Biosemiotic Approaches in Cultural Studies: General and Specific

Abstract

The article explicates new conceptual approaches to the study of culture, language, semantic, and communicative processes, focusing on the importance of the role of the natural environment and various living systems in cultural semiosis. The author substantiates the relevance of the main biosemiotic approaches in the study of sign systems of culture and the problems of semiosis, and also determines their specificity, main problems and prospects for use. The author explicates the biological roots of sign formation and meaning, establishes the main mechanisms for their formation, draws attention to similarities, rather than differences, in the manifestations of culture and the natural world, reveals the local contexts of the functioning of the process of semiosis, which are related to the interests of living organisms, their interactions with the environment. The article considers the possibility of using biosemiotics as an interdisciplinary basis that unites the natural and human sciences in the field of studying semiotic processes, identifies the main obstacles to the development of this direction. The perspective of the research proposed in the article allows us to talk about new prospects for the use of biosemiotic approaches in the study of culture and society, taking into account the influence of the natural environment and living systems on the process of sign formation. It also makes it possible to establish the integrative and explanatory functions of biosemiotic positions associated with the unification of the biological and sociocultural aspects of semiosis. The results of the study may be important for the development of modern cognitive sciences and non-classical epistemology, focused on the study of various forms of cognition, for the search for ecological methods and approaches to the study of sign systems of culture, for the creation of new hybrid methods and models for the study of semiotic systems, for the solution of a number of epistemological and metaphysical issues that require philosophical reflection.