Graduate of semiotics in doctoral studies, Kadri Tüür has won the highest prize in Estonia's student research competition for her doctoral thesis "Semiotics of nature representations: on the example of nature writing."

Her supervisors professors Kalevi Kull, Ulrike Plath and Peeter Torop have also been credited! Congratulations!

The thesis is available on DSpace - http://hdl.handle.net/10062/56524

The aim of the present thesis is to open up new perspectives in the study of nature writing, combining semiotic and ecocritical approaches. The idea of primary and secondary modelling systems originates from Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics. In their works, human language is considered as primary modelling system – it is the main means of mediated human communication. Secondary modelling systems, such as literature, film, and many others that deal with artistic modelling of the world, are based on language as a sign system. Thomas A. Sebeok, an American semiotician, pointed out that those exclusievly human modelling systems are preceded by a zoosemiotic level of modelling that is based on our sensory and bodily experience in relating to the material world. Using the concept coined by Jakob von Uexküll, we can say that zoosemiotic modelling is based on Umwelt, or the life-world as formed in the combination of the species-specific sensory organs and the repertoire of possible ways of relating to the environment around us. Thus we can proceed from the understanding that modelling is the foundation of all interpretational and representational activities. Model is a means of communication that enables both artistic and scientific propagation of information. Modelling characteristic of human species takes place mainly with the help of human language and by representations created in human language. Representation is understood in the present work in the limits of language-mediated descriptions of environment as they appear in literary texts. The material for my work comes from a specific sub-field of literature, namely nature writing. Estonian nature writing in a narrow sense is understood as documentary prose that is based on the author’s personal experiences in nature, informed by knowledge of natural history and biology in general, and written in literary language. In regard of textual poetics, nature writing is similar to fiction, and can therefore be studied using the means of literary studies, as traditionally done in ecocriticism. What is different in case of nature writing, is that unlike fiction, it invites its reader to move beyond the text, to the natural environment that has been represented in a piece of nature writing. More or less explicitly, each literary text also contains the level of zoosemiotic modelling: senses, Umwelten of other species, their ways of movement, feeding, etc. Biosemiotic analysis helps to bring this layer of modelling to the fore. In addition, the work contains articles written in co-operation with researchers from other disciplines (botanics, history). Stemming from that experience, the last part of the cover article is devoted to questions related to cross-disciplinary co-operation in connection to the notion of environmental humanities, in order to contribute to the search for solutions to our global environmental problems. It is proposed that the original contribution of the present work into the general semiotic discussion lies in relating the concepts of text, Umwelt, model, and representation to each other and demonstrating how meaning is created in in nature writing in their interplay. By analysing the notion of representation, a better understanding of human sign-use practices is achieved, ass well as a bettern understanding of the application possibilities of human signification in inter-species communication.