Founded in 1994 and dedicated to analysing different issues in semiotics and application of semiotic access in the analysis of cultural discourses.
Call for papers for the special issue of Semiotika (2026) on the structural psychoanalysis
The 2026 issue of Semiotika will be dedicated to structural psychoanalysis – a school of thought that is well known internationally but has so far appeared in Lithuania only in fragmentary form. We invite contributors to cultivate these emerging threads, to connect them like symptoms into a network, to search for underlying structures, and to come together for a reading of the discourse of the unconscious. The impulse for this theme is connected both historically and directly to the present. On the one hand, it arises from the intrigue-filled parallel development of psychoanalysis and structuralism: from the contemporaneous trajectories of Sigmund Freud and Ferdinand de Saussure to the projects of Jacques Lacan and Algirdas Julius Greimas, which were planted in the same intellectual soil but grew separately. On the other hand, both theoretical traditions quickly became communities in their own right, expanded the boundaries of their objects of analysis, and today make a significant contribution to the study of artistic, social, and other forms of discourse. Neither the subject nor its language is ever entirely self-transparent. Yet repressed and censored content should not be understood as chaotic; it is organized and meaningful. We propose to seek structures of such meanings in a wide range of utterances and narratives – both aesthetic and banal, both those considered true and those considered false. Accordingly, we welcome both theoretical contributions and articles devoted to the analysis of concrete objects (works of art, cultural phenomena, ideologies). Thematic guidelines for article submissions: • Psychoanalysis and structuralism: history, influences, polemics • Psychoanalysis and theories of meaning: dialogue, tensions, contradictions • Structural psychoanalysis and continental philosophy (phenomenology, hermeneutics, etc.) • Psychoanalytic art criticism (literature, cinema, visual arts, conceptual art) • Psychoanalytic approaches to contemporary ideologies and public discourse • Critiques of psychoanalysis (Marxism, feminism, schizoanalysis, etc.) Submission deadline: July 31, 2026 Please send your submission to semiotika.psichoanalize@gmail.com Semiotika is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed open-access academic journal. It publishes original research articles in Lithuanian, English, and French. No submission or publication fees are charged to authors. A detailed description of article structure, citation style, and other requirements can be found on the journal’s website in the “Guidelines for Authors” section.
Call for papers for the special issue of Semiotika (2027) on the sociocriticism
The 2027 issue of Semiotika will be devoted to reflecting on the relationship between sociocriticism (the sociology of text) and sociosemiotics. Sociocriticism proposes looking for sociality not beyond the text but within the text itself and considers semiotic text analysis one of the main tools for reconstructing sociality. This field of research considers context, primarily a social one, not as something external to the discourses of literature, cinema, and visual arts, but as part of those discourses themselves. By choosing to analyze social, historical, or ideological in a text and revealing that a work of art belongs to the cultural paradigm of a particular era, sociocritics give priority to text analysis, assuming that sociality can be reconstructed from the text itself, that the text is so powerful that "the reading can draw both the premises of its emergence and the consequences of its existence" (Pierre Barbéris). Sociocriticism is an interdisciplinary approach that uses various tools of textual analysis (e.g., semiotics, intertextuality theory, and visual studies) and combines them with historical and sociological interpretation. We invite the researchers to submit articles offering original sociocritical interpretations of texts and theoretical discussions for this thematic issue of the journal. Thematic guidelines for article submissions: theoretical issues (text, social reality and ideology in semiotic theory; the relationship between sociocriticism and sociosemiotics, possibilities for their cooperation; critical reflections on sociocritical theory; problems of integrating different methodologies into sociocritical analysis, new theoretical directions, etc.); research in historical poetics; analysis of the sociality of literature and other art forms; the ideology and political dimension of text; the semantic dynamics of text in a changing historical context; the integration of sociocritical analysis into sociological research of literature or other arts; subjectivity and agency and their representation in artistic and documentary discourses and ego-documents; reading and interpretation as socio-semiotic instances; case studies revealing the social dimension of a particular discourse, its relationship to the historical context, the historicity of its semantic effects, etc. Submission deadline: December 15, 2026 Please send your submission to sociokritika@protonmail.com Semiotika is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed open-access academic journal. It publishes original research articles in Lithuanian, English, and French. No submission or publication fees are charged to authors. A detailed description of article structure, citation style, and other requirements can be found on the journal’s website in the “Guidelines for Authors” section.