The centripetal and centrifugal dynamics of selected Judaic symbols as hieratic markers from the semiotactic perspective
The centripetal and centrifugal dynamics of selected Judaic symbols as hieratic markers from the semiotactic perspective

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the semiotic salience of the main hieratic markers of Judaism in the form of the Menorah and Magen David. They are necessarily cast against other Judaic symbolism, as for example the semiotic presence of Hamsa, which is not however a hieratic marker. The analysis is based on two (illusory) contrastive forces that have also been widely used to analyze linguistic phenomena: the centrifugal and centripetal. Framing them as implicational preferences operating on the investigated areas of the semiosphere, I accordingly propose several functional and structural categorizations of the investigated signs. The analytic corpus for a bottom-up study was collected in various European countries and Morocco in the years 2010‒2022 and consists of hundreds of tokens of digital documentation of encountered Judaica and concatenations of Judaism symbols in pragmatic contexts. The discussion is also indexed by a cultural dyad of the sacred/profane. The analysis brings to light some synchronic processes which that type of signage undergoes, e.g. the process of fortition of the Magen David (centrifugal direction - diffusive, dividing, with a concomitant lenition of the menorah (centripetal position – confusive, binding) and postulates the Shield of David as a floating semiotactic prime.

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