From semiotics of hypermedia to physics of semiosis: A view from system theory

Abstract

Given that theoretical analysis and empirical validation is fundamental to any model, whether conceptual or formal, it is surprising that these two tools of scientific discovery are so often ignored in the contemporary studies of communication. In this paper, we pursued the ideas of a) correcting and expanding the modeling approaches of linguistics, which are otherwise inapplicable (more precisely, which should not but are widely applied), to the general case of hypermedia-based communication, and b) developing techniques for empirical validation of semiotic models, which are nowadays routinely used to explore (in fact, to conjecture about) internal mechanisms of complex systems, yet on a purely speculative basis. This study thus offers two experimentally tested substantive contributions: the formal representation of communication as the mutually-orienting behavior of coupled autonomous systems, and the mathematical interpretation of the semiosis of communication, which together offer a concrete and parsimonious understanding of diverse communication phenomena.