“Animal Symbolicum” in the Natural and Cultural Semiospheres

The human as an “animal symbolicum” (by Ernst Cassirer) is a unique being included simultaneously in two semiospheres. One of them is the semiosphere of conventional signs and symbols created by himself in culture. The other semiosphere of natural signals and indexes is available to the human as an animal together with other living beings. Both these semiospheres described correspondingly by Y. Lotman and E. Hoffmeyer, are the subjects of anthroposemiotics and biosemiotics, semiotics of culture, and semiotics of nature. Their interaction is a subject of human ecosemiotics. Both external communicative processes among people and the internal mental activity of individuals contain together natural and cultural semiotic components that interact and counteract with each other. In these processes, the natural signal-indexical codes can be transformed and supplemented by cultural conventions (if, for example, natural expressive movements are subordinated to cultural norms of gesticulation) or modified from pure cognitive means to means of communication―as the codes mediating transmission of perceptual images by depictions. Natural codes can compete with systems of cultural signs on the force of influence on people (as in various fashion systems) or in accordance with them participate in the creation of complex heterogeneous texts (as in arts).