USA

Geographical borders represent a clash of cultures. Those inhabiting or moving through borderlands struggle to maintain a sense of place and, in turn, an understanding of cultural collective memory. This project strives to understand how the vis ual and discursive elements that constitute the U.S. Mexico border function rhetorically to communicate difference and establish place. By utilizing a social semiotics perspective, I analyzed visual rhetoric of the U.S. - Mexico border in the form of photographs and maps produced in both the United States and Mexico. Additionally, a theory of cultural memory was used to explore the confluence of events and rhetorical phenomena that shape the U.S.- Mexico border, and allow the U.S.-Mexico border to shape the rhetoric of the countries it divides. I argued that borders are inherently rhetorical and the intersection of visual elements, culture, place and memory make borders important to understand from an anthropological, and geographical perspective, as well as a rhetorical one. This project holds political and social implications for the relationship between the United States and Mexico, and reveals key findings regarding how cultural identity is negotiated in fragmented places like borderlands.

USA

Powerful semiotic signs like the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall served significant communicative functions. The modern culture of nation state wall building continues despite the fact that the security fences are obsolete. Wall advocates argue that security fences deter undocumented immigrants from trying to cross the border illegally. The walls also function to stop terrorism or other criminal threats. This paper applies semiotic and hermeneutic methods to examine and compare the communication functions of South African apartheid with the U.S. Mexico border wall. Structuration Theory (ST),and issociation and Dimensional Accrual (DAD) are applied to discuss the consequences to communication from such barriers.

Monterrey

Las aplicaciones de la realidad virtual nos han desbordado en infinidad de interrogantes y especulaciones sobre el presente y el futuro de nuestra sociedad.