Professor Lee Yunhee of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Wins Top Award from International Association for Semiotic Studies

Second Honor with the "Mouton d'Or Award"

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies announced on the 10th that Professor Lee Yunhee has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Mouton d'Or Award, the top paper prize of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS-AIS) official journal, Semiotica.

Professor Lee Yunhee, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Professor Lee has been listed for the second time following her first award in 2008, becoming the first researcher to receive the prize twice since its establishment.

The Mouton d'Or Award is presented each year to the study with the highest academic originality and contribution among the articles published in Semiotica, following a rigorous evaluation by an international jury of three members.

It is regarded as one of the most prestigious awards in the field of world semiotics.

The award-winning article is "The role of sentiment, aesthetic behavior, and narrative semiosis in the identification of selfhood from Peirce's semiotic perspective," published in issue 266 of Semiotica in 2025.

Based on Charles Sanders Peirce's categorial methodology, the article offers a detailed analysis of "selfhood" as formed within sign activity, from the perspectives of two kinds of semiotic agency: the practical dimension and the theoretical dimension.

In particular, it received high acclaim for its integrated illumination of how sentiment, aesthetic behavior, and narrative semiosis operate in self-awareness.

Meanwhile, Semiotica is the official journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, founded in 1969 by leading figures such as Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, and Thomas Sebeok. It has established itself as a central journal for semiotic research spanning the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, philosophy, and communication theory.

Published by De Gruyter Mouton, the journal is considered one of the oldest and most influential in the field of semiotics and is recognized as a representative platform that provides scholarly benchmarks for researchers around the world.