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63-812: Chopra was raised in Silicon Valley, and obtained a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Semiotics from Brown University in 1999. He completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in film at the Columbia University School of the Arts in 2007, where he received the School of Art's Deans Fellowship and the FOCUS Film Fellowship. Chopra made his first student film, Hate Crime , in the summer of 1998. As an undergraduate at Brown University , he wrote, directed and produced Uljhan ,

126-407: A computational semiotics method for generating semiotic squares from digital texts. Pictorial semiotics is intimately connected to art history and theory. It goes beyond them both in at least one fundamental way, however. While art history has limited its visual analysis to a small number of pictures that qualify as "works of art", pictorial semiotics focuses on the properties of pictures in

189-653: A 10-minute short film that played in festivals in New York and Los Angeles. In 2003, he directed, edited, and produced a short romance film entitled Butterfly , starring Tillotama Shome , which was shot in New Delhi and screened at over 20 festivals across North America, Europe, India and Pakistan. Butterfly won "Best Film" at the Napa Valley Wine Country Festival and the Ivy League Film Festival,

252-496: A basis for musical allusion." Subfields that have sprouted out of semiotics include, but are not limited to, the following: Palo Alto International Film Festival The Palo Alto International Film Festival (abbreviated as PAIFF) was a four-day festival that ran at the end of September. The Festival celebrated the innovation in cinema. PAIFF's speakers series, Palo Alto Talks, hosted conversations between industry leaders in film and technology. The 2012 festival opened with

315-404: A busy world; but even these may be fine-tuned for specific cultures. Research also found that, as airline industry brandings grow and become more international their logos become more symbolic and less iconic. The iconicity and symbolism of a sign depends on the cultural convention and are, on that ground, in relation with each other. If the cultural convention has greater influence on the sign,

378-430: A clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge. Thomas Sebeok would assimilate semiology to semiotics as a part to a whole, and was involved in choosing the name Semiotica for the first international journal devoted to the study of signs. Saussurean semiotics have exercised a great deal of influence on the schools of structuralism and post-structuralism. Jacques Derrida , for example, takes as his object

441-402: A connotation that is culturally-bound, and that violates some culture code. Theorists who have studied humor (such as Schopenhauer ) suggest that contradiction or incongruity creates absurdity and therefore, humor. Violating a culture code creates this construct of ridiculousness for the culture that owns the code. Intentional humor also may fail cross-culturally because jokes are not on code for

504-430: A general sense, and on how the artistic conventions of images can be interpreted through pictorial codes. Pictorial codes are the way in which viewers of pictorial representations seem automatically to decipher the artistic conventions of images by being unconsciously familiar with them. According to Göran Sonesson, a Swedish semiotician, pictures can be analyzed by three models: the narrative model, which concentrates on

567-427: A wide variety of possibilities for pictorial semiotics. Some influences have been drawn from phenomenological analysis, cognitive psychology, structuralist, and cognitivist linguistics, and visual anthropology and sociology. Studies have shown that semiotics may be used to make or break a brand . Culture codes strongly influence whether a population likes or dislikes a brand's marketing, especially internationally. If

630-587: Is a branch of science that generally studies meaning-making (whether communicated or not) and various types of knowledge. Unlike linguistics , semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems . Semiotics includes the study of indication, designation, likeness, analogy , allegory , metonymy , metaphor , symbolism , signification, and communication. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological dimensions. Some semioticians regard every cultural phenomenon as being able to be studied as communication. Semioticians also focus on

693-500: Is a commissioned piece about the Queens, New York based non-profit organization South Asian Youth Action . In 2006, Chopra wrote, produced, and directed his first feature film, Punching at the Sun , depicting the life of a troubled South Asian teen ( Misu Khan ) living in Queens, New York . It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival as the first South Asian American film to be selected to

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756-440: Is combining methods and theories developed in the disciplines of semiotics and the humanities, with providing new information into human signification and its manifestation in cultural practices. The research on cognitive semiotics brings together semiotics from linguistics, cognitive science, and related disciplines on a common meta-theoretical platform of concepts, methods, and shared data. Cognitive semiotics may also be seen as

819-481: Is covered in biosemiotics including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics . The importance of signs and signification has been recognized throughout much of the history of philosophy and psychology . The term derives from Ancient Greek σημειωτικός (sēmeiōtikós)  'observant of signs' (from σημεῖον (sēmeîon)  'a sign, mark, token'). For the Greeks, 'signs' ( σημεῖον sēmeîon ) occurred in

882-519: Is deeply concerned with non-linguistic signification. Philosophy of language also bears connections to linguistics, while semiotics might appear closer to some of the humanities (including literary theory ) and to cultural anthropology . Semiosis or semeiosis is the process that forms meaning from any organism's apprehension of the world through signs. Scholars who have talked about semiosis in their subtheories of semiotics include C. S. Peirce , John Deely , and Umberto Eco . Cognitive semiotics

945-743: Is offered by Jean-Jacques Nattiez who, as a musicologist , considered the theoretical study of communication irrelevant to his application of semiotics. Semiotics differs from linguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense. The branch of semiotics that deals with such formal relations between signs or expressions in abstraction from their signification and their interpreters, or—more generally—with formal properties of symbol systems (specifically, with reference to linguistic signs, syntax )

1008-486: Is possible to successfully pass a sign perceived as a cultural icon, such as the logos for Coca-Cola or McDonald's , from one culture to another. This may be accomplished if the sign is migrated from a more economically developed to a less developed culture. The intentional association of a product with another culture has been called "foreign consumer culture positioning" (FCCP). Products also may be marketed using global trends or culture codes, for example, saving time in

1071-406: Is referred to as syntactics . Peirce's definition of the term semiotic as the study of necessary features of signs also has the effect of distinguishing the discipline from linguistics as the study of contingent features that the world's languages happen to have acquired in the course of their evolutions. From a subjective standpoint, perhaps more difficult is the distinction between semiotics and

1134-414: Is the so-called semiotics (Charles Morris) which is now commonly employed by mathematical logicians. Semiotics is the theory of symbols and falls in three parts; Max Black argued that the work of Bertrand Russell was seminal in the field. Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted . This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be

1197-469: Is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning . In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs. Signs often are communicated by verbal language, but also by gestures, or by other forms of language, e.g. artistic ones (music, painting, sculpture, etc.). Contemporary semiotics

1260-452: The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), to highlight the 29th Annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival 's focus on South Asian film and filmmakers. He also directed and wrote a dystopian short film entitled Carbon Dated in 2011. In 2012, Chopra directed a web series, again in partnership with CAAM, entitled Nice Girls Crew . Season 1 screened in 2012, and Season 2 of

1323-437: The logical dimensions of semiotics, examining biological questions such as how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world. Fundamental semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study. Applied semiotics analyzes cultures and cultural artifacts according to the ways they construct meaning through their being signs. The communication of information in living organisms

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1386-560: The nature–culture divide and identifying symbols as no more than a species (or sub-species) of signum . A monograph study on this question was done by Manetti (1987). These theories have had a lasting effect in Western philosophy , especially through scholastic philosophy. The general study of signs that began in Latin with Augustine culminated with the 1632 Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot and then began anew in late modernity with

1449-477: The philosophy of language . In a sense, the difference lies between separate traditions rather than subjects. Different authors have called themselves "philosopher of language" or "semiotician." This difference does not match the separation between analytic and continental philosophy . On a closer look, there may be found some differences regarding subjects. Philosophy of language pays more attention to natural languages or to languages in general, while semiotics

1512-471: The values of the culture , and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life. To explain the relationship between semiotics and communication studies , communication is defined as the process of transferring data and-or meaning from a source to a receiver. Hence, communication theorists construct models based on codes, media, and contexts to explain the biology , psychology , and mechanics involved. Both disciplines recognize that

1575-628: The Audience Choice Award at the 2003 Asian Film Expo in Lyon , France, and a Director's Citation at the 2004 Black Maria Film and Video Festival . In 2009, Chopra directed a short film entitled Chop Chop (2009) starring Sung Kang , Tillotama Shome and Manu Narayan . He wrote and directed a sci-fi short film in 2010 entitled Pia , starring Tillotama Shome and Pia Shah as an android/cyborg, for PBS 's FutureStates project. In 2011, Chopra directed The King's Speech Parody LOL , in partnership with

1638-461: The Greek semeîon , 'sign'). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to

1701-518: The Saussurean relationship of signifier and signified, asserting that signifier and signified are not fixed, coining the expression différance , relating to the endless deferral of meaning, and to the absence of a "transcendent signified". In the nineteenth century, Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he would sometimes spell as "semeiotic") as the "quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs," which abstracts "what must be

1764-497: The Saussurean semiotic is dyadic (sign/syntax, signal/semantics), the Peircean semiotic is triadic (sign, object, interpretant), being conceived as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial. Peirce would aim to base his new list directly upon experience precisely as constituted by action of signs, in contrast with the list of Aristotle's categories which aimed to articulate within experience

1827-435: The animal Umwelt a relation of self-identity within objects which transforms objects experienced into 'things' as well as +, –, 0 objects. Thus, the generically animal objective world as Umwelt , becomes a species-specifically human objective world or Lebenswelt ( ' life-world ' ), wherein linguistic communication, rooted in the biologically underdetermined Innenwelt ( ' inner-world ' ) of humans, makes possible

1890-421: The attainment of any end, especially happiness: or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts. Locke then elaborates on the nature of this third category, naming it Σημειωτική ( Semeiotike ), and explaining it as "the doctrine of signs" in the following terms: Thirdly,

1953-622: The attempt in 1867 by Charles Sanders Peirce to draw up a "new list of categories ". More recently Umberto Eco , in his Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language , has argued that semiotic theories are implicit in the work of most, perhaps all, major thinkers. John Locke (1690), himself a man of medicine , was familiar with this "semeiotics" as naming a specialized branch within medical science. In his personal library were two editions of Scapula's 1579 abridgement of Henricus Stephanus ' Thesaurus Graecae Linguae , which listed σημειωτική as

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2016-418: The characters of all signs used by…an intelligence capable of learning by experience," and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes. Peirce's perspective is considered as philosophical logic studied in terms of signs that are not always linguistic or artificial, and sign processes, modes of inference, and the inquiry process in general. The Peircean semiotic addresses not only

2079-537: The company did not research the codes underlying European culture. Its storybook retelling of European folktales was taken as elitist and insulting, and the strict appearance standards that it had for employees resulted in discrimination lawsuits in France. Disney souvenirs were perceived as cheap trinkets. The park was a financial failure because its code violated the expectations of European culture in ways that were offensive. However, some researchers have suggested that it

2142-506: The company is unaware of a culture's codes, it runs the risk of failing in its marketing. Globalization has caused the development of a global consumer culture where products have similar associations, whether positive or negative, across numerous markets. Mistranslations may lead to instances of " Engrish " or " Chinglish " terms for unintentionally humorous cross-cultural slogans intended to be understood in English. When translating surveys ,

2205-554: The conversation surrounding musical tropes—or "topics"—in order to create a collection of musical figures that have historically been indicative of a given style. Robert Hatten continues this conversation in Beethoven, Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (1994), in which he states that "richly coded style types which carry certain features linked to affect, class, and social occasion such as church styles, learned styles, and dance styles. In complex forms these topics mingle, providing

2268-508: The dimension of being that is independent of experience and knowable as such, through human understanding. The estimative powers of animals interpret the environment as sensed to form a "meaningful world" of objects, but the objects of this world (or Umwelt , in Jakob von Uexküll 's term) consist exclusively of objects related to the animal as desirable (+), undesirable (–), or "safe to ignore" (0). In contrast to this, human understanding adds to

2331-562: The dream started with "dream thoughts" which were like logical, verbal sentences. He believed that the dream thought was in the nature of a taboo wish that would awaken the dreamer. In order to safeguard sleep, the midbrain converts and disguises the verbal dream thought into an imagistic form, through processes he called the "dream-work." Semiotics can be directly linked to the ideals of musical topic theory, which traces patterns in musical figures throughout their prevalent context in order to assign some aspect of narrative, affect, or aesthetics to

2394-462: The existence of signs that are symbols; semblances ("icons"); and "indices," i.e., signs that are such through a factual connection to their objects. Peircean scholar and editor Max H. Fisch (1978) would claim that "semeiotic" was Peirce's own preferred rendering of Locke's σημιωτική. Charles W. Morris followed Peirce in using the term "semiotic" and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals. While

2457-444: The external communication mechanism, as per Saussure, but the internal representation machine, investigating sign processes, and modes of inference, as well as the whole inquiry process in general. Peircean semiotic is triadic, including sign, object, interpretant, as opposed to the dyadic Saussurian tradition (signifier, signified). Peircean semiotics further subdivides each of the three triadic elements into three sub-types, positing

2520-564: The festival. At Sundance, it was nominated for a Humanitas Prize . The film also screened at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and the 2006 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival , where it won the Jury Award for Best Narrative film. It has been screened at over 30 film festivals, and was released online in 2008 via Jaman.com . Chopra started work on the Kickstarter crowd-funded indie feature film Nature Boy in 2011, which tells

2583-413: The further dimension of cultural organization within the otherwise merely social organization of non-human animals whose powers of observation may deal only with directly sensible instances of objectivity. This further point, that human culture depends upon language understood first of all not as communication, but as the biologically underdetermined aspect or feature of the human animal's Innenwelt ,

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2646-414: The gesture. Danuta Mirka's The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory presents a holistic recognition and overview regarding the subject, offering insight into the development of the theory. In recognizing the indicative and symbolic elements of a musical line, gesture, or occurrence, one can gain a greater understanding of aspects regarding compositional intent and identity. Philosopher Charles Pierce discusses

2709-439: The individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. To coin a word to refer to a thing , the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their language, but that word can transmit that meaning only within the language's grammatical structures and codes . Codes also represent

2772-540: The music videos for Chee Malabar 's tracks "Harsh Truth", "Unbearable Sweetness", "Now Is Too Soon", and "Hamas 2.5". He has also directed various music videos and music pieces for jazz pianist Vijay Iyer . Chopra has worked on several documentaries. His Project Heart: Uganda series focused on the work of the World Children Initiative treating children's heart disease in Uganda . His documentary SAYA! Turns Ten

2835-662: The name for ' diagnostics ' , the branch of medicine concerned with interpreting symptoms of disease (" symptomatology "). Physician and scholar Henry Stubbe (1670) had transliterated this term of specialized science into English precisely as " semeiotics ", marking the first use of the term in English: "…nor is there any thing to be relied upon in Physick, but an exact knowledge of medicinal phisiology (founded on observation, not principles), semeiotics, method of curing, and tried (not excogitated, not commanding) medicines.…" Locke would use

2898-549: The name to subtitle his founding at the University of Tartu in Estonia in 1964 of the first semiotics journal, Sign Systems Studies . Ferdinand de Saussure founded his semiotics, which he called semiology , in the social sciences: It is…possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from

2961-602: The post- Baudrillardian world of ubiquitous technology. Its central move is to place the finiteness of thought at the root of semiotics and the sign as a secondary but fundamental analytical construct. The theory contends that the levels of reproduction that technology is bringing to human environments demands this reprioritisation if semiotics is to remain relevant in the face of effectively infinite signs. The shift in emphasis allows practical definitions of many core constructs in semiotics which Shackell has applied to areas such as human computer interaction , creativity theory, and

3024-449: The prominent cognitive semioticians are Per Aage Brandt , Svend Østergaard, Peer Bundgård, Frederik Stjernfelt , Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Jordan Zlatev. Zlatev later in co-operation with Göran Sonesson established CCS (Center for Cognitive Semiotics) at Lund University , Sweden. Finite semiotics , developed by Cameron Shackell (2018, 2019), aims to unify existing theories of semiotics for application to

3087-478: The receiving culture. A good example of branding according to cultural code is Disney 's international theme park business. Disney fits well with Japan 's cultural code because the Japanese value " cuteness ", politeness, and gift-giving as part of their culture code; Tokyo Disneyland sells the most souvenirs of any Disney theme park. In contrast, Disneyland Paris failed when it launched as Euro Disney because

3150-526: The relationship between pictures and time in a chronological manner as in a comic strip; the rhetoric model, which compares pictures with different devices as in a metaphor; and the Laokoon model, which considers the limits and constraints of pictorial expressions by comparing textual mediums that utilize time with visual mediums that utilize space. The break from traditional art history and theory—as well as from other major streams of semiotic analysis—leaves open

3213-433: The relationship of icons and indexes in relation to signification and semiotics. In doing so, he draws on the elements of various ideas, acts, or styles that can be translated into a different field. Whereas indexes consist of a contextual representation of a symbol, icons directly correlate with the object or gesture that is being referenced. In his 1980 book Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, Leonard Ratner amends

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3276-525: The same symbol may mean different things in the source and target language thus leading to potential errors. For example, the symbol of "x" is used to mark a response in English language surveys but "x" usually means ' no ' in the Chinese convention. This may be caused by a sign that, in Peirce's terms, mistakenly indexes or symbolizes something in one culture, that it does not in another. In other words, it creates

3339-562: The series screened in 20d. He also directed the season 2 of web series Delhi Crime . In 2014, Chopra wrote and directed a futuristic short film entitled Teacher In A Box (2014), again in partnership with the PBS FutureStates project, set in a future where teachers are replaced with digital avatars of themselves. Along with Prashant Bhargava , Chopra co-directed the music video for the Swetshop Boys ' "Benny Lava". Chopra also directed

3402-494: The signs get more symbolic value. The flexibility of human semiotics is well demonstrated in dreams. Sigmund Freud spelled out how meaning in dreams rests on a blend of images, affects , sounds, words, and kinesthetic sensations. In his chapter on "The Means of Representation," he showed how the most abstract sorts of meaning and logical relations can be represented by spatial relations. Two images in sequence may indicate "if this, then that" or "despite this, that." Freud thought

3465-538: The story of an ex-tennis champion who finds himself washed up and disconnected in his hometown at age 33. Chopra makes his films under the label "Chops Films". Chopra serves on the board of the Palo Alto International Film Festival , and assists with the New Voices for Youth Film-making Initiative. Semiotics Semiotics ( / ˌ s ɛ m i ˈ ɒ t ɪ k s / SEM -ee- OT -iks )

3528-479: The study of meaning-making by employing and integrating methods and theories developed in the cognitive sciences. This involves conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental investigations. Cognitive semiotics initially was developed at the Center for Semiotics at Aarhus University ( Denmark ), with an important connection with the Center of Functionally Integrated Neuroscience (CFIN) at Aarhus Hospital. Amongst

3591-556: The technical process cannot be separated from the fact that the receiver must decode the data, i.e., be able to distinguish the data as salient , and make meaning out of it. This implies that there is a necessary overlap between semiotics and communication. Indeed, many of the concepts are shared, although in each field the emphasis is different. In Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics , Marcel Danesi (1994) suggested that semioticians' priorities were to study signification first, and communication second. A more extreme view

3654-513: The term sem(e)iotike in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (book IV, chap. 21), in which he explains how science may be divided into three parts: All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, first, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for

3717-420: The third branch [of sciences] may be termed σημειωτικὴ , or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Λογικὴ , logic; the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. Juri Lotman introduced Eastern Europe to semiotics and adopted Locke's coinage ( Σημειωτική ) as

3780-446: The way to understanding an action of signs beyond the realm of animal life (study of phytosemiosis + zoösemiosis + anthroposemiosis = biosemiotics ), which was his first advance beyond Latin Age semiotics. Other early theorists in the field of semiotics include Charles W. Morris . Writing in 1951, Jozef Maria Bochenski surveyed the field in this way: "Closely related to mathematical logic

3843-481: The work of Martin Krampen , but takes advantage of Peirce's point that an interpretant, as the third item within a sign relation, "need not be mental". Peirce distinguished between the interpretant and the interpreter. The interpretant is the internal, mental representation that mediates between the object and its sign. The interpreter is the human who is creating the interpretant. Peirce's "interpretant" notion opened

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3906-416: The world of nature and 'symbols' ( σύμβολον sýmbolon ) in the world of culture. As such, Plato and Aristotle explored the relationship between signs and the world. It would not be until Augustine of Hippo that the nature of the sign would be considered within a conventional system. Augustine introduced a thematic proposal for uniting the two under the notion of 'sign' ( signum ) as transcending

3969-451: Was originally clearly identified by Thomas A. Sebeok . Sebeok also played the central role in bringing Peirce's work to the center of the semiotic stage in the twentieth century, first with his expansion of the human use of signs ( anthroposemiosis ) to include also the generically animal sign-usage ( zoösemiosis ), then with his further expansion of semiosis to include the vegetative world ( phytosemiosis ). Such would initially be based on

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