[Commlist] Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 9.2 is now available

Intellect is excited to announce that Empedocles: European Journal for 
the Philosophy of Communication 9.2 is now available! For more 
information about the issue, click here >> https://bit.ly/2Qz4PU6

*_Contents_*

*The Dao of communication*
Authors: Adrian Pablé And  Johan Siebers

Cross-cultural communication and the art of sign-making
Authors:  Charlotte Conrad

Traditional western linguistics portrays language as a fixed code and 
the language user as a code operator. Accordingly, knowing the code 
should guarantee the ability to communicate well. Yet asymmetrical 
cultural backgrounds in communicating agents can be seen to compromise 
or enable communication in ways that are not explainable based on this 
view. I suggest that we can move beyond this anomaly in our current 
understanding of language and communication by changing our minds on 
human perception so as to encompass the individual contribution. I 
describe sign-making as an act of perception that helps the perceiver 
find the interaction potential in a situation, and look at how such an 
account can better accommodate an understanding of what happens during 
cross-cultural communication.

*Media as mediation: Régis Debray’s medium theory and its implications 
as a perspective*
Authors: Luo Shicha

In recent years, the translation of Debray’s writings and the study of 
his media thoughts have become increasingly popular in China, but the 
‘medium’ in his media discourse has never been clarified. Debray pointed 
out that the focus of the media is ‘mediation’, which actually reveals a 
new way of thinking and reasoning. He then proposed four stages of 
mediological reasoning: Message, Medium, Milieu and Mediation. This 
article believes that based on this framework (i.e. 4M), Debray used 
McLuhan’s theory as a hub for analysis and launched a set of research 
methods and tools aimed at exploring the multiple nature of medium and 
message on the sense of interaction between culture and technology, 
which also involved the utility of ‘mediasphere’ as an exploration 
principle to question the past and future of mankind and the media 
conditions. This approach provides an avenue for us to understand 
ourselves and transmissions in different space-time categories at both 
practical and theoretical levels. This article emphasizes that it is 
better not to interpret Debray’s thoughts as a theory parallel to the 
existing medium theories because its focus is on research approaches 
rather than arguments. Besides, although Debray’s medium theory is based 
on his experience and thinking in Europe and Latin America, there are 
reasons for the publicity of Debray’s ideology in China. From the 
perspective of history, culture and human geography, Chinese 
civilization can be said to contain rich ideological resources of 
mediation. This is of great significance to re-understand China’s 
history and reality in the new context of globalization, and to discover 
the global value of China’s experience.

*Revisiting the materiality of signs: collective enunciation, 
landscaping, and the autoglottic space*
Authors: Jasper Zhao Zhen Wu

Taking the semiotic landscaping of the Occupy Movement in Hong Kong in 
2014 as an example, the article explores the semiotic relation between 
the materialization of signs and the constitution of a collectivity. 
Juxtaposing the concepts of ‘collective assemblage of enunciation’, 
‘landscaping’ and ‘autoglottic space’, the article argues that 
collective enunciations are not autonomous from human agency. Instead, 
collective enunciations can be created by deliberate de-subjectification 
and de-personification in the materialization of signs.

*China is a hare: The articulation of national identity in Year Hare Affair*
Authors: Xuanxuan Tan

National identity is dynamic and dialogic, and its maintenance and 
reproduction have become increasingly fragmented and fractured. Although 
recent studies have discerned different modes of articulating national 
identity, very few studies have focused on youth culture and the 
maintenance and reproduction of national identity in China. Therefore, 
this study analyses metaphors, discursive practices and ideologies in 
the Chinese animation Na nian na tu na xie shi er (Year Hare Affair) 
using a coherent theoretical framework of multimodal metaphor and 
critical discourse analysis. First, four genres of multimodal metaphors 
are identified in animation. Next, this study analyses the ideologies 
and discursive practices of metaphors and argues that elements of what 
is called ‘ACG subculture’ – due to its focus on animation, comics and 
games – articulate elements of dominant culture by raising semantic 
conflicts in metaphor scenarios. The practice of articulation-produced 
national identity is informed by the conceptual metaphor CHINA IS A 
HARE. This metaphor, suggesting historic endurance and the lineage of 
the Chinese spirit, is an ideologically vested euphemism for national 
identity that embraces a dual notion of identity that is both national 
and individual. Finally, the novel reproduction of an endogenous and 
heterogeneous national identity in animation provides us with space to 
re-imagine the interplay between national identity, dominant ideology 
and Chinese youth.

*Hegemony, semiogenesis and the emergence of self-consciousness in 
Gramsci’s view: A Gramscian reading of integrationism*
Authors: Gianluigi Sassu

*Was Confucius teaching us how to do things with words? Reflections on 
ethics in language and communication*
Authors: Feifei Zhou And Xiyin Zhou

As observed by both western and Chinese scholars, despite the cultural 
and historical distance between them, the works of Confucius and J. L. 
Austin (together with other scholars of speech act theory) share similar 
views on the performative dimensions of language. Speech act theory 
underscores how utterances constitute actions instead of reporting inner 
mental states of the speakers, while Confucian texts also draw attention 
to the embeddedness of language in the wider contexts of personal 
affairs and social order. In this article, we conduct a detailed 
comparison of the two to demonstrate that their views on language and 
communication, although sharing some important concerns, differ 
significantly in two main aspects: (1) The relationship between one’s 
‘internal’ cultivation and ‘external’ behaviours; (2) The 
conceptualization of language and ethics. In conclusion, we discuss the 
implications of a Confucian outlook for the study of language and 
communication and point out some directions for future research.

*Are integrationists sceptics?*
Authors: David Eisenschitz

Integrationism advocates a radical epistemological reform in 
semiological theory. It is a relatively recent perspective, developed by 
Oxford Professor Roy Harris (1931–2015); yet integrationism’s main 
principles are best seen as the outcome of different timid trends in the 
history of theories of language. The epistemological exigencies that 
this perspective puts on theorists has often provoked reproaches that 
this perspective was too negative, nihilistic, destructive, a form of 
scepticism. This article takes this criticism at its word and outlines a 
comparison between the main form of scepticism known in Greek Antiquity, 
Pyrrhonism, and integrationism. A historical outline of the development 
of both movements is drawn, for context. Then particular issues serve as 
comparison points between both: the definition of doctrinal cohesion; 
the relation of each intellectual movement to ‘science’; the use of 
particular forms of arguments or ‘modes’; and some specific aspects of 
language-use that Pyrrhonism has addressed.
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