Per Aage Brandt

Interrogating the relatively new field of cognitive semiotics, this book explores shared issues in cognitive science and semiotics. Building on research from recent decades, Per Aage Brandt investigates the potential of a cognitive semiotic approach to enhance our understanding of language, thought and semiosis in general. Introducing a critical, non-standard approach both to cognitive science and to semiotics, this book discusses the understanding of meaning and mind through four major dimensions; mental architecture, mental spaces, discourse coherence and eco-organization. Encompassing a rich variety of topics and debates, Cognitive Semiotics outlines several bridges between 'continental' and 'analytic' thinking in the study of semantics, pragmatics, discourse and the philosophy of language and mind.

Signs, Mind, and Meaning

Cognitive Semiotics

Brandt Brandt

Ulf Cronquist

This book is about meaning in music, poetry, and language; it is about signs: symbols, icons, diagrams, and more. It concerns art and how we communicate, how we make sense to each other—including the concept of nonsense. It is about metaphor and irony. It embraces a vast human universe of signification and some of its cognitive machines of meaning-making: a complex and diverse unfolding of the expressive human mind. These 24 essays study different aspects of the way we signify, present recent research and models of such processes, and discuss the—often intricate—problems of understanding the relations between expression and thought. In evolution, music may have preceded the language of words, and music remains indirectly present in every temporal unfolding of bodily, affective, playful, meaningful activity. We are immersed in meaning and have to ‘listen’ to it since it constitutes the semiotic reality structuring the world as we experience it.

Essays in Cognitive Semiotics

The Music of Meaning

bidrag til en semiotisk kulturanalyse

Kultur & subjekt

"Denne bogs essays belyser forskellige aspekter af en verden, hvori vi muligvis lever, og som besidder en for så vidt paradoksal egenskab: idet den leves, erkendes den ikke, og idet den erkendes, genkendes den ikke som den, hvori der leves; at leve den fordrer miskendelse af den, og jo mere den erkendes, jo mere fremmed forekommer den." Per Aage Brandt deler ud af sine teoretiske overvejelser og analyser omkring en række kulturelle fænomener, som falder ind under forskellige dele af humaniora. Fælles for alle essaysne er, at de tager udgangspunkt i semiotikken. Per Aage Brandt (f. 1944) er en dansk sprogforsker og digter. Han er uddannet i romansk filologi ved Københavns Universitet og Sorbonne Universitet i Frankrig. Per Aage Brandt har været med til at grundlægge Forfatterskolen og har både været professor ved Aarhus Universitet og Case Western Reserve University i Ohio, USA.

Sky og krystal

Wolfgang Wildgen

The French mathematician René Thom (Fields medal 1958) died in 2002. In this volume his contributions to biology, semiotics and linguistics are discussed by a group of scholars who have continued his work and have shaped the new paradigm of dynamic semiotics and linguistics. Thom's heritage is full of revolutionary ideas and deep insights which stem from a rich intuition and a sharp awareness of the current state of the sciences, including their potentials and risks. The contributions to this volume are elaborations of papers given at a colloquium at the International Center for Semiotics and Linguistics of the University of Urbino (Italy), in 2005. The central concern of this volume is semiogenesis, i.e. the evolution and differentiation of meaningful («pregnant») forms in the field of symbolic systems - from bio-communication to language and cultural forms like music, art, architecture or urban forms. The basic questions are: How are meanings created and further differentiated? Where do they come from? What kind of forces drive their unfolding? How can complex cultural forms be understood based on simple morphodynamic principles? Applications concern the perception of forms by animals and humans, the categorization of forms e.g. in a lexicon, and predication or other complex symbolic behaviors which show up in grammar or in cultural artifacts like the unfolding of urban centers.

Per Aage Brandt

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