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Semiosis (from the Greek: σημείωσις, sēmeíōsis, a derivation of the verb σημειῶ, sēmeiô, "to mark") is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. Briefly – semiosis is sign process. The term was introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) to describe a process that interprets signs as referring to their objects, as described in his theory of sign relations, or semiotics. Semiosis is triadic and cyclic. Other theories of sign processes are sometimes carried out under the heading of semiology, following on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913).

Introduction to theory[link]

Peirce was interested primarily in logic, while Saussure was interested primarily in linguistics, which examines the functions and structures of language. But both of them recognised that there is more to significant representation than language in the narrow sense of speech and writing alone. So they developed the idea of semiosis to relate language to other sign systems both human and nonhuman. Today, there is disagreement as to the operating cause and effect. One school of thought argues that language is the semiotic prototype and its study illuminates principles that can be applied to other sign systems. The opposing school argues that there is a metasign system and that language is simply one of many codes for communicating meaning, citing the way in which human infants learn about their environment before they have acquired language. Whichever may be right, a preliminary definition of semiosis is any action or influence for communicating meaning by establishing relationships between signs which are to be interpreted by an audience.

Discussion[link]

Semiosis is the performance element involving signs. Although a human can communicate many things unintentionally, individuals usually speak or write to elicit some kind of response. Yet there is little real explanation of how semiosis produces its effects, which is odd given that the word "sign" is in everyday use and most people would understand what it means. But semiotics has not offered clear technical definitions, nor is there agreement about how signs should be classified.

As an insect or animal, human or otherwise, moves through its environment (sometimes termed the umwelt), all the senses collect data that are made available to the brain. However, to prevent sensory overload, only salient data will receive the full attention of the cognitive elements of the mind. This indicates that a part of the process must be controlled by a model of the real world capable of ranking data elements in terms of their significance and filtering out the data irrelevant to survival. A sign cannot function until the brain or audience distinguishes it from the background noise. When this happens, the sign then triggers cognitive activity to interpret the data input and so convert it into meaningful information. This would suggest that, in the semiosphere, the process of semiosis goes through the following cycle:

• The plant, insect, or animal with the need to communicate (e.g., to recognise an object of food) will know what needs to be said and assess the best means of saying it (e.g., starting a searching behaviour);
• This information will then be encoded and relevant muscle groups will effect transmission — although to some extent intentional in the human, the actual movements of the body are autonomic, i.e. the individual is not aware of moving individual muscles, but achieves the desired result by an act of will (see H. L. A. Hart on the nature of an action);
• The audience filters ambient data and perceives the uttered code as a grouping of signs;
• The audience then interprets the signs (sometimes termed decoding) to attribute meaning. This involves matching the signs received against existing patterns and their meanings held in memory (i.e. it is learned and understood within the community). In plants, insects and animals, the results of a successful interpretation will be an observable response to the stimuli perceived.

In biology, scout bees and ants will return home to tell the others where food is to be found, the fact of fertility must be announced to prospective mates from the same species, and the presence of danger must be passed as a warning to others in the group. Such transmission may be chemical, auditory, visual, or tactile whether singly or in combination. There is a new field of research activity termed biosemiotics, and Jesper Hoffmeyer claims that endosymbiosis, self-reference, code duality, the availability of receptors, autopoiesis, and others are the general properties of all living systems. Thomas Sebeok suggests that a similar list of properties for life may coincide with the definition of semiosis, i.e. that the test of whether something is alive, is a test to determine whether and how it communicates meaning to another of its kind, i.e., whether it has semiosis. This has been called the Sebeok's Thesis.

For humans, semiosis is an aspect of the wider systems of social interaction in which information is exchanged. It can result in particular types of social encounter, but the process itself can be constrained by social conventions such as propriety, privacy, and disclosure. This means that no social encounter is reducible to semiosis alone, and that semiosis can only be understood by identifying and exploring all the conditions that make the transmission and reception of signs possible and effective. When two individuals meet, the ways in which they think, the specific identities they assume, the emotional responses they make, and the beliefs, motives, and purposes they have, will frame the situation as it develops dynamically and potentially test the legitimacy of the outcomes. All these elements are, to a greater or lesser extent, semiotic in nature in that prevailing codes and values are being applied. Consequently, where the line is drawn between semiosis and semiotics will always be somewhat arbitrary.

See also[link]

• Index of semiotic terms
• Semeiotic

References[link]

• Bains, Paul. The Primacy of semiosis: An ontology of relations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (2006)
• Hoffmeyer, Jesper. Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (1996)

Antonio Moreno
Born	Antonio Garrido Monteagudo (1887-09-26)September 26, 1887 Madrid, Spain
Died	February 15, 1967(1967-02-15) (aged 79) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor/Director
Years active	1912–1959
Spouse	Daisy Canfield Danziger (1923-1933)

Antonio "Tony" Moreno (September 26, 1887 – February 15, 1967) was a notable Spanish-born American actor and film director of the silent film era and through the 1950s.

Biography[link]

Born Antonio Garrido Monteagudo in Madrid, Spain, he emigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen and settled in Massachusetts, where he completed his education. After attending the Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts, he became a stage actor in regional theater productions. In 1912, he moved to Hollywood, California and he was signed to Vitagraph Studios and began his career in bit parts and as a movie extra.

In 1914, Moreno began co-starring in a series of highly successful serials opposite the enormously publicly popular silent film actress Pearl White. These appearances helped to increase Moreno's popularity with the nation's nascent film-goers. By 1915, Antonio Moreno was a highly regarded matinee idol and appearing opposite such successful actors as Tyrone Power, Sr., Gloria Swanson, Blanche Sweet, Pola Negri and Dorothy Gish. Moreno was often typecast in his earliest films as the "Latin Lover", as were other actors of the era with Latin roots, such as Ramón Novarro and Rudolph Valentino.

By the early 1920s, Antonio Moreno joined film mogul Jesse Lasky's Famous Players and became one of the company's most highly paid performers. In 1926 Moreno starred opposite Swedish acting legend Greta Garbo in The Temptress and the following year followed up with a starring role in the enormous box-office hit Clara Bow vehicle It.

Moreno married American heiress Daisy Canfield Danziger, in 1923, and the couple moved to an estate known as Crestmount, now known as the Canfield-Moreno Estate. The union lasted ten years and ended shortly before Canfield Danziger was killed in an automobile accident on February 23, 1933.

With the advent of talkies in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Moreno's career began to falter, in part because of his heavy Spanish accent. While still acting in English language films, Moreno also began taking parts in Mexican films. During the early 1930s, Moreno directed several well-received Mexican films, among them is the 1932 drama Santa, which has been hailed by film critics as one of the best Mexican films of the era. By the mid-1930s, Antonio Moreno began rebuilding his faltering Hollywood career by taking notable roles as a character actor. By the mid-1940s and throughout the 1950s, Moreno appeared in a number of well received roles, most notably, his 1954 role in the classic horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon and his 1955 role as Emilio Figueroa in film director John Ford's influential western epic The Searchers opposite John Wayne and Natalie Wood.

Moreno retired from film in the late 1950s and died of heart failure in Beverly Hills, California, in 1967, and was laid to rest in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California. His film career spanned more than four decades.

In 1994, the Mexican magazine Somos published their list of "The 100 best movies of the cinema of Mexico" in its 100th edition and named the 1931 Moreno directed Santa its 67th choice.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Antonio Moreno was given a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6651 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, California, USA.

Of note is that Moreno was the half-brother of Alfred Moreno Monteagudo, who took over management of the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel in the 1940s. Antonio Moreno is the granduncle of horror/fantasy author Nicholas Grabowsky, to which a related biography is slated for late 2009/early 2010 in conjunction with the release of the Creature From the Black Lagoon remake by Universal Pictures.

Silent filmography[link]

References[link]

• "Antonio Moreno," The Clearfield Progress, August 26, 1920, page 15.
• "Antonio Moreno, Silent-Film Star," The New York Times, February 16, 1967.
• Bodeen, Dewitt. "Antonio Moreno," Films in Review, June–July, 1967.
• Menefee, David W. The First Male Stars: Men of the Silent Era. Albany: Bear Manor Media, 2007.
• "Public Pleased by Vitagraph’s Move to Return Antonio Moreno to Feature Films," The Moving Picture World. New York: Chalmers Publishing Company. December 25, 1920.
• Virginia, Violet. "Antonio Moreno of the Vitagraph Players," Motion Picture Magazine, December 1914. Pages 103-105.

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Antonio Moreno at the Internet Movie Database
• Antonio Moreno at Silents Are Golden
• Some contemporary articles and interviews with Antonio Moreno
• Photographs and literature
• "Antonio Moreno". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6921745. Retrieved September 2, 2010.