Abstract "Zoosemiotics beyond Sebeok" submitted to 22nd gathering in biosemiotics

I have just submitted the abstract below to the organizers of the 22nd gathering in biosemiotics, which will be held at Palacký University in Olomouc, the Czech Republic June 27th - July 1st 2022.

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Zoosemiotics beyond Sebeok  

Author: Morten Tønnessen 

Email: ***@gmail.com 

Affiliation: Professor of philosophy, Department of social studies, University of Stavanger, Norway  

The chapter presented here (Tønnessen, forthcoming) outlines semiotic studies in ethology and zoology, starting with foundational work and contemporary developments and proceeding to relevant methodologies and prospective future studies. The conception of zoosemiotics as a field of study has evolved considerably since Thomas Sebeok coined the term in 1963, and currently signifies a far more comprehensive field than what Sebeok’s original definition of zoosemiotics as “the scientific study of signalling behaviour in and across animal species” indicates (1963: 465). In contrast, Maran et al. (2011: 8) distinguish between ethological zoosemiotics and anthropological zoosemiotics, with the former overlapping with Sebeok’s initial notion of zoosemiotics and the latter programmatically expanding the conception of zoosemiotics. The contemporary notion of zoosemiotics entails that the semiotic study of animals cannot simply be understood as a synthesis between semiotics and ethology, although such a synthesis remains at its core. It must furthermore be understood as engaging and intersecting with ecology, cultural studies and other fields of study where animals appear in one form or another. Contemporary zoosemiotics is markedly post-Sebeokian in that it deviates from Sebeok’s outlook in the framing of the human being’s position within nature at large. In similar terms, it also deviates from Sebeok’s worldview in the framing of culture’s position within nature. In the first case, contemporary zoosemiotics is arguably more consistently pluralistic, and has less of an anthropocentric bias, than Sebeokian zoosemiotics. In the second case, in its view on the relation between culture and nature, it is arguably more consistently holistic. These developments, representing deviations from classical Sebeokian zoosemiotics, appear to be regarded as advances by most scholars and students in the newest generation of zoosemioticians – and to be more in line with the contemporary Zeitgeist among concerned scientists and environmental and animal protection activists.   

In modern science, the agency and subjectivity of animals has tended to be neglected. This har largely limited studies of animals to quantitative methods, whether in the study of animals in themselves, or in the study of how animals relate to human beings. Today, zoosemiotics is arguably the theoretically and empirically soundest approach to “taking the animal’s perspective”. More research is needed on how humans relate to animals. And more research is needed on how animals relate to humans. In the near future, work is needed that connects semiotic studies in ethology and zoology with issues in global human ecology, develops flexible zoosemiotic tools and methodology for application by practitioners such as field ethologists, veterinarians, zookeepers etc., and makes further connections between semiotic studies of animals and phenomenology, ethnography, and anthropology by developing tools and methodology tailor-made for studies related to human agents and their dealings with animals.    

REFERENCES 

Maran, T., D. Martinelli and A. Turovski, eds. (2011). Readings in Zoosemiotics (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition 8), Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton. 

Sebeok, T. A. (1963). Review. Language, 39: 448–466. 

Tønnessen, M., forthcoming, 2022. Semiotics in ethology and zoology. In Bloomsbury Semiotics (4 volumes, ed. Jamin Pelkey), volume 2, Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences (ed. Stephanie Walsh Matthews). Bloomsbury Academic.