On Musical Self-Similarity : Intersemiosis as Synecdoche and Analogy

Self-similarity, a concept taken from mathematics, is gradually becoming a keyword in musicology. Although a polysemic term, self-similarity often refers to the multi-scalar feature repetition in a set of relationships, and it is commonly valued as an indication for musical coherence and consistency . This investigation provides a theory of musical meaning formation in the context of intersemiosis, that is, the translation of meaning from one cognitive domain to another cognitive domain (e.g. from mathematics to music, or to speech or graphic forms). From this perspective, the degree of coherence of a musical system relies on a synecdochic intersemiosis: a system of related signs within other comparable and correlated systems. This research analyzes the modalities of such correlations, exploring their general and particular traits, and their operational bounds. Looking forward in this direction, the notion of analogy is used as a rich concept through its two definitions quoted by the Classical literature: proportion and paradigm, enormously valuable in establishing measurement, likeness and affinity criteria. Using quantitative qualitative methods, evidence is presented to justify a parallel study of different modalities of musical self-similarity. For this purpose, original arguments by Benoît B. Mandelbrot are revised, alongside a systematic critique of the literature on the subject. Furthermore, connecting Charles S. Peirce s synechism with Mandelbrot s fractality is one of the main developments of the present study. This study provides elements for explaining Bolognesi s (1983) conjecture, that states that the most primitive, intuitive and basic musical device is self-reference, extending its functions and operations to self-similar surfaces. In this sense, this research suggests that, with various modalities of self-similarity, synecdochic intersemiosis acts as system of systems in coordination with greater or lesser development of structural consistency, and with a greater or lesser contextual dependence.

Intertextualidad e intersemiosis en Macanudo (1- 6) de Liniers

Introducción: “A veces me gusta tomarme un tiempo para observar el mundo y ver lo increíble y lo frágil que es todo”, “Si te conocés desde chico con alguien, entonces podés ser chico cuando quieras”, “Mi nación es cualquier lugar donde alguien se abrace”. Expresiones como éstas cautivan a los lectores por su profundidad, su delicadeza, su capacidad de observación y de síntesis para nombrar los grandes temas de la existencia. La elección de cada palabra y su orden en la frase están cuidadosamente sopesados; hay un uso peculiar de los adjetivos y las estructuras sintácticas que contribuye a la densidad del discurso. Estos pequeños textos lingüísticos nos sitúan, por lo tanto, frente a lo que Roman Jakobson llamó la “función poética” del lenguaje. Este tipo de frases abundan en Macanudo, la tira creada por Ricardo “Liniers” Siri que, desde el año 2002, se publica diariamente en la última página de la sección Espectáculos del periódico argentino La Nación. La tira ha sido tan bien aceptada por el público que ya lleva una década en el diario y su autor ha reunido ese material en diez libros. Además de su poesía verbal, son muchos los factores que hacen de Macanudo una historieta especial, diferente de la mayoría. Por empezar, se trata de una tira que aloja las historias y ocurrencias de múltiples personajes, algunos fijos, otros esporádicos y unos cuantos que tan sólo viven un día. Los dibujos de Liniers complementan la escritura reforzando la configuración de un universo propio, dotado de sensibilidad, humor y ternura. En su espacio tienen lugar la reflexión filosófica y sociopolítica, así como cuestiones relacionadas con los vínculos humanos, la creación artística y, especialmente, el rol que ocupan el arte y la industria cultural en nuestra vida cotidiana...

Roman Ingarden’s Objectivity vs. Subjectivity as a problem of Translatability

Ingarden (1962, 1964) postulates that artworks exist in an “Objective purely intentional” way. According to this view, objectivity and subjectivity are opposed forms of existence, parallel to the opposition between realism and idealism. Using arguments of cognitive science, experimental psychology, and semiotics, this lecture proposes that, particularly in the aesthetic phenomena, realism and idealism are not pure oppositions; rather they are aspects of a single process of cognition in different strata. Furthermore, the concept of realism can be conceived as an empirical extreme of idealism, and the concept of idealism can be conceived as a pre-operative extreme of realism. Both kind of systems of knowledge are mutually associated by a synecdoche, performing major tasks of mental order and categorisation. This contribution suggests that the supposed opposition between objectivity and subjectivity, raises, first of all, a problem of translatability, more than a problem of existential categories. Synecdoche seems to be a very basic transaction of the mind, establishing ontologies (in the more Ingardean way of the term). Wegrzecki (1994, 220) defines ontology as “the central domain of philosophy to which other its parts directly or indirectly refer”. Thus, ontology operates within philosophy as the synecdoche does within language, pointing the sense of the general into the particular and/or viceversa. The many affinities and similarities between different sign systems, like those found across the interrelationships of the arts, are embedded into a transversal, synecdochic intersemiosis. An important question, from this view, is whether Ingardean’s pure objectivities lie basically on the impossibility of translation, therefore being absolute self-referential constructions. In such a case, it would be impossible to translate pure intentionality into something else, like acts or products.

Tecnologias, mídias, criação e hipertextualidade na transformação da informação em conhecimento interativo

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Motivating film title translation: a cognitive análisis

This proposal is a non-quantitative study based on a corpus of real data which offers a principled account of the translation strategies employed in the translation of English film titles into Spanish in terms of cognitive modeling. More specifically, we draw on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera’s (2014) work on what they term content (or low-level) cognitive operations, based on either ‘stands for’ or ‘identity’ relations, in order to investigate possible motivating factors for translations which abide by oblique procedures, i.e. for non-literal renderings of source titles. The present proposal is made in consonance with recent findings within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (Samaniego 2007), which evidence that this linguistic approach can fruitfully address some relevant issues in Translation Studies, the most outstanding for our purposes being the exploration of the cognitive operations which account for the use of translation strategies (Rojo and Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2013: 10), mainly expansion and reduction operations, parameterization, echoing, mitigation and comparison by contrast. This fits in nicely with a descriptive approach to translation and particularly with skopos theory, whose main aim consists in achieving functionally adequate renderings of source texts.