Linguistic Frontiers Feed

The Use of Nonbinary Language Strategies in Casual Ingroup Verbal Communication in the Czech LGBTQ+ Community

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

As a Slavic language, Czech poses very specific challenges for nonbinary language expression. The study of nonbinary Czech is a relatively recent field, and while various strategies for nonbinary Czech have been documented, data regarding their actual use in casual ingroup communication is limited. This paper presents the results of a qualitative analysis of several recordings conducted with two volunteer participants from the Czech LGBTQ+ community who employ different language strategies to express nonbinarity. We examine individual users’ preferences and document their efforts to creatively avoid gender markers. Additionally, we explore the consistency of these strategies, their mutual interactive influences and the reasons behind their use. We also corroborate some earlier findings with direct examples from our data.

Sentiment analysis of cultural differences in online comments on popular news

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The rapid growth of online communication through social networks has created new opportunities for understanding public opinion on socially relevant issues. This research examines how sentiment analysis (SA) can reveal cultural differences, specifically analyzing Czech and Ukrainian online comments on news topics including the war in Ukraine, political discussions, public health issues (tick-borne diseases, COVID-19), LGBTQ+ community matters, and natural disasters. By comparing three large language models (GPT-3.5-Turbo, Twitter-XLM-Ro-BERTa, and Zephyr 7B) with native speaker evaluations, we assess whether AI-based sentiment analysis can accurately capture culturally-specific emotional expressions in medium-resource languages. Our dataset comprises 6,085 comments (2,999 Czech from X/Twitter, 3,086 Ukrainian from Telegram) collected during 2023, focusing on socially relevant news coverage. We employed a hybrid methodology combining machine learning analysis with expert validation by native speakers. The study addresses a critical gap in cross-cultural sentiment analysis research, as no previous studies have compared Czech and Ukrainian linguistic patterns in this context. Results demonstrate significant performance differences among models depending on language: GPT-3.5-Turbo achieved highest accuracy for Czech (p<0.001), while all models performed comparably for Ukrainian. Both populations showed predominantly negative sentiment (Czech: 69.93%, Ukrainian: 68.93% via GPT-3.5), reflecting shared emotional responses to crisis events.

In Search of Lost Meaning: Technologies of Writing and the Crisis of Representation

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

In Search of a New Understanding of Barthes’s Concept of the Index

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Within the broad tradition of structuralism there are some differences in the treatment of extra-textual reality, character motivation, and the importance of plot. The article proposes some reconciliation between the Prague School and French narratology, centred around a revision of the concept of “index”. It also asserts a fundamental continuity between the devices of poetic language and those of narrative prose. In the first section of the paper it is shown that, when Roland Barthes adapts the notion of the index to his structural narratology, he vacillates somewhat about its definition and application, sometimes associating it with metaphor and sometimes with metonymy. A consistent reflection upon Barthes’s ambivalent use of the index makes it possible to describe narrative atmosphere as well as character psychology, but still within the parameters of structuralism. This reflection yields an understanding of index that is less formalistic and more compatible with the theorization of the Prague School. The second part of the paper plays out some applications of this redefined index and poetic language for Czech literature, including examples from Vladislav Vančura and Milan Kundera.

Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language Today Review: Angelova, E. (Ed.), 2024. “Revolution in Poetic Language” Fifty Years Later: New Directions in Kristeva Studies. Albany: SUNY Press, 2024.

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

This is a review of Emilia Angelova’s edited volume “Revolution in Poetic Language” Fifty Years Later: New Directions in Kristeva Studies. The volume commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Kristeva’s magnum opus and explores whether the text, first published in 1974, retains its relevance when transposed to differing social, historical, or cultural contexts. The review discusses the various forms of this transposition as presented in the volume, offering insight into contemporary approaches within Kristeva studies.

Causation as Indexical Semeiosis: Flaws in Mechanistic Biological Method

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The concept of causation is widely regarded as a dyadic relation necessary for scientific inquiry, and as a basic component in discussions of biological mechanism, or of the same in other sciences. A re-examination of causation in view of Peirce’s Semeiotic shows that causation might more usefully be understood in terms of his Indexical Semeiosis analysis. By so proceeding, this hypothesis could yield useful experiments that show promise for removing some antinomies in sciences that are currently treated according to Necessitarian presuppositions.

Pragmatic Challenges in Studies of Animal Acts. Interpreting Zoo-Communication from a Systemic Socio-Semiotic Perspective

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Animals’ communicational acts are meta-studied based on a framework interrelating five aspects form, content, act, time, and space in a systemic perspective. Aspects relate to levels, sign, utterance, life-genre, and lifeworld and to processes. Six studies are investigated, positioning act as part of a web of communicational elements aiming at illustrating the pragmatic role act and life-genre play in sustaining animal life-functions. Re-interpretations of studies of signals, calls, and gestures further aim at enhancing the framework epistemologically and methodologically for the study of zoo-communicational pragmatics. It is suggested that since act tends to be treated as a limited category the field could benefit from a systemic perspective, one that allows balancing open-and closedness on all levels and between all aspects. Studies of great apes’ gestures are studied in particular, focusing which epistemic position acts have when communication is seen as systemic. The paper concludes that a socio-semiotic, systemic, and pragmatic framework can play a constructive role when designing and validating research on zoo-communicational acts.

AI and Animal Communication: A Generative Zoosemiotics Perspective

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

In recent years, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to the study of non-human communication has gained significant momentum. This article critically explores the intersection between AI and zoosemiotics by analysing a corpus of three emblematic case studies – Project CETI, ISPA, and current bioacoustic classification systems – which apply generative models and machine learning techniques to animal communication. Through close textual and conceptual analysis, the article shows how these approaches, despite their technical sophistication, tend to reduce animal semiosis to its external form, overlooking its embodied, ecological, and relational dimensions. The study exposes the epistemological, methodological, and semiotic limits of such models, demonstrating how the situated nature of animal signification is often flattened into abstract algorithmic encoding, devoid of pragmatic context. In response to these issues, the article introduces the concept of Generative Zoosemiotics (GZ), a new theoretical framework that combines tools from zoosemiotics and cultural semiotics with a critical inquiry into AI technologies. GZ proposes to analyse how machines interpret, simulate, or reconfigure animal signs, questioning the epistemic and ethical implications of these practices and asserting the irreducibility of interspecific communication to the logic of symbolic translation.

The Sound Apparatus in Open World Games: Musical Resonance in The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

This study examines the role of soundscapes in open-world video games, with a focus on The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2. It explores how dynamic music and adaptive audio systems serve as bridges between players and game world, fostering immersion and emotional engagement. Employing frameworks from semiotics, game studies, and cultural theory, the research discusses key concepts such as Karen Collin’s “participatory supplemental connotations”. Hartmut Rosa’s “resonance”, and Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s tripartite model and the dichotomy between memory and monument drawn by Jacoviello. Through an analysis of The Witcher 3’s Slavic-inspired soundscape and Red Dead Redemption 2’s nostalgic Western motifs, the paper illustrates how game music functions both as a cultural document and an interactive monument. The paper examines how adaptive musical cues, ambient soundscapes, and diegetic shifts support exploratory play, emotional resonance, and contextual storytelling in vast, dynamic virtual environments. The study positions game music not as a passive backdrop but as an interactive structure of signs, emotions, and narrative strategies.

Resonating with the Past: Mediation of Memory in Sound Sculptures

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Sound sculptures can serve as resonant mediums of remembrance, reawakening historical soundscapes and evoking memories through the use of sound. In this way, they enable a sensory connection to the past. This paper explores how sound functions as a semiotic resource, interacting with other modalities within sound sculptures and the contexts in which they are placed. It examines how memory can be accessed through the sense of hearing and investigates cases where sound memorializes historical events. I draw on a social semiotic approach, particularly Günter Kress’s theory of multimodality, considering sound sculptures as multimodal texts and multisensory objects. Complementing this, I employ sound theory and acoustic ecology studies, primarily the works of Raymond Murray Schafer, which provide a language for describing the sound modality within sound sculptures. To ground this exploration, I analyze sonic objects and sonic events in the sound sculptures by artists Bill Fontana, Markus Kison, and Nikita Kadan through the lenses of the acoustic ecology framework. These works exemplify how sound can operate as both a symbol and a mnemonic trigger, how its sensory and emotional dimensions contribute to memory-making processes.

Juri Lotman’s Cultural Explosion and its Function in Friendship Studies and the Pragmasphere

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

In his 1992 work Culture and Explosion, Juri M. Lotman describes the notion of explosion as a “moment of unpredictability” (2009 [1992], 123). The concept of explosion entails the actualisation of one out of an array of possibilities with reference to a certain phenomenon. Although – on the surface level – the term may seem to suggest otherwise, the concept of explosion retains a quality of order. It implies the actualisation of one possibility out of a discrete set of possibilities, and does not correlate to a random or undefined actualisation (Lotman 2009 [1992], 123). Put another way, the term points to a chaotic realisation of a certain outcome that is ordered to the extent that the possible outcomes of the explosion must be finite. This article attempts to review Lotman’s primary texts, regarding the concept of cultural explosion and semiosphere. Further, the current work explores the ways in which the semiosphere and explosion concepts are relevant in friendship studies, and how they can be developed in the pragmasphere model.

Between Face and Voice: Semiotic Relationships

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The aim of this study is to investigate the semiotic relationships that emerge from the interpretation of the face in relation to the sound of the voice, considering both as signifying expressions subject to layered semantic interpretation. Specifically, we will explore the relationship between the voice and the face, treating them as palimpsests in symbiotic signification. This approach draws on fundamental semiotic research into the face, examining how, being both an integral part of the phonatory apparatus and a modulator of vocal sound, it conveys culturally legible characteristics and generates meanings in connection with the voice, particularly in relation to the emotional dimension perceptible in both. Alongside this primary aim, a secondary objective emerges: to investigate, from an interdisciplinary perspective combining semiotics and cognitive science, the middle ground on which the contested boundary between nature and culture shifts. This reflection builds on analyses of the cultural interpretation of facial and vocal expression to reach the biological foundations of our semiotic system and its cultural ramifications.

Resonant Heels and ‘The Devil Wears Prada’: Building and Sharing Identity Through Sound

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

This paper explores how the “sounding silhouette” (Stasiulite) – the sound produced by a dressed body – becomes a social value, that is, a semantic concept (Violi). It proposes a methodology for analysing the valences emerging from sounding and the values emerging from signalling silhouettes (community values), drawing on Peirce, Greimas, and Landowski. Through Ricoeur’s notion of identity, the sounding silhouette is shown to shape identity via four personae types: coherent (acceptance), indifferent (a priori rejection), rebel (a posteriori rejection), and aesthetic/ascetic (neutrality). This four types of personae developing from the relation with the values sent: accepted, rejected a priori or a posteriori or neutralized. These theories are applied to The Devil Wears Prada, where heels function as a signalling silhouette linked to power and willingness. This silhouette acts as interpellation, initiating dialogue with others. Using Marino and Santangelo’s framework on spreadability, the paper argues that in Western societies, the dominant shared values are power and willingness, tied to the construction of self-made identities.

Soundscapes of Fear: Resonance as a Weapon and the Sonic Warfare Continuum

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The main goal of this article is to combine, within the context of sonic warfare, the concepts of soundscape (R. Murray Schafer), narrativity (Algirdas Greimas), and sonic warfare continuum (Steve Goodman), all interpreted through the lens of the resonance theory as postulated by Hartmut Rosa. The thesis is that resonance, as an unstoppable and affective force that can be exerted on (and by) all physical objects, contains a dangerous component that can be identified in so-called “sonic weapons” and “sonic war machines”. By identifying specific soundscapes and analyzing different sonic weapons, it becomes possible to use the sonic warfare continuum to study the resonance they establish with listeners, and one can also conceive different effects and inclinations towards the same “resonating” objects. To illustrate this theoretical framework, two recordings of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Boots and their reception in different contexts and soundscapes will be analyzed. This will demonstrate how, within the sonic warfare continuum, different narratives surrounding sonic war machines push the listeners to react to similar stimulations. Therefore, listeners establish resonance through sonic war machines in powerful, tensive, and potentially threatening ways.

Introduction

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“Künstliche Erfahrungswelten”–How Digital Technology is mediating Human Experience

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Experience is a vital element of human cognition; therefore, to learn something new, humans need new experiences. How can the use of artifacts1, such as instruments and technologies contribute to this objective? The idea of a direct experience of an object is not completely outdated. Still, it is becoming rare: communication is mediated by smartphones and apps, and instruments and computer simulations mediate scientific discoveries. Instead of visiting a museum, we can browse through its online collection. Hence, by designing the methodologies and technologies that mediate experience we are shaping the experience itself. The article introduces Charles S. Peirce’s concept of experience to discuss the structure of technological mediation of experience and the potential for artificial experience. It reflects on how digital technologies contribute to the development of new experiences to allow for new or deeper knowledge of our world.

Sonic (and Other) Environments as the Mirror of Society (and as the Challenge for Artistic Testimony)

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The main topics of the paper are the (non)ecological dimensions of sonic and other environments in contemporary world reflecting the “suchness” and quality of certain cultures and society of global transcapitalism in its late phase of digitalisation, and devastation as well. Various social discursive and nondiscursive practices of this civilization influence very deeply our ways of living in many important dimensions—spiritual, moral, ecological, economic, political, and way of communication among others, which is mirrored in different sonic (and other) environments we are situated. The author refers to the special works of arts, kind of new musical discourses appropriating field recordings of unique environments, sonic sculptures, or intermedia installations in social-critical contexts as the testimonies of such artists as Bob Ostertag (USA), Peter Machajdík, Jonáš Gruska (both SK), among others.

Emotional granularity – Vocabulary for mental health?

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

This paper presents a linguistic/semiotic critique of the notion of emotional granularity in the context of Lisa Feldman Barrett’s theory of constructed emotion. (Barrett 2017a) Barrett claims that emotional granularity, the usage of refined emotion vocabulary, has positive effects on coping and health. Barrett’s denial of basic emotions like fear or anger and her rejection of ethological perspectives put her theory out of sync with other recent approaches such as Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience (e.g. Panksepp 2004) or Adolph’s Neuroscience of Emotions (Adolphs 2018). Although the idea of constructed emotion seemingly resonates with constructivist points of view, this paper challenges Barrett’s assumption that coping strategies depend on specific lexemes (i.e. emotional granularity) to construct and describe emotions. Barrett ignores relevant concepts in linguistics and semiotics and relies on convenient lab experiments and quantifiable results. Barrett’s conjectures about more ‘refined’ emotion vocabulary evoke problematic deficit theories long discredited by linguists (e.g. Labov 1970). Her recommendations for developing emotional granularity for the more ‘accurate’ description of emotions perpetuate assumptions about social background and vocabulary that extend 1960s deficit theories about education to elitist assumptions about class and mental health. By presenting emotional granularity as an antidote to alexithymia, Barrett contributes to an increasingly popular research agenda in psychology. Thure von Uexküll’s (1979) early criticism of alexithymia (in the context of psychosomatic medicine) provides the foundational (bio)semiotic concepts (derived from Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory) that expose Barrett’s problematic research methods (e.g. random images without context eliciting multiple choice vocabulary) and nomenclatural approach to emotion words. Discourse analysis and corpus linguistics offer neutral and unbiased descriptive approaches to how people express their emotions in different registers, styles, contexts, and genres. Meaning is not in the lexeme but exists in the embeddedness of a speaker in their subjective now with their lived past and potential future that are absent from the artificial lab experiments Barrett’s emotional granularity conjecture is based on.

Tracking Cognitive and Emotional Functions with fNIRS and Existential Graphs. A Study in Progress.

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The main objective of the study is to assess the effectiveness of fNIRs in monitoring cognitive and emotional responses during a logical game activity. Additionally, the study explores the use of Existential Graphs as a tool for observing brain cognitive responses during problem-solving tasks. Through the fNIR device, the study measures oxygenation and deoxygenation levels in the frontal lobe while participants engage in cognitive activities such as attention, information processing, decision-making, and future planning. While the focus is on Existential Graphs, the study incorporates the block and puzzle game Tetris as a counter example to validate the findings. For this purpose, our study has for the first time applied Peirce’s Existential Graphs as a practical cognitive model to observe real time problem solving processing of the frontal lobe; the study is also the first to use fNIRs to study the brain activity while processing existential graphs.

Constructing a Gold Corpus of Annotated Youtube Comments for Discursive Strategies Span Classification

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Our research project is focused on the creation of a corpus of German YouTube comments relating to the topic of gender diversity. It aims at the identification of dominant arguments for and against gender diversity and the multiple discursive strategies, such as victim-blaming, denial, proposal, etc., used to convey them. This is crucial for understanding the pro and contra communication as well as developing linguistic strategies to refute misconceptions and fake information around the topic. This paper discusses the theoretical background, data collection, corpus creation, and the annotation process as a way of reconstructing discursive strategies identified by works in critical discourse analysis and bringing to light new ones.