Organisational Semiotics (OS) aims to provide new methodologies, techniques and tools to the development of information systems and organisations by applying semiotic theories and studies, therefore offering a new perspective on the field, which incorporates technical and social aspects. In order to apply semiotics to Information Systems (IS) and Information technology (IT) different approaches...

This paper presents Manas, a Semiotic Engineering epistemic tool for the design of collaborative systems (CoSys) whose aim is to expand the designers’ knowledge and awareness of their influence on groups and group dynamics. Manas has been developed to help designers represent their conception of computer-mediated communication and reflect upon some of its potential social effects, springing fro...

This paper discusses how semiotic engineering can support the formulation of problems and solutions involved in handling face-to-face (F2F) sociability models in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Based on a case study where a group of users migrated through different types of CMC systems, we show that the designer’s model of F2F sociability is extensively signified and encoded into technol...

A distributed classification paradigm known as collaborative tagging has been successfully deployed in large-scale web applications designed to organize and share diverse online resources. Communities of web users categorize resources by associating metadata with them, in the form of freely chosen text labels, or tags. Here we regard tags as basic dynamical entities and study the semiotic dynam...

What is a semiotic machine? A robot, a computer running programs endowed with artificial intelligence, any computer, a simple calculating machine, or even an ordinary mechanical typewriter? The question will be examined in the light of Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of semiosis, which requires reference to processes such as reasoning, translation, interpretation, control, self-control, autopo...

This paper develops a semiotic operand, the hypersign. The hyperlink is structurally amenable to semiotic analysis. Anchor and destination function as signifier and signified. Especially significant are digital surrogates, such as Amazon catalogue entries, and Google gists, which are systematically produced hypertextual signifier-signified pairings. Hyperlinked surrogates constitute the hypersi...

The nature of mathematical language and the linguistic challenges of learning mathematics have been explored since the 1970s. Schleppegrell (2007) provides a comprehensive synthesis of the research completed by applied linguistics and mathematics educators which aims to identify the linguistic structures in mathematics and how these differ from everyday language. In particular, Michael Halliday...

Film discourse is a typical of multimodal discourse which contains many semiotic modalities such as image, text, sound and music. Multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) focuses on how meaning is made through the use of multiple modes of communication as opposed to just language. The MDA assisted film discourse analysis helps understand films through the interaction among different modalities as we...

The approach to pragmatics explored in this article focuses on elements of social interaction which are of universal relevance, and which may provide bases for a comparative approach. The discussion is anchored by reference to a fragment of conversation from a video-recording of Lao speakers during a home visit in rural Laos. The following points are discussed. First, an understanding of the fu...