Overview

Interrogating the relatively new field of cognitive semiotics, this book explores shared issues in cognitive science and semiotics. Building on research from recent decades, Per Aage Brandt investigates the potential of a cognitive semiotic approach to enhance our understanding of language, thought and semiosis in general. Introducing a critical, non-standard approach both to cognitive science and to semiotics, this book discusses the understanding of meaning and mind through four major dimensions; mental architecture, mental spaces, discourse coherence and eco-organization. Encompassing a rich variety of topics and debates, Cognitive Semiotics outlines several bridges between 'continental' and 'analytic' thinking in the study of semantics, pragmatics, discourse and the philosophy of language and mind.

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9781350189669

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Reviews

Working as one of the earliest and most original thinkers in cognitive semiotics, Per Aage Brandt, unfurls a brilliant tapestry of cross-disciplinary inquiry in this volume to reveal untold dynamics of the embodied poetic imagination. Brimming with insight on the truly hard problem of understanding meaning, this book is sure to inspire further research and productive debate among those who are working to integrate cognitive science with perspectives from semiotic phenomenology. Readers interested in many other domains -- from the study of songs, money, numbers, politics, and translation, to the study of consciousness, poetics, linguistics, psychology, and the history of ideas -- will also be instructed and inspired by reading this timely book. * Jamin Pelkey, Associate Professor of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Ryerson University, Canada * When cognitive studies need to become (more) semiotic, and semiotics needs to become (more) cognitive (as Per Aage Brandt states in his Introduction), what better place to look than in what has been called the phenomenology of meaning? The present work takes us on an illuminative journey through the author's decade-long occupation with this real-life (rather than armchair) philosophy, and invites the readers to join him on his travel through the performative semantics of symbols (as in linguistics), the informative semantics of truth and truth functions (as in philosophical and institutional discourse), to the formative semantics of our existential human condition. Going from words through discourse to activity, the whole spectrum of knowing, understanding, and acting is displayed in this unique collection encompassing a lifetime's work of one who may safely be called the parent (and godparent) of many (not only Danish, but global) innovative approaches to Cognitive Semiotics. * Jacob Mey, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark * In a series of applied studies, Per Aage Brandt's cognitive semiotics brings out the convergence between Danish semiotics, European philosophy and the more recent work of the Paris School in both its semio-linguistic component and its mathematical component. An indispensable work to anticipate and accompany the new mental landmarks of the twenty-first century. * Anne Henault, Professor Emeritus of Semiotics, Paris Sorbonne University, France *

Author Information

Per Aage Brandt is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University, USA.

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