Semiotic studies

This article is a Russian translation of the General introduction to the four-volume project “Open Semiotics”, published in 2023 under the editorship of Amir Biglari in the L'Harmattan publishing house. The original imprint – Biglari, A. (2023), General intoduction, A. Biglari (ed.), Open Semiotics: Epistemological and Conceptual Foundations, L'Harmattan, Paris, vol. 1, pp. 33–43.
“Open Semiotics” comprises four volumes: (1) Epistemological and Conceptual Foundations, (2) Culture and Society, (3) Texts, Images, Arts, (4) Life and its Extensions. The project includes 141 chapters authored by 178 scholars from 58 countries spanning all continents, which represent a broad array of trends and approaches as well as numerous and diverse disciplinary crossings. 
Given that signs and meanings pervade the world in its different aspects, semiotics is naturally open to interactions with other fields, from the humanities and social sciences to the natural and pure sciences. Open Semiotics aims to explore and expand these interactions, and to facilitate new avenues for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, providing insights into a redeployment of disciplinary fields.

The article examines a new complexity problem of ontology brought to life by technical interventions in living systems. The object is the philosophical problems of biology, the subject of the research is to identify the specifics and typology of the philosophical problems of biology.
The development of experimental technology predetermined the transition of biology to the molecular (genomic) level, which made it one of the leaders among the natural sciences. Biology is changing the scientific picture of the world within the framework of cybernetic ontology, a new paradigm, wherein molecules are used as vehicles for transmitting information, and life sciences are transformed into “technobiological art.” The nature of scientific knowledge transforms subject-object relations, knowledge is determined by techno-scientific methods and techniques in the field of biomedical and information technologies. Practical and theoretical schemes of biology act as a special model of experimental measurement practice and as a project of technical action.
Technology raises many socio-ethical issues that go beyond the purview of natural scientists and engineers. Both philosophers and natural scientists are disturbed by the idea that the development of natural science has changed or will change in the nearest future civilization and the destinies of mankind.

The article is devoted to the problems of V. Nabokov’s author’s style, considered from the standpoint of semiotics. Russian-language prose created by V. Nabokov during the Berlin period of his life is used as research material: the novels “Mary”, “King, Queen, Knave”, “The Luzhin Defense”, “Glory”, “Camera Obscura”, “Despair”, “Invitation to a Beheading”, “The Gift” and stories from the collection “The Return of Chorb”. The features of the Nabokov’s text verbal sign, as well as the visual and expressive capabilities of the verbal images in the writer’s works are considered. Thanks to the use of N. Goodman’s general theory of symbols and Aage A. Hansen-Löwe’s theory of intermediality as a methodological basis, the possibility of interpreting Nabokov’s poetics as “flickering,” metaphorical, “polycode” opens up. As a “code” of Nabokov’s images, not only verbal signs themselves are considered, but also their translation into signs of other arts that are not directly related to words - painting, cinema, architecture. As a result of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that V. Nabokov’s verbal sign strives for maximum visual expressiveness, taking on some of the properties of the iconic sign. Thanks to the chosen approach, new results were achieved in the study of V. Nabokov’s artistic language.

This article is an experience of studying the structure and role of the «Samara text» in the novel «Petrushka's Syndrome» by Dina Rubina. The initial premise of this article is the author's conviction that it is space that appears in the named novel by Dina Rubina as a constructive principle of the literary work genre organization and the construction of an artistic semiosphere, through analysis of which the researcher can enter the sphere of meanings. The Samara space is not the only one in the novel and is included in a large and complex system of spaces formed by the «Lviv», «Prague», «Berlin», «Israeli» and «South Sakhalin» chapters, and each of these loci has its own artistic tasks and own meanings. At the same time, Samara appears in the novel as a very special space and semantic code formed by the Samara history, urban folklore, artistic and other texts, which together form an urban myth and urban text, and finally, perhaps, by Dina Rubina’s personal impressions, obviously well acquainted with Samara and the Samara residents. All these components of the «Samara text» form the Samara code, which is the focus of the article authors. The most thorough analysis in the article is one of the Samara mini-topos – Visi's apartment, which is the quintessence of the «Samara» life in the novel.

The article deals with the consideration of numerous cases of the writer's self-reflection when creating his scientific biography, about the dialogical links of biography with the epoch. The creative life of an artist can develop both thanks to and despite the influence of time, or even independently of it. Attention is paid to the problem of the gradual formation of the writer, the creative person's awareness of his own mission, his socio-cultural destiny. There is an important question about the incentive motives for choosing a profession, which include a fateful meeting with a great artist, and the burden of accumulated life impressions, and the experienced psychological trauma. The importance of the writer's diverse reception of someone else's aesthetic experience is great. The attitude to this experience can be expressed as a triad: influence, repulsion, mutual enrichment. The article discusses the dual role of the creative crisis (the annoying lack of a theme, the feeling of exhaustion and frustration, the impoverishment of creative means), which can be considered not only as a failure, but also as a rare chance of a probable productive renewal. The examples of such radical renewal in the creative life of V.P. Kataev, Yu.V. Trifonov, V.F. Tendryakov in the 1960-1970s are given. In addition, the article takes into account the phenomenon of the literary generation, belonging to which can become a school for the writer and help him to determine the vector of further development, the problems of creativity, the choice of artistic language, creative manner. The author talks about the special importance of cultural generation and the own individual creative code developed by the writer, which the writer will pass on to future literary generations.

The relevance of the study of identities and practices of the youth consolidation in the conditions of the Russian society is substantiated. The article defines concepts of the consolidation and identity at the theoretical and empirical levels. It considers the potential of the mix strategy in the study of identities and practices of the modern youth consolidation. The authors indicate factors of popularity of the mix strategy in the modern conditions, and the content of the discussion in the Russian scientific sociological field on the conformity of the translation into Russian of the English-language name Mixed Methods Research. Based on an appeal to the analysis of already implemented practices of applying the strategy of mixing methods, two approaches to its use are outlined. The article considers four key elements of the strategy of mixing methods within the framework of D. Creswell and V. Plano Clark’s approach, and indicates three strategies for combining methods from D.Morgan’s position. The author's position and problematic issues related to the use of the strategy of mixing methods are outlined. It is indicated what opportunities the application of the strategy of mixing methods opens up within the framework of the claimed study. It is concluded that the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches in one research cycle complicates the task of understanding the identities and practices of the modern young consolidation, and at the same time allows you to look more deeply at the subject of research.

The article is aimed to analyze the work motivation of employees of modern Russian aerospace enterprises engaged in automated and non-automated production sites. The authors give an overview of the existing approaches to the analysis of work motivation and provide data from the pilot sociological study conducted in October 2023 (N=86), when theoretical and applied problems were solved. Theoretically, the hypothesis about the influence of digitalization and robotization processes on the factors of labor motivation was tested. The applied task of the study was connected with the approbation of the tools of sociological research and methods of factor and cluster analysis to the data obtained during the survey of employees. The conducted research enabled the authors to conclude about 3 main groups of motives that form the factors of the employees’ work motivation of the surveyed enterprise: 1) motivation of professional realization; 2) material motivation and 3) socially-oriented motivation. As a result of the cluster analysis, two groups of employees were identified, depending on the type of dominant motives: those who are materially oriented towards professional self-realization ("pragmatists") and those who expect approval and support from their superiors and their colleagues in the course of their work ("conformists"). Despite the fact that the hypothesis about the influence of the automation level of a production site on the type of the employee’s dominant motivation has been confirmed using the discriminant analysis method, it needs additional verification on a larger sample scale.