2022 Vol. 13 №2

The article explores the context important for the analysis of Lotman’s talk at the seminar on the problem of semiogenesis and functional specialization of cerebral hemispheres as a model of intellectual processes, which was held in Tartu. Forty years later, the author anal­yses changes in the viewpoints on the proposed model, taking into account the data of experi­mental neuroscience. The article emphasizes the fundamental value and topicality of Yuri Lotman’s ideas on the production of meaning in individual and cross-cultural space.

The article discusses a possible development of Yuri Lotman’s concept of semiosphere by supplementing it with the idea of semio-poiesis. Analysis of the processes of origination, evo­lution and functioning of the genetic code makes it possible to describe the main mechanisms of these processes. The associations of material phenomena (in this case nucleotides and amino acids) led to the establishment of semiotic links, resulting in mechanisms of information stor­age and transmission, allowing the creation of stable life forms. The increasing complexity of organization leads to the crystallization of informational and semiotic origins. Semio-poiesis, a recursive autoreference of the semiotic system, becomes a form of organization of the bio­world, where such parameters as sense and purpose become determinative. Such an under­standing of these processes makes it possible to develop Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere and, firstly, to confirm his assumptions that semiosis can be preceded only by a previous se­miotic form, and, secondly, to show the original mechanisms of semiosphere self-organization and autonomous functioning. The very dualism of the genetic code, its simultaneous biochem­ical and linguosemiotic organization, and the processes of gene expression can be compared with what Lotman considered to be the basic principle of semiosphere functioning — the in­teraction of oppositely organized heterogeneous mechanisms.

The article presents a reflection on Yuri Lotman’s idea of reorienting semiotics from the analysis of structures to the analysis of texts and their binary diagogical nature. This idea allows correlating Lotman’s approach with Bakhtin’s concept of a continuous, meaning-generating dialogue. The juxtaposition of these approaches opens up new possibilities for ex­panding the semiotic analysis of the processes of meaning formation, metaphorization, the dynamics of culture, and the correlation of social and personal experience in these dynamics. The prospects of expanding the scope of the apparatus of semiotics, such as the narrative ap­proach, deep semiotics, and analysis of the dynamics of social institutionalization of sign structures, are revealed. This, in turn, opens up new horizons for the development of the theo­ry of meaning and understanding, the convergence and juxtaposition of semiotic and herme­neutic traditions, analytical philosophy and phenomenology, abstract modeling and the role of subjectivity (self-consciousness of self). Such extensions and perspectives realize the potential of semiotics as an effective conceptual platform of interdisciplinarity and convergence of sci­entific disciplines in understanding the ongoing transformations and responsible socio-cultural engineering.

The author explores the meaning of proper names and other types of singular terms in the context of propositional attitudes, combining the problems of empty names, rigid designators and non-specific reading. An object in the attitudes can be given to the agent as such (de re), in the description (de dicto), as well as in several intermediate ways. From the analysis of the phe­nomenon of rigid designation, I move on to the theory of the object, where I consider two alterna­tives — strict, or Leibnizian, and weak. The first explains the actual non-existence by impossi­bility, the second — by occasionality. Here there are two ways of defining non-existent (fiction­al) objects — kinship and the counterpart relation, which are realized in frames that are different in their features. Nonspecific character is inherent in the kinship and counterpart relation in different ways. A special case is formed by hybrid worlds in which the real and the fictitious meet. The result of my analysis is five variants of a weakened de re reading of proper names and other singular terms in the context of attitudes. I describe their features, touching on the cogni­tive effect of narration, which operates with the appropriate attitudes.

The article investigates the problem of the universally significant meaning of communi­cative messages. This framework problem implies answering more specific questions — is there a reality (correlative to the meaning of judgments) that would guarantee the universali­ty of the meanings of linguistic expressions; is there a reality behind moralizing or judgments of taste that ensures agreement on value judgments if they become the content of communica­tion. What provides the typical identity of mental states (thoughts, perceptions, representa­tions, sensations) in different individuals, when these states are thematized in communica­tion? Is there a typical correlation behind them in reality, which ensures the identity of men­tal states? The article posits that propositional attitudes act as “carriers” or frameworks of typical communicative environments, indirect contexts in which propositional content are localized as the main — intralingual — evolutionary mechanism that stabilizes key commu­nicative meanings. Indirect contexts produced in the language or the operators “I know that...”, “I hope that...”, “I remember that...”, “I want that…”, “I imagine that...” protect sentences from negation and make it possible to reproduce universally significant meanings.

The paper describes the practice of creating poetic texts on lects that possess a problemat­ic linguistic status. The author proposes using ‘topolect’ as a universal term for such entities, which allows them to be placed in a special category of language systems that occupy an in­termediate level between the standard and the rather homogeneous territorial dialects in a kind of multilingualism that is characterized by the distribution of functions between idioms. The analysis of the poetic tradition of topolects makes it possible to reveal some general pat­terns of text functioning for the texts on de facto normalized, but not subjected to strict standardization, semi-autonomous idioms. Different modes of correlating the oral and the written in these texts come in direct connection with the practice of recitation and other forms of the auditory existence of poetry. The introduction of new empirical material contributes to the reassessment of the problem of the oral and the written, since it demonstrates the non-equivalence of the oral and the spoken, and the written and the literary. The visually percepti­ble text in its written form is informatively not equivalent to the voiced version of the same text. Building relationships between ‘visual speech’ (in the form of a poetic text) and its sounding shows the evolution of topolect writing and metalanguage reflection of its authors.

This article explores Reinhard Jirgl’s concept of literary writing, which uses linguistic and textual deconstruction, alphanumeric encoding, and intra- and intertextual strategies. Semiotic and discursive analyses allow identifying lexical, syntactic, and semantic elements of the structural and functional performativity of Jirgl’s texts. His prose exploits the enor­mous poetic potential of the alphanumeric code, the aesthetics of narrative simultaneity and hypertextuality, and the fragmentedness of the agent. The principle of aberrant text produc­tion helps the author stage the process of sense formation and brings to the fore the concept of hierarchical rule destruction, which applies to language, society, and reality. By deconstruct­ing syntax and orthography, Jirgl’s system of language and script generates new senses. It also compels the recipient to destroy customary mental matrices and analyse processes taking place in society.

Narrative staging of Jirgl’s texts is performed to identify the main problems that student translators are faced with when decoding the writer’s prose. Rendering a contemporary fic­tional text into a different language requires paying attention to meaning construction and (de)construction, the extralinguistic context, and links and interactions between linguistic and social meanings. Moreover, it is necessary to explore connections between the performa­tive and narrative characteristics of utterances.

New literary contexts and the alarmist forms of narrative peculiar to Jirgl’s writing urge the translator to develop specific professional skills and philological competencies.

The article provides an overview of the VI International Scientific Seminar "Hagiog­raphy in the Russian Cultural Space", dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Fedor Dostoev­sky’s birth. The seminar was organized at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University on October 11—12, 2021. The main ideas and key points of the presentations of the plenary and section meetings are explored.