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As the semiotics of gestures is in the process of establishing itself as a semiautonomous branch of semiotics, a critical assessment of its methods and goals is in order. This article reviews some of the methodological problems which have hindered the scientific study of gestures, among which the dependence on linguistic models (the lexicon fallacy) and the reliance on phenomenological observations (restricted to the pragmatic sphere). It advocates the construction of broader theoretical perspectives (derived from evolutionary biology and ecology) and the development of methods of inquiry at different scales than the ones constrained by phenomenological observations (direct or mediated by recordings). It concludes by outlining future research on gestures as a new challenge for semiotics.

Document w/link to visual materials on prezi.com EAA (European Archaeological Association) Session #366—Chair: Paul Bouissac PREAMBLE—when I use the term ‘post-historical’ it is not in the sense of postmodern theory, but in the sense of Fredrik Barth (my mentor in fieldwork) who made the cons- picuous claim that historians have more to learn from anthropology, than anthropo- logists have from history (since anthropological knowledge is a bit ‘out of kilter’). I have presently moved on the assumption that the relation between archaeology and history might be evoked along similar lines. Mostly owing to the fact that archaeology, like anthropology, is a fieldwork-based science. Meaning that what is claimed as knowledge should at least partly be rooted in fieldwork. But then including artefacts. Moving from anthropology to archaeology has—for me—is based on three lines of query: 1) what does it mean to do fieldwork on books? 2) how to understand the gaps between a book as written, as made and as read? 3) how can we understand the spatial orientation in a book as a space unto itself (that contains its own reality)? In sum: can we understand the space within a book and the space beyond it, as a semiotic boundary, where the formation of memes can be studied, and foster a more sensorial readability of authors like Gilbert Simondon. I am thinking of the Mediaeval precedent that he gives to his notion of ‘information’ (i.e., with a formative impact). In this paper a way of diagramming the relationship between light, darkness and colour is proposed; in which some difficulties in Goethe’s Theory of Colour (1810) are being tentatively sorted out through the study of space (cf, brief for session #366): the study of the Book of Kells in the wake of a learning theatre with the Darkness Group at KHiO.

Affinal avoidance registers are strategies of restrained linguistic conduct in relation to one’s in-laws. Current theories are primarily concerned with two types of strategies: (1) taboos on uttering the proper names of affines, and (2) substitution of everyday words with dedicated parallel lexicon in the presence of affines (so-called “mother-in-law languages”). However, the role of pronouns has received limited attention. Here we explore little-known registers in the Aslian languages (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula), where dedicated pronoun paradigms take centre stage in communication with and about in-laws. We characterise and compare these closely related but internally diverse systems, situate them in their cultural contexts, and discuss their status in relation to current theories and typologies of avoidance and honorific registers.

In this lecture, we will discuss the emergence of the semiotic function, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, and we will consider the part played by the picture sign in this development. In order to demonstrate that pictures are indeed signs, we will explore the basic elements of the sign presupposed but never put into focus neither by Saussure nor by Peirce. Indeed, explorations in the psychology and phenomenology of perception will turn out to be necessary, in order to characterise the sign in opposition to more elementary meanings, such as those given to us in the common sense world, variously characterized as the “lifeworld”, the “natural world”, or the world of “ecological physics”.

The argument of our third lecture showed that iconicity could only be saved from the critical arguments advanced by Bierman and Goodman by means of introducing a properly structured common sense world. In this lecture, we will first consider to what extent the linguistic model may still be helpful, and in which respects it is misleading. Then the necessary furnishing of the common sense world, which is also the basis of picture interpretation, will be discussed in its own right. In this connection, the importance of indexicality to perception, in itself and as it carries over to pictorial representation, will be demonstrated. This will also prompt a return to the theory of indexicality, inspired, once again, in a close reading of Peirce, but developed on the bases of more recent psychological findings. The function of structural opposition will be discussed in contrast to the perceptual logic of indexicality.