While semanticized body movements (gestures) are an established field of research, semanticized postures have been explored only marginally. The following paper introduces basics of a posture research. At the beginning types of posture and movement are classified, with the focus on the features static, conventionalized, semantisized and encoded. Based on Roland Posner’s classification of fundamental symbol types (POSNER 1996) a hierarchy of complex symbol actions is developed. This hierarchy is able to gather symbol processes that are connected to postures – from simple signals to communication. Finally, the expression and content concerning classification system is applied on two example sequences, which are taken out of popular DEFA films. While only vague attributions are possible in the daily routine, it is demonstrated that postures are more semioticized and disambiguated in films, due to cinematic means. With reference to depiction traditions in iconography and everyday culture, it is shown how semantification of postures in films is attributed.
In the public sphere, advertising media wrestles for our attention. Besides attractive contents innovative communication forms are demanded as well. In this essay I attend the development of codes in Out-of-Home areas and consider the multimodal communication of posters and public screens and displays. The original means of expression like writing, images, and color were complemented some years ago by illumination and movement of advertising media. That tendency results in the moving image, as screens and displays offer a large variety of opportunities, which exceeds the traditional poster easily. Further possibilities are provided by modern computer technology: the image of reality is augmented by virtual elements – Augmented Reality. After considerations about the emotionalization of traditional posters, I examine in what respect Augmented Reality is such a strategy aiming to evoke emotions in its observers on purpose. To do so I highlight various examples and discuss how they arouse our attention, entertain us, and create emotions in us.
Our article has discussed the as-if structure of emoticons on internet and other media. It has shown that both the form (syntax) and the meaning of emoticons (semantics and pragmatics) are dependent on the occurrence of real facial expressions in the natural and social context. On the indexical and symbolic level, however, an unlimited number of mentefacts (comics, television, etc.) are represented. For this understanding of the iconic emoticons, the focus will be placed on the results of research on facial expression. Indexical emoticons are closely related to human gestures. Thus, symbolic emoticons can be also explained by a reference to verbal signs, pictorial symbols, and symbolic colors.
Broadly defined, every result of a human action is an artefact. In a narrower sense, the term is used for material things resulting from human actions; in this sense, all artefacts together form the realm of material culture. Although meanings play an important role in our daily interaction with artefacts, they have never been treated in a comprehensive and systematic fashion. In design theory, cultural semiotics, anthropology, and archaeology, different approaches to the semantics of artefacts have been taken. The article draws on these findings to build a generalized approach to artefact semantics that concentrates on the processes in which artefacts are connected with meanings (cf. section 3).
In section 4.1, seven principles of semantization are proposed: semantization through (1) frame connection, (2) style, (3) iconicity, (4) individual experiences, (5) cultural allusions, (6) connection to social groups, (7) specific contexts. These principles explain semantization as causal process depending on certain conditions. In section 4.2, a notation system for representing processes of semantization is proposed that combines logical and semiotic notation. For each of the seven principles of semantization, the proposed notation and one example are given.
Using body and apparel language, Nick Walker‘s graffito Le Corancan tackles the subject of ›loi anti-burqa‹ in France in 2010. It shows women dancers masked with niqabs, swinging their legs in the French cancan fashion, displaying their underwear made of the French national flag colours. The splayed ›natural‹ legs, stretching from either side of the focus, straddle the opposing cultures. Do they integrate or do they separate these? Is the visual sexuality of the Muslim ladies a threat or is it an emancipatory unveiling? – Nick Walker just lets the symbols dance. He couples the elementary stimulus-and-reaction pattern of sexual copulation with ideological questions, thus linking the mind to the origin of the cancan. This developed from anarchistic entertainment of the ordinary people (traceable to primitive tribal dances) to the ›infernal final gallop‹ in Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers and then to the voyeuristic amusement of the decadent bourgeois in the Moulin Rouge. – The most typical element of the cancan is what is known in German as the ›Stechschritt‹ (literally: ›stab step‹), but ›goose step‹ in English and ›pas de l’oie‹ in French. The last two expressions both refer not only to the swinging of the stretched leg that imitates anatomically the pace of a goose and a duck but also indicate the etymological derivation from the French child word ›cancan‹ – for ›canard‹ (Fr. duck). As a mixture of Monty Python humour, sexual connotation and military aesthetics the prostituting gesture still causes excitement in front of an alpha male-audience – or one that considers itself as such.
