The Semiotics of Religious Space in Second Life

Scholarly research on the religious dimension of Second Life can be conducted with reference to several elements: ties between the religious dimension of Second Life and that of the ‘First Life’ (an approach privileged by the sociology and the psychology of religion); the transcendent value inherent in the creation of an alternative reality (an approach favored by the philosophy of religion); the enunciation of a ‘virtual’ religious dimension through the digital artifacts of Second Life (an approach promoted by aesthetics, phenomenology, and semiotics); etc. Adopting the point of view of cultural semiotics, the paper summarizes the results of a ‘virtual’ ethno-semiotic participant observation conducted over six months in portions of the digital ‘metaverse’ of Second Life where a religious dimension is predominant. The consequent analysis of digital places of worship singles out five main characteristics of their aesthetics, phenomenology, and semiotics: isolation, prototypicality, didacticism, anarchy, and parasitism.