Semiotic Approaches to Cultural Interactions

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Semiotic Matters (Maria-Ionela Neagu and Maria-Crina Herțeg)
• The structure of the volume
• Bibliography
• PART I Semiotic Approaches to (Narrative) Identity
• Chapter 1. Narrative and Visual Digressions in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Alina-Elena Roșca
• Bibliography
• Chapter 2. The Image of Legacy Hunters in the Works of Petronius and Martial (Cristina Iridon)
• 1. The Roman will
• 2. Legacy hunting, a social phenomenon
• 3. Legacy hunting a literary topos
• 4. Types of inheritance
• 5. Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Chapter 3. (Un)Mirroring the Self in Diary Writing (Lucia Ispas)
• 1. Demons, myths and complexes
• 2. The beguiling mirror
• 3. I am another
• 4. Narcissus
• 5. The Illusion of the Self
• Bibliography
• Webography
• Chapter 4. Border-crossing Refugee Identities and Makeshift Homes in Malala Yousafzai’s We Are Displaced, Ben Rawlence’s City of Thorns and Defoe’s The Review (Ana Maria Tolomei)
• 1. Introduction – Identity production and preservation
• 2. Multilayered identities and individual / collective trauma memories
• 3. Inside / outside city configuration, exchange and creativity
• 4. Multimodality in refugee crisis
• Bibliography
• Sources
• PART II Semiotic Construction of Reality via Language
• Chapter 5. Semiotic Approaches to English Language Teaching (Jana Bérešová)
• 1. Theoretical framework to semiotics and its impact on language teaching
• 2. Modern trends in language education
• 3. Practical applications of semiotic approaches in modern English language teaching (ELT)
• 4. Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Chapter 6. The Idiomaticity of English and Romanian Headlines. A Corpus-Based Approach (Maria-Crina Herțeg)
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Literature review
• 3. Interpretation of the results
• 4. Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 7. Le communicateur contemporain : art et pouvoir de la persuasion (Diana Rînciog)
• 1. Les composantes du discours de succès
• 2. Donald Tusk, entre empathie, simplicité et naturel du message
• 3. Le ton mobilisateur du discours d’Emmanuel Macron
• 4. Expressivité, énergie et personnification dans les discours de Volodimir Zelenski, Joe Biden, Donald Trump et Kamala Harris
• 5. Conclusions finales
• Bibliographie
• PART III Film Semiotics
• Chapter 8. La littérature et le film (Gabriela Duda)
• 1. Introduction. Le statut de la littérature à l’époque d’une culture de l’image
• 2. Création et intertextualité dans l’adaptation cinématographique d’un texte littéraire. Exemples illustratifs
• 3. Quelques repères théoriques concernant les différences entre le texte (littéraire) et l’image (filmique) et leur fondement commun : la narrativité
• 4. Un cas exemplaire d’adaptation cinématographique : de la nouvelle Der Tod in Venedig (Thomas Mann) au film Morte a Venezia (Luchino Visconti)
• 5. Conclusions partielles
• Bibliographie
• Chapter 9. Lights, Camera, Metonymy! How a figurative mechanism transformed the art of sci-fi cinema (Ilhana Nowak)
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Theoretical overview: links between figurativity, cinematography and multimodality
• 3. Science fiction cinema: corpus and approach
• 3.1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• 3.2. Interstellar (2014)
• 3.3. Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
• 4. Beyond 2049: concluding remarks
• Bibliography
• PART IV Visual Semiotics in Advertising
• Chapter 10. Visual Design of Baby Formula Packaging: Critical Discourse Analysis (Jelena Josijević and Jelena Danilović Jeremić)
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Theoretical framework
• 3. Data and methodology
• 4. Results and discussion
• 4.1. Descriptive and interpretative level
• 4.2. Explanatory analysis
• 5. Concluding remarks
• Sources
• Bibliography
• Chapter 11. ‘Nature Has Everything’: A Multimodal Analysis of Ethical Consumerism Discourse on Instagram Advertising: The Case of Krijen (Cemre Çiçek-Tümer and Hale Işık-Güler)
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Data and methodology
• 3. Findings and discussion
• Construction of Ethical Consumerism Discourse Through Promoting a Product
• Construction of Ethical Consumerism Discourse Through Creating Awareness
• Construction of Ethical Consumerism Discourse Through Referring to Important Days
• Construction of Ethical Consumerism Discourse Through Providing Information About How to Use the Products
• Construction of Ethical Consumerism Discourse Through Making Announcements
• Construction of Ethical Consumerism Discourse Through Special Deals
• 4. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Chapter 12. Female Objectification and Sexism in the Twentieth Century Advertising (Maria-Ionela Neagu and Carmen-Gabriela Iordache)
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Theoretical framework
• 2.1. Advertising: Discourse and culture
• 2.2. The Self and the Other
• 3. Research methodology
• 4. Female objectification and sexism in the twentieth century advertising
• 4.1. Suffragette Series No° 7 and No° 11 (1909)
• 4.2. The Christy Girl (1917 & 1944)
• 4.3. Nunn Bush (1966) & Weyenberg Shoes (1974)
• 5. Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Webography
• Notes on Contributors

Maria-Ionela Neagu and Maria-Crina Herțeg (eds.)

Semiotic Approaches to
Cultural Interactions

Images and Texts

Berlin · Bruxelles · Chennai · Lausanne · New York · Oxford

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Neagu, Maria-Ionela editor | Herțeg, Maria-Crina editor

Title: Semiotic approaches to cultural interactions : images and texts / edited by Maria-Ionela Neagu and Maria-Crina Herțeg.

Description: New York : Peter Lang, 2025. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025010901 (print) | LCCN 2025010902 (ebook) | ISBN 9783631932384 hardcover | ISBN 9783631938393 ebook | ISBN 9783631938409 epub

Subjects: LCSH: Semiotics--Social aspects | Culture | LCGFT: Essays

Classification: LCC P99.4.S62 S45 2025 (print) | LCC P99.4.S62 (ebook) | DDC 302.2--dc23/eng/20250519

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025010901

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025010902

This volume was supported by research funding from Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti, Romania.

ISBN 978-3-631-93238-4 (Print)

ISBN 978-3-631-93839-3 (E-PDF)

ISBN 978-3-631-93840-9 (E-PUB)

DOI 10.3726/b22927

© 2025 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne (Switzerland)

Published by Peter Lang GmbH, Berlin (Germany)

info@peterlang.com

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilization outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

www.peterlang.com

Contents

Introduction: Semiotic Matters

Maria-Ionela Neagu and Maria-Crina Herțeg

PART I Semiotic Approaches to (Narrative) Identity

Chapter 1. Narrative and Visual Digressions in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Alina-Elena Roșca

Chapter 2. The Image of Legacy Hunters in the Works of Petronius and Martial

Cristina Iridon

Chapter 3. (Un)Mirroring the Self in Diary Writing

Lucia Ispas

Chapter 4. Border-crossing Refugee Identities and Makeshift Homes in Malala Yousafzai’s We Are Displaced, Ben Rawlence’s City of Thorns and Defoe’s The Review

Ana Maria Tolomei

PART II Semiotic Construction of Reality via Language

Chapter 5. Semiotic Approaches to English Language Teaching

Jana Bérešová

Chapter 6. The Idiomaticity of English and Romanian Headlines. A Corpus-Based Approach

Maria-Crina Herțeg

Chapter 7. Le communicateur contemporain : art et pouvoir de la persuasion

Diana Rînciog

PART III Film Semiotics

Chapter 8. La littérature et le film

Gabriela Duda

Chapter 9. Lights, Camera, Metonymy! How a figurative mechanism transformed the art of sci-fi cinema

Ilhana Nowak

PART IV Visual Semiotics in Advertising

Chapter 10. Visual Design of Baby Formula Packaging: Critical Discourse Analysis

Jelena Josijević and Jelena Danilović Jeremić

Chapter 11. ‘Nature Has Everything’: A Multimodal Analysis of Ethical Consumerism Discourse on Instagram Advertising: The Case of Krijen

Cemre Çiçek-Tümer and Hale Işık-Güler

Chapter 12. Female Objectification and Sexism in the Twentieth Century Advertising

Maria-Ionela Neagu and Carmen-Gabriela Iordache

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Semiotic Matters

Maria-Ionela Neagu*/Maria-Crina Herțeg**

*Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiești/
**1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia

In recent years, scholars and theoreticians have cast a critical eye on issues of multifaceted encounters and exchanges of people, objects and ideas across time and place. An aesthetics of mobility and identity shaping has started to acquire solid foundation and to situate itself behind the most productive investigations in literary and linguistic studies. Such an aesthetics impels semiotic techniques that most accurately depict the act of movement across cultures and boundaries, thereby facilitating a process of negotiation and (re)definition of concepts and issues.

From Peirce (1931–1936), to Johnson (1987), Sonesson (2006), and Zlatev (2009), core assumptions regarding meaning making pinpoint to the concurrent relationships inside the semiotic triad word-concept-meaning. What distinguishes them is, on the one hand, the conceptual understanding of these (sign) notions, and, on the other hand, the cognitive processes that are activated by the recipient once confronted with the sign in order to gain knowledge of the world.

Let’s consider the following real-life situations:

‘What do you mean by tree?’ asked the child. ‘T-R-E-E. Do you get that?’ ‘As a matter of fact, no, I don’t’. ‘Then, look around you! That’s a tree and those are trees as well. Can you see them?’ ‘Yes, I can’.

‘What do you mean by tree?’ asked the child. ‘Trees are tall plants with strong trunks rooted in the ground and long branches like arms rising to the sun. Can you imagine them?’ ‘No, I can’t’. ‘Here, let’s get closer… Can you feel the trunk of this tree?’ ‘Yes, I can’ said the child after his mother helped him touch the tree.

These two short mother-child conversations underscore the major role of ‘experiencing the sign’, proving that UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003, 103–104) and SEEING IS TOUCHING (Kövecses 2010, 70–71) are not just some conceptual metaphors compiled by linguists, but mere reality. Being unable to see obstructs human comprehension of any sign or the grasp of any form of conceptual representation unless proper bodily experience is involved in order to enhance the indexical dimension. Reason cannot help the visually impaired child to grasp reality unless he feels it so as to consciously imagine what it is like. It is useless to mention that despite mother’s quick attempt to make her child understand, her spelling of the word ‘tree’ does not help the first child either. It is his ability to see that makes the difference, as it leads to faster and better understanding of the concept and its implicit association with the sign. Therefore, comprehension is context-dependent, the (human) subjects representing an important component part. As Zlatev (2009, 186) posits: ‘the capacity to acquire and use a public language […] is due to a complex process of biological-cultural co-evolution, resulting in qualitatively different cognitive capacities and cultural tools in all (non-severely impaired) members of our species’.

Departing from the basic semiotic triadic models, the contributions in this volume highlight the social function of language and image, addressing the way in which the sender of a message, be that a novelist, an advertiser, a teacher, or a politician, selects a certain text-type and additional (audio)visual means in order to negotiate the meaning and achieve the ultimate goal of persuading the audience. In line with Baker (2012), we claim that the empirical analysis conducted in each of the case studies under focus gains depth as a result of the corpus investigation which broadens the research regardless of the approached genres. Thus, the contributors are able to outline the formation and production of narrative and social/public identities in a wider range of popular culture categories, thereby significantly contributing to the understanding of identity as ‘multiplicity’ (Deleuze 1968/1994), i.e. as a state of ongoing becoming, as ‘a process in which social actors co(develop), and (co)change in their social-time-place’ (Norris 2011, 34). In a similar vein, van Leeuwen (2022) enlarges upon the multimodal communication of both corporate and individual identity. The outlined methods and strategies are genuinely illustrated with a view to demonstrating the evolution and impact of identity design in contemporary culture. Drawing on such insightful work, our volume attempts to deploy the necessary semiotic resources and multimodal tools to substantiate the argumentative dimension of textual and visual production in shaping (narrative and social/public) identities, and thus, to intensify, enrich and advance the social semiotic studies of identity.

Multimodal meaning construction represents an important notion which has been researched extensively as part of the field of semiotics, engendering a rich profusion of studies that contributed to the development of various theoretical and analytical approaches (Barthes 1977, Kress and van Leeuwen 1996/2006, Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009, Kress 2010, Drăgan 2021, van Leeuwen 2022, Neagu and Costea 2022, Machin and Mayr 2023, Rocca et al. 2024). Intercultural exchanges have defined and shaped the cultural context of the world in a continuous desire to expand the spectrum of manifestations and to approach various subcultures and transcultures as primary art forms. Deep-seated and commonplace notions have been challenged and debated in a new territory where deconstruction leads people to experience new cultures or communities and become more receptive to the existence of different values and practices. Therefore, ‘meaning resides in the orchestration of the modes by the producer and the recipient’s ability to decode them all – narrative voices, images, sounds, music, symbols, actions, body language, even evocative silence act jointly to shape the meaning’ (Neagu 2022, 7).

This context, where crossing borders and ideologies inspires a strong exposure to different ways of thinking and systems of values and norms, requires the rewriting and re-creation of the cultural heritage that would generate a new type of awareness in which the overcoming of stereotyped beliefs, traces, and images finds stability (Said 1979). Thus, visual representations and textual/discursive patterns of knowledge are encouraged to resist opposition or oppression. Kjeldsen (2013, 2015) enlarges upon the potential of various forms of imagery to contribute to the argumentative salience of the concurrent text. While enhancing or even complementing and extending the written or spoken discourse, visual productions encompass both ideological and narrative coherence.