Aspetti fenomenologici e semiotici di una ricerca interdisciplinare sui luoghi d’origine / An Interdisciplinary Research: Phenomenological and Semiotic Aspects

Abstract

The research is focused on representations, both visual and linguistic, which people produce of their own places of origin, when solicited. The team includes scholars from different disciplines such as Semiotics, Psychology and Geography. The semiotic approach focuses on specific semiotic layers of the drawings and describes how each person reconstructs a complex image of his/her childhood place and how they translate their own memories from one language to another e.g. from a drawing to a verbal story. In this short essay I will discuss the philosophical starting point of the research, mostly inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of être au monde and liberté; also, some specific semiotic aspects such as the relationship between enunciation and maps (Louis Marin); the ratio facilis and ratio difficilis (Umberto Eco); the comparison among different styles of representations, aimed at outlining specific genres of maps of birth-places.