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From Theory to Analysis: Forethoughts on Cultural Semiotics

in Versus n. 114, From Analysis to Theory: Afterthoughts on the Semiotics of Culture, pp.23-38

Abstract

The article interprets the sociocultural background of the current trend of cultural semiotics in continental Europe, formulates some hypotheses about the ‘crisis of structuralism’, and sketches four scenarios for the future evolution of ‘the discipline of signs’: first, the option for hardwiring it with exclusive reference to biology and especially neurophysiology; second, the choice of turning it into semiotics of cultures (plural); third, the possibility of transforming it into semiotics of culture (singular); and fourth, the option for cultural semiotics. Advantages and shortcomings of the three first scenarios are generally reviewed, and as a result the fourth one (cultural semiotics) is presented as the most viable one, to be developed through the methodological topology of a reversed pyramid, that is, combining Greimas’s generative path with Lotman’s cultural typology. The article concludes by an analytical case study: the management of religious diversity in multi-confessional urban contexts.