Course paper

Materials of the research Particular texts are the materialized support upon which possible semiotic worlds can become instantiated. They provide the material from which the researcher can infer the social representations of the group under study. Texts, whatever sign-system they are made of (verbal, visual, musical or behavioral performances), are the material prima for the researcher to work on in search for their meaning. We should remember that any perceptible form in which the outcome of an action- semiosis appears can be taken as a text (as used in this paper). Texts are mediational tools for communication. They are materialized products of somebody’s interpretants, but they can also act as represent for somebody else’s semiosis aimed to attribute significance to that text,

which in turn produce new interpretants, also in some form of text. Semiotic analysis is to be applied to texts elaborated with signs belonging to sign-systems. The analysis of texts relies on the examination of the possibilities that the signs employed have (at the moment and in the setting in which they were employed) for representing a social phenomenon and for relating that phenomenon to other social phenomena. This requires taking into account the formal features of the signs and the rules of the sign-system employed (their formal value - syntax), so that the phenomenon can be represented and communicated in a meaningful discourse. There are many kinds of sign-systems which allow the production of meaningful discourses: language, pictures, music, dance, gestures, mime, emotional expressions, etc. However, the syntactic values of these signs, the kind of phenomena they can represent, and therefore the communicative capabilities of each of these sign-systems, are very different. Not all sign-systems are equally suited for producing, communicating or sharing any kind of social phenomena. All of them are employed in everyday life; each of them has rules for use in different settings, as well as being privileged within particular social practices.The research materials cover the following main sources: different types and materials of cultural semiotics.