ABSTRACT The 1913 volcanic eruption on the island of Ambrym (Vanuatu) struck both groups composing the island’s population at the time, the Islanders and the British Presbyterians who had come to ‘civilise’ them. Through the lens of Peirce’s semiosis, particularly his notion of the ‘indexical sign’, this article examines the chronological development of the two groups’ divergent, and also at times convergent interpretations of the eruption as a sign. This semiotic analysis is then extended into the island’s socio-historical context, from the Presbyterians’ first attempts at missions to the catastrophic upheaval that decimated the island’s population until the 1940s, to study how the two groups interpreted themselves, each other, Western Christianity and the traditional Ambrymese belief and authority system.

中文翻译：

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压倒一切的符号学：1913年Ambrym喷发的灾难

摘要 1913 年安布里姆岛（瓦努阿图）的火山喷发袭击了当时组成该岛人口的两个群体，即岛民和前来“文明化”他们的英国长老会。通过皮尔斯符号学的镜头，特别是他的“索引符号”概念，本文考察了这两个群体对火山爆发作为一个标志的不同的、有时是趋同的解释的时间发展。这种符号学分析随后扩展到该岛的社会历史背景，从长老会首次尝试传教到 1940 年代之前导致岛上人口锐减的灾难性动荡，以研究这两个群体如何解释自己、彼此、西方基督教和传统的Ambrymese信仰和权威体系。