Trajectories of Translation - The Thermodynamics of Semiosis (Hardcover)

This book builds on Marais's innovative A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation to explore the implications of this conceptualization of translation as the semiotic work from which social-cultural reality emerges and chart the way forward for applications in empirical research. The volume brings together some of the latest developments in biosemiotics, social semiotics, and Peircean semiotics with emergent work in translation studies toward better understanding the emergence of particular trajectories in society-culture through semiotic processes. The book further develops lines of thinking around thermodynamics in the work of Terrence Deacon to consider the ways in which ideas emerge from matter, creating meaning, and its opposite in the ways in which ideas constrain matter. Marais links these theoretical strands to empirical case studies in the final three chapters toward operationalizing these concepts for further empirical work. This innovative work will be of interest to scholars in translation studies, semiotics, multimodality, and development studies.