## Activity 8.1 — Build an Umwelt ★

Group (3–4) 35 min

Practices: Uexküll's Umwelt, each organism's world is structured by the signs meaningful to it (§8.2).

Pick a **Thai animal** and reconstruct its **Umwelt**: the world *as signs* for that being. Options: a **soi dog**, a **temple macaque**, a **water buffalo**, a **tokay gecko** (ตุ๊กแก), a **water monitor** (in the khlong), a **mosquito**. Fill in: | For this animal… | Answer | |---|---| | Which signs is it tuned to perceive? (smells, sounds, movements) | | | Which signs trigger which behaviors? | | | What is meaningful and what is simply ignored? | | | How does its world differ from a human's in the same place? | |

Instructor notes

- Model after Uexküll's **tick** (§8.2): the tick's world is essentially three signs (butyric acid → warmth → bare skin). A temple macaque's Umwelt may be described as centered on human hands (food), eye contact (threat), other macaques' postures, etc. A mosquito: CO₂, body heat, sweat chemistry. - The key insight (§8.2): meaning is not "out there" objectively; it emerges from the fit between an organism and its own world. The same khlong is a different world of signs for a monitor lizard, a fish, and a commuter. - Great bridge back to Activity 1.4 (do we touch reality?) and forward to ecosemiotics (§8.5).

## Activity 8.2 — Animal Signals: An Observation Task

Individual → Pair Homework + 20 min Phone (photo/video/audio)

Practices: zoosemiotics, describing animal communication and its functions (§8.1).

Observe an animal communicating for 15 minutes, e.g. temple or street animals, birds at dawn, a market's caged birds, a pet. Record (notes, photo, short clip) **three distinct signals** and for each ask: - What is the **sign vehicle** (call, posture, display)? - What might it **stand for** (threat, mate, food, contact)? - What **function** does it seem to serve (cf. Jakobson: is it phatic contact-keeping, conative, emotive)? - Is it **learned or innate**, as far as you can tell?

Instructor notes

- Connect to the book's cases (§8.1): von Frisch's bee waggle dance; Cheney & Seyfarth's vervet alarm calls (different calls for leopard/eagle/snake); birdsong dialects learned from tutors. - Reinforce the honest caution in §8.1: inferring *meaning* and *intention* in animals is genuinely hard; reward tentative, evidence-based claims over confident anthropomorphism (a theme the chapter returns to in §8.8). - Jakobson's functions (Ch 5) transfer neatly: many bird calls are essentially **phatic** (§5.3 notes ornithologists' view).

## Activity 8.3 — Is the Genetic Code Really a *Code*? A Debate

Whole-class 35 min

Practices: the biosemiotic claim that genetics is genuine semiosis vs the "merely chemistry" view (§8.2–8.3).

Biologists routinely say DNA is "transcribed," "translated," and "expressed." Is this a real **code** or just a metaphor? Split into two teams: - **Team Semiosis:** the genetic code is conventional (a codon could have mapped to a different amino acid), tRNA acts as an *interpreter*, so this is genuine sign activity (Barbieri). - **Team Chemistry:** it is all thermodynamics and molecular shape; "reading" and "meaning" are just convenient metaphors. Each side prepares three points from §8.3; hold two rounds; then map where each student stands and why.

Instructor notes

- Team Semiosis' strongest card (§8.3): the codon→amino-acid mapping is **not chemically necessary** (it could have evolved differently; slight variant codes exist), which is precisely what makes it code-like and conventional. In Peircean terms: codon = sign vehicle, amino acid = object, cellular machinery = interpreter, polypeptide = interpretant. - Team Chemistry's card: everything is explicable by physics without invoking meaning; the book's own counter (§8.3) is that speech is *also* "just acoustics," yet meaningful; description at one level doesn't cancel meaning at another. - **Warning:** this activity might be too difficult for students without some background in biology; use it only when your students are ready for it or you can provide that background in class. - No resolution is required; the split itself teaches the "semiotic threshold" question (§8, Eco 1976).

## Activity 8.4 — The Rice Paddy as a Sign Network

Group (3–4) 35 min

Practices: ecosemiotics, ecosystems as webs of interpreted signs; semiotic pollution (§8.5).

Choose a Thai ecosystem you know: a **rice paddy (นา)**, a **mangrove (ป่าชายเลน))**, a **khlong (คลอง)**, or an **orchard**. Map it as a **network of sign relations**: 1. List the organisms (plants, insects, birds, fish, buffalo, humans). 2. Draw arrows for **who reads whose signs** (a heron reads ripples; a frog reads insect movement; a farmer reads the sky and the soil; plants read chemical signals from damaged neighbors). 3. Identify one form of **semiotic pollution** disrupting the network (artificial light confusing insects/birds, pesticide disrupting pollinators, noise, plastic, etc.) and trace its downstream effects.

Instructor notes

- The core move (§8.5): an ecosystem is not just matter/energy but a **web of interpreted signs**; every organism reads signs within its own Umwelt and produces signs others read. - "Semiotic pollution" (§8.5) is a memorable, actionable concept: light pollution, ocean noise, agrochemicals disrupt *sign relationships*, not just organisms. Thai examples abound (light over paddies, khlong pollution, pesticide effects on bees). - Ties conservation to meaning (§8.5's closing point) and connects to the book's ecological ethics (§8.8).

## Activity 8.5 — Two Frontiers: A Message to the Stars / Does the Bot Interpret?

Group (3–4) 40 min Optional: a chatbot / LINE bot

Practices: astrosemiotics (designing an interpretable message) and artificial semiotics (does AI perform semiosis?) (§8.6–8.7).

Choose **one** track: **Track A: Message to the stars.** Like the Arecibo message, design a short signal to communicate *"life exists here"* to a non-human intelligence that shares no code with us. What can you rely on: mathematics, prime numbers, images, self-explaining structure? Sketch it and explain your choices. **Track B: Does the bot interpret?** Have a short exchange with any AI chatbot or a LINE bot. Then debate, using §8.6: is it **producing and interpreting signs** (semiosis), or only simulating it? Does your answer depend on whether interpretation requires **consciousness**?

Instructor notes

- **Track A** dramatizes the semiotic problem of a **shared code** (§8.7): with no common convention, senders fall back on what might be universal (math, physical constants, self-describing icons). Good link to Jakobson's *code* factor (Ch 5) and to the Wow! signal / SETI discussion (§8.7). - **Track B** turns on the book's own framing (§8.6): if interpretation requires consciousness, current AI is not a genuine semiotic agent; if it does not (as biosemiotics allows for cells), then AI arguably qualifies. There is no settled answer: the point is to reason with the criteria. - Keep Track B grounded in observation of an *actual* exchange, not sci-fi speculation.