A dialogical semiosis of traveling narratives for self-interpretation: Towards activity-semiotics

Abstract

AbstractThis paper proposes the idea of “activity-semiotics,” which is characterized by three modes of semiosis, namely, representation, indication, and interpretation, based on dialogical interaction. This activity-semiotics or thought-activity as metasemiosis emphasizes the power of interpretation with a processual-functional approach through a discussion of sign and meaning. In this regard, the dialogical processes involve three interpretants in each semiosis, namely, emotional interpretant, energetic interpretant, and logical interpretant, which are to be examined as to how they are connected in relation to object. My argument for dialogical semiosis is intended to reveal the teleological nature of semiosis where goal, means, and action are cooperative in semiosis in which learning, knowing, and living are engaged. This activity-semiotic model is thus characterized as anthroposemiosis, and yet it adopts not an anthropocentric but an anthropomorphic stance. For this reason, logical interpretant is critical and generates an intellectual concept incorporated with emotional and energetic interpretant. I illustrate how activity-semiotics as dialogical semiosis is operative in traveling narratives or narratives of travel, leading to self-interpretation. Thus, the action of travel in the three modes of semiosis will be represented as metaphorical, transitional, and transformational concepts, respectively, of travel as object.