Sign theory and the materiality of discourse (original) (raw)
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SAUSSURE'S THEORY OF THE LINGUISTIC SIGN: A COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
Papars of the International Congress of Linguistics, 20-27 July, 2013, Geneva
This paper elaborates Saussure " s idea of the linguistic sign as a bilateral unit combining the signifier (a concept / meaning) and signified (a sound image). It is argued that onomasiologically their relation is accounted for by cognitive mapping which evolves in the direction (1) the experienced world the thought / meaning of a linguistic sign; (2) the meaning of a linguistic sign its internal form; (3) the internal form of a linguistic sign its external form; (4) the external form the external form 2. Semasiologically, the relation between the signified and the signifier evolves in an opposite direction and grounds on mental construal. Therefore, a cognitive approach to Saussure' s definition of a sign provides a better understanding of the interaction between its conceptual and formal aspects.
Sign Systems Studies 30.1, 2002
2015
Abstract. In the paper an attempt is made to treat the basic concepts of biosemiotics and semiotics of culture in a wide intellectual context. The three leading paradigms of the current intellectual discourse are distinguished, which could be conventionally designated as “classical”, “modern ” and “postmodern”: Peirce’s semiosis stands for the classical, Umwelt for the modern and semiosphere for the postmodern semiotic space. I must start with an apology: although several biological and philo-sophical terms and constructions will be discussed, my paper is related to neither of those fields. One of the reasons is that I am a complete ignoramus in biology and allergic to philosophy. Thus, I will focus on the perspective of cultural semiotics, analysing the mentioned pheno-mena from the aspect which is close to Michel Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge (Foucault 1970, 1972). Before treating Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt, we should briefly consider the intellectual context, where this con...
Tartu : Tartu University Press eBooks, 2002
Introduction: Re-reading of cultural semiotics 396 P eeter Torop In many disciplines the personality of a scholar and his/her creation as a whole turn into a driving force of a discipline long since a scholar has passed away. There exist scholars the re-reading and rediscovering of whom proves that the future of a science can sometimes wait its time in the past. Julia Kristeva's re-reading of Mikhail Bakhtin created in the 1960s the situation in which Bakhtin's 40 year studies occurred to be as sent from the future. Such re-reading probably waits for several scholars who, due to one reason or another, have not been enough distributed as translations in great languages. Of J. Lotman's predecessors an example of this can be M. Bakhtin's con temporary Juri Tynjanov. A reason for re-reading can be a wish to get rid of the cultural layer and returning to the values of the original text that has turned into hardly comprehensible because of multiple interpretations. So has Jerzy Pelc expressed a wish to return to Charles Sanders Peirce: "I wish to find out what he actually had in mind. I therefore ask questions. And I would very much like to hear competent answers to these questions, but answers that are not formulated according to the rules of Peirce's style and poetics which his followers and commentators sometimes adopt as their own" (Pelc 1990: 4). Roland Barthes can be an example of a recent re-reading; different parts of his legacy occur again innovative in the hands of several researchers. Jonathan Culler, for example, stresses the value of a theoretician and a semiologist in this "back to Barthes" movement: "It seems to me that the essential feature of Barthes's genius is to have discovered the heuristic func tion of systematicity and of the requirement of explicitness. [...] Systematicity is, first and foremost, a means of estrangement, Verfremdung" (Culler 2001: 440). The innovative nature of R. Barthes is condensed in the notion of text. It is this notion that connects R. Barthes and J. Lotman, and J. Culler's fol lowing words might characterise both scholars: "A first consequence of this interdisciplinary reorientation was the positing of the methodological equi valence of different cultural products, whether literary works, fashion captions, advertisements, films, or religious rituals: all can be considered as text" (Culler 2001: 442). Since the concept of text is paired with the notion of work, J. Culler recognises two perspectives for R. Barthes' treatment of text. First, "work and text would be two different concepts of the object of study. [...] Alternatively, work and text could be two different classes of objects (roughly the traditional and the avant-garde)" (Culler 2001: 444). In contem porary methodological searches Barthes thus occupies an important place, although this does not concern all his works: "We may often need to read Barthes against the grain to preserve the theoretical and methodological gains that he himself risks dissipating or concealing in such slides into mystification or nostalgia; but this sort of vigilance is precisely what we can learn when we go "back to Barthes", or rather, back to the early writings of Roland Barthes" (Culler 2001: 445). Re-reading from another viewpoint can take to the equalisation of semio logy and sociology: "Barthesian semiology was inevitably and invariably a Introduction 397 sociology" (Polan 2001: 456). From the side of semiotics, however, an oppo site attitude is possible. An example of that can be John Deely's fear in an argument with Umberto Eco, especially in connection with the bringing close together sign and sign-function: "As we shall see over the course of this discussion, this amounts to proposing the elimination of semiotics in the name of semiotics, or, what amounts to the same thing, the restriction of semiotics to the horizon of semiology" (Deely 2001: 705). J. Deely's re-reading of Eco also takes to reformulation of the famous definition "the possibility of lying is the proprium of semiosis" (Eco 1977: 59): "This is well put, if one sided, since the possibility of expressing any truth is equally the proprium of semiosis. Since the sign is that which every object presupposes, and since semiotics studies the action of signs, perhaps the best definition of semiotics would be: the study of the possibility of being mistaken" (Deely 2001: 733). Viewing semiotics against the background of the distinction of the notions of discipline and field, or the theoretical and the applied aspects, J. Deely tries to defend the notion of the sign for the sake of holistic semiotics: "[...] the notion of signum is broader and more fundamental than Eco's notion of sign-function, and nothing is more important in the long run than a proper clarification and laying of the foundations for the enterprises of semiotics. [...] sign is the universal instrument of communica tion, within oneself or with others equally" (Deely 2001: 733). The disciplinary importance of the problem is indicated by Jerzy Pelc's attempt to re-read works by Ch. S. Peirce and Ch. Morris, and to answer the same questions that bothered J. Deely. Viewing semiosis as sign process and semiotics as the science or knowledge of semiosis, J. Pelc presents an under standing of the object of semiotics: "The object of semiotics, in one meaning of this term, are semiosic activities and the products thereof, i.e., semiosis and signs together with their semiosics" (Pelc 2000: 431). Through re-reading Peirce and Morris J. Pelc also articulates the notion of semiosis: "I treat semiosis as activities which in some cases produce signs together with selec ted semiosic properties or semiosic relations thereof, and sometimes semio sics, i.e., the totality of semiosic properties of these signs or the totality of semiosic relations containing the signs as their elements" (Pelc 2000: 428). From another viewpoint J. Deely, for example, treats the same problems through the concept of intersemiosis: "[...] human understanding finds its operational existence initially in terms of the intersemiosis which perception makes possible as developing around a sensory core" (Deely 2002: 68). These dissimilar re-readings reflect well the dependence of any discus sions on metalanguages that are the means of communication and self communication of those participating in the discussion. Thus science does not depend that much on culture a part of which it is. Even if discussion or dialogue goes on in the framework of one discipline, scholarly multilingua lism is preserved, because the sources of metalanguage, including texts and authors re-read, are very diverse. At the same time (meta)linguistic identity problems emerge inside different traditions. Talking about the semiotics of
Linguistics Grappling with the “Oddness” of Signs
Language and Semiotic Studies
In the last two decades of his career, Saussure continually tried to clarify the status of signs, considering however that it was an "absurd task" attacking this "odd entity" consisting of the association of two heterogeneous species. In his Course II Saussure showed that the semiological character of this entity does not derive from the properties of the material used but from the differential relations that this entity has with other coexisting entities. Previously, in the notes of La double essence, he had demonstrated that the internal link on which signs are based is "of a highly peculiar kind", that is to say, totally unnatural. In this paper, we show the very important theoretical and methodological implications of this reversal of perspective, which consists in posing the psychic associative union in its entirety.
From the Sign to the Passage: A Saussurean Perspective
NOTE: This is a shorter version of the paper published in the journal Texto! textes et cultures. It will be published in the proceedings of the 39th Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America. This presentation traces the development of Saussure’s concept of the sign (or kenome) to the notion of passage proposed by François Rastier. This way of viewing semiosis substitutes the two-faced monadic sign with an open-ended and fully contextualized relation between two planes of language. While a sign is an artifact of interpretation, a passage is a moment of ongoing interpretation, a praxeology. The passage thus participates in a rhetorical-hermeneutic problematic based on a deontology and a non-realism, instead of a logico-grammatical or representational problematic. Although it has been developed within the semiotics of natural languages, the passage offers us a new way of looking at other semiotic performances and thereby contribute to the development of the semiotics of cultures.
Ferdinand de Saussure is widely regarded as the father of modern linguistics. ‘The Nature of Linguistics Sign’ is extracted from his work “Course of General Linguistics”.
Tartu : Tartu University Press eBooks, 2005
Postmodern methodology in the human sciences and philosophy reverses the Aristotelian laws of thought such that (1) non-contradiction, (2) excluded middle, (3) contradiction, and (4) identity become the ground for analysis. The illustration of the postmodern logic is Peirce's (1) interpretant. (2) symbol, (3) index, and (4) icon. The thesis is illustrated using the work of Merleau-Ponty and Foucault and the le тёте et I 'autre discourse sign where the ratio [Self:Same :: Other:Different] explicates the communicology of Roman Jakobson in the conjunctions and disjunctions, appositions and oppo sitions of discours, parole, langue, and langage.