Semiotic of Culture

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

The main goal of the course is to analyse the problems of understanding the phenomenon of a culture and relations between different cultures (semiospheres) in the perspective of semiotics. At first students learn how to understand the culture as a language and a text, than they try to “read” the signs (and significance) of such phenomena as (multi)cultural identity, assimilation or racism. Students also need to recognize the mechanism of the intersection of different semiotic systems in the global world, which is one of the most important topics in modern semiotics.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to semioticsWeek 2: Signs and thingsWeek 3: Analysing structuresWeek 4: Rhetorical tropes, metaphor, metonymy, synecdocheWeek 5: Irony, denotation and conotationWeek 6: Cultural mythsWeek 7: CodesWeek 8: Textual interactions 1Week 9: Textual interactions 2Week 10: Structuralist and postsructuralist semioticsWeek 11: Multiculturalism, Transculturalism, InterculturalismWeek 12: Nation, Multiculturalism, Integration, AssymilationWeek 13: RacismWeek 14: Totalitarianism/totalitarian systemsWeek 15: Summary

Reading list

D. Chandler, Semiotics. The basics, Routledge. Taylor&Francis Group, New York 2007P. Stockinger, Semiotics of Culture. Some general considerations (Helsinki 2003, online),P. Stockinger, Semiotics of Culture and Intercultural Communication (Open Semiotics Resource Center – Semiotics Institute Online, Toronto, Canada),L. J. Rogers (Editor), Beth Blue Swadener (Editor), Semiotics and Dis/Ability: Interrogating Categories of Difference (Cultural Studies)R. Barthes, Mythologies, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1972J. Lotman, Culture and explosion, Ed. by Grishakova, Marina Transl. by Clark, Wilma, De Gruyter Mouton 2009P. Torop, Semiosphere and/as the research object of semiotics of culture, Sign Systems Studies 33.1, 2005M. Lotman, Umwelt and semiosphere, Sign Systems Studies 30.1, 2002G. Sonneson, The concept of text in cultural semiotics, “Meaning and Interpretation” project, Stockholm University, 1996G. Deissler, Intercultural errors versus multicultural solutions, Blueprint 2011S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Touchstone Books; New Ed edition 1998