A Semiotic Methodology for Animal Studies

 1.       Introduction and purpose

1.1.         Creation process

1.1.2.     About the corpus

1.1.3.     About the academic and social impact

1.2.         Why use semiotics in animal studies

1.2.2.     History of animal studies

1.3.         Questions about methodology

1.3.2.     Including new corpus categories

1.3.3.     Hypothesis, biases and ideologies

2.       Debates and controversies

2.1.1.     Language

2.1.2.     Consciousness

2.1.3.     Emotions

2.2.         The perspective of humanities

2.2.2.     What are language sciences for?

2.2.3.     The specific French academic tradition

2.3.         Author position

2.3.2.     About the particular case of definitions

3.       Necessary and problematic definitions

3.1.1.     Emotion

3.1.2.     Consciousness

3.1.3.     Memory

3.2.         Problematic definitions

3.2.2.     Emotions

3.2.3.     Intelligence

3.2.4.     Culture

4.       Semiotic tools and concepts

4.1.1.     Relevance

4.1.2.     Peirce's tools

4.1.3.     Intensity, frequency, context

4.2.         Semiotic concepts

4.2.1.     Intentional, conscious, unconscious

4.2.2.     Jakobson's functions of language

4.2.3.     Eco's semiotic theory

4.2.4.     About the case of anthropomorphism

5.       Intertheoricity: how to build bigger models

5.1.1.     Academic position about interdisciplinarity

5.1.2.     Difficulties and flaws of interdisciplinarity

5.1.3.     Guillaume's theory

5.2.         How intertheoricity allows for bigger models

5.2.2.     Definitions: harmonisation and creation

5.2.3.     How concepts "communicate" with each other

5.3.         Why we need bigger models

5.3.2.     Over-specialised researchers

5.3.3.     More impact, less time

6.       Strengths and flaws of ethological and biological methodology

6.1.1.     Ancient and strong field

6.1.2.     Evolutive methodology

6.1.3.     Observation-based science

6.2.         Flaws to counter

6.2.2.     Observation is disruption

6.2.3.     How ideology can be rooted in science

7.       Animal studies, animal ethics

7.1.1.     Working with living beings

7.1.2.     Difficulty to understand stranger minds

7.1.3.     Situation of emergency

7.2.         Ethical issues

7.2.2.     About complex species

7.2.3.     About pain in animals

7.3.         Solutions of semiotic methodology

7.3.2.     On ethical issues

8.       Building zoosemiotics

8.1.1.     Semiotics and biosemiotics

8.1.2.     Biosemiotics and zoosemiotics

8.2.         Progress wanted, and progress needed

8.2.2.     Where we are going

8.2.3.     Where we need to go

8.3.         Conclusion