Opposition theory is one of the main outcomes of structural linguistics of the last century. While it is still valid and used in the field of phonology, it has not had the same fortune in other linguistic disciplines and has been replaced by other theoretical concepts. The present paper aims to revisit the opposition theory, particularly Louis Hjelmslev’s theory of participative opposition. Participative oppo si tion seems to have a high application potential not only in linguistics but also in other scientific fields. The first part of the paper outlines a brief history of the binary opposition theory within structural linguistics, while the second part introduces the somewhat forgotten concept of participative opposition, shows its explanatory power and, finally, its possible applicability in biology.

Inner speech plays a significant role in various cognitive processes as internalized social speech and a unique form of sign-using activity. While previous research has already emphasized the role of inner speech in the formation of meanings and interpretation, few attempts have been made to establish a semiotic account of inner speech as a mechanism of meaning-making. The study aims to establish a semiotic account of the concept of inner speech as internalized social speech and as a form of inner communication embodied in artistic discourse. Thus, the paper addresses the meaning-making functions of inner speech at the levels of verbal (inter- and intrapersonal communication) and artistic discourses (manifestation of inner communication in artistic texts). It identifies the role of inner speech in the formation and development of individual meanings that originate from the nature, phenomenology and individual development of internalized verbal language. This development of meanings follows specific laws, which include the internalization of verbal communication, socio-cultural experience and external representations of different modalities. The role of inner speech in meaning-making in artistic narration is addressed by analysing the manifestation of inner communication in artistic discourse and intentional adaptation of the concept of inner speech. The study identifies how the evolution of cultural communication processes shapes the ontology and manifestation of the artistic inner monologue in contemporary culture.

We present a cognitive semiotic case study of the narrative potential of the statue Den lille Havfrue (‘the little mermaid’) by Edvard Eriksen in Copenhagen. On the basis of theoretical analysis and a survey in which 20 European and 19 Chinese participants replied to questions concerning this statue we argue that it, and similar statues, may be considered as products of intersemiotic translation, but only if we dispense with any requirements of “equivalence” between source and target, since statues are necessarily semiotically highly reduced. While the source narratives constitute cases of primary narrativity, with narrations providing the audiences with stories, statues may partake only of secondary narrativity, where a prior story is needed for the statue to be understood as narration. In our study, this was reflected by correlations between reported prior knowledge and narrative (and possibly even non-narrative) interpretations of Den lille Havfrue. Finally, we relate the discussion to present-day cultural and political “settings”, where many statues, including Den lille Havfrue, have become part of a global anti-racism narrative.

The idea that translation involves revealing and discovery of information from the source has been discussed in a few fields of study, especially creative translation and intersemiotic translation. These operations are fundamentally dependent on iconic properties. An operational criterion detrivializes the common description of the icon as a sign of similarity to define more precisely iconic processes as a sign through which it is possible to discover or reveal new information about its object. This idea becomes particularly interesting when we think about multiple translations of the same source, each revealing such distinct traits that some may consider as opposing one another. As an example to be discussed in our case study, we have selected Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, both of which have been widely translated. Until now there has been no systematic analysis in the field of intersemiotic translation studies of the relationship between one source and multiple targets. We compare two intersemiotic translations of the Alice novels: a 1980 TV episode from The Muppet Show by Jim Henson and the 1988 feature film Něco z Alenky by Jan Švankmajer, both displaying distinct characteristics of their own and revealing different information about the works of Carroll.

Saeta (Spanish: ‘arrow’) is nowadays identified as a religious modality of flamenco singing, performed during Holy Week celebrations. The textual fabric of a saeta comprises both melody, manner of singing, and verbal texts, as well as the inherent spatiality of a communicative act. Due to the multifaceted nature of this cultural phenomenon, the semiotic perspective is optimal to capture “a psychosocial connection” through investigated signage. In particular, the analysis will draw on Juri Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere, focusing on its fraction relating to religious experience, namely, the sacrosphere. The results point to transactional tectonics and posit an analytical entity of a vacuous interlocutor as a hieratic proxy, having the status of being in a floating structural position within the posited level of what we shall call here [saeta]2.

The following is a brief synopsis of the 2021 summer Semiosalong event titled “Funktionskreis and the biosemiotic signifieds”, held at the Karl Ernst von Baer House, Tartu, Estonia, with presentations by the authors of this review. The included talks revolve around the idea of a ‘second major turn in biosemiotics’ following the more ‘Peircean inspired biology’ turn of the last few decades of the 20th century, and reconciling its findings with other theoretical foundations of general semiotics, such as structural semiology. The aesthetic and textual concerns of the latter invite commentary from the biosemiotic perspective.

The Cours de linguistique generale (1916), which became the master text for structuralist linguistics and semiotics, is characterized by a series of dichotomies. Some of them, e.g. langue and parole, signified and signifier, arbitrary and motivated, are very well known, others less so. This paper looks at Saussure’s semiotics in terms of these dichotomies, and considers how later critiques, such as Voloshinov’s (1929), and reformulations, particularly Hjelmslev’s (1935, 1942) and the concept of enunciation which emerged conjointly in the work of Jakobson, Lacan, Dubois, Benveniste and others, were shaped as responses to the Saussurean dichotomies. Also examined in terms of its contrast with Saussure is Bally’s stylistics. The aim is a fuller understanding of the shapes taken by structuralist semiotics, in view of the heritage on which they were based and the broader intellectual climate, including phenomenology and Marxism, in which they developed.

Saussure’s proposals on the sign, formulated more than a century ago in 1916, continue to exert an undisputed authority on linguistics and social sciences. In semiotics, the dyadic model of the sign is continuously used, even in the context of reflections on non-linguistic objects. The tendency in semiotics has been to adopt the Saussurean theory of the sign and enhance it with Hjelmslev’s findings, which has led to Hjelmslev becoming as significant as Saussure in the field of semiotics. In particular, it is to Hjelmslev that we owe the notions of denotation and connotation, which the present article aims at clarifying. Indeed, a misunderstanding still exists regarding the sense of these two concepts, that is to say, some forms of denotation are often – and wrongly – considered as connotations. Hence, this paper deals with Saussure’s legacy; his legacy in Hjelmslev, as well as Barthes, since I shall refer to the propositions formulated by the latter in his Mythologies (1957) to clarify the distinction between denotation and connotation.

This paper aims to show the role played by the relations of comparison and associativity, as they are introduced in Saussure’s Cours de linguistique generale, in the theories of Luis J. Prieto. This is done, first, on the basis of a historiographical approach, and second, on the basis of an exegetical approach to Prieto’s works. Thus, the paper first presents and analyses three programmes, corresponding to three courses Prieto gave at the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba during the early 1950s. The analysis of these programmes will show the centrality of Saussure’s Cours in Prieto’s linguistic theorizing. After this, an attempt will be made to show the continuity between the theoretical tenets presupposed by the courses’ programmes and the main proposal advanced in Prieto’s article “Classe et concept. Sur la pertinence et sur les rapports saussuriens ‘de comparaison’ et ‘d’echange’”. By constructing this continuity we attempt to show: (1) the constant influence the Cours exerted upon Prieto’s thinking throughout his whole career, and (2) that such influence is manifested in the fact that Prieto did not generalize linguistic principles as such, but rather posited that linguistic principles were instances of more general semiotic ones.

Saussure’s refusal to adopt a biological perspective in linguistics and to consider the problem of the origin of language does not imply a struggle against the natural and biological aspects of language. Rather, it derives from the awareness that it is impossible to look at language “from the outside” if one wants (as Saussure considers obligatory for the linguist) to drop into the perspective of the speaking subjects. This tendency to consider the nature of language “from within” has a strong philosophical importance.

This article focuses on an epistemological analysis, Bachelardian and Saussurean, of the problematics of biosemiotics. This discipline is first characterized in its general features, and in contrast with biolinguistics – a characterization that allows us to see its foundation on the traditional definition of the sign. Then, the Saussurean break with this traditional definition is explained, and with it the theorization which is constitutive of the Saussurean concept of language (la langue), explaining the given: the idioms. Biosemiotics appears in this “recurrent light” as a scientific ideology in the sense of Georges Canguilhem. It is a counterpart of structuralism, another scientific ideology, which emphasized the notion of structure, whereas this time it is the sound/sense relationship that is at the heart of the elaboration. Its commonality of problematics with and its singularity in relation to biolinguistics appear at the same time: if biolinguistics and biosemiotics both ignore the heterogeneity and the discontinuity constitutive of language, the reductionism of biosemiotics takes the form of a dissolution instead of the organicism underlying biolinguistics.

Didactics and semiotics are two fields that have been interconnected for a long time. Russian language teaching in France in the 20th century, especially in its first half, had several interesting didactic features closely related to the understanding of Ferdinand de Saussure’s theoretical conceptions. Through the works of influential Slavist professor Paul Boyer (1864–1949), some of Ferdinand de Saussure’s ideas became reflected in French didactics in a particular way, providing the basis for a new method of teaching Russian as a foreign language. The article offers an analysis of the textbook Manuel pour l’etude de la langue russe by Boyer and Nicolas Speransky, as well as of the teaching method “language-in-itself ”, with the objective to identify the references to the Course in General Linguistics and to consider their reflection in didactics.

This paper strives to pursue two goals at the same time: how can one get to know in depth the intellectual life of the USSR in the 1930s–1950s; and, what can the virulent anti-Saussurean criticism in Russia at that time tell us about the specificity of the Marxist-Leninist theory of signs? We propose the following angle of attack: the recurring theme of this criticism, namely that Saussure’s Cours presents a “theory of hieroglyphics”, therefore a type of “bourgeois idealist” theory that Lenin assailed in his 1909 book Materialism and Empiriocriticism about Ernst Mach. Yet thinking about hieroglyphics is based on much older controversies, dating back to the 17th century and concerning the deciphering of Egyptian writing. The issue which arises here is semiotic in nature: it is the scalar opposition between transparency and opacity of the sign that is at stake. Does the sign hide or reveal? The Soviet discourse on language and signs in the 1930s–1950s seems to be based on an interrogation of the sign/referent, language/thought, form/content relationship. A part of the history of semiotics can thus be discovered from the critique of the “hieroglyphic theory”, a little-known episode in a debate on the interpretation of Saussurism.

During the linguistic discussion organized in the Soviet newspaper Pravda in 1950, Ferdinand de Saussure was mentioned only a few times, but the corresponding references are important from the point of view of both the opinions about Saussure that were prevalent in Soviet linguistics before the discussion, and in light of its evolution afterwards. In 1950, both a supporter and an opponent of Marrist linguistics, Ivan Meschaninov and Arnold Chikobava respectively, unconditionally agreed on at least one thing: namely, that the theories of Saussure were, from their point(s) of view, unacceptable for “progressive” Soviet linguistics. This criticism of Saussure shows the significant shift made by Soviet humanities in the middle of the last century over the course of just a few years: in the late 1950s, it was the “revision” of the main theses of the criticism of Saussure that made possible the (relative) triumph of structuralism, which finally took place in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

Tracing the emergence of biosemiotics, attention can be drawn to the very early usage of the term ‘biosemiotics’ (Biosemiotik) in the writings of Austrian chemist Vincenz Kletzinsky (1826–1882) that dates back to the 1850s. In the same decade, Kletzinsky also proved to be among the first to use the terms ‘biochemistry’ and ‘biophysics’.