be compared.

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