Focuses on three devices (plan, analysis, and context) with which one can consider electronic mail. States that the inequality in "message contexts" (social, mental, and physical) is the problem in electronic mail communication. Offers implications for using semiotics with visual culture in education. (CMK)

This article explores the effects of certain discourses as they relate to sexual harassment in a Swedish higher education setting. Using a semiological perspective, the author analyzes notions of existence, range, prevention, and stability in order to demonstrate the way they aim at signifying a limited and, from a bureaucratic point of view,…

This article presents a story of Han, a Vietnamese kindergartner, during her first year at East Elementary School. A classroom environment that supports learner-generated inquiries gives her the self-confidence to inquire freely into a second language and culture. Her inquiries enable her to develop her oral and written English language as she…

In a discussion of the role of language in education, education is viewed as a semiotic apprenticeship, or opportunity to gain the cultural tools and practices for meaning-making in construction of knowledge. This process occurs through guided participation in discipline-based forms of inquiry. In this enterprise, language is seen as having a…

Designed to help practitioners become more familiar with the underpinnings, currents, pros and cons, and research studies produced by the critical-thinking movement in the United States, this special collection offers eight digests and three FAST (Focused Access to Selected Topics) annotated bibliographies concerning critical thinking at all…

An investigation of structural aspects of television messages focused on the interaction between structure and content in the creation of meaning. A preliminary study using quantitative data analyzed 137 television news stories from the commercial networks on the fighting in El Salvador to determine how structural elements were used by…

A composition course is described in which students are encouraged to explore metaphorical expressions in a variety of media. (JH)

This article describes several types of native American nonspeech communications systems, including the Plains sign language, distance signaling of various kinds, picture writing and whistle speech. See FL 508 188 for availability. (CLK)

The intellectual changes of the 19th century were as dramatic as the economic changes of the Industrial Revolution. U.S. citizens at that time subscribed to the traditional belief that a spiritual self, grafted onto the body, was the source of life and thought. The later belief that human beings possessed complete, experiential knowledge of their…

Music videos from the past few years have become a prominent phenomenon in our culture. They are critically compared by a small or large section of the public with the structures of, and relations within, social reality. These videos are considered to portray real situations that are, according to the standards of western culture, severely…

This monograph posits a rhetorical theory of video-art and presents perspectives on the status of video-art in Latin America. Video-art, which utilizes technology in the field of aesthetics, is perceived as fundamentally rhetorical and stylistic. Conclusions about the form include the comments that the analysis of visual messages is possible…

The article presents an audio-visual teaching method for advanced students of Italian, in which major emphasis is placed on phonostylistic and semiotic factors: intonation and stress, rhythm, and gestures. A sample exercise is included. (CLK)

DEPENDENCE UPON SYMBOLS HAS LONG BEEN THE MARK OF CIVILIZED MAN. ALTHOUGH THE MAJORITY OF US HAVE LITTLE TROUBLE IDENTIFYING AND EVALUATING THE REFERENTS OF PHYSICAL SYMBOLS, WE ARE LESS SURE WHEN DEALING WITH THE MORE SUBTLE TYPE OF SYMBOLS CALLED WORDS. WE KNOW THAT A WORD'S MEANING MAY VARY ACCORDING TO SPEAKER, WRITER, LISTENER, READER, OR…

Symbolic interaction is the foundation for a theory of rhetoric developed in this paper. As manipulators of symbols, humans, unlike all other animals, use abstractions both to indicate (describe things present) and to represent (describe intangible things). Only human beings are capable of the elaborate systems of linguistic reference called…

A survey of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's views on the phenomenology of language yields insight into the basic semiotic nature of language. Merleau-ponty's conceptions stand in opposition to Saussure's linguistic postulations and Korzybski's scientism. That is, if language is studied phenomenologically, the acts of speech and gesture take on greater…