CHAPTER  V

SEMIOLOGY/SEMIOTICS:

(THE RELATION OF THE SIGN TO THE MEANING)

 

INTRODUCTION:

 

Semiology and semiotics are linguistic forms for designating the study of signs. In contemporary times, there is the dominance of semiotics as the preferred term for the study of signs. The discursive rivalry between “semiology” and “semiotics” as cultural forms of understanding is due to the gradual recognition of the comparative depth, scope, and importance of the studies. Semiology is propagated by Ferdinand de Sausurre (1857-1913) and those who took their principal inspiration in the study of signs from his work. Semiotics is a development by Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) and those who took principal inspiration in the study of signs from his work.[1] Thus, we have now two traditions, one is called the Sausurrean tradition and the other the Peircean tradition.

 

I.                  WHAT IS SEMIOLOGY/SEMIOTICS?

 

Semiology is from the Greek word semeion, meaning 'sign'. Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology. The laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts.

 

Semiology then is the scientific study of sign systems, like culture. The signs and codes it refers to can be regarded as historically and culturally specific. It does, however, insist that it is these codes and signs which make meaning possible. Therefore, it is through these that all human beings are able to interpret and make intelligible the world around them.

 

Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist (1857-1913), was the founder not only of linguistics but also of what is now more usually referred to as semiotics, elaborated in his Course in General Linguistics(1915). De Saussure was a noted linguist whose theories on the structure of language had a profound effect on modern linguistics and literary theory. His system was based on the concepts of the signifier (sound image or graphic), the referent (object or real thing) and the signified (concept or meaning). The signifier (an expressions) and the signified (its meaning) are inseparably connected; they are two sides of a single sheet of paper.[2] He posited that the connection between the signifier and the signified was an arbitrary one based on conventions of politeness. Another key to his theories is the idea of difference: he believed that signification was a function of difference.

 

Semiotics began to become a major approach to media theory in the late 1960s, and although it is less central now, it remains essential for anyone in the field to understand it. Nowadays, the term 'semiotics' is more likely to be used as an umbrella term to embrace the whole field.

 

There are other figures the early development of semiotics: Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and Charles William Morris (1901-1979). Leading semiotic theorists now include Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Christian Metz, Julia Kristeva and Algirdas Greimas. A number of linguists work within a semiotic framework, such as Roman Jakobson and Michael A. K. Halliday. Semiotics is difficult to disentangle from structuralism, whose major exponents include Claude Lévi-Strauss in anthropology and Jacques Lacan in psychoanalysis. Modern semiotic theory is also sometimes allied with a Marxist approach which tends to stress the role of ideology.

 

The most common brief definition of semiotics is 'the science of signs'. It involves the study of any medium as a semiotic 'sign system'. The term 'science' is misleading. As James Monaco(1981) points out, semiotics 'is most definitely not a science in the sense that physics or biology is a science'.. Some commentators consequently define semiotics simply as the study of signs.

 

Semiotics is different from 'content analysis'. While content analysis involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest 'content' of media texts, semiotics seeks to analyze media texts as structured wholes. Semiotics is rarely quantitative, and often involves a rejection of such approaches. As Olivier Burgelin argued: 'There is no reason to assume that the item which recurs most frequently is the most important or the most significant, for a text is, clearly, a structured whole, and the place occupied by the different elements is more important than the number of times they recur'. Whereas content analysis focuses on explicit content and tends to suggest that this represents a single, fixed meaning, semiotic studies focus on the system of rules governing the 'discourse' involved in media texts, stressing the role of semiotic context in shaping meaning.

 

Semiotics is not a strictly empirical science. John Fiske notes that:

 

Semiotics is essentially a theoretical approach to communication in that its aim is to establish widely applicable principles... It is thus vulnerable to the criticism that it is too theoretical, too speculative and that semioticians make no attempt to prove or disprove their theories in an objective, scientific way. (Fiske 1982: 118)

 

Semiotics represents a range of studies in art, literature, anthropology and the mass media rather than an independent academic discipline. Those involved in semiotics include linguists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, literary, aesthetic and media theorists and educationalists. Beyond the most basic definition, there is considerable variation amongst leading semioticians as to what semiotics involves. It is not only concerned with (intentional) communication but also with our ascription of significance to anything in the world. Semiotics has changed over time, since semioticians have sought to remedy weaknesses in early semiotic approaches. Even with the most basic semiotic terms there are multiple definitions.  Consequently, anyone attempting semiotic analysis would be wise to make clear which definitions are being adopted.

 

There are two divergent traditions in semiotics stemming respectively from Saussure and Peirce; where the approach of a particular semiotician is employed this also needs to be made clear. The writings of semioticians have a reputation for being dense with jargon: as one critic put it, 'Semiotics tells us things we already know in a language we will never understand'.

 

Because of the influence of Saussure, and because linguistics is a more established discipline than the study of other sign systems, semiotics draws heavily on linguistic concepts. Saussure saw linguistics as a branch of semiotics, though Roland Barthes and some other semioticians have treated semiotics as a branch of linguistics. Semioticians commonly refer to films, television and radio programmes, advertising posters and so on as 'texts', and Fiske and Hartley (1978) referred to 'reading television'. Media such as television and film are regarded by some semioticians as being like 'languages'. The issue tends to revolve around whether film is closer to what we treat as 'reality' in the everyday world of our own experience or whether it has more in common with a symbolic system like writing.

 

1. The Discipline of Semeiotic

 

Peirce considers semiotics as a formal discipline, one that aims at discerning the necessary conditions for the subject it studies. The profound influence of Kant on Peirce is evident here. Yet Semiotics lies above all empirical sciences, as indeed does all of the science of philosophy of which it is a sub-branch. Semiotics lies below mathematics, however, for Peirce crowns his classification of the sciences with mathematics understood very broadly as "the science that draws necessary conclusions" (not to be confused with "the science of drawing necessary conclusions", which is logic).

 

Semeiotic is a normative science, given that Peirce sees signification construed even in his very broad and naturalistic sense to be irreducibly teleological. To what end is semiosis tending? It tends ultimately (in the long run) towards truth, again construed very broadly, as "settled" signs - signs which have ceased to contradict each other with respect to the objects they signify. Since all empirical sciences draw on the concept of truth yet do not themselves study it, they must rely on leading principles from semeiotic with respect to this vital notion.

 

Therefore, this leads us to the general characterisation of semiotics , as a branch of philosophy, being a formal, normative science that is specifically concerned with the question of truth as it can be expressed and known through the medium of signs.

 

II.              SAUSSUREAN TRADITION:

 

A)   Saussure's vision of semiology

 

We shall not dwell on linguistics here, but we need to look at Saussure's ideas as it was he who laid the foundation stone of semiology. It was he in fact who coined the term (which he developed from the Greek word for 'sign'). He used the word to describe a new science which he saw as 'a science which studies the life of signs at the heart of social life'. (Saussure 1971). This new science, he said, would teach us 'what signs consist of, what laws govern them'. As he saw it, linguistics would be but a part of the overarching science of semiology, which would not limit itself to verbal signs only.

 

Saussure saw semiology as a branch of linguistics, whereas today linguistics would be seen as merely one branch of this overarching study of signs.

 

B)   Communication and language

 

Many semiologists (or semioticians), when commenting on the media, have used vocabulary which might strike you as more appropriate to the study of literature. Thus, for semioticians, a TV documentary, a radio play, a Madonna song, a poster at a bus stop are all texts. We users of these texts are referred to as readers. Thus you will find Fiske and Hartley titling their book Reading Television and Monaco calling his How To Read a Film. Similarly, some semioticians will tend to talk about the vocabulary of film, the grammar of TV documentaries and so on, following through the analogy with language. However, some commentators would argue that it is fundamentally impossible to draw glib analogies between language and cinema or photography.

 

C)   The Sign According to Saussure  

 

First let us look at the idea of denotation. Briefly the idea is that a sign 'denotes' or 'refers to' something 'out there in the real world'. It supposes that words (let's stick with words for the time being) are labels attached to things much as labels might be stuck to artefacts in a museum. That seems a pretty sensible idea at first, perhaps - we can readily see how 'Manila', 'Fidel Ramos', 'Vilma Santos' denote things 'out there'. But as soon as we get on to 'city', 'woman', 'man', things start to get a bit of a wonder. Which city, woman, man? And when we get on to words like 'ask' or 'tradition', this simple sign-----> thing relationship starts to fall apart. As Wittgenstein puts it '[the idea that the individual words in language name objects] surrounds the workings of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible.' (Wittgenstein (1958) 

 

Saussure tried to get around this problem by saying that 'the linguistic sign does not unite a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound image'. (Saussure (1971). If we consider printed language, then we could say that a sign consists of the printed form of a word and a concept; if we consider a black and white photograph, then the sign consists of a particular set of shapes/shades and a concept. Structuralism (i.e. the philosophy which derived later from Saussurean linguistics), then, 'brackets the referent', in the current jargon. In other words, the thing referred to (the referent) is taken out of the sign-----> thing(referent) relationship and is replaced by 'concept'. Clearly, the 'linguistic turn' is strengthened by this, since any notion of a reality external to language and concepts is de-emphasized.

 

D)   Signifier\signified (Their Relationships).

 

Saussure actually saw the division of the sign into sound image and concept as a bit ambiguous. So he refined the idea by saying it might make things clearer if we referred to the concept as the signified (signifié) and the sound image as the signifier (signifiant).

 

One might think that the distinction between sound image (signifier) and concept (signified) doesn't get us very far forward in trying to figure out what we mean by 'meaning'. This might probably be right. After all, it's not easier to say what the concept of 'the' or 'of' is than to say what thing those words correspond to. And, of course, I don't know if the concepts 'city', 'woman', 'man' in your head are the same as those in mine. As the British linguist, David Crystal (1987), puts it:

Some words do have meanings which are relatively easy to conceptualise, but we certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say. Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might bring to mind.

While that's quite correct, the fact remains that it also explains why Saussure's ideas took things forward. His notion of the sign places the emphasis on our individual 'concepts' corresponding to the sound images. Your mental picture of a car (indeed, for all we know, not only a mental picture, but also a mental smell, mental noise or whatever) will not be the same as mine, for a variety of reasons.

 

Saussure shifted the emphasis from the notion that there is some kind of 'real world' out there to which we all refer in words which mean the same to all of us. Obviously, we in our language community have much of this real world in common, otherwise we couldn't communicate, but, for various reasons, the 'real world' which we articulate through our signs will be different for every one of us. (It is for this reason that Saussure saw semiology as a branch of social psychology.)

 

E)   Arbitrariness of the sign

 

Saussure stressed the arbitrariness of the sign as the first principle of semiology. When we say something is 'arbitrary', we mean that there's no good reason for it. If you make an 'arbitrary choice' between two things, then you choose for no good reason; you probably don't care which one you choose. By saying that signs are arbitrary, Saussure was saying that there is no good reason why we use the sequence of sounds 'sister' to mean a female sibling. We could just as well use 'soeur', 'Schwester', 'ati'. For that matter, we could just as well use the sequence of sounds: 'brother'. Of course, as he pointed out, we don't have any choice in the matter. If we want to talk about female siblings in the English language, we can talk about 'female siblings' or 'sisters' - and that's all; there are no more options.

 

Saussure saw language as being an ordered system of signs whose meanings are arrived at arbitrarily by a cultural convention. There is no necessary reason why a pig should be called a pig. It doesn't look sound or smell any more like the sequence of sounds 'p-i-g' than a banana looks, smells, tastes or feels like the sequence of sounds 'banana'. It is only because we in our language group agree that it is called a 'pig' that that sequence of sounds refers to the animal in the real world. You and your circle of friends could agree always to refer to pigs as 'squerdlishes' if you want. As long as there is general agreement, that's no problem - until you start talking about squerdlishes to people who don't share the same convention.

 

III.    The Sign

A)    Definition:      

 

A sign in general - that  which stands for something other than itself or is. According to this definition that for which it stands, can in its turn stand for another, that is to say, to be a sign also to it. On the other part also the “first” sign can already be something through which stands another sign, that is a meaning:

 

(L)   -   M   -   N   -   (O) 

 

The relation between sign and meaning can still be overturned inside out: smoke can be sign of fire, but also fire can be sign for the presence of the smoke. In this case, to be sign or meaning become so interchangeable.

 

Thus, the signs are no longer a special class of things, but all could be signs, and all could be something for which stands a sign. All that “which can be used to lie can be a sign.”[3] And it is justified, therefore, to rather talk of “sign function” instead of sign.

 

Augustine defined the sign as “signum est res, quod praeter speciem quam ingeret sensibus, aliud ex se faciens in cogitationem venire”: “the sign is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into thought as a consequence.” This definition can best be understood by comparing the sign with an arrow that points or with a shadow that stands as an image for an object.

 

The sign is like this arrow that points. It stands in relation not to itself but to something other than itself, and brings this object which it is related to spring into consciousness. Any sign is a sign only because it points to something it itself is not. a sign as such as a linguistic utterance is, strictly speaking, nothing but a series of noises coming out of a person’s voice box. But what is understood of course is not the noise itself but what the noise stands for. It “points” at something which is brought into consciousness and that which is brought into consciousness can be described, talked about, analyzed, thought about, studied, associated with something else, or assmilated with other signs.

 

N. B.    The “other than itself” for which the sign stands is ambiguous: it can mean: the meaning, but also the res signified. 

 

The importance of such distinctions of the diverse signs and their systematization, as elaborated by Pierce, applies to everything. But it also applies to the Saussurian distinction between sign and meaning as something fixed and essential: To be sign and to be signified are only two aspects almost spontaneous, of the only sign-function.

 

The importance also applies, generally, in choosing the point of departure in the analysis of the linguistic reality, respectively Sign: Do we have to start from the sign or from the signified, from outside or from inside? This choice seemed to determine an option for realism or for nominalism, or even for realism with respect to idealism. But each sign can be signified and every signified can be a sign. There is no longer any natural difference between external and internal: both are of cultural realities, and with that is repeatable, general and abstract.

 

The question, whether  “the signified thing” is also either a cultural reality and not natural, and if the function of reference and with it the “signified thing” should be absorbed within the sign-function, as Eco maintains, it shall be discussed further.

 

According to post-structuralist semiology, a sign is a thing which stands for something else. The sign may refer to the specific content intended to be communicated (the signified), or it may simply point to a formal device devoid of meaning (the signifier). In either case, there is a potential infinitude of interpretations of a given sign. This is a result of the incessant and tyrannical generation of meaning which takes place in the human psyche, wherein mental constructs are freely associated with one another. Signs, signifiers, and signifieds interact as if they were particles suspended in a turbulent medium, connecting with one another in a chaotic order determined by the matrix of the individual's personality and experiences. Theoretically, this leads to an infinite chain of semiosis, in which each concept is related to all others through the process of association.

 

B)   Epistemology of the Sign.

 

For the Stoics, it ran quite simply: that which seems to reveal something. For St. Thomas Aquinas, he speaks of sign as the sensible cause of a hidden effect: “per causam sensibilem quandoque ducimur in cognitionem effectus occulti.” ( ST 1, q. 70, a.2).

 

More recently, De Sausurre defined sign as a union of the signified and the signifying; Pierce defines it as something by knowing which we know something else. Thus, the classic formula: “ id quod inducit in cognitionem alterius.”

 

More specifically, let us say that a sign all that which, being historically based, allows knowledge of the mystery by creating the conditions for interpersonal communication.

 

C)   Analysis of the Sign.[4]

           

In semiotics, 'signs' may be anything from which meanings may be generated (such as words, images, sounds, gestures and objects). For the analytical purposes of semiotics (in the tradition of Saussure), every sign is composed of:

·         a 'signifier' - the form which the sign takes; and

·         the 'signified' - the concept it represents.

Nowadays, the 'signifier' is commonly interpreted as the material form of the sign.

For example:

 

Sign:: The written word 'tree'

Signifier: The letters 't-r-e-e-'

Signified concept: The category 'tree'

 

Whilst this basically 'Saussurean' model is commonly adopted, it is a more materialistic model than that of Saussure himself. He referred to the signifier (signifiant) in terms of a 'sound-image' (image acoustique, 'the psychological imprint of the sound', (Nöth 1990), and to the signified (signifié) as a mental concept.

 

The distinction between signifier and signified has sometimes been equated to the familiar dualism of 'form and content' (e.g. Wells 1977, Andersson & Trudgill 1992): within such a framework the signifier is seen as the form of the sign and the signified as the content. However, such a formulation could misleadingly suggest the equivalence of content and meaning (whereas the latter requires interpretation) (Nöth 1990).

 

Note that unlike Peirce's model of the sign, Saussure's model excludes reference to an object in the world (reference is only to a mental concept and to a 'sound-image'). His conception of meaning was purely structural. Such a model can be seen as supporting the notion that language does not 'reflect' reality but rather constructs it. However, some have criticized its detachment from social context (Gardiner 1992). Saussure also emphasized the arbitrariness of the sign (though he was focusing on linguistic signs, seeing language as the most important sign system). In the context of natural language, he stressed that there is no necessary connection between the signifier and the signified: the relationship is purely conventional and arbitrary. Each language involves different distinctions between one signifier and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'free') and between one signified and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'bush').

 

In contrast to Saussure's 'self-contained dyad', Charles Sanders Peirce offered a triad:

·      The Representamen: the form which the sign takes (not necessarily material);

·         An Interpretant: not an interpreter but rather the sense made of the sign;

·         An Object: to which the sign refers.

 

Peirce's triadic model of the sign is complex, and will not be discussed in detail here. However, note that the interpretant is itself a sign in the mind of the interpreter. The phrase 'unlimited semiosis' is used to refer to the way in which this could lead to a series of successive interpretants (potentially) ad infinitum (Nöth 1990). Signs are "the same as semeioses, or units of processes" governed by a triadic telos.[5]

 

A community is a community of interpretation. When two persons meet who cannot at first communicate in a shared language, the struggle to do so sets in motion a triadic process "so far as means are suggested which make the ideas of the two [persons] cohere."[6]

 

Variants of Peirce's triad are often presented as 'the semiotic triangle' (as if there were only one version). Here is a version which is quite often encountered and which changes only the unfamiliar Peircean terms (Nöth 1990):

·         Sign vehicle: the form of the sign;

·         Sense: the sense made of the sign;

·         Referent: what the sign 'stands for'.

 

The goal that Peirce sets for himself is the articulation of the broadest meaning of sign action and interpretation[7] He wants to know every detail of how interpretations arise. He considers this as a scientific investigation. He was not interested in a priori answers. Answers that simply end as all interpretation is limited by the accepted categories of interpretation and no interpretation actually occurs because we cannot escape the linguistic categories of our own form of social life.

 

The notion of the importance of sense-making (which requires an interpreter - though Peirce doesn't feature that term in his triad) has had a particular appeal for media theorists who stress the importance of the active process of interpretation, and thus reject the equation of 'content' and meaning. Many of these theorists allude to semiotic triangles in which the interpreter (or 'user') of the sign features explicitly (in place of 'sense' or 'interpretant'). This highlights the process of semiosis (which is very much a Peircean concept). Whether a dyadic or triadic model is adopted, the role of the interpreter must be accounted for - either within the formal model of the sign, or as an essential part of the process of semiosis. David Sless argues that 'statements about users, signs or referents can never be made in isolation from each other. A statement about one always contains implications about the other two' (Sless 1986).

 

Note that semioticians (whether Saussurean or Peircean) make a distinction between a sign and a 'sign vehicle' (the latter being a 'signifier' to Saussureans and a 'representamen' to Peirceans). The sign is more than just a sign vehicle (Nöth 1990). The term 'sign' is often used loosely, so that this distinction is not always preserved (even Saussure and Peirce were sometimes guilty of this). In the Saussurean framework, for instance, the distinction between the sign and the signifier can become unclear.

 

Whereas Saussure emphasized the arbitrary nature of the (linguistic) sign, most semioticians stress that signs differ in the how arbitrary/conventional they are. Based on the ideas of Peirce, three modes of relationship between sign vehicles and their referents are commonly referred to. We will choose Terence Hawkes's term 'modes of relationship' (Hawkes 1977) rather than the conventional 'modes of signs' for reasons explained below.

·         Symbolic: a sign which does not resemble the signified but which is 'arbitrary' or purely conventional (e.g. the word 'stop', a red traffic light, a national flag, a number);

·         Iconic: a sign which resembles the signified (e.g. a portrait, a cinematic image, an x-ray, a diagram, a scale-model, onomatopoeia, 'realistic' sounds in music, sound effects in radio drama, a dubbed film soundtrack, imitative gestures);

·         Indexical: a sign which is directly connected in some way (existentially or causally) to the signified (e.g. smoke, weathercock, thermometer, clock, spirit-level, footprint, fingerprint, knock on door, pulse rate, rashes, pain).

 

The three forms are listed here in decreasing order of conventionality according to Nöth: 'Decoding the similarity of an icon or image with its object presupposes a higher degree of cultural conventionality than decoding signs which "direct the attention to their objects by blind compulsion", as Peirce defines the index' (Nöth 1990). Within each form signs also vary in their degree of arbitrariness/conventionality.

 

The terms 'motivation' and 'constraint' are sometimes used to describe the extent to which the signified determines the signifier. The more a signifier is constrained by the signified, the more 'motivated' the sign is: iconic signs are highly motivated; symbolic signs are unmotivated. The less motivated the sign, the more learning of an agreed convention is required. Fiske points out that:

Convention is necessary to the understanding of any sign, however iconic or indexical it is. We need to learn how to understand a photograph... Convention is the social dimension of signs...: it is the agreement amongst the users about the appropriate uses of and responses to a sign. (Fiske 1982)

 

Note that Peirce categorized a photograph as an index rather than an icon: 'photographs, especially instantaneous photographs, are very instructive, because we know that in certain respects they are exactly like the objects they represent. But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature. In that aspect, then, they belong to the... class of signs... by physical connection [the indexical class]' (Wollen 1969).

 

It is easy to slip into referring to these three forms as 'types of signs', but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive: a sign can be an icon, a symbol and an index, or any combination. 'A map is... indexical (it indicates where places are) and iconic (it represents places in topographical relation to each other) and symbolic (its notational system must be learned)' (Danesi 1994). Film and television use all three forms: icon (sound and image), symbol (speech and writing), and index (as the effect of what is filmed); iconic signs dominate, although some filmic signs are fairly arbitrary, such as 'dissolves' which signify that a scene from someone's memory is to follow.

 

James Monaco suggests that 'in film, the signifier and the signified are almost identical... The power of language systems is that there is a very great difference between the signifier and the signified; the power of film is that there is not' (Monaco 181). Iconic and indexical signs are more likely to be read as 'natural' than symbolic signs since they are less arbitrary. In being less reliant than writing on symbolic signs, film, television and photography suggest less of an obvious gap between the sign and its signified, which make them seem to offer 'reflections of reality'. Roland Barthes argued that such media serve an ideological function because they appear to record rather than to transform or signify (Woollacott 1982).

D)   Paradigms and Syntagms

Signs are organized into codes in two ways: by paradigms and by syntagms. The distinction between paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures is a key one in structuralist semiotic analysis. These two dimensions are often presented as 'axes', where the vertical axis is the paradigmatic and the horizontal axis is the syntagmatic. The plane of the paradigm is that of selection whilst the plane of the syntagm is that of combination (these terms were introduced by Roman Jakobson).

 

A paradigm is a set of associated signs which are all members of some defining category, but in which each sign is significantly different. In natural language, the vocabulary of a language is one paradigm, and there are grammatical paradigms such as verbs or nouns. The use of one paradigm (e.g. a particular word or image) rather than another shapes the preferred meaning of a text. Note that the significance of the differences between even apparently synonymous paradigms is at the heart of Whorfian theories about language.

 

In film and television, paradigms include ways of changing shot (such as cut, fade, dissolve and wipe). Fiske and Hartley (1978) show how the medium or genre used by a particular media text are also paradigms which derive meaning from the ways in which they differ from alternative media or genres: as they put it, 'although the signifier remains the same, the sign itself is altered' by a change of genre or medium. Marshall McLuhan's notion that 'the medium is the message' can thus be seen as a semiotic concern: to a semiotician the medium is not 'neutral'.

 

A syntagm is an orderly combination of interacting signs which forms a meaningful whole (sometimes called a 'chain'). Such combinations are made within a framework of rules and conventions (both explicit and inexplicit). In language, a sentence, for instance, is a syntagm of words. Paragraphs and chapters are syntagms too. In a photograph or painting syntagmatic relationships are spatial (Silverman 1983). Syntagms are created by the choice of paradigms from those which are conventionally regarded as appropriate or which may be required by some rule system (e.g. grammar).

 

Roland Barthes (1967) outlined the paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements of the 'garment system'. The paradigmatic elements are the items which cannot be worn at the same time on the same part of the body (such as hats, trousers, shoes). The syntagmatic dimension is the juxtaposition of different elements at the same time in a complete ensemble from hat to shoes.

E)   Denotation and Connotation

Semioticians distinguish between denotation and connotation, terms describing the relationship between the sign and its referent. 'Denotation' tends to be described as the definitional or 'literal' meaning of a sign; 'connotation' refers to its socio-cultural and personal associations (ideological, emotional etc.).

 

Roland Barthes introduced the notion that there are different orders of signification (levels of meaning). The first order of signification is that of denotation: at this level there is a sign consisting of a signifier and a signified. Connotation is a second-order of signification which uses the first sign (signifier and signified) as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified.

 

Connotations 'derive not from the sign itself, but from the way the society uses and values both the signifier and the signified' (Fiske & Hartley 1978: 41). A car can connote virility or freedom in Western cultures. The choice of words often involves connotations, as in references to 'strikes' vs. 'disputes', 'union demands' vs. 'management offers', and so on.

 

Dominic Strinati raises the issue: 'Is there such a thing as pure denotation?' (Strinati 1995: 125). Is denotation just another connotation? In an important paper, the British sociologist Stuart Hall comments on this issue.

 

The term 'denotation' is widely equated with the literal meaning of a sign: because the literal meaning is almost universally recognized, especially when visual discourse is being employed, 'denotation' has often been confused with a literal transcription of 'reality' in language - and thus with a 'natural sign', one produced without the intervention of a code. 'Connotation', on the other hand, is employed simply to refer to less fixed and therefore more conventionalized and changeable, associative meanings, which clearly vary from instance to instance and therefore must depend on the intervention of codes.

 

We do not use the distinction - denotation/connotation - in this way. From our point of view, the distinction is an analytic one only. It is useful, in analysis, to be able to apply a rough rule of thumb which distinguishes those aspects of a sign which appear to be taken, in any language community at any point in time, as its 'literal' meaning (denotation) from the more associative meanings for the sign which it is possible to generate (connotation). But analytical distinctions must not be confused with distinctions in the real world. There will be very few instances in which signs organized in a discourse signify only their 'literal' (that is, nearly-universally consensualized) meaning. In actual discourse most signs will combine both the denotative and the connotative aspects (as redefined above). It may, then, be asked why we retain the distinction at all. It is largely a matter of analytic value. It is because signs appear to acquire their full ideological value... at the level of their 'associative' meanings (that is, at the connotative level) - for here 'meanings' are not apparently fixed in natural perception (that is, they are not fully naturalized), and their fluidity of meaning and association can be more fully exploited and transformed. So it is at the connotative level of the sign that situational ideologies alter and transform signification. At this level we can see more clearly the active intervention of ideologies in and on discourse... This does not mean that the denotative or 'literal' meaning is outside ideology. Indeed, we could say that its ideological value is strongly fixed - because it has become so fully universal and 'natural'. The terms 'denotation' and 'connotation', then, are merely useful analytic tools for distinguishing, in particular contexts, between not the presence/absence of ideology in language but the different levels at which ideologies and discourses intersect. (Hall 1980)

 

Stuart Hall's observations here were very much a response to critics of some remarks by Roland Barthes. Barthes argued that in photography connotation can be (analytically) distinguished from denotation. In Fiske's summary, 'denotation is the mechnical reproduction on film of the object at which the camera is pointed. Connotation is the human part of the process, it is the selection of what to include in the frame, of focus, aperture, camera angle, quality of film and so on. Denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed' (Fiske 1982). Victor Burgin argued with the notion that a photograph reproduces its object, insisting that 'the photograph abstracts from, and mediates, the actual' (Burgin 1982): we do not mistake one for the other.

 

At the connotative level, signs are more 'polysemic', more open to interpretation. However, there is a danger here of stressing the 'individual subjectivity' of connotation: commentators such as Fiske stress 'intersubjective' responses which are shared to some degree by members of a culture; with any individual example only a limited range of connotations would make any sense (Fiske & Hartley 1978).

 

As Fiske puts it, 'it is often easy to read connotative values as denotative facts; one of the main aims of semiotic analysis is to provide us with the analytical method and the frame of mind to guard against this sort of misreading' (Fiske 1982).

 

Related to connotation is what Roland Barthes refers to as myth. Barthes argues that the orders of signification called denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology - which John Hartley has described as a third order of signification (Hartley 1982). Cultural myths express and serve to organize shared ways of conceptualizing something (Fiske 1982). This is an ideological function. British news programmes, for instance, allude to the myth that 'we all favour moderation'.

 

Susan Hayward offers a useful example of the three levels of signification in relation to a photograph of Marilyn Monroe:

 

At the denotative level this is a photograph of the movie star Marilyn Monroe. At a connotative level we associate this photograph with Marilyn Monroe's star qualities of glamour, sexuality, beauty - if this is an early photograph - but also with her depression, drug-taking and untimely death if it is one of her last photographs. At a mythic level we understand this sign as activating the myth of Hollywood: the dream factory that produces glamour in the form of the stars it constructs, but also the dream machine that can crush them - all with a view to profit and expediency. (Hayward 1996)

F)   Codes

In each text signs are organized into meaningful systems according to certain conventions which semioticians refer to as codes (or signifying codes). Such conventions represent a social dimension in semiotics: a code is a set of practices familiar to users of the medium operating within a broad cultural framework. A range of typologies of codes can be found in the literature of semiotics (e.g. Fiske 1989a: 312-6; see also the typologies of Eco and Barthes mentioned below). I refer here only to those which are most widely mentioned in the context of media and communication studies (the tripartite framework is my own).

            Social Codes:

·          [In a broader sense all semiotic codes are 'social codes']

·         verbal language (phonological, syntactical, lexical, prosodic and paralinguistic subcodes);

·         bodily codes (bodily contact, proximity, physical orientation, appearance, head nods, facial expression, gestures, posture, eye movement and contact);

·         commodity codes (fashions, clothing, cars);

·         behavioural codes (protocols, rituals, role-playing, games);

·         regulatory codes (e.g. the Highway Code, professional codes of practice).

·         Textual codes

·         scientific codes, including mathematics;

·         aesthetic codes within the various expressive arts (poetry, drama, painting, sculpture, music, etc.);

·         genre, rhetorical and stylistic codes: narrative (plot, conflict, character, action, dialogue, setting, etc.), exposition, argument and so on;

·         mass media codes including photographic, televisual, filmic, radio, newspaper and magazine codes, both technical and conventional.

·         Interpretativecodes
[There is less agreement about these as semiotic codes]

·         perceptual codes: e.g. of visual perception (Nichols 1981; Eco 1982) (note that this code does not assume intentional communication);

·         codes of production and interpretation: codes involved in both 'encoding' and 'decoding' texts - dominant (or 'hegemonic'), negotiated or oppositional (Morley 1980);

·         ideological codes: John Fiske lists individualism, freedom, patriarchy, race, class, materialism, capitalism, progressivism and 'scientism' (Fiske 1987), but all codes can be seen as ideological.

 

Understanding such codes, their relationships and the contexts in which they are appropriate is part of what it means to be a member of a particular culture. 'A culture can be defined as a kind of "macro-code", consisting of the numerous codes which a group of individuals habitually use to interpret reality' (Danesi 1994; also Nichols 1981). These conventions are typically inexplicit, and we are not normally conscious of the roles which they play. Their use helps to guide us towards what Stuart Hall (1980) calls 'a preferred reading' and away from what Umberto Eco calls 'aberrant decoding', though media texts do vary in the extent to which they are open to interpretation (Fiske 1982). The 'tightness' of semiotic codes themselves varies from the rule-bound closure of logical codes (such as computer codes) to the interpretative looseness of ideological codes. John Corner (1980) suggests that loosely-defined 'codes' may not be usefully described as codes at all.

 

Codes are not static, but dynamic systems which change over time, and are thus historically as well as socio-culturally situated. The way in which such conventions are established is called   codification (Giraud). In Hollywood cinema the white hat became codified as the signifier of a 'good' cowboy; eventually this convention became over-used and was abandoned (Fiske & Hartley 1978).

 

John Fiske (1982) distinguishes broadcast codes from narrowcast (or restricted) codes. A broadcast code is shared by member of a mass audience; a narrowcast code is aimed at a more limited audience. Pop music is a broadcast code; ballet is a narrowcast code. 'Narrowcast codes have acquired the function in our mass society of stressing the difference between "us" (the users of the code) and "them" (the laymen, the lowbrows). Broadcast codes stress the similarities amongst "us" (the majority)' (Fiske 1982) and tend to be simpler. Broadcast codes are learned through experience; narrowcast codes often involve more deliberate learning (Fiske 1989). Narrowcast codes have the potential to be more subtle; broadcast codes can lead to cliché.

 

A distinction is sometimes made between digital and analogue codes. Analogue codes, such as visual images, involve graded relationships on a continuum. Digital codes, such as written language, involve discrete units. 'Turning nature into culture and thus making it understandable and communicable involves codifying it digitally' (Fiske 1989). It is often difficult to say what analogue codes mean because trying to put their meaning into words breaks up the continuum (Nichols 1981).

 

'Fundamental to all semiotic analysis is the fact that any system of signs (semiotic code) is carried by a material medium which has its own principles of structure' (Hodge & Tripp 1986). Film and television involve both aural and visual codes. Cinematic and televisual codes include genre, camerawork (shot size, focus, lens movement, camera movement, angle, lens choice, framing), editing (cuts and fades, cutting rate and rhythm), manipulation of time (compression, flashbacks, flashforwards, slow motion), lighting, colour, sound (soundtrack, music), graphics and narrative style. Christian Metz added authorial style, and distinguished codes from sub-codes, where a sub-code was a particular choice from within a code (e.g. western within genre).

 

The syntagmatic dimension was a relation of combination between different codes and sub-codes; the paradigmatic dimension was that of the film-maker's choice of particular sub-codes within a code (Lapsley & Westlake 1988). Since, as Metz noted, 'a film is not "cinema" from one end to another' (cited in Nöth 1990), film and television involve many codes which are not specific to these media.

 

Some codes are unique to a specific medium or to closely-related media (e.g. 'fade to black' in film and television). Others are shared by (or similar in) several media (e.g. scene breaks); and some are drawn from cultural practices which are not tied to a medium (e.g. body language) (Monaco 1981). Some are more specific to particular genres within a medium. Some are more broadly linked either to the domain of science ('logical codes', suppressing connotation and diversity of interpretation) or to that of the arts ('aesthetic codes', celebrating connotation and diversity of interpretation). However, such differences are differences of degree rather than of kind (Fiske & Hartley 1978).

 

Fiske and Hartley argue that:

The way we watch television and the way we perceive [everyday] reality are fundamentally similar, in that both are determined by conventions or codes. Reality is itself a complex system of signs interpreted by members of the culture in exactly the same way as are films and television programmes. Perception of this reality is always mediated through the codes with which our culture organizes it, categorizes its significant elements or semes into paradigms, and relates them significantly into syntagms. (Fiske & Hartley 1978: 65-6)

 

The codes of television relate closely to the codes for the perception of the everyday world that the boundary between television and reality is hard to define. Furthermore, watching television shares with everyday life the characteristic of being a familiar and casual activity which most of us engage in without feeling the need for elaborate analysis.

 

Umberto Eco offered ten fundamental codes as instrumental in shaping images: codes of perception, codes of transmission, codes of recognition, tonal codes, iconic codes, iconographic codes, codes of taste and sensibility, rhetorical codes, stylistic codes and codes of the unconscious (Lapsley & Westlake 1988; Eco 1982). Roland Barthes itemized five codes utilized in reading: hermeneutic (narrative turning-points); proairetic (basic narrative actions); cultural (prior social knowledge); semic (medium-related codes) and symbolic (themes) (Silverman 1983).

 

IV.     Meaning

 

Any theory of meaning always attempts to answer the question: what is it to understand the sense of a   symbolic expression?

 

 To understand that the linguistic sign (word), is a reality of our natural speaking appears simple enough. But from the moment that the point of view is extended, and that the linguistic sign is treated simply as such, a sign, then things get complicated.

 

1)   Two Erroneous Solutions.

 

[a]   The meaning of a Sign is not the object to which the sign eventually refers.

 

Not all the signs, not even the linguistic signs, are names, which point to an object they are referred. In other words, names are not fixated to the objects named. More important is, that no sign, not even the proper nouns, have as their meaning the object to which they refer themselves: even when the object of a sign disappears and no longer exist. A name or another sign does not lose its meaning. In fact, we can talk about things that don’t exist.

 

It is in such case that there is a distinction between meaning and referent. Frege has already noted this: that the meaning (Sinn, meaning), and the reference (Bedeutung, referent) are two different things.

 

[b]   The Meaning of the Sign is not Just any Mental Private Reality.

 

L. Wittgenstein - shows very clearly the impossibility of a private meaning, even in the case of psychological terms, as “pains” - which are associated to a psychical experience.

2)   The Sign-Function.

 

It seems convenient, following Umberto Eco, to unite in our consideration of the sign function the relation between the sign and its meaning.

 

Some Components of Signs:

 

1.      The Historical Dimension. A sign, to be truly such, must have a reality which is knowable through normal sense channels. It should hence be realty sited in the human sphere of cognition and be immediately perceptible as a signpost to a further meaning.

2.      The component of Mediation. The sign is an arbitrary union between something signified and something signifying it. By definition, the latter case never in itself exhaust what it signifies, without risk of sign’s being destroyed. the arbitrary character of the union may, in the course of time, undergo a modification of relationships, nevertheless, owing to “collective inertia” (De Sausurre), the original meaning never be completely altered.

3.      As regards the relationship between signified and signifier, it is possible to create a number of different terminologies to accompany the general term, sign. Ex. sign-pointer, sign-symbol, sign-ikon, sign-aesthetic, etc.

4.      A sign creates communication. It is created to communicate. The sign is a means of communication that finds its sphere of meaning in a context that favors its being correctly understood.

 

Elements for Identifying the Sign:

 

·         there must be a consensus: this means that the sign emerges from the sphere of the subjective.

·         the sign stimulates reflection.

·         it prompts us to make a decision whether to accept the sign or refuse it.

 

As a Summary: A Sign to be a Sign:

 

·         must present itself to the senses and hence be perceptible.

·         must be historical, i.e. contained in a socio-historical context.

·         must be signifying, i.e. admitting to the comprehension of something signified and yet to be expressed, but not entirely contained in it.

·         must be universal, i.e. it creates consensus beyond the sphere of the individual.

 

Three Approaches to a Theory of Meaning:[8]

 

1.       Intentionalism shares with Buhler a conception in which language has the character of a tool. The speaker uses the signs and concatenations of signs produced by him as a vehicle for informing another player about his beliefs or intentions. In this conception, the premises of the modern philosophy of consciousness are still presupposed as unproblematic. The representing subject stands over and against a world of things and events; at the same time, he asserts his sovereignty in the world as a purposively acting subject. From the same perspective, he encounters other subjects who asserts themselves in turn. If language obtains its meaning exclusively from the intentions of the purposive user of language, then it loses the autonomy of having its own internal structure.

 

2.       Formal semantics follows a different intuition. It attends to the grammatical form of linguistic expressions and ascribes to language a status that is basically independent of the intentions and ideas of speaking subjects. In relation to the rule- system of language itself, the practice of employing language and the psychology of understanding it occupy a status that is merely secondary. Initially, the object of the theory of meaning is constituted by the linguistic expressions themselves and not by the pragmatic relations between speakers and hearers that can be read off from the process of communication. Correct usage and correct understanding do not result from the intentions of the speaker or from the conventions agreed upon by users of language but from the formal properties of the expressions and their generative rules. The relation of the signified (the meaning) to the signifier (the sign) was thought to be explicable in terms of the relation of the symbol (meaningful sign) to the designatum (the object referred to). This basic semiotic notion was suitable for the object-centered theory of knowledge in the philosophy of consciousness.

 

3.       Yet a different intuition underlies the use-theory of meaning, which Wittgenstein developed from his critique of the truth-semantic conception once shared by him. Wittgenstein uncovered the action character of linguistic expressions. From this perspective, the representational function of language loses its privileged position among a multiplicity of uses. The medium of language does not facilitate first and foremost the description or affirmation of facts. Wittgenstein’s formula is that the meaning of a word is its use in the language. Unlike the intentionalistic approach, the use-theoretical approach does not emphasize the tool character of language but the interconnection of language with an interactive practice in which a form of life is simultaneously reflected and reproduced. These relationships are not interpreted intentionalistically from the perspective of a single speaker but as reflections of antecedently established and intersubjectively shared practice.

 

V.   Communication and Signification:

 

1)   Process of Communication:

 

This process can be described as the passage of a signal from a source, across a transmitter, along a canal, to a destination.

 

As a model of an elementary communicative process, the following can serve:

 

NOISE

 

 

 

 

For Example:

The level of the water in a basin over the mountain. It is measured by a float which transmits an electrical signal. The transmitted electrical signal is captured by a receptor, to the valley which converts the electrical signal into a mechanical event (“message”).

 

The process of communication can be or from the machine to the machine, or the destination can be an intelligence (a human being) and the signal can be a pure stimulus, but soliciting an interpretative answer (the common employee sees the blinking on the sky, he understands that the water in the basin over the mountain has reach the danger level and he remedies it by opening the lock).

 

In such a case, the process of communication presupposes a system of communication as the proper necessary condition.

 

Beyond the mechanical or technological considerations, all the above elements of the process of communication are determined in their efficiency by the communicator as well as the recipient. According to David Berlo, their ability for communication is determined by a) Communication skills, b) Communication attitudes, and c) Knowledge level, d) Socio-cultural systems.

 

Communicator as well as recipient is important element of every communication and one must be aware that both are determined by their cultural and social context. Out of this context the communicator will select the medium and the symbols and signs for encoding his message. Only if the recipient is able to decide this medium and the signs of the communicator, can com-munication take place. The encoding must be done in such a way that the proper decoding for the recipient is made possible. This requires, however, that the communicator be knowledgeable about the socio-cultural environment of his recipient and be able to encode accordingly.

 

There must be at least a certain amount and level of common-ness between the communicator and recipient and a respective agreement about the medium and the code to be used in order to arrive at successful communication.

 

Models of Communication

 

1. Linear Models.

 

They do not sufficiently study what happens between the sender and the receiver. They are mainly concerned about the effect of the message given by the communicator. The context of human communication is not taken seriously enough in this model. In the further development of linear models an attempt was made to come up with more emphasis on the socio-cultural background of the persons involved in the communication process and on the role of feedback. But still basically the process is seen as a linear happening. Informations here is considered as a physical substance, as a kind of commodity and the individuals involved are considered as separate individual minds. Also the working definition of communication of John O’Brien is still linear. He defines communication as “a process of transmission and reception of signals originated by a source and received by a destination”. With signals there are not only ideas but also behavior. The reception of a message by a destination does not mean necessarily to be in agreement on the message received.

 

Thus human interaction and communication is conditioned but not determined. therefore “conditioning and not determining is the operative word.”

 

And this conditioning plays a vital role in all stages of human communication.

 

·         The shaping of a message is conditioned by background and perception of the sender.

·         The message is conditioned by the encoding process, by the imperatives of the channel and the constraints of redundancy as a means of overcoming possible noise.

·         The shaping of the message is also conditioned by the sender’s perception of the receiver and his potential decoding process.

·         Communication being a transactional process makes the feedback from the receiver a vital input to the sender which conditions his further activity.

 

2.  Participatory Communication Models.

 

Coming from similar considerations Everett Rogers and Lawrence Kincaid have presented their “convergence model” of communication. Here, they define communication as: “a process in which the participants create and share information with one another in order to reach a mutual understanding.”

 

This, however, is not to be seen only as a single process, but as an going series of processes or a cumulation of such convergences.

 

This communication takes place in space and time which creates a network or a structure for communication. A “communication network or a structure for communication. A “communication network consists of interconnected individuals who are linked by patterned communication flows”. Such a structure “is the arrangement of the differentiated elements that can be recognized in the patterned communication flows in a system.

 

3.  Semiotic Approach.

 

Within semiotics there is no one emerging school, but there are different authors with different outlooks. Whereas De Sausurre, for example was mainly concerned with the semiotics of language, Pierce enlarged this understanding beyond the mere language approach in an influential way. Umberto Eco tried to put semiotics into a communication models and underlined the relation between culture and communication by considering the hypothesis that “a) the whole culture must be studied as a semiotic phenomenon”, and b) all aspects of a culture can be studied as the contents of a semiotic activity which for him means: “the whole of culture should be studied as a communicative phenomenon based on signification systems.

 

Whereas the linear approaches are concerned with the message transmission from sender to receiver and especially its effect, the semiotic approach, even more than the convergence, is concerned with the sharing and generations of meanings. The modern semiotic approaches originated from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Sausurre (1857-1913), but were extented beyond linguistics by Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) and others.

 

Ferdinand de Sausurre sees the sign as having two elements:

a) the outside appearance such as sound or image which he calls the signifier (“significant”)

b) the mental concept being signified (“signifie”).

 

Pierce describes the elements of meaning this way:

 

A sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign... The sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object.

 

The semiotic view is concerned about the generation and exchange of meanings through signs. and the meaning of the sign depends on the context in which it is communicated.

 

Pierce distinguishes three types of signs:

 

a)      icon as representation of an object, e.g. a photograph, a map etc.

b)      index as a sign connected or associated with its object, e.g. smoke as an index of fire.

c)      Symbol is arbitrary and comes about by choice, exists by convention, rule or assent, e.g. traffic signs.

 

 

The semiotic approach is especially important for intercultural communication where the meanings of signs from two different cultural contexts have to be analyzed and used.

 

4.  Interactive Dyadic Model.

 

Intercultural communication takes place more on the interpersonal dyadic than the mass (media) level. Therefore one has probably to start with a person-to-person communication as the basis for intercultural communication. For this W.S. Howell has developed his “Interactive Dyadic Model” of intercultural communication. In this model not only the communications flow is considered but especially the fact that both communicator and respondent have certain expectations determined by their own culture and experience.

This model shows, a) how every message sent by one participant changes the reaction of the other, and that, b) within the participant, any message prestructures his expectation for the following message. There is an ongoing interapersonal and interpersonal change.

 

Principles of Communication

 

a)      Basic principle for efficient communication is the fact that any communication must be receptor-oriented because it is a participatory process of mutual sharing of meanings and convictions between partners, individual or group from different cultures.

b)      Another important principle especially in intercultural communication is the conviction that generally all communication processes including all their single elements are culturally bound. Communicators and receptors are determined in their communicative acts by their culture and context.

c)      The self-concept of the communicator is of influence in intercultural communication. How one feels about oneself relates to how one communicates wth others. A person with a positive self-concept can more easily accept others and cope more easily with problems and pressures from outside and inside another culture. A negative self-concept “leads to pessimism, the feeling that ‘nobody likes me’,” it leads one to become oversensitive to criticism and overrespnsive to praise.

d)      The credibility of the communicator will be further decisive for the outcome of every communication.

e)      The concept of homophily is partly taken from the diffusion of innovation approach to communication and related to the cultural determination of intercultural communication processes as already mentioned earlier. the homophily principle says that we tend to more easily interact with people who have similar opinions, social characteristics and desires than we.

 

[The text is taken from Franz-Josef Eilers, svd., Coomunicating Between Cultures (Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1992) pp. 35-45.]

 

2)      Process of Signification:

 

It can only verify itself when a code exists. A Code is the system of signification, which pairs present entity ( “that which stands for ....) to an absent entity (..... something other”) on the basis of standing rules.

 

A system of signification is on account of the autonomous semiotic construct, which does imply nobody in a process of communication.

 

N.B.    

Here the code is considered as an abstract result, “ideal”, a type of mathematical calculus. If you want to use code, that is to say, a system of signification for communication, then it is not anymore autonomous, but has a need of a process of communication with all its characteristics. The other part can be considered as code - at least in the analogical sense - the stable correlation according to certain rules or also according to natural laws, among the series of physical events in a material with those in another, that is to say, pure in communicative process. 

 

[a]   Diversity of Codes.

 

A process of signification can be in various levels. In fact, it is normally. A signification can be the vehicle for a further signification “obtaining thus the destiny of super-elevation of codes.”

 

EXPRESSION		CONTENT
Expression	Content
AB	Danger	evacuation, etc.
BC	Security	rest

 

This relation of further vehicularization of meanings can be elevated to various levels. An eventual limit of this supra-elevation of codes would not be theoretical but practical. The vehicularization can also be intersecting:

 

content		expression				Expression			content
			content		Expression			content
				expression			Content

 

The meanings of the further levels of signification are not by themselves less precise. This depends purely on the type of the code being used. The question instead would be what meaning in the case of multiple intersecting code, a privileged intelligent is going to used by its eventual action. What is his motive on doing it? Thus, it is not a question of semantics, but of pragmatic.

 

N.B.

In the Anglo-Saxon context this relation is often expressed with the term “denotation” and “connotation”. In the example above, AB denotes “danger”, and connotes “evacuation”.

 

As we already have said that a sign usually communicates different specimens. It is rather to be considered a content what it has as content, a discourse of prose levels.

 

The importance of this also applies to what Pierce calls “Interpretant”. It is no longer the intelligible effect which the sign produces in the mind or in a “quasi-mental” objective. It is  referred as representation of the same object. In other words, in order to establish the meaning of the signifying, it is necessary to name the first signifying through another signifying, who in his turn has another signifier, which can be interpreted by another signifier, soon and so forth.

 

A similar problem to that of “denotation” and “connotation” is placed respectively in the “Ipercodifica” - or in general “extracodifica”.

“Ipercodifica” means that it proposes itself a specific rule as application of the general rule that is presupposing the existing code. “Ipercodifica” is most important for the understanding of the process of signification of rites, ceremonies, and of the liturgy, and in general the meaning of the religious language.

 

“Ipocodifica” is the provisionary assumption of a code in the absence of a precise rule for signifying vague meanings. The “Ipocodifica is of foremost importance not only for learning a language, but in general, for the competence of speaking, not only the discursive one.

 

[b]   SIGN - Meaning and Cause-Effect.

 

A mechanical process of communication is no other than the process of cause and effect. It is enough that in the example above, the intervention of someone in-charge for water... is eliminated. Substituting him with a machine that in the signal of the alarm (high level of water) reacts automatically with the opening of the closet, sending another electric signal from the valley to the mountains. Hence, the example can even be simplified: the float rising with the level of the water opens directly the closet with which it is connected through a chain. In that way it allows the water to flow which goes down until the chain is loosened and the closet is closed again. In such case, it is evident that the process of communication is purely a process of cause and effect.  

 

Also the process of communication towards an intelligence, which implies and contains a process of signification, can be partially considered as a process of cause and effect. This is so, because the process of signification is also a process of communication. It is, therefore, understandable that the relation of sign-meaning or rather the inverse of meaning-sign could be interpreted as, and reduced to the relation of cause-effect.

 

This relation is suggested even more in the considered fundamental paradigm of every “sign-function” - that of the so called “signum naturale”. One such reduction of the process of signification to one of pure communication and with that of the relation between cause and effect eliminates the specificity of culture, of language and in general of human communication.

 

Another type of reduction is found when the relation cause-effect is considered exclusively as the relation of sign-meaning. (This happens in the English Empiricism coming from Berkeley and completed in Hume, but prepared already by Nominalism in the late Medieval.)

 

If later, in the case of the above example, the variation of the course of the water in the basin of the mountain communicated to the valley, produces directly, namely without any human intervention, passing a second “communication” now from the valley to the mountain, the opening of a closet and with that the lowering of the level of water in the basin on the mountain, hence not only the relation “sign-meaning” - but also under certain profile that of “cause-effect” is convertible.

 

[c]   The Unlimited Semiosis.

 

Peirce considers "semiosis" as an action or influence, which involves a cooperation of three subjects namely: the sign, its object and its interpretant. This tri-relative influence is not being in anyway resolvable into actions between pairs.

Hardly, the discourse made brings diverse aspects to an unlimited Semiosis.  However, every sign can be the meaning of another sign or viceversa. The content of an expression can be the expression for another content. Therefore, every reality, even cause and effect, if used as cultural unity, can be part of a process of signification, and can be sign, may be meaning in a “sign-function”.

 

            “Sign” and “Meaning”, but also “test” and, in this context, also “representations” and “story” become, thus every term, comprehending, also transcendental.

 

 

 

VI.            Other Developments in Semiotics.

 

1)      Biosemiotics.

 

The semiotisation of nature as a trend in 20th century life science is discussed. The reasons for this trend is analysed and it is claimed that semiosis is an emergent property in our universe appearing with the first life forms nearly 4 billion years ago. From this tender beginning semiotic freedom has increased throughout organic evolution, and it is suggested that this fact holds the key to an eventual bridging of the gap between history in the sense of thermodynamic irreversibility and history in the sense of human culture. A unification of biology, a true ‘modern synthesis’, should base its understanding of evolution on a semiotic theory of life.

 

Darwin was right in seeing selection as the central process in animate nature, but for more than hundred years Darwinists have resisted taking the full consequence of this insight. It is now necessary to take this consequence and admit the obvious: That selective processes presupposes interpretations (with the implied possibility of misinterpretation). Thus, to the extent selection is a natural process, semiosis is a natural process - semiosis goes on all the time and at all levels of the biosphere. It may be feared that such a position will put biology outside the safe range of natural science, since interpretation seems to presuppose the existence of some kind of subject-ness. This risk, however, must be confronted through a thorough analysis of the implications, rather than evaded by repression.

 

Biosemiotics confronts the same ontological problem as does traditional biology: The problem of explaining how coding surfaces could arise in lifeless nature. The difference between biosemiotics and biology rather has to do with the consequences to be drawn from the fact of coding. According to the biosemiotic conception life was from the very beginning suspended in a universe of signification, and though the internal structure of cells or organisms is probably describable in purely biochemical terms, this will not give us a true understanding of such structures, since they were developed through a period of billions of years under the guiding logic of semiotic interactions. The semiotic ordering (through spans of evolutionary history) of chemistry holds the key to the function of this chemistry. In this sense, and only in this sense, is life an irreducible phenomenon.

 

Biosemiotics proper deals with sign processes in nature in all dimensions, including (1) the emergence of semiosis in nature, which may coincide with or anticipate the emergence of living cells; (2) the natural history of signs; (3) the "horizontal" aspects of semiosis in the ontogeny of organisms, in plant and animal communication, and the inner sign functions in the immune and nervous systems; and (4) the semiotics of cognition and language (in itself an enormous field, so its subsumption under the mark of `biosemiotics' may appear a little misleading). Biosemiotics and its sub-fields are a topic of growing concern among many biologists and semioticians (e.g., Anderson et al. 1984, Sebeok 1977, Hoffmeyer in press, von Uexküll 1986). Biosemiotics can be seen as a contribution to a general theory of evolution, involving a synthesis of different disciplines. It is a branch of general semiotics but the existence of signs in its subject matter is not necessarily presupposed as far as the origin of semiosis in the universe is one of the riddles to be solved.

 

2)      Sociosemiotics.

 

Sociosemiotic is a systemic-functional approach to investigating processes of normative change in distributed virtual environments. Distributed virtual environments are considered as dynamic open systems. Here, the construal and instantiation of meaning is actualised in the interplay between the evolution and ontogenesis of mediating technological systems, and of the textual and interactional norm systems of those who interact within, and contribute to the development of, these kinds of virtual environments.

 

Let us make a distinction between "content" and "meaning". By "content" we refer to data, text, sounds and images which are reproduced in digital formats and carried by means of a variety of carriers including paper, microfilm and magnetic or optical storage.  Considered from a cultural and social semiotic perspective, there is a great deal of difference between "content" conceptualised as information types and "content" conceptualised in terms of the social and cultural meanings that this information takes part in creating.

 

While information is something that may (perhaps must) be neatly coded in discrete units in order to be transmitted over a computer network, meaning is more than pure information flow. Meaning is to begin with interactional (Putnam 1975; Edelman 1989, 1992; Coppock 1995). Now, since it is socioculturally instantiated and construed, it changes, develops and evolves continually as a result of human beings' intersubjective interactions with one another and their material interactions with the environment.

 

Human language and culture may be considered as information exchanging and interpreting dynamic open systems (Halliday 1987; Lemke 1993). We refer to systems which persist only through being in a state of constant change through their ongoing dialogical exchanges of information with other interpreting systems constituting their environment. Any given system's interactions with its environment create internal disorder, and this is exported to the surrounding environment, increasing its entropy. This causes a renewal of the exporting system, which in becoming something more than it was before, cannot return to its previous state. An open system of this kind is metastable since the only reason it exists at all is because it is open, and this openness means that its basic state of being is necessarily one of constant becoming (Lemke 1993).

 

Meaning is grounded within, and thus dependent on for its creation, a context of culture. And it constantly evolves and changes. While the amount of information produced, stored, exchanged and interpreted merely grows in volume. Information cannot in itself constitute meaning. It is when information is exchanged and interpreted by people who need to actually do something with this information that social and cultural meanings arise.

 

Seen from a systemic-functional perspective, the process of human meaning-making is then a culturally and socially grounded semiotic, involving the production, exchange and interpretation of information as well as material goods and services. Therefore, meaning (acting semiotically) develops along with doing (acting materially) as interdependent modes of human behaviour, and both depend on interaction with the physical and social environment.

 

3)      The Semiosphere.

 

The concept of the semiosphere was originally introduced by the russian-Estonian semiotician Yuri Lotman in 1990. The semiosphere is a sphere like the atmosphere, the hydrosphere or the biosphere. It penetrates these spheres and consists in communication: sounds, odours, movements, colours, electric fields, waves of any kind, chemical signals, touch etc.

 

The semiosphere poses constraints or boundary conditions to the Umwelts of populations since these are forced to occupy specific semiotic niches i.e. they will have to master a set of signs of visual, acoustic, olfactory, tactile and chemical origin in order to survive in the semiosphere. And it is entirely possible that the semiotic demands to populations are often a decisive challenge to success. Ecosystem dynamics, therefore, shall have to include a proper understanding of the semiotic networks operative in ecosystems.

 

[a]. From biosphere to semiosphere

 

Heredity is a phenomenon rather well understood. And yet its real significance is rarely properly explained. The significance is this: Since living systems are mortal their survival has to be secured through semiotic rather than physical means. Heredity is semiotic survival, i.e. survival through a message contained in the genome of a tiny template cell, the fertilised egg in sexually reproducing species. The message contained in the genome of every organism is self-referring in that it harbours the instructions necessary for the construction of the organism itself. By its very existence the organism proves that the fertilised egg was in fact capable of producing it by drawing on these instructions. This semiotic way of survival, however, which is characteristic to living systems, is only semi-faithful. In each generation the self-descriptions are split up and recombined in new patterns and restructured due to crossing over during meiotic division or to other alterations such as mutations. Thus each generation exhibits a unique pool of genotypes. Likewise, in every generation the fertilised eggs (or the tissues of the growing embryos) shall have to interpret the genomic descriptions in a proper way for the individuals to develop normally, and that process isn't safe either. Therefore survival through semiosis implies a dynamic creativity unheard of in the pre biotic world.

 

In addition to this vertical semiotic system, i.e. genetic communi­cation down through the generations, all organisms also partake in a horizontal semiotic system, i.e. communication throughout the ecological space. Every organism is born into a world of significance. Whatever an organism senses also mean something to it, food, escape, sexual reproduction etc. This is one of the major insights brought to light through the pioneering work of Jakob von Uexküll: "Every action, therefore, that consists of perception and operation imprints its meaning on the meaningless object and thereby makes it into a subject-related meaning-carrier in the respective Umwelt (subjective universe)" (J. v. Uexküll 1982 [1940]).

 

Due to the Cartesian heritage still ruling the value system of modern science, biology has only reluctantly incorporated the communicative aspects of life into its theory system. Thus, the ecosystems of this planet are understood mainly in terms of concepts like biomass, energy flow, or food chains. Clearly, the behavioural and communicative aspects of animal life are considered but they are generally not allowed to play any fundamental role in the dynamics of ecosystems or in evolutionary theory. This bias towards the material and energetic aspects of ecosystem dynamics may well have blinded us to the importance of the semiotic web unfolding throughout ecosystems. The advantages of possessing refined Umwelts and exhibiting distinct semiotic freedom are multifarious. The most important may be the capacity for anticipation, the possibility of foreseeing actual events and protect oneself against them or otherwise derive advantage from them.

 

Horizontal communication also is a precondition for advanced social complexity. And learning processes would hardly be possible without it. There can be little doubt that one important trend in evolution has been the development of animals with still more complex Umwelts. Due to this trend the horizontal or ecological semiotic network has gained an increasing autonomy relative to the genetic semiotic system, i.e. the authority to make decisions was gradually delegated from the genomic systems to the organisms themselves. Or in other words, the anticipation contained in the genomic messages more and more became anticipation of the talent for anticipation required by the organisms for reproductive success.  Thus, gradually a semiotic network was established throughout the surface of the Earth corresponding to the totality of "contrapuntal duets" in the words of Jakob von Uexküll (1982 [1940]). We can express this as the emergence of an autonomous sphere of communication. a semiosphere.

 

Surprisingly then, from a biosemiotic point of view the biosphere appears as a reductionist category which will have to be understood in the light of the yet more comprehensive category of the semiosphere.

 

[b]  The inner semiosphere

 

The study of communicative processes in nature has in the past mainly been directed towards the level of communication between organisms. This has been categorised under rubrics such as "ethology", "animal behaviour", "animal communication" or "semiotics'. The semiosphere emanates from within organisms and there is no way it can be kept apart from physiology, biochemistry or molecular biology. The area of endosemiotics, i.e. the study of sign-processes inside the body, has only recently attracted more widespread recognition. The transition away from the classical models in biology did in fact begin already in the fifties.

 

VII.   Symbol[9]

 

            We have a better comprehension of what a symbol is by understanding the meaning of myth. From the perspective of the history of religions, myth will take the meaning not as false explanation by means of images and fables, but a traditional narration which relates to events that happened at the beginning of time. It has the purpose of providing grounds for the ritual actions of human beings today. In general, it establishes all the forms of action and thought by which human being understands himself/herself in his/her world. This makes rites as myths in action.

 

            For us, now, a myth is only a myth because we can no longer connect that time with the time of history as we write it. We cannot connect mythical places with our geographical space. It is in this sense that myth can no longer be an explanation. However, in losing its explanatory pretensions the myth reveals its exploratory significance and its contribution to understanding, This is what we call the symbolic function: the power of discovering and revealing the bond between the human being and what he/she considers sacred. Paradoxical as it may seem, the myth, elevated to the dignity of symbol, is a dimension of modern thought.

 

            This dimension of the symbol can only be recovered by the "re-enactment" of the experience made explicit by the myth. It is, then, to this experience that we must try to penetrate. If we begin with the interpretation of the living experience, we must not lose sight of the fact that that experience is abstract, in spite of its lifelike appearance. It is abstract because it is separated from the totality of meaning from which we detach it for didactic purposes. We must not forget that this experience is never immediate. It can be expressed only by means of the primary symbolism that prepare the way for its treatment in myths and speculation.

 

Criteriology of Symbols.

 

            Language is essentially symbolic. Before we proceed to a direct intentional analysis of symbolism, we must determine the extent and the variety of its zones of emergence. One cannot, in fact, understand the reflective use of symbolism without reverting to its naïve forms, where the prerogatives of reflective consciousness are subordinated to the cosmic aspect of hierophanies, to nocturnal aspect of dream productions, or finally to the creativity of the poetic world. These are the three dimensions of symbolism - cosmic, oneiric, and poetic. These are present in every authentic symbol. The reflective aspect of symbols is intelligible only if it is connected with these three functions of symbols.

 

            The human being first reads the sacred on the world, on some elements or aspects of the world, on the heavens, on the sun and moon, on the waters and vegetation. Spoken symbolism, therefore, refers back to manifestations of the sacred, to hierophanies, where the sacred is shown in a fragment of the cosmos, which, in return, loses its concrete limits, gets charged with innumerable meanings, integrates and unifies the greatest possible number of the sectors of anthropocosmic experience. First of all, it is the sun, the moon, the waters - that is to say, cosmic realities - that are symbols. Shall we say then that symbols, in their cosmic aspect, are anterior to language, or even foreign to it? Not at all. For these realities to be a symbol is to gather together at one point a mass of significations which, before giving rise to thought, give rise to speech. The symbolic manifestation as a thing is a matrix of symbolic meanings as words. We have never ceased to find meanings in the sky. It is the same thing to say that the sky manifests the sacred and to say that it signifies the most high, the elevated and the immense, the powerful and the orderly, the clairvoyant and wise, the sovereign, the immutable. The manifestation through the thing is like the condensation of an infinite discourse. The manifestation and meaning are strictly contemporaneous and reciprocal. The concretion in the thing is the counterpart of the surcharge of the inexhaustible meaning which has ramifications in the cosmic, in the ethical, and in the political. Therefore, the symbol-thing is the potentiality of innumerable spoken symbols, which are knotted, together in a single cosmic manifestation.

 

            Although we shall deal only with spoken symbols and only symbols of the self, we must never forget that these symbols, which will appear to us as primary in comparison with the elaborated and intellectualized formations of the consciousness of self, are already on the way to cutting themselves loose from the cosmic roots of symbolism.

 

            These cosmic resonance, reaching even into reflective consciousness, are less surprising if the second dimension of symbolism is taken into consideration - the oneiric dimension. It is in dreams that one can catch sight of the most fundamental and stable symbolisms of humanity passing from the "cosmic" function to the "psycic" function. To manifest the "sacred" on the "cosmos" and to manifest it in the "psyche" are the same thing. Cosmos and Psyche are the two poles of the same "expressivity"; I express myself in expressing the world. I explore my own sacrality in deciphering that of the world.

 

            Now, this double "expressivity" - cosmic and psychic - has its complement in a third modality of symbols: poetic imagination. A poetic image is much closer to a word than to a portrait. As M. Bachelard puts it: it "puts us at the origin of the speaking being"; "it becomes a new being of our language, it expresses us in making us that which it expresses. " The poetic symbol shows us expressivity in its nascent state. In poetry, the symbol is caught at the moment when it is a welling up of language, "when it puts language in a state of emergence."

 

            Note that the three forms of symbols are connected to each other. The structure of the poetic image is also the structure of the dream when the latter extracts from the fragments of our past a prophecy of our future, and the structure of the hierophanies that make the sacred manifests in the sky and in the waters, in vegetation and in stones. 

 

 

 

            Approximations to the Essence of Symbol.

 

1.       That symbols are signs is certain: they are expressions that communicate meaning. This meaning is declared in an intention of signifying which has speech as its vehicle.

 

2.       Not every sign is a symbol. We shall say that the symbol conceals in its aim a double intentionality: the first or literal intentionality, it supposes the triumph of the conventional sign over the natural sign; the second intentionality, which is built on the literal meaning, which points to a certain situation of man in the sacred. Symbolic signs are opaque, because the first, literal, obvious meaning itself points analogically to a second meaning, which is not given otherwise than in it. This opacity constitutes the depth of the symbol, which, it will be said, is inexhaustible.

 

3.       But let us correctly understand the analogical bond between the literal meaning and the symbolic meaning. While analogy is inconclusive reasoning that proceeds by fourth proportional - A is to B as C is to D - in the symbol, I cannot objectify the analogical relation that connects the second meaning with the first. It is by living in the first meaning that I am led by it beyond itself. The symbolic meaning is constituted in and by the literal meaning which effects the analogy in giving the analogue. The symbol is the movement of the primary meaning which makes us participate in the latent meaning and thus assimilates us to that which is symbolized without our being able to master the similitude intellectually. It is in this sense that the symbol is donative. It is donative because it is a primary intentionality that gives the second meaning analogically.

 

4.       The distinction between symbol and allegory is an extension of our remarks on the analogy effected by the literal meaning itself. In allegory, what is primarily signified (literal meaning) is contingent, and what is signified secondarily (symbolic meaning) is external enough to be directly accessible. Symbol and allegory are not on the same footing: symbols precede hermeneutics, while allegories are already hermeneutics. This is so because the symbol presents its meaning transparently in an entirely different way than translation, which applicable to allegory. It evokes its meaning or suggests it. It presents its meaning in the opaque transparency of the enigma and not by translation.