Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Biosemiotics and Evolution pp 65–85Cite as

A Proposal for a Biosemiotic Approach to Digitalization: Literacy as Modeling Competence

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Evolution Research ((IDER,volume 6))

Abstract

The advantages of a biosemiotic approach to the social effects of digitalization are explicated. Biosemiotics is a semiotic modeling theory that is inherent to a phenomenology of the body. Even though it offers an encompassing and comprehensive account of meaning as modeling, it has only recently been employed in analyzing cultural and social matters, which are the traditional foci of semiotic theories that tended to overlook the role of the body and its relation to the environment in meaning-making. Here, it is argued that biosemiotics offers a theoretical framework that captures the multimodal and fast communication dynamics of digital societies as affordances of the human body. As such, the chapter explores a biosemiotic perspective on sustainable development as fostered by digitalization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    As consensually accepted in semiotics, I take the meaning to be the product of interpretation. As interpretation continuously unfolds throughout an organism’s life, the meaning is never a complete and finalized product.

References

  • Anderson, B ([2006] 1983) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso, London, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Barthes, R (1991 [1957]) Mythologies. Trans. Cape, Jonathan. The Noonday Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Boehm G, Mitchell WJT (2009) Pictorial versus iconic turn: two letters. Culture, Theory and Critique 50(2–3):103–121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyer D (2008) Thinking through the anthropology of experts. Anthropology in Action 15(2):38–46

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandt PA (2011) What is cognitive semiotics? A new paradigm in the study of meaning. Signata: Annales des sémiotique/Annals of Semiotics 2:49–60

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bringhurst R (2004 [1992]) The elements of typographic style. Version 3.0. Hartley & Marks, Vancouver

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell C (2017) Exploring the textual woods: Umberto Eco’s growing concept of text. In: Torkild T, Bent S (eds) Umberto Eco in his own words. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, pp 134–142

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell C, Olteanu A, Kalevi K (2019) Learning and knowing as semiosis: extending the cultural apparatus of semiotics. Sign Systems Studies 47(3/4):325–381

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciula A, Eide Ø (2017) Modelling in digital humanities: signs in context. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 32(1):i33–i46

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciula A, Marras C (2016) Circling around text and language: towards “pragmatic modelling”. Digital humanities. DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 10(3):17–29

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciula A, Marras C (2019) Exploring a semiotic conceptualisation of modelling in digital humanities practices. In: Olteanu A, Stables A, Borţun D (eds) Meanings & co.: the Interdisciplinarity of communication, semiotics and multimodality. Springer, Cham, pp 33–52

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Cobley P (2010) The cultural implications of biosemiotics. Biosemiotics 3(2):225–244

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cobley, P ([2014] 2001). Narrative, Second Edition. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Cobley P (2016) Cultural implications of biosemiotics. Springer, Dordrecht

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cobley P (2017) What the humanities are for – a semiotic perspective. In: Kristian B, Cobley P (eds) Semiotics and its masters. de Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, pp 3–23

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Cobley P, Stjernfelt F (2015) Scaffolding development and the human condition. Biosemiotics 8(2):291–304

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Danesi M (2002) Understanding media semiotics. Arnold, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Descartes R (2008 [1643]) Meditations on first philosophy with selections from objections and replies. Oxford University Press, Trans. Michael Moriarty. Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco U (1976) A theory of semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Eco U (1979) The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco U (1999 [1997]) Kant and the platypus: essays on language and cognition. A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc, San Diego

    Google Scholar 

  • Elleström L (2013) Spatiotemporal aspects of iconicity. In: Elleström L, Fischer O, Christina L (eds) Iconic investigations. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 95–117

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Elleström L (2014) Media transformation: the transfer of media characteristics among media. Palgrave Macmillan, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Elleström L (2018) A medium-centered model of communication. Semiotica 224:269–293

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elleström L (2019) Modelling human communication: Mediality and semiotics. In: Olteanu A, Stables A, Borţun D (eds) Meanings & co.: the Interdisciplinarity of communication, semiotics and multimodality. Springer, Cham, pp 7–32

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Eriksen J-M, Stjernfelt F (2012) The democratic contradictions of multiculturalism. Telos, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Faraj S, Azad B (2012) The materiality of technology: an affordance perspective. In: Leonardi PM, Nardi B, Kallinikos J (eds) Materiality and organizing: social interaction in a technological world. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Fiske, J (1990 [1982]). Introduction to communication studies. Second Edition. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson JJ (1979) The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Gould SJ, Vrba ES (1982) Exaptation – a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology 8(1):4–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halliday MAK (1978) Language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. Arnold, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Halliday MAK, Webster JJ (eds) (2009) Continuum companion to systemic functional linguistics. Continuum, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartley J (2015) Urban semiosis: creative industries and the clash of systems. Int J Cult Stud 18(1):79–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmeyer J (2007) Semiotic scaffolding of living systems. In: Barbieri M (ed) Introduction to biosemiotics: the new biological synthesis. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 49–166

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmeyer J (2008) The semiotic body. Biosemiotics 1(2):169–190

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmeyer J, Stjernfelt F (2016) The great chain of semiosis. Investigating the steps in the evolution of semiotic competence. Biosemiotics 9(2):7–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins J (2020) The concept of affordances in digital media. In: Friese H, Nolden M, Rebane G, Schrieter M (eds) Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten. Springer, Wiesbaden, pp 47–54

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Ihde D (1990) Technology and the lifeworld: from garden to earth. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

    Google Scholar 

  • Jay P (2014) The humanities “crisis” and the future of literary studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jesper H (2018) Knowledge is never just there. Biosemiotics 11(1):1–5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-018-9320-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kralemann B, Lattmann C (2013) Models as icons: modelling models in the semiotic framework of Peirce’s theory of signs. Synthese 190:3397–3420

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kress G (2010) Multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Kress G, Selander S (2012) Multimodal design, learning and cultures of recognition. Interned and Higher Education 15(4):265–268

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kress G, van Leeuwen T (2001) Multimodal discourse: the modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. Arnold, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Kull K (2003) Ladder, tree, web: the ages of biological understanding. Sign Systems Studies 31(2):589–603

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lacković N (2020a) Inquiry graphics in higher education: new approaches to knowledge, learning and methods with images. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lacković N (2020b) Thinking with digital images in the post-truth era: a method in critical media literacy. Postdigital sciences and education 2:442–462

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lacković N, Olteanu A (2020) Rethinking educational theory and practice in times of visual media: learning as image-concept integration. Educ Philos Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1799783

  • Lähteenmäki M (2010) Heteroglossia and voice: conceptualizing linguistic diversity from a Bakhtinian perspective. In: Lähteenmäki M, Vanhala-Aniszewski M (eds) Language ideologies in transition: multilingualism in Russia and Finland. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp 17–34

    Google Scholar 

  • Lähteenmäki M, Varis P, Leppänen S (2011) Editorial: the shifting paradigm: towards a re-conceptualisation of multilingualism. Apples – Journal of Applied Linguistics 5(1):1–11

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff G, Johnson M (1980) Metaphors we live by. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff G, Johnson M (1999) Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff G (1987) Women, fire, and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Locke J (1836 [1690]) An essay concerning human understanding. T. Tegg and Son, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Lotman Y (1990) Universe of the mind: a semiotic theory of culture. Tauris, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Machin D (2013) Introduction: what is multimodal critical discourse studies? Crit Discourse Stud 10(4):347–355

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Majchrzak A, Faraj S, Kane GC, Azad B (2013) The contradictory influence of social media affordances on online communal knowledge sharing. J Comput-Mediat Commun 19:38–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maran T (2014) Biosemiotic criticism: modelling the environment in literature. Green Letters 18(3):297–311

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maran T, Kull K (2014) Ecosemiotics: Main principles and current developments. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 96(1):41–50

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martinelli D (2016) Arts and humanities in Progress: a manifesto of Numanities. Springer, Cham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Martinet A (1962) A functional view of language. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Marwick AE, boyd d. (2010) I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media Soc 13(1):114–133

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCarty W (2005) Humanities computing. Palgrave Macmillan, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McLuhan M (1962) The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of the typographic man. University of Toronto Press, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • McLuhan M (1964) Understanding media. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London

    Google Scholar 

  • McLuhan M (1997) In: McLuhan E, Zingrone F (eds) Essential McLuhan. Routledge, London

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Mills KA (2016) Literacy theories of the digital age: social, critical, multimodal, spatial material and sensory lenses. Multilingual Matters, Bristol

    Google Scholar 

  • Moxey K (2008) Visual studies and the iconic turn. J Vis Cult 7(2):131–146

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nöth W (2001) Ecosemiotics and the semiotics of nature. Sign Syst Stud 29(1):71–81. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2001.29.1.06

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum MC (2010) Not for profit – why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Olteanu A (2019) Multiculturalism as multimodal communication: a semiotic perspective. Springer, Cham

    Google Scholar 

  • Olteanu A, Stables A (2018) Learning and adaptation from a semiotic perspective. Sign Systems Studies 46(4):409–434

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pagni E (2016) Why explicit semiotic grounding is essential to biology as science? The point of view in biosemiotics. HumanaMente Journal of Philosophical Studies 9(31):57–72

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, CS (1931–1935, 1958) The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and A. W. Burks. Belknap, Cambridge. [In-text references are to CP, followed by paragraph number]

    Google Scholar 

  • Pérez-González L (2014) Multimodality in translation and interpreting studies: theoretical and methodological perspectives. In: Bermann S, Porter C (eds) A companion to translation studies. Wiley Blackwell, Oxford, pp 119–131

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rifkin J (2011) The third industrial revolution: how lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world. Palgrave Macmillan, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Roli A, Kauffman SA (2020) Emergence of organisms. Entropy 22(10):1163. https://doi.org/10.3390/e22101163

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Rorty RM (ed) (1967) The linguistic turn: essays in philosophical method with two retrospective essays. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Roth CE (1992) Environmental literacy: its roots, evolution, and directions in the 1990s. ERIC, Columbus, OH

    Google Scholar 

  • Said EW (1994 [1993]) Culture and imperialism. Vintage Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Saussure F (1959 [1916]) Course in general linguistics [Course de linguistique générale]. Eds. Bally, C., Sechehaye, A. Trans. Baskin, W. The Philosophical Library, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Scolari Carlos A (2012) Media ecology: exploring the metaphor to expand the theory. Commun Theory 22:204–225

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scolari CA, Masanet M-J, Guerrero-Pico M, Establés M-J (2018) Transmedia literacy in the new media ecology: teens’ transmedia skills and informal learning strategies. El Profesional de la Informacion 27(4):801–812

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sebeok T (1991) A sign is just a sign: advances in semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis

    Google Scholar 

  • Sebeok T (2001 [1994]) Signs: an introduction to semiotics. University of Toronto Press, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • Sowa J (2014) From existential graphs to conceptual graphs. In: Management Association, I (ed) Computational linguistics: concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 439–472

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Stables A (2001) Who drew the sky? Conflicting assumptions in environmental education. Educ Philos Theory 33(2):245–256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stables A (2012) Be(com)ing human: semiosis and the myth of reason. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Stables A, Bishop K (2001) Weak and strong conceptions of environmental literacy: implications for environmental education. Environ Educ Res 7(1):89–97

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stjernfelt F (2006) The semiotic body. A semiotic concept of embodiment? In: Nöth W (ed) Semiotic bodies, aesthetic embodiments and Cyberbodies. Kassel University Press, Kassel, pp 13–48

    Google Scholar 

  • Stjernfelt F (2007) Diagrammatology: and investigation on the borderlines of phenomenology, ontology and semiotics. Springer, Dordrecht

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Stjernfelt F (2012) Liberal multiculturalism as political philosophy: will Kymlicka. Monist 95(1):49–71

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stjernfelt F (2015) Iconicity of logic – and the roots of the “iconicity” concept. In: Hiraga MK, Herlofsky WJ, Shinohara K, Kimi A (eds) Iconicity: east meets west. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 35–53

    Google Scholar 

  • Strate L (2008) Studying media as media: McLuhan and the media ecology approach. MediaTropes 1:127–142

    Google Scholar 

  • Torresi I (1998) 2009. Advertising. In: Baker M, Saldanha G (eds) Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies, 2nd edn. Routledge, Oxford, pp 6–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Treem JW, Leonardi PM (2013) Social media use in organizations: exploring affordances of visibility, Editability, persistence, and association. Ann Int Commun Assoc 36(1):143–189

    Google Scholar 

  • van Leeuwen T (2005) Introducing social semiotics. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • von Uexküll, J (2010 [1934, 1940]) A foray into the worlds of animals and humans with a theory of meaning. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

    Google Scholar 

  • Verbeek, P-P (2005 [1992]) What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. Trans. Crease, Robert P. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA

    Google Scholar 

  • Wodak RE (2017) The “establishment”, the “Élites”, and the “people”: Who’s who? Journal of Language and Politics 16(4):551–565

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by the Estonian Research Council (grant MOBJD346 “Towards a joint environmental and digital literacy: An ecosemiotic approach to digitalization”).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Alin Olteanu

  2. Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania

    Alin Olteanu

Authors
  1. Alin Olteanu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alin Olteanu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de Fora, Brazil

    Elena Pagni

  2. Department of Psychology, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de Fora, Brazil

    Richard Theisen Simanke

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Olteanu, A. (2021). A Proposal for a Biosemiotic Approach to Digitalization: Literacy as Modeling Competence. In: Pagni, E., Theisen Simanke, R. (eds) Biosemiotics and Evolution. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85265-8_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation