Papers by Georgios Stampoulidis
Journal of Cognitive Semiotics, 2019
Cognitive linguistic and semiotic accounts of metaphor have addressed similar issues such as univ... more Cognitive linguistic and semiotic accounts of metaphor have addressed similar issues such as universality, conventionality, context-sensitivity, cross-cultural variation, creativity, and "multimodality." However, cogni-tive linguistics and semiotics have been poor bedfellows and interactions between them have often resulted in cross-talk. This paper, which focuses on metaphors in Greek street art, aims to improve this situation by using concepts and methods from cognitive semiotics, notably the conceptual-empirical loop and methodological triangulation. In line with the cognitive semiotics paradigm, we illustrate the significance of the terminological and conceptual distinction between semiotic systems (language, gesture, and depiction) and sensory modalities (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste). Thus, we restrict the term multimodality to the synergy of two or more different sensory modalities and introduce the notion of polysemiotic communication in the sense of the intertwined use of two or more semiotic systems. In our synthetic approach, we employ the Motivation and Sedimentation Model (MSM), which distinguishes between three interacting levels of meaning making: the embodied, the sedimented, and the situated. Consistent with this, we suggest a definition of metaphor, leading to the assertion that metaphor is a process of experiencing one thing in terms of another, giving rise to both tension and iconicity between the two "things" (mean-ings, experiences, concepts). By reviewing an empirical study on unisemiotic and polysemiotic metaphors in Greek street art, we show that the actual metaphorical interpretation is ultimately a matter of situated and socio-culturally-sensitive sign use and hence a dynamic and creative process in a real-life context.
SAUC - Street Art & Urban Creativity Scientific Journal , 2019
Multimodality is in fact a polysemous word, which is tightly related to the notions of modality, ... more Multimodality is in fact a polysemous word, which is tightly related to the notions of modality, and (semiotic) mode and is used in conceptually different ways across different disciplines (for a review see Adami, 2016; Devylder, 2019; Green, 2014). As cognitive semiotics (Zlatev et al., 2016) aims to integrate concepts and methods from semiotics, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, we endeavor to offer a coherent terminology, in line with the proposals of Green (2014), Stampoulidis et al. (2019) and Zlatev (2019), which distinguishes the notions of perceptual (sensory) modalities (sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste) and semiotic systems (language, depiction and gesture). For example, using this polysemiotic/multimodal distinction would allow us to describe the work of street art displayed in Figure 1 consisting of verbal text (language) and pictorial elements (depiction) as clearly a form of polysemiotic communication, instantiated in the particular socio-cultural medium of street art, whereas the street artwork displayed in Figure 2 might be considered as an example of unisemiotic communication (only the semiotic system of depiction is present). Nevertheless, both artworks may be considered monomodal since at least one perceptual modality is involved: sight. On the other hand, artworks such as these displayed in Figure 3 and Figure 4 can be both polysemiotic and unisemiotic, respectively, and (potentially) multimodal (if) they trigger multiple senses in the viewer, such as sight and touch, for example. It is important to note that the terminological distinction and conceptual dichotomy between the semiotic systems of language and depiction are not always clear-cut, especially in the case of street art (and graffiti), as has been argued in a certain literature (Bal, 1991; Neef, 2007). Therefore, we would like to stress that street art is typically a form of polysemiotic communication, and thus, we restrict the term unisemiotic either to the case of primarily depiction-dominant or primarily language-dominant graphic representations.
Visual Communication, Oct 19, 2019
Research on (verbo-)pictorial metaphors and other rhetorical figures is primarily focused on the ... more Research on (verbo-)pictorial metaphors and other rhetorical figures is primarily focused on the genre of advertising, leaving other genres underinvestigated.
In this study, the authors focus on street art, a visually perceived cross-cultural medium used to address sociopolitical issues. This genre typically combines two interacting semiotic systems – language and depiction – and is thus a form of polysemiotic communication. Their analysis is based on a corpus of 50 street artworks addressing the financial, sociopolitical and migrant/refugee crisis in the city of Athens (2015–2017). They present a data-driven procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors and other rhetorical figures in street art, informed by cognitive linguistic and semiotic models. Quantitative analyses show that their models can be reliably applied to street art and can enable them to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures within these images. At the same time, qualitative analyses show that this genre usually requires the integration of conceptual, contextual, socio-cultural and linguistic knowledge in order to achieve successful interpretation of these images. The authors discuss their findings within the theoretical framework of cognitive semiotics.
Public Journal of Semiotics (PJOS), 2019
In line with cognitive semiotics, this paper suggests a synthetic account of the important but co... more In line with cognitive semiotics, this paper suggests a synthetic account of the important but controversial notion of narrative (in street art, and more generally): one that distinguishes between three levels: (a) narration, (b) underlying story, and (c) frame-setting. The narrative potential of street art has not yet been considerably studied in order to offer insights into how underlying stories may be reconstructed from the audience and how different semiotic systems contribute to this. The analysis is mainly based on three contemporary street artworks and two political cartoons from the 1940s, involving the same frame-setting, which may be labeled as "Greece vs. Powerful Enemy." The study is built on fieldwork research that was carried out during several periods in central Athens since 2014. The qualitative analyses with the help of insights from phenomenology show that single static images do not narrate stories themselves (primary narrativity), but rather presuppose such stories, which they can prompt or trigger (secondary narrativity). Notably, the significance of sedimented socio-cultural experience, collective memory and contextual knowledge that the audience must recruit in order to reconstruct the narrative potential through the process of secondary narrativity is stressed.
Nuart Journal, 2019
This photo essay focuses on a specific kind of street art practice in Greece, namely a number of ... more This photo essay focuses on a specific kind of street art practice in Greece, namely a number of visual interventions in abandoned buildings, and especially the Xenia Hotels Project initiated by the artist Anna Dimitriou.
Proceedings of the 13th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS), 2018
This paper is part of my ongoing doctoral research centered on “Street Art and Cognitive Semiotic... more This paper is part of my ongoing doctoral research centered on “Street Art and Cognitive Semiotics” at the division of Cognitive Semiotics at Lund University. More concretely, in this article, a fresh approach, based on a constructive (verbo-) pictorial argument, is taken to attending the relationship between a cognitive semiotics approach and street art signs in a programmatic way. This study is based on fieldwork research that was carried out during several periods in central Athens between 2014 and 2017, including photo documentation and semi-structured ethnographic interviews with street artists. In the following, my intention is first to outline a cognitive semiotic conceptual toolbox for street art understanding furnished mainly by Sonesson (2008, 2013, 2014). Second, three concrete examples indicative of these attempts are examined and analyzed semiotically.
SAUC - Street Art & Urban Creativity Scientific Journal, 2018
The campus of the National Metsovian Polytechnic in central Athens has been a significant corners... more The campus of the National Metsovian Polytechnic in central Athens has been a significant cornerstone in the socio-political landscape of the city. Within the history of modern Greece, Polytechneio is regarded as a symbol of resistance against the Greek military dictatorship (junta) in 1973. In March 2015 and during times of austerity politics, the west façades of the Polytechneio were covered by a “black-and-white mural” (Tziovas 2017: 45). This paper examines how and why this black-and-white mural has been discussed often controversially from different kinds of recipients, leading to an ardent public debate within Greek society from a cross disciplinary point of view: 1) semiotics, 2) design, and 3) cultural studies. For our analysis, we use data from primary and secondary sources. Primary data sources include photographic documentation of the field. Secondary data sources include photographic material and newspaper articles circulated online, as well as, relevant academic literature. First, we examine how this mural was integrated into the constructions and intersubjective experiences of public space from
the perspective of semiotization of space. Second, we discuss the practicalities involved for the fulfilment of this mural from the perspective of design-scope. And third, we advance the discussion around the issues of cultural preservation and heritagization
of street art and graffiti. Our goal in this paper is to avoid binary interpretations, and instead, to induce in an intermediary way the significance of public dialogue, which this mural achieved to trigger.
Journal of Language Works - Sprogvidenskabeligt Studentertidsskrift (LWO), Jun 8, 2016
Athenian graffiti functions as a testament of creativity and artistry occurring during the hard t... more Athenian graffiti functions as a testament of creativity and artistry occurring during the hard times of socioeconomic and political crisis in Greece the last seven years. The impact of Greece's crisis is presented through urban art in downtown Athens. This extensive street art practice on Athenian walls as a linguistic and imagery line is approached in the present article via the semiotic and multimodal perspective, as the main symbolic and representative expression generated by the crisis, contributing to the production of visual urban culture. Fieldwork research was conducted in Athens from January to July 2015. The findings from the qualitative analysis highlight that politicized wall writings constitute a modern wall language, expressing social and political messages produced mainly via text and image, reconstructing the wall slogans and murals as the fundamental means of sociopolitical reaction.
LUP, Feb 16, 2016
This paper discusses the urban writing on Athenian walls as an imaginative medium of intercommuni... more This paper discusses the urban writing on Athenian walls as an imaginative medium of intercommunication occurring during the socioeconomic and political crisis era in Greece, over the last seven years. The street art activity on the city’s walls as a linguistic and imagery phenomenon could be approached as the main symbolic mode of public expression generated by the crisis. To investigate it fieldwork research was conducted in central Athens from January to July 2015. Three research methods were applied: participant observation into two graffiti crews, consequent photo documentation of wall writings, and eight semi-structured interviews with street artists. The research findings disclose the metamorphosis of public walls into an interactive public notebook as an attestation of the processes in the Athenian multimodal urban landscape.
Conference Presentations by Georgios Stampoulidis
ΧΙI Ιnternational Conference on Semiotics - Signs of Europe, 2019
While metaphor and narrative have often been discussed (with much controversy) but rarely togethe... more While metaphor and narrative have often been discussed (with much controversy) but rarely together (e.g. Fitzpatrick and Farquhar, 2019). As cognitive semiotics aims to integrate concepts and methods from semiotics, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, we endeavor to offer a coherent terminology, which distinguishes the notions of sensory modalities (vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste) and semiotic systems (language, depiction and gesture) (Stampoulidis et al., 2019; Zlatev, 2019). My work focuses on street art, an often visually perceived socio-cultural medium that typically incorporates two interacting semiotic systems (language and depiction), and is thus, polysemiotic (Stampoulidis et al., 2019). In this way, we refer to semiotic systems in which metaphors (and other rhetorical figures) and narratives can be expressed avoiding terminological ambiguity. In this presentation, I discuss methods and results from two recently published studies: (a) a study on street art metaphors (Stampoulidis and Bolognesi, 2019) and (b) a study on street art narratives (Stampoulidis, 2019).
This talk focuses on Greek street art, denoting an intentional, highly creative and typically pol... more This talk focuses on Greek street art, denoting an intentional, highly creative and typically polysemiotic medium of protest and resistance. In our study on street art, marking a polysemiotic/multimodal distinction would help us toward a synthetic analysis of the interaction between language and depiction, and that of language, depiction, vision, and (potentially) smelling, touching or even hearing, into a whole communicative situation (Stampoulidis et al. 2019). In this presentation, we illustrate the significance of this distinction by reviewing examples on unisemiotic and polysemiotic street art metaphors.
The 12th International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature, Lund, Sweden, May 3, 2019
Cognitive linguistic and semiotic accounts of metaphors have often discussed the complex phenomen... more Cognitive linguistic and semiotic accounts of metaphors have often discussed the complex phenomenon of metaphor in various ways, often addressing factors such as universality and conventionality, context-sensitivity, cross-cultural variation and creativity, deliberateness and "multimodality". However, in most cases, such factors are investigated in isolation (cf. Gibbs 2017). Therefore, we propose a cognitive semiotic approach that can help us to seek convergences instead of divergences among such long-standing debated issues by using a coherent and consistent terminology, informed by cognitive semiotics. Cognitive linguistic approaches to metaphor propose an understanding of metaphor as an instrument of thought, rejecting the traditional notion of metaphor as a figurative device (e.g. Grady 1997; Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) emphasizes that metaphors are more or less fixed (and static) conceptual mappings based on bodily and cultural experiences. What we argue instead is that such cognitive correspondences are not metaphors per se, but rather diagrams, serving as motivations for the use of contextually situated and culturally embedded metaphors. Taking the overall theme of the conference, iconicity, we highlight that similarity-based analogies (diagrams) between source and target are the dominant motivating factors for metaphor creation and interpretation. At the same time, the semiotic grounds of indexicality and symbolicity (based on sociohistorical awareness, background knowledge and context) are closely interacting with iconicity. This conforms with the view that metaphors are the most complex iconic signs (Peirce 1974 [1931]) especially when understood as creative, emergent, and dynamic processes, which are socio-culturally derived and contextually influenced (Kövecses 2015, Müller 2008, Sonesson 2015). Our presentation argues for a synthetic cognitive semiotic investigation of metaphors in Greek street art by bringing together complementary perspectives from semiotics and cognitive linguistics.
The Creative Power of Metaphor, Oxford, UK, Mar 29, 2019
Cognitive linguistic and semiotic theories have often discussed the complex phenomenon of “metaph... more Cognitive linguistic and semiotic theories have often discussed the complex phenomenon of “metaphor” in various ways, addressing factors such as universality and conventionality, context-sensitivity, creativity, deliberateness and “multimodality”. However, for the most part, cognitive linguistics and semiotics have been poor bedfellows and interactions between them have resulted in much cross-talk. Further, a number of crucial questions in metaphor research remain unanswered: How does universal, cultural-specific, and context-sensitive knowledge interact in metaphor use? To what extent are metaphors creative in terms of the creator’s intentionality and perceiver’s unexpectedness? How do metaphors manifest themselves within and across semiotic systems and sensory modalities?
As cognitive semiotics (e.g. Zlatev et al. 2016) aims to integrate concepts and methods from semiotics, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, we propose that it can help answer such questions. In particular, we offer a cognitive semiotic framework with (a) a coherent terminology, which distinguishes the notions of “sensory modalities” (vision, smell, touch and taste) and “semiotic systems” (language, depiction, gesture, and music), and (b) an analytical procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors in the genre of street art.
Our poster presentation will introduce and illustrate this framework with examples from Greek street art.
4th International Conference on Figurative Thought and Language (FTL4), Braga, Portugal, 2018
Research on (verbo–) pictorial metaphors is primarily focused on the genre of advertising, leavin... more Research on (verbo–) pictorial metaphors is primarily focused on the genre of advertising, leaving other genres under-investigated. In this study, we focus on street art, which includes posters, wall paintings, graffiti, murals and other urban expressions systematically used by street collectives as communication tools for addressing socio–political issues in interaction with the spatiotemporal contextual surroundings (Avramidis & Tsilimpounidi 2017; Chaffee 1993). We hereby present our systematic analysis of a corpus of 50 street artworks addressing the Greek financial and sociopolitical crisis, which outset in 2008-2009. The materials were gathered between 2015 and 2017, during an ethnographic research undertaken in Athens. From the analyses presented, we derived a model for metaphor identification and interpretation in street art, which we hereby present. The model is based on the three dimensions of meaning identified in previous research on visual metaphor (Steen 2008; Bolognesi et al., in press), which we modified and applied to the genre of street art. Our analyses show that, although our model can be applied reliably to street art, and enable the analysts to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures within these pictures, this genre usually requires several sources of conceptual and linguistic knowledge to be integrated in the analysis of the pictures, in order to achieve a successful interpretation. These include contextual information, previous sociocultural and historical knowledge, shared conventionalities, and linguistic knowledge. In this talk, we exemplify our claims, as well as our model, through several examples taken from our corpus. With this talk, we therefore offer further contribution to the questions of how street artworks can be interpreted in view of metaphoric conceptions and how these are related to the semiotic systems of language and picture taking into account their (verbo–) pictorial interaction.
The Third Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics ( IACS3), Toronto, Canada, 2018
Since the beginning of the 21 st century, art in " publicly accessible spaces " (Bengtsen, 2018: ... more Since the beginning of the 21 st century, art in " publicly accessible spaces " (Bengtsen, 2018: 125) has received significant attention within a number of academic fields, including most recently cognitive semiotics, which integrates methods, models, and theories from semiotics, cognitive science, and (cognitive) linguistics (Zlatev et al, 2016). Street art, graffiti, and urban art as expressive and worldwide phenomena are often considered to be variants of urban creativity (an umbrella term), encompassing several types of art in urban space (Bengtsen, 2018; Stampoulidis, 2016). Here, street art is understood as a visually perceived (un)sanctioned cross-cultural medium addressing socio-political issues and has been chosen due to its all-embracing nature. It typically combines two interacting semiotic systems – language and pictures, and is thus a form of polysemiotic communication (Zlatev and Devylder, forthcoming). By taking into account the interactions between those systems, the attention here, is paid on the expression of metaphorical and/or other potential figurative constructions. To do so, we need to take into account the embodied experiences on some level of universality (based on shared human nature and biology), via historical constraints on the level of shared conventionality and culture-specificity among sign users, unified on the level of contextual creativity and pragmatic communication. The figurative (metaphorical and other) interpretation of street artworks is challenged by our intersubjective lifeworld nature, historical knowledge-based expectancy and experiential ground, linguistic and context-specific information, and further genre conventions (for example, performativity and intertextuality). For this paper, we use data derived from fieldwork research undertaken in central Athens periodically between 2014 and 2017, including photographic documentation and interviews. Along these lines, a further contribution is offered to the questions of 1) how street artworks can be interpreted in the light of metaphorical conceptualizations, and 2) how these are related to the semiotic systems of language and pictures by taking into account their quite frequent interaction.
6th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies, Lund, Sweden, 2018
The campus of the National Metsovian Polytechnic in central Athens (henceforth Polytechneio), whi... more The campus of the National Metsovian Polytechnic in central Athens (henceforth Polytechneio), which was constructed in the late 19 th century, has been a significant cornerstone in the sociopolitical landscape of the city. Within the history of modern Greece, Polytechneio is regarded as a symbol of resistance against the Greek military dictatorship (junta) in 1973. The surrounding wall of Polytechneio has ever since functioned as a canvas for various kinds of political messages and artistic interventions. In March 2015 and during the times of austerity politics, the west wall of the Polytechneio was covered by a " black-and-white mural " (Tziovas 2017: 45). This paper examines if, how, and why this black-and-white mural has been discussed often controversially from different kinds of recipients, leading to an ardent public debate between local and international street art practitioners and graffiti writers, public and research authorities, communication media, and Greek public opinion. For our analysis, we use data from primary and secondary sources. Primary data sources include interviews and photographic documentation of the field. Secondary data sources include photographic material and newspaper articles circulated online. Taking into consideration the blurred delimitation between street art and graffiti, we focus on the creation and erasure of this black-and-white mural through the lens of a triadic scheme: 1) urban and spatial semiotics 2) design and 3) cultural heritage. The first layer refers to spatialization of semiosis and semiotization of space and examines if and how this mural was integrated into the constructions and experiences of public space. The plasticity of the wall content bears the potential to change the city by making space for pluralistic kinds of aesthetic, dialogic, urban, political, social, and activist encounters (Halsey & Pederick 2010). The second approach implies the need of understanding design as a predominant axis of the human activity for meaning construal and includes all the practicalities involved for the fulfilment of this mural. Thirdly, the issue of cultural preservation, when applied in this case, illustrates the tensions between the institutional frameworks of cultural heritage on one hand, and the growing heritagisation of the street artworks on the other (Merrill 2015). Our goal is to avoid binary interpretations, and instead, to induce the significance of public dialogue, which this mural achieved to trigger.
Herrenhausen Conference "Society through the Lens of the Digital", Hanover, Germany, 2017
This paper aims to discuss street art as new form of art and activism of uncomissioned and unsanc... more This paper aims to discuss street art as new form of art and activism of uncomissioned and unsanctioned artifacts including paintings, murals and various kinds of stencils, posters, and stickers applied in any public surface. As Bengtsen (2014) has argued street art is a sociocultural practice, which is performative, ephemeral, and site specific. Street art has much to tell us about the dialectics in public space, the cultural interaction, and the meaning – making of the urban verbo/visual text production depending on the urban contextualization. Relying on the researcher’s own empirical data gathered during fieldwork conducted in Athens, I discuss if and how Athenian street artists reflect upon contemporary sociopolitical issues, and if and how street art has the potential to actively transform the public space into a communicative and dynamic sociopolitical arena.
In particular, the always-imposed question is if and how street artifacts become historical objects with social and artistic expressions of cultural values and heritage (MacDowall 2006, 2008). If so, it is important a research to be pursued towards the cultural significance of street art with the help of digital georeferential applications. Towards this direction, an interdisciplinary study of street art based on GIS models is to be conducted.
One of the main objectives of my PhD project in cognitive semiotics is to build up a digital infrastructure for restoring, protecting, analyzing and visualizing street artifacts with the implementation of GIS (Geographical Information System) technique. In fact, it seems to me that a project like this is an appropriate example of how cultural archival data despite of their ephemeral nature can be explored in new ways applying digital technology in relation with the geographical coordinates.
Book Reviews by Georgios Stampoulidis
Cognitive Semiotics, 2019
Uploads
Papers by Georgios Stampoulidis
In this study, the authors focus on street art, a visually perceived cross-cultural medium used to address sociopolitical issues. This genre typically combines two interacting semiotic systems – language and depiction – and is thus a form of polysemiotic communication. Their analysis is based on a corpus of 50 street artworks addressing the financial, sociopolitical and migrant/refugee crisis in the city of Athens (2015–2017). They present a data-driven procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors and other rhetorical figures in street art, informed by cognitive linguistic and semiotic models. Quantitative analyses show that their models can be reliably applied to street art and can enable them to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures within these images. At the same time, qualitative analyses show that this genre usually requires the integration of conceptual, contextual, socio-cultural and linguistic knowledge in order to achieve successful interpretation of these images. The authors discuss their findings within the theoretical framework of cognitive semiotics.
the perspective of semiotization of space. Second, we discuss the practicalities involved for the fulfilment of this mural from the perspective of design-scope. And third, we advance the discussion around the issues of cultural preservation and heritagization
of street art and graffiti. Our goal in this paper is to avoid binary interpretations, and instead, to induce in an intermediary way the significance of public dialogue, which this mural achieved to trigger.
Conference Presentations by Georgios Stampoulidis
As cognitive semiotics (e.g. Zlatev et al. 2016) aims to integrate concepts and methods from semiotics, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, we propose that it can help answer such questions. In particular, we offer a cognitive semiotic framework with (a) a coherent terminology, which distinguishes the notions of “sensory modalities” (vision, smell, touch and taste) and “semiotic systems” (language, depiction, gesture, and music), and (b) an analytical procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors in the genre of street art.
Our poster presentation will introduce and illustrate this framework with examples from Greek street art.
In particular, the always-imposed question is if and how street artifacts become historical objects with social and artistic expressions of cultural values and heritage (MacDowall 2006, 2008). If so, it is important a research to be pursued towards the cultural significance of street art with the help of digital georeferential applications. Towards this direction, an interdisciplinary study of street art based on GIS models is to be conducted.
One of the main objectives of my PhD project in cognitive semiotics is to build up a digital infrastructure for restoring, protecting, analyzing and visualizing street artifacts with the implementation of GIS (Geographical Information System) technique. In fact, it seems to me that a project like this is an appropriate example of how cultural archival data despite of their ephemeral nature can be explored in new ways applying digital technology in relation with the geographical coordinates.
Book Reviews by Georgios Stampoulidis
In this study, the authors focus on street art, a visually perceived cross-cultural medium used to address sociopolitical issues. This genre typically combines two interacting semiotic systems – language and depiction – and is thus a form of polysemiotic communication. Their analysis is based on a corpus of 50 street artworks addressing the financial, sociopolitical and migrant/refugee crisis in the city of Athens (2015–2017). They present a data-driven procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors and other rhetorical figures in street art, informed by cognitive linguistic and semiotic models. Quantitative analyses show that their models can be reliably applied to street art and can enable them to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures within these images. At the same time, qualitative analyses show that this genre usually requires the integration of conceptual, contextual, socio-cultural and linguistic knowledge in order to achieve successful interpretation of these images. The authors discuss their findings within the theoretical framework of cognitive semiotics.
the perspective of semiotization of space. Second, we discuss the practicalities involved for the fulfilment of this mural from the perspective of design-scope. And third, we advance the discussion around the issues of cultural preservation and heritagization
of street art and graffiti. Our goal in this paper is to avoid binary interpretations, and instead, to induce in an intermediary way the significance of public dialogue, which this mural achieved to trigger.
As cognitive semiotics (e.g. Zlatev et al. 2016) aims to integrate concepts and methods from semiotics, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, we propose that it can help answer such questions. In particular, we offer a cognitive semiotic framework with (a) a coherent terminology, which distinguishes the notions of “sensory modalities” (vision, smell, touch and taste) and “semiotic systems” (language, depiction, gesture, and music), and (b) an analytical procedure for the identification and interpretation of metaphors in the genre of street art.
Our poster presentation will introduce and illustrate this framework with examples from Greek street art.
In particular, the always-imposed question is if and how street artifacts become historical objects with social and artistic expressions of cultural values and heritage (MacDowall 2006, 2008). If so, it is important a research to be pursued towards the cultural significance of street art with the help of digital georeferential applications. Towards this direction, an interdisciplinary study of street art based on GIS models is to be conducted.
One of the main objectives of my PhD project in cognitive semiotics is to build up a digital infrastructure for restoring, protecting, analyzing and visualizing street artifacts with the implementation of GIS (Geographical Information System) technique. In fact, it seems to me that a project like this is an appropriate example of how cultural archival data despite of their ephemeral nature can be explored in new ways applying digital technology in relation with the geographical coordinates.
ONLINE REGISTRATION AND A PRELIMINARY CONFERENCE PROGRAMME WILL BE AVAILABLE IN FEBRUARY 2019.
The conference is an opportunity to initiate an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas between scholars, artists, activists, planners and others who work within the diverse field of urban creativity. The conference is hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies in collaboration with the Division of Art History and Visual Studies at Lund University.
Paper 1 presents a set of qualitative and quantitative analyses of rhetorical figures such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, oxymoron and personification in street art. A novel and empirically tested data-driven procedure is introduced, one that is informed by cognitive linguistic and semiotic theory for the identification and interpretation of rhetorical figures in crisis-related street art in Athens. The analyses show that, although the methodological protocol can be applied reliably to street art, and can enable the analysts to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures, this genre often requires multiple kinds of sociocultural, contextual and linguistic knowledge to be accommodated in the analysis of the images, in order to achieve a successful and intersubjective
interpretation.
Paper 2 contributes to the study of figurativity and polysemiotic communication. It discusses the complex phenomenon of metaphor synthetically, offering an approach that may help us to go beyond and overcome challenges among debated issues in metaphor research in cognitive linguistics and semiotics by using a coherent terminology, informed by cognitive semiotics. The data derived from the empirical analysis presented in Paper 1 are used as the basis for the theoretical implications of the analysis in Paper 2, and by extension for the validity of the step-wise procedure for identification and interpretation of rhetorical figures in street art.
Paper 3 explores street artists’ experiences (on the basis of 10 audio-recorded go-along interviews) by focusing on what motivated their art-making and the verbal metaphors they used in go-along interviews where they were asked about these motivations. Methodologically it emphasizes the need for a theoretical definition of metaphor that should be clearly linked to its operationalization in alignment with the specific data. The results of the study reveal that street artists use a range of highly and moderately innovative metaphors when talking about personal experiences and motivations in relation to their art-making, with respect to situated communication.
Paper 4 extends the scope of the thesis to the narrative potential of single static images, such as street artworks. With its qualitative approach, yet drawing on a sample corpus of street artworks, Paper 4 allows us to delve into narratological discussions probing the narrative potential of street art. The findings suggest that single static images can be able to narrate and be interpreted as narrations but only if the underlying story is known in advance.
In sum, the thesis contributes new knowledge to our understanding of street art and provides a systematic and empirically grounded account of its figurative and narrative interpretation, with a number of workable ideas offered to the study of cognitive semiotics.