Preliminary list of the
 Congress sessions

in the 9th World Congress of IASS-AIS

Note: You can apply to participate in the open sessions and round tables by sending an abstract and cv to the address iass-9@helsinki.fi before January 31 2007. Note also that all of the sessions or round tables are not open for new participants.

Symposia, Hommages

Applying Peirce
Organizer: Peirce Research Centre, chair: Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen.
Program committee: Vincent Colapietro (chair), Maria Lucia Santaella Braga, Leila Haaparanta, Risto Hilpinen, Robert Innis, Lorenzo Magnani, Cheryl Misak, Jaime Nubiola, Ilkka Niiniluoto, John Sowa
Further information: http://www.helsinki.fi/peirce/2007/

The Actuality of Finno-Ugric Semiotics
A symposium of the IAFUSS (International Association for Finno-Ugrian Semiotics Studies)
Organizers: Vilmos Voigt and Anti Randviir

Hommage à Claude Lévi-Strauss: Papers on the life and work of the founder of structuralism

Round tables

Asian Semiotics
Coordinator: Yu Zheng Li

Applying Biosemiotics: Understanding and Misunderstanding Culture
Coordinator: Paul Cobley

The biosemiotic perspective has been undoubtedly crucial in the development of semiotics in the twenty-first century. It has shed light on the status of the ‘semiotic animal’, has opened up new understandings of sociality and has reconfigured human relations in ecological and global context.
 
Yet, the applications of biosemiotics to the understanding of culture from a micro perspective (as well as, sometimes, from a macro perspective) have been less extensive than might have been desired.
 
Papers are therefore invited for a roundtable in which applications of biosemiotics to the study of culture will be discussed.
 
Topics might include:
 
- culture, innenwelt and umwelt
- the biosemiotic paradigm in the structures of fine art, film, literature, science, philosophical writing etc.
- biosemiotics at work and home (e.g. status syndrome)
- the development of the biosemiotic paradigm (with reference to culture)
- biosemiotics and contemporary social theory paradigms (e.g. complexity, culturalism).
- biosemiotics and creativity
- biosemiotics, ecology and eco-criticism
 
Other topics for papers within the general rubric would be welcome.

Los bordes de  la semiótica
Coordinador: Juan Magariños de Morentin

Chinese-Western Comparative Semiotics
Coordinators: Jie Zhang, Jiazu Gu, Haihong Ji

Social problems in cinema
Coordinators: Romana Rutelli, Patrizia Calefato

Communication et spectacle
Coordinateur: José Maria Paz Gago; participants: Fr. Jost, André Helbo, Oscar Steinberg, Fernando Andacht
 

Communication, Journalism, Media
Coordinators: Maarja Löhmus, Andres Könno)

Dialogue in Semiotics, Semiotics in Dialogue
Coordinators: Massimo A. Bonfantini, Augusto Ponzio, Susan Petrilli.
Invited to participate: Marcel Danesi, Frank Nuessel, Youzheng Li, Winfried Noeth, Lucia Santaella, Gloria Withalm, Jimmy Kelemen, Traian Stanciulescu, Anti Randviir.

The coordinators will discuss their co-authored volume, I dialoghi semiotici: Sul dialogo, sulla menzogn e la verità, sui nuovi mass-media, sulla retorica e l'argomentazione, sulla testualità e la discorsività, sull'ideologia e l'utopia (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2006).

Digital Authoring and Reauthoring of Multimedia Knowledge Resources for a Multilingual and Multicultural Market: The Semiotic Challenge
Coordinator: Peter Stockinger

The Ethical Footprint. Discussions of the material world
Coordinator: Anne Stenros. Invited speakers: Marketta Luutonen, Panu Lehtovuori, Paula Bello, Satu Miettinen,

The European Semiosphere: Information Flow in Cultural Communication
Coordinator: Elize Bisanz. Participants: Michael Tomasello, Terrence W. Deacon, Margot Wallström

Estudios semioticos sobre la television
Coordinadores: Alfredo Cid Jurado, Charo Lacalle. Invitados a participar: Marita Soto, Rocco Mangieri, Antonio Perri, Mario Carlon, Mireya Cid Jurado, Rafael del Villar, Edgar Moran

The Globality of Languages: Communication and Contact in Art Therapy
Coordinators: Gino Stefani, Stefania Guerra Lisi

Konsensusmoral versus Pflichtethik
Coordinator: Anna-Riitta Tunturi 

Korean Semiotics
Coordinators: Roland Posner, Kim Sung Do

Narrativité dans la communication musicale/Narrativity in musical communication
Coordinator: Marta Grabocz. Participants: Robert S. Hatten, Raymond Monelle, Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam, Eero Tarasti

Les "Ostensignes", affichage et interprétations de signes d'appartenance communautaire. Approche sémio-discursive d'un conflit multi-identitaire.
Coordinator: Louis Panier. Participants: Members of research teams Semeia and Médias et Identités.

Semioethics and Existential Semiotics
Coordinators: Eero Tarasti, Augusto Ponzio, Susan Petrilli.
Invited to participate: Jeff Bernard, Massimo A. Bonfantini, Paul Cobley, Vincent Colapietro, John Deely, Hisashi Muroi, Winfried Noeth, Floyd Merrell, Susan Petrilli, Augusto Ponzio, Eero Tarasti.

The coordinators will present the main topics covered in their respective books: Tarasti's Existential Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) and Semiotics Unbounded: Interpretive Routes through the Open Network of Signs by Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio (Toronto University Press, 2005).

A Stroll through the World of Animals: Cross-species – Understanding and Misunderstanding
Coordinators: Paul Cobley

Papers are invited on any aspect of human understanding of the world of animals.
 
Topics might include:
 
- comparative umwelten
- modes of animal communication
- human representation of species in art, on film, in literature, in science, in philosophical writing, in history
- the historiography of zoosemiotics
- the history of ‘misunderstanding’ animal communication (Clever Hans effect, etc.)
 
Other topics for papers within the general rubric would be welcome.

The Teaching of Semiotics in the 21st Century
Coordinators: Harri Veivo (University of Helsinki, The Finnish Network University of Semiotics), Kristian Bankov (New Bulgarian University)

Since its emergence in the first half of the 20th century, semiotics has been defined at the same time as an interdisciplinary field of research and as an individual science with its own theory and methods. The latter has been indispensable for the advancement of research, whereas the former has in many occasions been the true reason for the interest towards semiotics in the academia and in society in general. However, the relation between the two has been difficult, provoking recurring questions about the nature of semiotic research, its own methodology, aims, and results, and its value. Teaching semiotics as an act of transmitting information, of research skills and of a specific, research oriented world-view (with its values and history) is the place where these questions find their most acute form and also need constantly convincing responses. At the beginning of the new century, we have to consider also the new standards of communication in the so called knowledge-based society and the strategic role, which semiotics could have in the unavoidable transformation of the academic institutions – both as an academic discipline and a theoretic framework. The round table discussion proposes to focus on the specific demands and tasks concerning the teaching of semiotics in this new social and academic context prevailing at the beginning of the 21st century.

Understanding Signs of Existential Life
Coordinators: Eero Tarasti, Solomon Marcus, Eric Landowski, Guido Ipsen, Drina Hocevar

Women in Semiotics
Coordinators: Susan Petrilli, Lucia Santaella, Eila Tarasti, Pirjo Kukkonen, Katriina Kajannes. Speakers include: Myrdene Andersen, Dinda Gorlée, Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, Susan Petrilli (On Victoria Welby, Mary Everst Boole, and Suzanne Langer), Augusto Ponzio (on Kristeva), H. Walter Schmitz, Lucia Santaella, Eila Tarasti, Genevieve Vaughan

Study sessions

Anthroposemiotics within the framework of biosemiotics
Coordinator: Göran Sonesson. Participants: Sören Brier, Barend van Heusden, Fredrik Stjernfelt, Jordan Zlatev.

In recent years, the most vital part of semiotics has been so-called biosemiotics, largely based on the inspiration of the ”Bedeutungslehre” of Jakob von Uexküll, in conjunction with Peircean semiotic theory. This conception has been elaborated at the level of cells as well as on a more traditional ethological, “zoosemiotic”, level. In this context, classical semiotics has often been described as ”anthroposemiotics” and given short shrift. From a developmental and evolutionary perspective, however, anthroposemiotics is clearly a part of biosemiotics. This does not only mean that classical issues of anthroposemiotics must be reconsidered from the point of view of biosemiotics, but also that “the difference which makes a difference” in the human species has to be accounted for. The question then becomes whether semiotics can give a more satisfactory description of human semiotic activities than currently fashionable ”Memetics” and Neo-Darwinism. The best contribution of biosemiotics to this study has been the concept of numerous ”semiotic thresholds”. Interestingly, the semiotic turn in the cognitive sciences, more or less completely realised by Deacon, Donald and Tomasello, has taken place within the framework of the study of human evolution and development. Both traditions suggest a stage-like unfolding of human potential, which retains the capacities of earlier stages. Human mimesis is unique, independently of language, and new abilities accrue to the human species after the end of biological change, with the creation of pictures, writing, and theory. In both case, the specificity of human society may be important, first as imitation, leading on to the sign function, and then as the basis of theory, the ”third embodiment”, completing that of Ego and Alius, which allows the human species to redefine his Umwelt from within.

Biosemiotics: Understanding and Misunderstanding in Plants and Animals
Coordinators: Timo Maran, Don Favareau

Biosemiotics: Understanding and Misunderstanding the Interdiscipline of Biosemiotics
Coordinators: Timo Maran, Don Favareau

Conceptualist Theories in Semiotics
Coordinators: Ivan Mladenov

We conceptualise the world of ideas in order to orient ourselves in it. But even at the most elementary level we do conceptualise. Any co-ordinated movement of our bodies means that a lightning-fast concept has been performed in our mind and we have acted according to this short scheme that we received from the mind. We conceptualise the symbols and the signs we constantly perceive, which means that we are permanently de-coding and de-ciphering the realm of signs, which comes towards us.

Most of our thinking flows as a permanent substituting process and we know something by comparing and relating it to something else, which is more familiar to us. Then we conceptualise the newly received knowledge, that is, we "store it" in our memory and it becomes a part of our previous experience.

There are many streams and doctrines, abridged by the term “conceptualism” (think, for example of the twentieth-century philosophy that undertook the “linguistic turn” or, of the cognitive revolution that followed it in the mid-fifties). For the purpose of this study session, “conceptualism” is not meant to be associated with any famous stream. It is rather a rationalizing of what is observed through epistemology and linguistics, for example, revealing the nucleus of meaning hidden in any sign, metaphor or, scientific dogma. Observations made of the level of signs and metaphors are quickly structured into semiotic hypotheses and immediately return to the reality of text. Thus, most of the concepts are ready to be used as apparatus for further deriving of meaning. The emphasis is not on sticking to the conceptualism as just another school but on dynamics of its capacity as one more heuristic (semiotic) tool.

Evolution of Theory of Mind: Neurosemiotic and Cultural Dimensions of Understanding the Other
Coordinator: Tatiana Chernigovskaya (St. Petersburg State University)

Issues in Sociosemiotics
Coordinators: Jeff Bernard and Susan Petrilli. Participants: Massimo A. Bonfantini, Susan Petrilli, Augusto Ponzio.

Kommunikationsmodelle - Karten und Atlanten in modernen Gesellschaft (Communication Models - Maps and Atlases in Modern Society)
Coordinator: Alexander Wolodtschenko (Dresden University of Technology)

Die Akkumulation des kartosemiotischen Wissens in der modernen Informationsgesellschaft verläuft in traditioneller (gedruckter) und elektronischer Form. Die Karten und Atlanten sind Kommunikationsmodelle und Hauptprodukte der Kartographie. Unter den kartographischen Darstellungen ist die Karte die häufigste Form der Wissensvermittlung über die räumliche Lage, Verteilung von Objekten und Sachverhalten der Erde und anderer Himmelskörper. Die Karte liefert naturbezogene, wirtschaftliche, politische, kulturelle, militärische und andere Informationen für unterschiedlich orientierte Nutzerkreise. Die Karte wird fast in allen Sphären der menschlichen Tätigkeit benutzt.

Semiotische Besonderheiten von Karten und Atlanten lassen sich im System Kartenherstellung-Kartennutzung sowie im System Atlantenherstellung-Atlantennutzung untersuchen. Hierbei zeichnet sich eine bestimmte Verschiebung in den Forschungsakzenten von der semiotischen Untersuchung einzelner Komponenten des kartographischen Zeichensystems (z.B. syntaktische Besonderheiten der Kartenzeichen) zur strukturellen Untersuchung diverser kartosemiotischer Modelle (z.B. eine Karte, eine Kartenserie, ein Atlas bzw. eine Reihe von Atlanten usw.) als Träger des räumlich-zeitlichen Wissens ab. Man kann mindestens zwei Hauptgruppen von kartosemiotischen Forschungen mit unterschiedlichen methodischen Herangehensweisen unterscheiden: a) basierend auf kartographischen Traditionen und b) basierend auf außerkartographischen Traditionen.

In der Session/Workshop können sowohl theoretische als auch angewandte bzw. praksisrelevante Probleme bezüglich der Rolle und der Kompetenzgrenzen der Karten und Atlanten als Kommunikationsmedium in der modernen Gesellschaft zur Diskussion gestellt werden.
 

La littérature coréenne, hier et aujourd'hui
Coordinator: Chie-Sou Kim. Participants: Chie-Sou Kim, Ki-Jeong Song, Do-heum Lee, Yong-Ho Choi, Hyo-Sook Liu, Ho-Young Kim

(Mis-)understanding Cities – Code and Communication in World Metropoles
Coordinator: Roland Posner. Participants: Sung-Do Kim, Yo-Song Park, Dong-Yoon Kim

More than half of the Earth's human population now lives in big cities, and therefore urban culture has become one of the focal points of cultural studies all over the world.  Cultural semiotics has for some decades (mis-)understood the city as a mere text, supposedly written on a never-finished palimpsest.  However, it would be wrong to reduce cities to rows of buildings and artifacts assembled along streets, plazas, and avenues (material culture).  Cities are determined by complex institutions which organize the life of the surrounding country (social culture) and develop codes and conceptions for defining and solving the problems of this life (mental culture).  The contemporary world is characterized by the rise of metropolises, and understanding their structure requires an analysis of their function in reenacting a country's rituals, confirming and developing a country's basic beliefs, and integrating the discoveries and innovations of other countries.  These functions are realized in competitive cooperation between the metropolises of the world, which forces each of them to form its own identity in opposition to the others. 

Montage and Semiotics
Coordinator: Tomi Huttunen, Pekka Pesonen. Chair: Pekka Pesonen. Participants: Yuri Tsivian, Roman Timenchick, Peeter Torop, Oksana Bulgakowa, Tomi Huttunen, Soo Hwan Kim, Lauri Piispa

Pragmatic-Semiotic Concepts and the Arts
Coordinators: Harri Veivo and Christina Ljungberg

Pragmatic-semiotic concepts which explicitly concern the processes and practices of making meaning have already had considerable impact on issues such as representation and subjectivity in literary studies and seem to offer a way to open up new space for a dialogue between research and the arts. How could such an approach offer a way to theorize different fields of research?  And how could it move beyond the level of abstract definition to account for the materiality and mediality of art? How could it explain the performativity and processuality of the work of art, which makes the effect it achieves instantaneous and unique? We invite proposals that not only concern the analysis and theorizing of art but also focus on interart phenomena such as the interaction between artist, work of art, and viewer / addressee and between the work of art and the world.

The Relevance of Adam Schaff and Claude Lévi-Strauss in Semiotics of Today
Coordinator: Augusto Ponzio

Signs under Erasure: Art/History, Nation, Culture
Coordinator: Johann Pillai (Eastern Mediterranean University)

This panel has been assembled by a a group of colleagues in northern Cyprus who are all working on the regeneration and analysis of signs in a cultural context. The participants will be presenting on a variety of topics related to communicative understanding and misunderstanding, including the semiotics of Cyprus postage stamps; the interpretation of Ottoman maritime graffiti on the walls of ruined churches in Famagusta; the re-writing of history textbooks to neutralize ideological signs; the (mis)communication of urban space through signboards in the modern city of Kyrenia; and the interpretative and communicative contexts of cartographical signs. The two artists in our panel are also planning an installation of artworks and performance pieces for the Congress.

We would welcome the addition to the session of up to 3 or 4 other papers or participants with an interest in the general concerns of our title; we would also like to have the session open to any and all of the visitors or participants at the Congress who might be interested in listening or joining in discussion.

Signs toward health: understanding and misunderstanding in health care communication
Coordinators: Peter Schulz, Paul Cobley.

Health care communication (HCC) has been central to semiotics since the beginning of the latter in the work of Hippocrates. In addition, HCC has developed into a thriving academic (sub)discipline in recent years. This panel will focus on the key issue of ‘quality’ in HCC, the ways in which understanding and misunderstanding may take place.

The contemporary media are crucial to the process of HCC. Indeed, the internet (and Google, in particular) has recently been found to be the most utilized route to HCC, irrespective of the perceived quality of information to be found on websites. Not only are media responsible for describing illness and health hazards, they are also frequently responsible for creating them. Media sometimes ‘intentionally’ create misperceptions; but, sometimes media audiences are instrumental in misunderstanding. Misunderstanding in HCC, however, is arguably of more importance than misunderstanding in many areas of media transmission of messages. Aberrant decoding of HCCs can sometimes be a matter of life and death rather than simply a source of empowerment through reading strategies. On the other hand, there is increasing recognition of the possibility that citizens develop ‘health literacy’ in the face of risks and the representation of illness.

Therefore we would welcome papers which address these issues and, particularly, papers on topics including the following:

•    representation of risks
•    the labelling of health conditions
•    the creation of models of comprehension in health care communication
•    investigations of different modes of communication (nonverbal as well as verbal)
•    the development of ‘health literacy’
•    semiotics implication of health literacy
•    the increasing dominance and the criteria of quality in HCC delivered by the internet

Textintentionen: Autor versus Leser
Coordinator: Anna-Riitta Tunturi

Typologies of Sound: From verbal expressions to sonic culinarism
Coordinators: Kai Lassfolk, Juha Torvinen, Susanna Välimäki (University of Helsinki)

Verbal expressions concerning perception of sound are used in many fields  of inquiry such as music research and pedagogy, product development, medical research, urban studies, and audio-visual studies. What are the criteria for defining descriptive vocabularies within these specific fields? What are the links between physical structure of sound, its
perception, cultural connotations, and verbal descriptions? Can sound be
enjoyed as such beyond music? Session is open for all papers related to
the theme and from whatever field of study.

Understanding Cities. Aesthetic Representation and Experience
Coordinators: Peter Allingham (Aalborg University), Kirsten Marie Raahauge (University of Copenhagen)
Participants: Harri Veivo, Ilpo Koskinen, Fredrik Stjernfelt, Ivar Tonsberg, Christian Jantzen, Mikael Vetner.

Writing semiotics today. Old issues and new problems. - Escrire la sémiologie aujourd'hui. Vieux questions et nouveaux enjeux. - Escribir la semiótica hoy. Viejas preguntas y nuevos problemas

Coordinator: Lucrecia Escudero Chauvel (Université de Lille III) and Adrian Gimate Welsh (Université Autonome Metropolitaine).

Other

An international forum for student-semioticians
Papers by students, chaired by specialists in their respective fields.

Non-stop movies on the history of semiotics
Rare films on the life and work of Greimas, Sebeok, Lotman, Kristeva, and others.
Note: Please contact us if you own or otherwise have access to such film materials.