The Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School is a scientific
school of thought
A school of thought, or intellectual tradition, is the perspective of a group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, economics, cultural movement, or art movement.
...
in the field of
semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
that was formed in 1964 and led by
Juri Lotman
Juri Lotman (russian: Ю́рий Миха́йлович Ло́тман; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar, semiotician, and historian of Russian culture, who worked at the University of Tart ...
. Among the other members of this school were
Boris Uspensky,
Vyacheslav Ivanov,
Vladimir Toporov
Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov (russian: Влади́мир Никола́евич Топоро́в; 5 July 1928 in Moscow5 December 2005 in Moscow) was a leading Russian philologist associated with the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. His wife was ...
,
Mikhail Gasparov,
Alexander Piatigorsky
Alexander Moiseyevich Piatigorsky (russian: Алекса́ндр Моисе́евич Пятиго́рский; 30 January 192925 October 2009) was a Soviet dissident, Russian philosopher, scholar of Indian philosophy and culture, historian, phi ...
,
Isaak I. Revzin, and others. As a result of their collective work, they established a theoretical framework around the
semiotics of culture
Semiotics of culture is a research field within semiotics that attempts to define culture from semiotic perspective and as a type of human symbolic activity, creation of signs and a way of giving meaning to everything around. Therefore, here cult ...
.
History
The Tartu–Moscow School of Semiotics developed an original method of multidimensional
cultural analysis
As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the arts, humanities, social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena and to interpret cultural representatio ...
. The languages of culture are interpreted as secondary modelling systems in relation to verbal language. This method permits a productive understanding of the use of different languages of culture.
This school is widely known for its journal, ''
Sign Systems Studies
''Sign Systems Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. It is the oldest periodical in the field. It was initially ...
'' (formerly published in Russian as ''Труды по знаковым системам''), published by
Tartu University Press
University of Tartu Press ( et, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus) is a university press and publishing house owned by the University of Tartu, Estonia.
Tartu University Press dates its history back to 1632, when University of Tartu was founded. It is ...
. It is the oldest semiotics journal in the world, established in 1964.
In its first period, the 1960s and 1970s, TMSS followed a
structuralist approach and was strongly influenced by
Russian formalism. Since the 1980s, its approach can be characterized as
post-structuralist
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...
(highly dynamic and complex), and is connected with the introduction of
Juri Lotman
Juri Lotman (russian: Ю́рий Миха́йлович Ло́тман; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar, semiotician, and historian of Russian culture, who worked at the University of Tart ...
's concept of
semiosphere
The semiosphere is an idea in biosemiotic theory proposing that, contrary to ideas of nature determining sense and experience, the phenomenal world is a creative and logical structure of processes of semiosis where signs operate together to pr ...
and its relation to
organicism
Organicism is the philosophical position that states that the universe and its various parts (including human societies) ought to be considered alive and naturally ordered, much like a living organism.Gilbert, S. F., and S. Sarkar. 2000. "Embrac ...
.
From 1990s, TMSS has been succeeded by the Tartu Semiotics School, which is based in the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and led by
Kalevi Kull
Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952, Tartu) is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1975. His earlier work dealt with ethology and field ecology. He has studied the mechanisms ...
,
Peeter Torop
Peeter Torop (born November 28, 1950, in Tallinn, Estonia) is an Estonian semiotician. Following Roman Jakobson, he expanded the scope of the semiotic study of translation to include intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual translation and st ...
,
Mihhail Lotman
Mihhail Lotman (born September 2, 1952 in Leningrad) is an Estonian literature researcher and politician, son of Juri Lotman and Zara Mints.
Mihhail Lotman's research fields include general semiotics and semiotics of culture as well as text th ...
,
Timo Maran
Timo Maran (born 13 April 1975) is an Estonian biosemiotician and poet.
He is the head Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu.
Membership in organizations:
* Estonian Naturalists' Society (vice-president 2007–2010)
* Estonian Semiotics ...
, and others.
Semiotics of Culture
The Semiotics of Culture is a research field within general semiotics founded by the Tartu-Moscow School. It originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, the ideas of Russian Formalism, and the Prague Linguistic Circle, alongside various individual theorists, although the theories developed in the Semiotics of Culture (especially its later iterations) depart radically from these influences.
Juri Lotman
Juri Lotman (russian: Ю́рий Миха́йлович Ло́тман; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar, semiotician, and historian of Russian culture, who worked at the University of Tart ...
is considered the main representative of the Semiotics of Culture.
Terms central to the semiotics of culture include “text,” “modeling system,” “language,” Lotman's conception of the “semiosphere,” and of course “culture” itself. While its ideas were being formulated in the 1960s, an official birth year for the semiotics of culture could be marked as 1973, when
Lotman Lotman is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Aleksei Lotman (born 1960), Estonian biologist, son of Juri Lotman
* Herb Lotman (1933–2014), U.S. food industry magnate
* Juri Lotman (1922–1993), Russian formalist critic, semio ...
alongside
Vjacheslav V. Ivanov,
Aleksandr M. Pjatigorskij,
Vladimir N. Toporov, and
Boris A. Uspenskij first published the manifesto Theses on the semiotic study of cultures (as applied to Slavic texts).
The Text, considered the foundational tool of the School, is used to view the boundaries of a material creation, experience, occurrence, etc., particularly those things that are culturally integrated or artistic. With the boundary of content set, the interrelations between it and exterior texts can be more clearly examined. As the boundaries are variable there is no strict definition of how a Text can be made of subject matter, and instead it emphasizes the cultural signification seen in comparing the boundaries of the text to its use in society. A general statement of the research program of the semiotics of culture is that it aims to examine the entire aggregate of sign systems as united by culture, to ascertain their number, their hierarchy, their mutual influence, or their functional correlation, both synchronically and diachronically.
Semiosphere
The
semiosphere
The semiosphere is an idea in biosemiotic theory proposing that, contrary to ideas of nature determining sense and experience, the phenomenal world is a creative and logical structure of processes of semiosis where signs operate together to pr ...
is a concept of Juri Lotman's and one that is central to the later semiotics of culture, and as a concept it is given explicit characterization in an article of Lotman's first published in 1984.
The
semiosphere
The semiosphere is an idea in biosemiotic theory proposing that, contrary to ideas of nature determining sense and experience, the phenomenal world is a creative and logical structure of processes of semiosis where signs operate together to pr ...
is the semiotic space outside of which semiosis cannot exist. The semiosphere precedes any individual text or isolated language, it is the “greater system” outside of which language does not only function, it does not even exist. The principal attribute of the semiosphere is the presence of a boundary, which translates external communications into understandable information. The division between the core (completely semioticized) and the periphery (partially semioticized, in constant flux with the asemiotic) is a law of the internal organization of the semiosphere. The semiosphere is an exceptionally dynamic mechanism with synchronic and diachronic dimensions and multiple codes engaging with each other.
Tartu-Moscow School
In the early 1960s and as a result of various summer schools organized in Estonia, the
Tartu-Moscow School was established. With
Juri Lotman
Juri Lotman (russian: Ю́рий Миха́йлович Ло́тман; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar, semiotician, and historian of Russian culture, who worked at the University of Tart ...
as its main representative, the Tartu-Moscow School developed the tradition of the semiotics of culture. In 1973, Lotman,
Vjacheslav V. Ivanov,
Aleksandr M. Pjatigorskij,
Vladimir N. Toporov, and
Boris A. Uspenskij first published the manifesto Theses on the semiotic study of cultures (as applied to Slavic texts), which laid the foundation for the semiotics of culture and represents a milestone for the school.
The theoretical origins of the school lie in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, the ideas of Russian Formalism, and the Prague Linguistic Circle, alongside other individual theorists, although the theories developed in the semiotics of culture (especially its later iterations) depart radically from these influences. The school is considered one very distinct and innovative branch of general semiotics, and during its development a controversial one. Alongside the five authors mentioned, the school had a broad international membership, and amongst this decentralized constituency there is a great diversity in publications covering a wide variety of topics. A brief timeline may help contextualize:
Late 1950s - Moscow mathematical linguistics paves way for cybernetic theories of culture
1960s - Semiotics born out of cybernetics and information theory.
-
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
supported development in linguistics.
- Juri Lotman's associate Igor Černov connects Moscow and Estonian intellectuals
- Estonian interest in
Structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
, alongside Tartu support for Russian Studies, makes such crossover easy.
The Taru-Moscow School of semiotics was formed when a diverse group of scholars joined informally from the 1950s to 1980s to provide alternatives to the regnant Soviet approaches to language, literature and culture. Their work develops the linguistics of Saussure, elaborated by Trubetzkoi and Hjelmslev. They subsequently came to treat art works and other cultural artifacts as the products of ‘secondary modelling systems’, that is, as elements arranged according to rules that could be seen as language-like and hence accessible to analysis by the procedures of structuralist linguistics. Opoyaz, the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the Prague Linguistic Circle the predecessors of TMS The group shared an interest in the Russian formalists and in contemporary linguistics, semiotics and cybernetics. During the 1970s prominent members of the group, such as Juri Lotman and Boris Uspenskii, turned from more theoretical and formalized work to historical studies of culture as a system of semiotic systems.
Lotman: The alumni of
Moscow University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
and
Leningrad University
Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...
formed the Soviet school of semiotics as a synthesis of these two traditions in the humanities. To them, a third tradition was added: the University of Tartu. It was not a mere chance: the University of Tartu had its own, well-established linguistic school, and, moreover, was always characterized by a high spirit of academic tolerance, an openness to all-Europe cultural trends.
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A distinctive feature of TMS was the combination of structuralist and semiotic approaches to language, literature and culture.
Theses on the semiotic study of cultures (as applied to Slavic texts)
Consisting of nine “theses”, the manifesto Theses on the semiotic study of cultures (as applied to Slavic texts) laid the foundation for the semiotics of culture and represents a milestone in the legacy of the Tartu-Moscow School. It was co-authored by Juri M. Lotman, Vjacheslav V. Ivanov, Aleksandr M. Pjatigorskij, Vladimir N. Toporov, and Boris A. Uspenskij.
The first two theses describe the research program of the semiotics of culture, and the third through to the ninth describe various considerations and concepts relevant to culture and its study through the use of the Text as an analytic tool. An condensed and abridged summary could read as follows -
Cultures can be studied through semiotic inquiry, as its building blocks are “texts”. Texts are the qualitative tool used to analyze cultures, and many things can be a text. Culture can be considered as a series of texts, a supercode of textuality, or a memory storage pattern utilizing texts.
[Lotman 1977]
The paradigmatic shift in Lotman's works of the 1980s (from “signs” to “texts”, from the binary understanding of meaning to the “clusters of meanings” typical of complex texts) was just a further step in his permanent effort to illustrate tension between the individual-singular and the systemic-holistic.
The notion of meaning-generation and amplification and the view on the artistic text as a device that performs a very important and complex work by activating linguistic, cultural, and psychological resources became a key topic in many TMS publications.
In a work of art, the creative function of language, its ability to produce new meanings, is especially and intensely felt, thanks to which the text becomes a capacitor of cultural memory: an increase in complexity results from constant re-contextualization and re-reading that amplifies the text's informational richness.
The TMS’ initial impetus toward “exact knowledge” in the humanities branched into a whole array of various approaches, developed by the school's participants: bright thinkers whose paths ultimately drifted apart. Their dialogue considerably increased reflection on their own theoretical premises, frameworks, and procedures, yet did not yield a general synthesis.
Cultural semiotics
Cultural semiotics has developed from linguistic semiotics via text semiotics
towards the semiotics of semiosphere.
1st Phase
Cultural semiotics started from the realization that in a semiotical sense culture is a multilanguage system, where, in parallel to natural languages, there exist secondary
modelling systems (mythology, ideology, ethics etc.), which are based on natural
languages, or which employ natural languages for their description or explanation
(music, ballet) or language analogization ("language" of theatre, "language" of movies).
The Soviet semiotics was rooted in tradition developed not by pure linguists, as it has been in Europe, and especially in United States, but also on ideas produced by literary scientists, especially in the OPOYAZ, Moscow Linguistic Circle and other formal and informal groups of the twenties combined both linguistic and literary interests.
TMS that developed in sixties sought actively incorporate elements of formalists legacy, but as not a simple revival of formalist. Even in the first volume of Trudy po znakovõm sistemam (Lectures on structural poetics 1964), Lotman was quite critical to pure formalist statement and methods.
2nd phase
The next step was to introduce the concept of text as the principal concept of cultural
semiotics (Chernov text as “main hero” of TMS), since as a term it
can denote both a discrete artefact and an invisible abstract whole (a mental text in
collective consciousness or subconsciousness). Text and textualisation symbolize the definition of the object of study; the textual aspect of text analysis means the operation with clearly defined sign systems, texts or combinations of texts. The processual aspect of text analysis presupposes definition, construction or
reconstruction of a whole. Thus the analysis assembles the concrete and the
abstract, the static and the dynamic in one concept—the text.
3rd phase
Yet the analysis of a defined object is static, and the need to also take into account
cultural dynamics led Juri Lotman to introduce the notion of semiosphere. Although
the attributes of semiosphere resemble those of text (definability, structurality,
coherence), it is an important shift from the point of view of culture's analyzability.
Human culture constitutes the global semiosphere, but that global system consists of
intertwined semiospheres of different times (diachrony of semiosphere) and different
levels (synchrony of semiosphere). Each semiosphere can be analyzed as a single
whole, yet we need to bear in mind that each analyzed whole in culture is a part of a
greater whole, which is an important methodological principle. It is an infinite dialogue of whole and parts and the dynamics of the whole dimension.
See also
*
Copenhagen–Tartu school
*
Prague linguistic circle
The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis an ...
References
Literature
* Andrews, Edna 2003. ''Conversations with Lotman. The Implications of Cultural Semiotics in Language, Literature, and Cognition''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
* Avtonomova, Natalia S. 2001. L’héritage de Lotman. ''Critique'' 57: 120–132.
* Baran, Hendryk 1976. Introduction. In: Baran, Henryk (ed.) ''Semiotics and Structuralism: Readings from the Soviet Union''. White Plains (N.Y.): International Arts and Sciences Press, VII-XXVI.
* Cáceres, M. 1999
Scientific thought and work of Yuri Lotman ''
Sign Systems Studies
''Sign Systems Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. It is the oldest periodical in the field. It was initially ...
'' 27: 46–59.
* Chang, Han-liang; Han, Lei; Wu, Shuo-yu Charlotte 2014. The reception of Tartu semiotics in China: A preliminary survey and a few case studies. ''Chinese Semiotic Studies'' 10(1): 133–163.
* Chernov, Igor 1988. Historical Survey of Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School. In: ''Semiotics of Culture. Proceedings of the 25th Symposium of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, Imatra, Finland, 27–29 July 1987'' (ed. H. Broms, R. Kaufmann), Helsinki: Arator, 7-16.
* Grishakova, Marina; Salupere, Silvi. A School in the Woods: Tartu-Moscow Semiotics. In: Grishakova, M. and S. Salupere, eds. ''Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities: Literary Theory, History, Philosophy''. Routledge, 2015.
*
Ivanov, Vyacheslav V. 1978. The Science of Semiotics.
*
Lotman, Juri M. 1977. ''The Structure of the Artistic Text''. Transl. University of Michigan. Brown University Press.
* Lotman, Juri M. 2005.
On the semiosphere ''
Sign Systems Studies
''Sign Systems Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. It is the oldest periodical in the field. It was initially ...
'' 33(1), 205-229.
*
Kull, Kalevi
Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952, Tartu) is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1975. His earlier work dealt with ethology and field ecology. He has studied the mechanisms ...
2001
Juri Lotman in English: Bibliography ''Sign Systems Studies'' 39(2/4): 343–356.
* Kull, Kalevi; Gramigna, Remo 2014
Juri Lotman in English: Updates to bibliography ''Sign Systems Studies'' 42(4): 549–552.
* Pilshchikov, Igor; Trunin, Mikhail 2016. The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics in Transnational Perspective. ''Sign Systems Studies'' 44(3): 368–401.
* Rudy, S. 1986. Semiotics in the USSR. In: Sebeok, T. A.; Umiker-Sebeok, J. (eds.), ''The Semiotic Sphere''. Nueva York: Plenum Press, 555–582.
* Salupere, Silvi; Torop, Peeter; Kull, Kalevi (eds.) 2013. ''Beginnings of the Semiotics of Culture''. (Tartu Semiotics Library 13.) Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
* Segal, Dmitri 1974. Aspects of Structuralism in Soviet Philology. Tel-Aviv: Papers on Poetics and Semiotics, 2. http://www.tau.ac.il/tarbut/pubtexts/segal/Segal-Aspects.pdf
* Semenenko, Aleksei 2012. ''The Texture of Culture: An Introduction to Yuri Lotman's Semiotic Theory''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
* Seyffert, Peter 1985. ''Soviet Literary Structuralism: Background, Debate, Issues''. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers.
* Shukman, Ann 1976. The Canonization of the Real. Jurij Lotman's Theory of Literature and Analysis of Poetry. ''PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature'' 1: 317–338.
* Shukman, Ann 1977. ''Literature and Semiotics. A study of the writings of Yu. M. Lotman''. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company.
* Shukman, Ann 1978. Soviet Semiotics and Literary Criticism. New Literary History, Volume 9, No. 2 Soviet Semiotics and Criticism: An Anthology. Johns Hopkins University Press.
* Uspenskij, B. A.; Ivanov, V. V.; Toporov, V. N.; Pjatigorskij, A. M.; Lotman, J. M. 1973. Theses on the semiotic study of cultures (as applied to Slavic texts). In: Eng, Jan van der; Grygar, Mojmir (eds.), ''Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture''. The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1–28.
* Waldstein, Maxim 2008. ''The Soviet Empire of Signs: A History of the Tartu School of Semiotics''. Saarbrüchen: VDM Verlag.
*
Winner, Thomas 1968. Introduction. In: I. M. Lotman, ''Lektsii po struktural'noi poetike. Vvedenie, teoriia stikha''. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University Press, vii-xii.
* Żyłko, Bogusław 2001. Culture and Semiotics: Notes on Lotman's Conception of Culture. ''New Literary History'' 32(2): 391–408.
* Żyłko, Bogusław 2014. Notes on Yuri Lotman's structuralism. ''International Journal of Cultural Studies'': 1–16.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School
Schools of thought
Semiotics organizations
Cultural studies
Education in Moscow
University of Tartu