Language and Culture: A Social Semiotic Perspective

ADFL Bulletin ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 8-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Kramsch
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2 (16)) ◽  
pp. 133-138
Author(s):  
Armine Matevosyan ◽  
Manana Dalalyan

The present paper goes along the lines of Semiotics, a branch of linguistics. It studies the system of signs which takes the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. Through the usage of signs we represent the linguocultural aspect of our knowledge, ethnic traditions and folklore. The interest we take in the paper is the study of signs and symbols in Armenian culture. Culture, including miniature paining, singing, dancing, architecture and cuisine, may involve any sphere of Armenian identity. Signs and symbols that constitute language and culture are constructed through verbal and non-verbal interactions and are arbitrary. The purpose of our analysis is to specify what why, whom questions in a specific context of situation, as well as in a large context of culture, such as social community, media and communication.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-263
Author(s):  
Yi Sun ◽  
Ruiyang Li

AbstractThis paper reports on a translation project launched at Xi’an International Studies University (XISU) in 2017 that focuses on political news published by Hanban, which offers a platform for instructions and services for Chinese language and culture globally. Assisted by the metaphor identification method MIPVU (Metaphor Identification Procedure from Vrije Universiteit) and the data retrieval software HyConc, metaphors in the self-established corpus were efficiently and comprehensively identified. The metaphors were classified into 12 categories based on metaphorical images in the source domains. Next, an analysis of the cultural, communicative, and political characteristics or features of the metaphors was conducted under the framework of semiotics by using a diversity of images of the metaphors’ corresponding signifier and signified to trace the emergence, processing/understanding, and transformation of the metaphors through translation. Ultimately, three feasible translation techniques are proposed that are suitable for different types of metaphors: 1) preserving the metaphorical image, 2) preserving the metaphorical image with annotation, and 3) transforming the metaphorical image, in pursuit of providing reference for translators in related translation practice.


Author(s):  
Mohamed Ahmed

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Finding it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel, many Iraqi Jewish novelists faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. Focusing on the literary works of the writers Shimon Ballas, Sami Michael and Eli Amir, this book examines their use of their native Iraqi Arabic in their Hebrew works. It examines the influence of Arabic language and culture and explores questions of language, place and belonging from the perspective of sociolinguistics and multilingualism. In addition, the book applies stylistics as a framework to investigate the range of linguistic phenomena that can be found in these exophonic texts, such as code-switching, borrowing, language and translation strategies. This new stylistic framework for analysing exophonic texts offers a future model for the study of other languages. The social and political implications of this dilemma, as it finds expression in creative writing, are also manifold. In an age of mass migration and population displacement, the conflicted loyalties explored in this book through the prism of Arabic and Hebrew are relevant in a range of linguistic contexts.


Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Smith

Coherence of place often exists alongside irregularities in time in cycles, and chapter three turns to cycles linked by temporal markers. Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) follows a linear chronology and describes the exploration, conquest, and repopulation of Mars by humans. Conversely, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984) jumps back and forth across time to narrate the lives of interconnected families in the western United States. Bradbury’s cycle invokes a confluence of historical forces—time as value-laden, work as a calling, and travel as necessitating standardized time—and contextualizes them in relation to anxieties about the space race. Erdrich’s cycle invokes broader, oppositional conceptions of time—as recursive and arbitrary and as causal and meaningful—to depict time as implicated in an entire system of measurement that made possible the destruction and exploitation of the Chippewa people. Both volumes understand the United States to be preoccupied with imperialist impulses. Even as they critique such projects, they also point to the tenacity with which individuals encounter these systems, and they do so by creating “interstitial temporalities,” which allow them to navigate time at the crossroads of language and culture.


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