Research On Material Symbols Of Urban Culture From A Semiotic Perspective

This thesis tries to use theories of language semiotics to analyse non-linguistic symbols. It focuses on material symbols of urban culture in order to introdue a new perspective to the study field.From the semiotic perspective, the material symbols of urban culture are such symbols that their physical forms and functions represent the urban culture and constitute a culture system. So this thesis systematically studies the structure and codification of their physical forms and functions. It takes paradigms of both Structuralist semiotics and Pragmatism Semiotics as basis and material symbols of Qingdao City as prototypes, such as Tin Hau Temple, Zhongshan road, the trestle, the beaches, the little port, the beer and so on.In the first part, the thesis takes a large number of examples to interpret the representaman, the object and the interpretant of the material symbols of urban culture,which reveal the existing form and cognitive path of them. In the second part, from linguistic symbol-material symbol relation angle, it analyses the signification and structural codification of the material symbols of urban culture to provide a theoretical reference for the protection and construction of urban culture.All points of view could be summarized as follows:Firstly, the material symbol of urban culture is a ternary structured symbol, constituted by the representaman, the object and the interpretant. The representamen include natural environment forms, roads, buildings, facilities, goods and other items of physical city. All the physical shapes, related behaviors and spiritual meanings as well as theirs corresponding language description could be regarded as the symbols' object. The interpretant usually be marked as other medium symbols, like language, writing, image, video, sound recording and so on.Secondly, language symbols participate in the codification process of the material symbols of urban culture as meta-language or connotation-language, which re-construct the substance, significance, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of the material symbols of urban culture.Thirdly, the codification of the material symbols of urban culture could be divided into two categories:the original codification, which follows the rules of the material's substance and functions; the alternative codification, which follows the language symbols' significance and connotation. The protection and construction of urban culture should take the original codification as a leadership. Original is essential attribute for the material symbols of urban culture.