Sphere metaphor in communication. The concept of semiosphere

Grzegorz Kapuściński

In modern semiotics of culture, we lack its comprehensive concept, integrating the different trends present in it. Such role can be played by the concept of culture as semiosphere, formulated earlier by the renowned Estonian semiotician Yuri Lotman (1922–1993). Despite the fact that it was recently translated, it is relatively unknown. According to his theories, culture is an aggregate of interpenetrating spheres of meanings. They are heterogeneous, formalized to different degrees, of various cohesion, both mutual as well as internal. Relations between them are of multi level and multi direction translation character. Semiosphere has an abstract as well as territorial dimension. Essential to translation assimilation are borders, on the one hand determining the identity of different spheres of semiosphere and, on the other, of filtering membrane character. Supplementary to this concept can be the idea of an axiosemiotic sphere, showing that in meaning as understood by man imperative is the values plane, inseparably tied to it.

KEYWORDS

semiosphere, axiosemiosis, semiotic space, universe, border, translation