Research / Research program
Cognitive Semiotics and Meaning
Meaning-making in bodily experience, the interpretation of images and coordination with others.
Experience and acquired capacities
This program brings the study of meaning into dialogue with cognitive science. A starting question is how acquired capacities participate in what we perceive, recognize and interpret. The history of learning forms part of the conditions of present activity.
The 2024 work on embodied habits examines their acquisition and deployment in meaning-making. It considers the integration of agendas with available resources and the anticipation of their use. This perspective connects accumulated experience with the signification that occurs in a particular situation.
The course of cognition
In the 2023 article with Carlos Garzón-Rodríguez, cognition is studied as a continuous process within which regions or episodes can be distinguished. The model draws on Peirce’s ideas about cognition and continuity to ask how a cognitive act is delimited and how it relates to those preceding and following it.
The authors present a Peircist development: they use Peirce’s conceptual resources to propose a model without retrospectively attributing that formulation to him. Temporal relations and orientation towards purposes are part of the proposal.
Coordination, language and gesture
The collaborative 2023 review of interactive alignment examines how interlocutors coordinate linguistic and behavioural aspects of interaction. It brings together theoretical and empirical studies and proposes an allostatic interpretation: anticipatory regulation achieved through change. This is a proposal for integrating the reviewed literature.
The Colombian co-speech gesture corpus, presented in 2021, contributes work on recording and annotating interactions. The article describes the selection and coding of gesture and speech behaviours in university interviews. This strand connects questions about cognition and communication with observable material.
Images and conceptual elaboration
The work with Germán Serventi on cognitive type and visual metaphorical expression asks how images draw on conceptual information extending beyond perceptual recognition. The proposal uses Umberto Eco’s notion of cognitive type to examine the operation of visual metaphors.
Presentations on perspective, point of view and attention place further questions within the study of visual meaning. Alongside the work on conceptual blending, they offer a way to follow the relation between perception, interpretation and meaning-making across different media.
Selected reading
Theoretical studies and collaborative work on habits, cognition, interaction and visual interpretation.
2024
Embodied agentive habits: between sedimentation and ongoing ground
The acquisition and deployment of embodied habits in meaning-making.
Full bibliographic record2023
Towards a Conception of the Continuous Structure of Cognition. A Peircist Approach
With Carlos Garzón-Rodríguez: a model of the continuous structure of cognition.
Full bibliographic recordRestricted access. For further information, contact the author.
2023
Interactive alignment as an allostatic process: A literature review
A literature review of interactive alignment and a proposed allostatic interpretation.
Full bibliographic recordRestricted access. For further information, contact the author.
2021
The UAN Colombian co-speech gesture corpus
Collaborative work on recording and annotating co-speech gestures.
Full bibliographic recordRestricted access. For further information, contact the author.
2014
Cognitive Type and Visual Metaphorical Expression
With Germán Serventi: cognitive type and visual metaphorical expression.
Full bibliographic record2013
Signo peirceano e integración conceptual: una propuesta de síntesis
A proposed connection between Peirce’s sign and conceptual blending.
Full bibliographic record
Selected presentations
Presentations on cognitive and visual semiotics, from 2019 to 2023.
Perspectiva versus Punto de Vista en la generación de sentido visual. Una propuesta
13th Conference of the International Association for Visual Semiotics. Bogotá, Colombia. 28–30 de septiembre de 2023.
Event detailsMeaning-Making: Phenomenology, Cognitive Science, and Semiotics
13th Conference of the International Association for Visual Semiotics. Bogotá, Colombia. 28–30 de septiembre de 2023.
Event detailsThe Curious Incident of the Dog and Predictive Processing: Drawing some Semiotic Consequences of Allostatic Approach to Cognition
The Fourth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS4—2022). Aachen (Germany). June 15-18.
Event detailsDraft for discussion. Current version: 2026-09-22 · r04
Time, Attention, and Visuality in Meaning-Making
12th Conference of the International Association For Visual Semiotics: Visual Semiotics Goes Cognitive. Lund (Suecia). Agosto 22-24, 2019.
Event details
Connection with Agentive Semiotics
The study of habits and acquired capacities connects these works with the program on agents, agendas and meaning-making.
Read about Agentive Semiotics