Semiotics Of Cities Selves And Cultures

This collection of essays presents the materials of the Third Annual Juri Lotman Days at Tallinn University in Estonia (3–5 June 2011). The participants discussed the semiotics of urban space from the perspective of the Tartu-Moscow School in comparison with contemporary approaches. This book consists of four sections. The articles in the first section discuss how “urban texts” function in modern and contemporary Baltic cultures. The papers in the second section focus on the semiotics of place in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian and Soviet culture from the perspective of linguistic poetics, cultural semiotics, and new materiality. The last two sections are devoted to the visual perceptions of the cityscape and their ideological interpretations as exemplified by Ukrainian, Estonian, Korean, Chinese, and North American illustrations.

Drawing upon the literature of landscape geography, tourism studies, cultural studies, visual studies and philosophy, this book offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the interaction between urban environments and tourists. This is a necessary prerequisite for cities as they make themselves into enticing destinations and compete for tourists' attention. It argues that tourists make sense of, and draw meaningful conclusions about, the places in which they tour based upon the interpretation of the signs or elements encountered within the built environment, elements such as graffiti and lamp posts. The writings of the American pragmatist Charles S. Peirce on interpretation provide the theoretical model for explaining the way in which mind and world, or thoughts and objects, result in tourists interacting with place. This theoretical framework elucidates three applied studies undertaken with foreign visitors to the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Based upon extensive ethnographic field work, these studies focus on tourists' interpretation of the urban landscape, with particular attention paid to the encounters with national culture, the role of architecture and the importance of the prosaic in urban tourism.

This book brings together a unique collection of personal narratives and summaries of studies that problematize existing meanings of "disability" and "difference." Using applied semiotics as an analytical lens, the contributors examine the ways that these labels are socially and culturally constructed. Contributors include anthropologists, teacher educators, special educators, disability studies scholars, educational psychologists, American Sign Language instructors, semioticians, school psychologists, linguists, and parents. Each author was asked to examine his or her experience(s) and consider the "markers" of lives that are considered different.

Semiotics, Media Studies and Communication Studies are three closely interlinked fields. Briefly stated, Semiotics, the science of signs, looks at how humans search for and construct meaning; Communication Studies is concerned with how meaning is conveyed; and Media Studies considers the ways in which messages are transmitted and received. This dictionary is designed to help students and general readers unlock the significance of the terminology and jargon commonly used in these fields. Being interdisciplinary in nature, Semiotics, Media, and Communication Studies are cluttered with notions derived from other disciplines. Hence, this dictionary also encompasses basic concepts from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, psychology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, computer science, and biology. Collected here are the terms, concepts, personages, schools of thought, and historical movements that appear frequently in the relevant literature. The basis of each entry is a simple definition, which often includes the term's origin. Illustrations are provided where necessary, along with historical sketches of movements or schools of thought. The commentary on personages consists of brief statements about their contribution and relevance. Thus, the dictionary not only defines what a term means, but often goes into its history, applications, and broad implications. Terms are cross-referenced and their etymology is given where possible. This is a compact, practical research manual that will relieve much tension for students in semiotics and related fields. Because of its interdisciplinary approach, it will also provide a range of scholars with a handy reference to disciplines distinct from but related to their own.

This book outlines the future of semiotic research in the study of urban spaces, with chapters authored by leading scholars in the field. It offers thought-provoking explanations of semiotic theory, methodology and applications with the goal of exploring recently developed approaches to the interpretive aspects of urban space. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Many Hindus today are urban middle-class people with many religious values in common with their professional counterparts in America or Europe. Just as so many modern professionals continue to build new churches, synagogues, and mosques, contemporary Hindus attend to the construction and maintenance of their religious institutions wherever their work and life takes them. In Diaspora of the Gods, Joanne Punzo Waghorne traces the changing religious sensibilities of the Hindu middle class. Waghorne leads her readers on a journey through the world of the new Hindu middle-class, focusing on their efforts to build and support places of worship. She invites the reader into the neighborhoods of Chennai to view often-innovative new and renovated temples constructed in a sometimes seemingly incongruous urban environment. Her journey, however, does not end there. The cousins and brothers--literal and figurative--of temple patrons and devotees in Chennai are constructing divine houses abroad that are remaking the religious panorama of the United Kingdom and the United States. Waghorne leads us into the London neighborhood of Tooting, climbing upstairs in a former warehouse to see a Goddess temple constructed from plywood painted in trompe l'oeuil to create all of the features of a proper temple. Elsewhere in London, we meet the God Murugan in an almost hidden temple immured within the stone shell of a former Church and another Goddess whose temple is tucked inside a lovely white church on a quiet street. In Washington, a multiplicity of Gods shares a glorious white temple in an otherwise ordinary suburban neighborhood. Waghorne offers detailed comparisons of these temples, and interviews temple priests, devotees, and patrons. In the process, she illuminates the interrelationships between ritual worship and religious edifices, the rise of the modern world economy, and the ascendancy of the great middle class. This is the first comprehensive portrait of Hinduism as lived today by so many both in India and throughout the world.

Rarely recognized outside its boundaries today, the Pacific Northwest region known at the turn of the century as the Inland Empire included portions of the states of Washington and Idaho, as well as British Columbia. Katherine G. Morrissey traces the history of this self-proclaimed region from its origins through its heyday. In doing so, she challenges the characterization of regions as fixed places defined by their geography, economy, and demographics. Regions, she argues, are best understood as mental constructs, internally defined through conflicts and debates among different groups of people seeking to control a particular area's identity and direction. She tells the story of the Inland Empire as a complex narrative of competing perceptions and interests.