CULTURAL SEMIOTICS: TOWARDS THE NOTION OF CULTURAL SEMIOSIS

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of the traditional deinition of semiosis as the process involving objects’ representations functioning as signs and futher elaboration of this deinition in cultural semiotics. The author
claims that the semiotics of culture primarily encompasses information processes, while the culturally marked mechanism of transforming information into text appears to be but another deinition of semiosis. The article focuses on culture text as a structure facilitating culture’s acquiring information about itself and contextually functioning as “mind” (J. Lotman). From this standpoint semiosis is described as the communication-oriented process of generating senses which unfolds when culture texts emerge in the mental space.