Semiotics, University of Tartu

🌱 Environmental Semiotics Meets Global Dialogue in 🇹🇿 Tasmania.

Last week, our researcher from the Department of Semiotics, 🌍Lona Päll, participated in the International Environmental Communication Association's COCE 2025 conference in 🇹🇿 Tasmania.

Unlike traditional academic conferences, COCE brings together researchers, practitioners, artists, nature writers, and environmental organizations from across the globe. The aim? To explore innovative formats for collaboration on pressing environmental issues.

🎙️ Lona’s talk focused on the importance of local narratives in driving the green transition. Building solar or wind parks doesn’t only change the energy system—it transforms landscapes and the ways people live with and in them.

🌍 How can we navigate such environmental conflicts without silencing local voices? How can dialogue respect both ecological and cultural contexts?

The theme of COCE 2025 was "Creative Collaboration in Environmental Communication", with a special focus on small-scale and marginal traditions—perfect for introducing ecosemiotic perspectives and fostering dialogue between different environmental communication methods.

🇹🇿 Tasmania was a symbolic host location: this island, similar in size to Estonia, is the birthplace of the world’s first Green Party. It has also seen major environmental struggles, like the Franklin River campaign and the Forest Wars, making it a fitting place to reflect on eco-activism and place-based resistance.

💡 Lona’s participation was supported by the Kristjan Jaak scholarship fund and the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

📷 Photo of Lona presenting by Gwendolyn Inocencio
🔗 Conference website: https://event.fourwaves.com/coce2025/pages

-lore

Here are photos of our MA graduation ceremony :)

Magistriaktuse fotod | Tartu Ülikool Loodame, et lõpuaktus tõi palju rõõmsaid hetki, mida soovid ka oma lähedastega või kasvõi kogu maailmaga jagada. Selleks, et seda ilusat tunnet paremini edasi anda, võid vabalt kasutada aktuse jäädvustusi.

Congratulations to all our new graduates!!!💐

🎉 Huge congratulations to Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel! ✨
The Stanford University Short-Term Research Fellowship for 🇪🇪 scholars as Estonian Security and Foreign Policy Experts is a truly well-deserved recognition of your outstanding academic work!

🔍 Mari-Liis Madisson, researcher in semiotics and cultural semiotics, plans to explore the semiotics of fear during her time at Stanford. Drawing on the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitization, she will analyze how Kremlin-originating propaganda is portrayed in Estonian media as a security threat.

🔍 Professor of political and sociosemiotics, Andreas Ventsel, aims to sharpen his new research focus— the semiotics of deterrence at Stanford University. He will investigate how deterrence strategies and security narratives are shaped by cultural perceptions of threat, also known as strategic culture.

Semioticians Mari-Liis Madisson and Andreas Ventsel were awarded the 2026 Short-Term Research Fellowships at Stanford University | University of Tartu In collaboration with the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and various partners at Stanford University, Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom has announced the 2026 Short-Term Research Fellowships for Estonian scholars. Two of the Stanford University Fellowships for Estonian Security and Fore...

🔔 We are inviting applications for the position of Professor of Semiotics of Culture. The application deadline is 1 July 2025. Please see our call for further details:

Call for Applications: Professor of Semiotics of Culture | University of Tartu Call for applicants: Professor of Semiotics of Culture. Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. The application deadline is 1 July 2025.

Joy and honor: Yesterday, the Ministry of Climate (Kliimaministeerium) recognized Professor of Biosemiotics Kalevi Kull with Estonia’s highest nature conservation award for his long-standing and multifaceted contribution to our nature conservation!!! Warmest congratulations to Kalevi Kull!

Tomorrow Tartu time, a book presentation of "Sphere of Understanding: Tartu Dialogues with Semioticians", edited by Kalevi Kull and Ekaterina Velmezova is taking place!

👉Join here: https://mdx-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94312643909?pwd=79r084rag2CCiIPm0ughHTvyA33iJk.1

A book presentation of "Sphere of Understanding: Tartu Dialogues with Semioticians", published by De Gruyter, will take place online on Monday 12 May 2025, from

6PM to 5PM (Paris time)/
7PM to 8PM (Tartu time)/
5PM to 6PM (London time)/
12PM TO 1PM (Toronto time)/
1PM to 2PM (Buenos Aires and São Paulo time)

via this link: https://mdx-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94312643909?pwd=79r084rag2CCiIPm0ughHTvyA33iJk.1

The presentation will bring together the book's curators—Ekaterina Velmezova, Kalevi Kull —along with discussants Paul Cobley (Middlesex University), Israel Chávez Barreto (Palacky University) and Winfried Nöth (University of Kassel).

You can find the publisher's page for the book here: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111435985/html

📣New Book Release | Semiotics: Principles & Problems by Yiheng Zhao

We are pleased to announce the publication of Semiotics: Principles & Problems, the latest English monograph by Professor Yiheng Zhao of Sichuan University.

In this book, Zhao redefines the core concepts of “sign” and “semiotics,” building a new foundation based on “meaning-making.” He proposes that a sign is not simply “one thing standing for another,” but a perception recognized as carrying meaning. Through this new perspective, semiotics becomes a true science of meaning.

Drawing on this theoretical innovation, the book explores a wide range of issues, including cultural markedness, the sliding of motivation in art, the fine line between falsehood and untruthfulness, and the double forces driving modernization in China.

Professor Yiheng Zhao is a scholar in Semiotics and Narratology, author of nearly 30 books, and Director of the Institute of Semiotics and Media Studies (ISMS) at Sichuan University.

Semiotics: Principles & Problems offers a profound and refreshing contribution to the study of signs, meaning, and culture.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1.1 What Is a Sign: A New Definition
1.2 Symbol and/or Sign
1.3 Redefining Semiotics
1.4 What Is the Use of Semiotics?
1.5 Fate of Semiotics in China

2. Composition of Sign
2.1 Sign Vehicle and Blank Sign
2.2 The Object-Sign-Art Triad
2.3 The Reduction of Signs: Reification
2.4 Semiotization
2.5 Partialization
2.6 Text

3. Semiosis and Incomplete Signs
3.1 Absence of Meaning
3.2 A Sign Must Mean
3.3 Any Interpretation Counts
3.4 Signal
3.5 No-Sender Signs
3.6 Potential Signs

4. Co-Texts
4.1 Definition of Co-text
4.2 Explicit Co-texts: Paratext and Archi-text
4.3 Generative Co-texts: Pre-text and Synchro-text
4.4 Interpretive Co-texts: Meta-text, Link Text, and Succession-text
4.5 Universality of Co-texts and Intertextuality
4.6 Co-textual Obsession

5. Coordination of Two Axes
5.1 Syntagmatic/Paradigmatic
5.2 Broad Width and Narrow Width
5.3 Studium and Punctum

6. Semiotic Rhetoric
6.1 Rise of Semiotic Rhetoric
6.2 Semiotic Metaphor
6.3 Variants of Semiotic Metaphor
6.4 Confusion Between Symbol and Sign
6.5 Symbolization
6.6 Linguistic and Semiotic Irony
6.7 Irony and Paradox
6.8 Large-Scale Irony

7. Code and Metalanguage
7.1 Codes
7.2 Metalanguage and Meaning
7.3 Composition of Metalanguage
7.4 Distributive Metalingual Conflict
7.5 Vortex of Interpretations
7.6 Meta-metalanguage and Vortex of Evaluations

8. Motivation and Its Sliding
8.1 Occasional Motivation
8.2 Universal Pragmatic Motivation
8.3 Rising and Falling of Motivation
8.4 Abrupt Rising After Falling of Motivation
8.5 Pragmatic Motivation
8.6 The Ubiquitousness of Pragmatic Motivation

9. Semiotic Veridiction
9.1 Sign, Truth, and Lie
9.2 Principle of Acceptance
9.3 Types of Acceptance
9.4 Types of Refusal to Accept
9.5 Veridiction Within Fabrication

10. Markedness
10.1 Binary Opposition and Tripartite Dynamics
10.2 The Marked Term vs. the Unmarked Bloc
10.3 Ancient Eastern Sages on Markedness
10.4 Art in Markedness

11. Semiotics of Art
11.1 The Failure of Proceduralism
11.2 A Functional Attempt to Redefine Art
11.3 Qualia
11.4 Rhematization
11.5 Peirce’s Ten Principal Classes
11.6 Neo-sensualism in Semiotic Aesthetics Today

12. The Double Forces of Modernization
12.1 History and Semiotic Forces
12.2 Driving and Braking Forces
12.3 “Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning for Application”
12.4 Metalingual Totality in New Confucianism