Discrimination from the semiotics of culture perspective

UDC 130.2

https://doi.org/10.20339/AM.04-23.098

Nadezhda V. Mihailova, Cand. Sci. (History), Associate Professor of the chair “History, Archeology and Local History” at Vladimir State University named after Alexander and Nikolay Stoletovs, e-mail: cnadezhda@yahoo.com

The purpose of the article is a cultural–semiotic analysis of discrimination as a type of relationships and interactions between Ours and Others. The hypothesis of the study is that the transition to a post-cultural model of the functioning of the semiosphere will contribute to the weakening of the discriminatory potential of semiotic systems. To achieve this goal, the symbolic nature of the images of Ours and Others is considered, which are analysed in the context of their correlation with referents; discrimination as a set of worldview attitudes is associated with sign-generating and metalanguage activities in the field of regulating relations between Ours and Others as signs; outlines the contours of a culture-semiosphere with a reduced discriminatory charge. The novelty of the research lies in the application of a cultural-semiotic approach to the study of the phenomenon of discrimination. The author comes to the conclusion about the ambivalence of chaos as a referent in the context of the semiosis of discrimination: chaos can act both as a referent of discrimination signs and as a referent of anti-discrimination signs through the actualization of its threatening or creative potential. In this regard, a view is being formed on post-culture with its activation of personal life creation and individual semiospheres as a time and space favorable for weakening discriminatory attitudes, ideas and practices while maintaining alienation as a whole as a universal mechanism of cultural self-regulation.

Keywords: discrimination, discriminatory attitudes, Ours, Alien, sign, text, referent, semiosphere, semiosis, post-culture.

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