# Recent semiotic publications in English

The proceedings of the 2011 meeting of the Semiotic Society of America (Haworth et al., eds.) provides a sample of current semiotic research presented in North America. There and elsewhere, one can find Romance approaches to semiotics (Biglari; Dondero; Greimas [in translation]; Schleifer) and Peircean studies (Broden; Dondero; Jappy). Areas that attracted substantial semiotic research recently include music (Rumph; Sheinberg ed.; Tarasti), communication and media (Galantucci and Garrod eds.; Gürsimek; Leeds-Hurwitz), socio-semiotics (Berger; Manning; Semenko), and biosemiotics (Favareau et al. eds.; Rattasepp and Bennett eds.). Other publications explore visual studies (Broden; Jappy), philosopy and logic (Gorlée; Pelc ed.), marketing (Crowther; Oswald), law (Wagner and Broekman eds.), religious discourse (Yelle), literature (Biglari, De Benedictis), and film (Zeng). Introductions to semiotics include Hall (2012) and, in the context of contemporary communication studies, Leeds-Hurwitz (2102).

- Berger, Arthur Asa (2012). Understanding American Icons: An Introduction to Semiotics. Walnut Creek: Left Coast. 184 p.

- Biglari, Amir. "Temporality and Aspectuality in Victor Hugo’s Les Contemplations" in Semiotics 2009. The Semiotics of Time, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, 15-19 October 2009, ed. Karen Haworth and Leonard Sbrocchi. Ottawa: Legas, 2010, pp. 262-266.

Broden, Thomas F. “Peirce, Semiosis, and Time: Examples from Visual Art” in Semiotics 2011: "The Semiotics of Worldviews," Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, Pittsburgh, October 27-30, 2011, ed. Karen Haworth and Leonard Sbrocchi. Ottawa: Legas, 2012, pp. 333-345.

Crowther, David. A Social Critique of Corporate Reporting: Semiotics and Web-based Integrated Reporting. 2nd ed. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Gower, 2012, xiii, 237 p.

De Benedictis, Raffaele. Wordly Wise: The Semiotics of Discourse in Dante’s Commedia. New York: Peter Lang, series Berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics, 2012, 257 p.

Dondero, Maria Giulia. “Diagrammatic Experiment in Mathematics and in Works of Art,” in Semiotics 2011. "The Semiotics of Worldviews," Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, Pittsburgh, October 27-30, 2011, ed. Karen Haworth and Leonard Sbrocchi. Ottawa: Legas, 2012, pp. 297-307.

Favareau, Donald, Paul Cobley, Kalevi Kull, Jesper Hofmeyer, eds. A More Developed Sign: Interpreting the Work of Jesper Hoffmeyer. Tartu: Tartu University Press, series Tartu Semiotics Library, 2012, 332 p.

Galantucci, Bruno, and Simon Garrod, eds. Experimental Semiotics: Studies on the Emergence and Evolution of Human Communication. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, series Benjamins Current Topics, 2012, 160 p.

Gorlée, Dinda. Wittgenstein in Translation: Exploring Semiotic Signatures. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, series Semiotics, Communication and Cognition, 2012, 361 p.

Greimas, A.J. “How to Define the Indefinite: An Essay in Semantic Description,” Genre 43 (Fall-Winter 2010): 289-326. Translation and introduction by Albert Samuel Whisman and Ronald Schleifer. Original French: "Analyse du contenu: comment définir les indéfinis (Essai de description sémantique)," Études de linguistique appliquée (Besançon) 2 (1963), 110-125.

Gürsimsek, Remzi Ates. Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design: A Social Semiotic Approach to the Co-production of Virtual Places and Artifacts in Second Life. Roskilde: Institut for Kommunikation, 2012, 282 p.

Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics. 2nd ed. London: Laurence King, 2012, 192 p.

Haworth, Karen, Jason Hogue, and Leonard Sbrocchi, eds. Semiotics 2011: "The Semiotics of Worldviews," proceedings of the 36th annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, 27-30 October 2011. Ottawa: Legas, 2012.

Jappy, Tony. Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics: A Visual Rhetoric. London: Continuum, 2012. OCLC: 808495519.

Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. Semiotics and Communication: Signs, Codes, Cultures. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012, 248 p. [Introduction to semiotics for communication studies]

Manning, Paul. The Semiotics of Drink and Drinking. London and New York: Continuum, 2012, 245 p. [Anthropological semiotics]

Oswald, Laura. Marketing Semiotics: Signs, Strategies, and Brand Value. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xii, 218 p.

Pelc, Jerzy, ed. Semiotics and Logic, special issue of Semiotica (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton) 188 (2012).

- Rattasepp, Silver, and Tyler Bennett, eds. Gatherings in Biosemiotics. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, series Tartu Semiotics Library, 2012. [Includes five papers on the importance of semiotics for biology, a history of the “Gatherings in Biosemiotics” conference since its inception in 2001, and the abstracts for the submissions to the 2012 meeting.]

Rumph, Stephen C. Mozart and Enlightenment Semiotics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012, xvi, 265 p.

Schleifer, Ronald (2009). “The Semiotics of Speculation: A.J. Greimas and the Example of Literary Criticism,” Genre 42 1.2 (Spring/Summer 2009): 165-186. French trans. Yves Abrioux "Sémiotique de la spéculation, Greimas et l’exemple de la critique littéraire," Théorie, Littérature, Epistémologie (Paris) 27 (2010): 47-75.

Semenenko, Aleksei. The Texture of Culture: An Introduction to Yuri Lotman’s Semiotic Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. x, 177 p.

Sheinberg, Esti, ed. Music Semiotics: A Network of Significations in Honour and Memory of Raymond Monelle. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012, xxii, 344 p.

Tarasti, Eero Semiotics of Classical Music: How Mozart, Brahms and Wagner Talk to Us. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, series Semiotics, Communication and Cognition, 2012, xiii, 493 p.

Uspenskii, Boris Andreevich, et al. "Tsar and God" and Other Essays in Russian Cultural Semiotics. Boston: Academic Studies Press, series Ars Rossika, 2012, 272 p.

Wagner, Anne and Broekman, Jan M., eds. Prospects of Legal Semiotics. Berlin: Springer, 2012, xxv, 245 p.

Yelle, Robert. Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. London and New York: Continuum, 2012, xii, 242 p.

Zeng, Hong. Semiotics of Exile in Contemporary Chinese Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, series Semiotics and Popular Culture, 2012, viii, 177 p.

# News of conferences and associations

## The Semiotic Society of America

### 2012

The Semiotic Society of America held its 37th Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, from 1-4 November 2012. Eero Tarasti (University of Helsinki), Michael Silverstein (University of Chicago), and Rafael Núñez (University of California, San Diego) delivered plenary addresses, while Isaac Catt (Duquesne University gave the Presidential Address. 95 participants presented 110 papers relating to a wide array of semiotic topics. Special events included an evening reception; a musical performance by Marcel Danesi (University of Toronto, Victoria College) and the Semiotones; a screening of Antiviral with commentary by director Brandon Cronenberg; as well as the annual business meetings of the Society. (Thanks to SSA Executive Director Elvira Katic, Ramapo College of New Jersey, for providing the above information).

### 2013

“Why Semiotics?” The Semiotic Society of America invites the submission of abstracts for presentation at its 38th Annual Meeting, 24-27 October 2013 in Dayton, Ohio. The non-restrictive theme of the meeting “Why Semiotics” invites discussions about why and how semiotics is and can be used as a research methodology. The Program Committee welcomes panel proposals on the conference theme as well as panels (3-4 papers) or individual papers on any topic related to semiotics. Proposals received by June 1st, 2013 will be given preference on the final program; early submission of proposals, both for individual papers and for panels, is recommended. Proposals must be submitted electronically to: submissionssemiotics2013[at]gmail.com. See the full Call for Papers (with full conference information and submission procedures).

The Algirdas J. Greimas Semiotics and Literary Theory Center (Vilnius)The Vilnius University Algirdas J. Greimas Semiotics and Literary Theory Center held its 22nd annual Summer Seminar 5-7 July in Druskininkai, Lithuania, supported by funding from the publishing house Baltos Lankos. Thomas F. Broden presented “An Intellectual Biography of Greimas: Perspectives from Overseas” and “Peirce’s Semiotics and Greimas’s Semiotics” in English. A.J. Greimas Center Director and seminar organizer Arunas Sverdiolas, Professor of philosophy at Vilnius University lectured on the phenomenology of popular culture. The 83 registered participants also included Greimas Center members Nijolė Keršytė, Dalia Satkauskytė, and Gintautė Žemaititė from Vilnius University and Dainius Vaitiekunas from the Vilnius Pedagogical University, as well as Juratė Levina (University of St. Andrews, Scotland), Algis Mickūnas (Ohio University, USA), Kęstutis Nastopka (Vilnius University), and Saulius Žukas (Baltos Lankos Press). A number of doctoral students in semiotics attended the seminar and participated in discussions, including Andrius Grigorjevas, Dalia Kaladinskienė, and Giedrė Olsevičiūtė. Extra-curricular highlights were the Saturday evening picnic on a bluff overlooking the Neman River and an excursion and dinner at the Soviet Sculpture Museum “Grūto parkas” which exhibits plastic art and documentation from Soviet Lithuania.

## International Society for Biosemiotic Studies

The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) held its 12th Annual Gatherings in Biosemiotics at Tartu University in Estonia 17-22 July 2012. Approximately 60 members presented papers. The General Assembly of the ISBS adopted a new Constitution and voted in a new Executive Board for the period 2012-2015:

- President: Jesper Hoffmeyer

- Vice President: Timo Maran

- Secretary: Paul Cobley

- Treasurer Luis Emilio Bruni

- Webmaster: Sara Cannizzaro

- Board Members: Victoria Alexander, Argyris Arnellos, Yagmur Denizhan, Jan Hoffmeyr, Karel Kleisner, Kalevi Kull

The Society thanked Don Favareau (National University of Singapore) for his service as member of the ISBS Executive Board, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Webmaster.

Communications concerning the ISBS may be directed to its Secretary, Paul Cobley (London Metropolitan University), at paullondonmet[at]aol.com. ISBS members are invited to participate in public discussions via the online Forum at http://biosemiotics.lefora.com/​.

The 2013 Gathering in Biosemiotics will take place in Castiglioncello, Italy. Istanbul, Turkey, is under exploration as the 2014 location.