By Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio
Sign and Interpretant
‘Semiotics’ indicates the general science of signs. According to this meaning, semiotics is the study of signs conceived as a discipline or science (Peirce, Saussure) or theory (Morris) or doctrine (Sebeok).
Of course there are different conceptions of sign. A sign is a factor in a process conceived either dyadically (signifier/ signified), following Saussure in his Cours de linguistique générale, his monograph published posthumously in 1915, or triadically (representamen/ object/ interpretant), following Charles S. Peirce as we read him in his Collected Papers, also published posthumously between 1931 and 1958. The triadic conception of sign is more adequate than the dyadic. The sign has its meaning in another sign. In Peirce’s view the minimal relation allowing for something to act as a sign is triadic and involves: 1) something objective (not necessarily a physical object), preexistent, autonomous, in this sense “material” with respect to interpretation (‘Object’ in Peirce’s terminology); 2) the interpreted, that is, the object insofar as it ‘has meaning’ (‘Sign’ in Peirce’s terminology); 3) the interpretant by virtue of which the object receives a given meaning (‘Interpretant’ in Peirce’s terminology). Reduced to its minimal terms the sign presents these three faces. When in what follows we speak of the ‘interpreted-interpretant’ relation, reference is to a (minimal and abstract) triadic relation given that the interpreted implies the object of interpretation, so that with this expression is understood in any case ‘object-interpreted-interpretant’. In other words, from a Peircean perspective, semiosis is a triadic process whose components include sign (or representamen), object and interpretant. ‘A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object’ (CP 2.274). Therefore, the sign stands for something, its object, by which it is ‘mediately determined’ (CP 8.343), ‘not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea’ (CP 2.228). However, a sign can only do this if it determines the interpretant that is ‘mediately determined by that object’ (CP 8.343). ‘A sign mediates between the interpretant sign and its object’ insofar as the first is determined by its object under a certain respect or idea, or ground, and determines the interpretant ‘in such a way as to bring the interpretant into a relation to the object, corresponding to its own relation to the object’ (CP 8.332).
The interpretant of a sign is another sign, which the previous sign creates in the interpreter. This is ‘an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign’ (CP 2.228). Therefore the interpretant sign cannot be identical to the interpreted sign, it cannot be a repetition, precisely because it is mediated, interpretive and as such always new. With respect to the previous sign, the interpretant is a response and as such it inaugurates a new sign process, a new semiosis. In this sense it is a more developed sign. As a sign the interpretant determines another sign that acts, in turn, as an interpretant: therefore, the interpretant opens to new semioses, it develops the sign process, it is a new sign occurrence. Indeed, each time there is a sign occurrence, including the ‘First Sign’, there is a ‘Third’, something mediated, a response, an interpretive novelty, an interpretant. Consequently, a sign is an interpretant by constitution. The fact that the interpretant (Third) is in turn a sign (First), and that the sign (First) is in turn an interpretant (is already a Third) places the sign in an open network of interpretants: this is the Peircean principle of infinite semiosis or of the endless series of interpretants (cf. CP 1.339).
Therefore, the meaning of a sign is a response, an interpretant that calls for another response, another interpretant. This implies the dialogic nature of sign and semiosis. A sign has its meaning in another sign that responds to it and is in turn a sign if there is another sign to respond and interpret it, and so forth ad infinitum.
The field of semiotic studies and the model of sign may be extended to the whole universe insofar as it is perfused with signs (Peirce), to the world of organisms, to the living world (Sebeok) and thus emerge as ‘global semiotics’ – expression which gives the title to Thomas A. Sebeok’s last monograph of 2001, Global Semiotics (published a few months before his death in December that same year). In this sense, the object of study of semiotics is any type of semiosis, verbal or nonverbal. Paradoxically, however, though the expression ‘semiotics’ indicates the general science of signs it has been improperly described as being restricted to human semiosis, verbal and nonverbal. Viewed in such terms semiotics has been indicated with the term ‘semiology’. Given their different range and focus it is best to distinguish between these two descriptions of semiotics, understood either as the general science of signs or as the science of human semiosis, by maintaining the different denominations, respectively ‘semiotics’ and ‘semiology’. When, instead, semiology claims to be the general science of signs, the consequence is that semiotics develops an approach that is not only limited and subject to the pars pro toto fallacy, but is also affected with anthropocentrism.
At this point we have clarified what semiosis is, that is, the object of semiotics. Semiosis is the process, or the relation, or the situation in which something carries out the role of sign. The sign is inseparable from semiosis. In fact, for something to be a sign something else (whether real or potential) must necessarily be involved to interpret the former’s meaning. This second something is an interpretant, in turn a sign, therefore connected to another interpretant in an open chain of interpretants. Semiosis exists for an interpreter insofar as it presupposes an interpretive process in which something is a sign through another sign, the interpretant, which recognizes in or invests the previous sign with meaning. The interpreter must necessarily be a living being. This particular aspect was evidenced by Charles Morris in his book of 1946 Signs, Language and Behavior. But Morris limited the concept of living being to the animal world, human and nonhuman. In this sense, the interpreter is some ‘mind’. Peirce, however, had already specified that the interpeter can be a ‘mind’ or a ‘quasi-mind’ with which he intended not to limit interpretation, therefore semiosis, to the animal world. Instead, by contrast wi th Morris and coherently with Peirce Sebeok’s specific contribution consists in extending the concept of interpeter: in fact according to Sebeok ‘interpreter’ is any living being whatsoever, whether a macroorganism or a microorganism such as a cell or portion of a cell.
Thanks to the interpreter which must necessarily be a living organism, therefore, whether micro or macro, even what is not a sign can become a sign. And what is not a sign but can become a sign is either something nonliving, inorganic, or living (or a portion), that is, something organic. In the first case we speak of signification. Signification is conferred by an interpreter from the outside on something that does not have a capacity for communication, or a communicative intention. Instead, in the case of living beings there are two possibilities: what we call symptomatization when interpretation confers meaning on something which has no intention of communicating anything, as in the case of a symptom; or what we call communication when interpretation concerns what is specifically produced with the intention of being interpreted, as in the case of the intepretation of a message.
Therefore all interpretation and signs in general belong to semiosis which can be distinguished into three types: semiosis of signification, semiosis of symptomatization, and semiosis of communication.
Another meaning of ‘semiotics’
Another important distinction concerns the difference between semiosis specific to the human animal and semiosis in any other living being. On this subject we must clarify another meaning of the expression ‘semiotics’.
In fact, the term ‘semiotics’ can also be used to indicate the specificity of human semiosis. According to this meaning, in the realm of life which converges with semiosis, human semiosis is characterized as metasemiosis, that is, as the possibility of reflecting on signs, of making signs not only the object of interpretation not distinguishable from the response to these signs, but also of interpretation as reflection on signs, as suspension of response and possibility of deliberation.
Developing Aristotle’s correct observation made at the beginning of his Metaphysics, that the human being tends by nature to knowledge, we can make the claim that the human being tends by nature to semiotics. That the human being is a ‘rational animal’ means that the human being is a ‘semiotic animal’. And it seems, uniquely so. Human semiosis, anthroposemiosis, can be characterized as presenting itself as semiotics as we are now describing the term. Semiotics as human semiosis or anthroposemiosis can venture across the entire universe in search of meanings and senses viewed, therefore, in terms of signs. However, as stated above and is testified by the history of ideas, semiotics thus understood runs the risk, which it goes without saying must be avoided, of absolutizing anthroposemiosis and oversimplifying it by identifying it with semiosis itself.
In conclusion we have two meanings of ‘semiotics’: semiotics as a discipline or general science of signs, and semiotics as specifically human semiosis.
Signification and significance
Charles Morris distinguished between signification and significance as indicated by the title of his monograph of 1964, Signification and Significance. The Relation of Signs to Values. With these terms he identified two different aspects of ‘meaning’: the semantic and the axiological.
Instead Victoria Welby introduced the term ‘significance’ to indicate the third level in her meaning triad, the other two being ‘sense’ and ‘meaning’. As we see in her monograph of 1903, What is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance, this triad plays a central role in her ‘significs’, the neologism she introduced to designate her own particular approach to the study of signs, meaning and interpretation.
As she explains, among others, to Peirce in their fascinating correspondence which took place during the last decade of their lives (published by Charles S. Hardwick in the volume Semiotic and Significs, 1977), the expression ‘significs’ takes account of the everyday expression, ‘What does it signify?’, focusing on the sign’s ultimate value and significance beyond semantic meaning. In addition to a theory of meaning, significs proposes a ‘significal method’ that transcends pure descriptivism and strictly logico-epistemological boundaries in the direction of axiology and the study of the conditions that make meaningful behaviour possible. Central to significs is Welby’s analysis of meaning into three main levels: ‘Sense’ – ‘the organic response to environment’; ‘Meaning’ – the specific sense which a word ‘is intended to convey’; ‘Significance’ – ‘the far-reaching consequence, implication, ultimate result or outcome of some event or experience’. As Peirce maintains in his letters to Welby, the triad ‘sense’, ‘meaning’ and ‘significance’ relates closely to his own triad respectively corresponding to his ‘Immediate Interpretant’, ‘Dynamical Interpretant’ and ‘Final Interpretant’.
Both Welby and Morris relate signs to values, therefore semiotics to axiology. As says Morris in Signification and Significance: ‘[…] if we ask what is the meaning of life, we may be asking a question about the signification of the term ‘life’, or asking a question about the value or significance of living – or both’. And that usage of such terms as ‘meaning’ (with the polarity suggested) is so widespread suggests a fundamental relation between what he understands by ‘signification’ as distinct from ‘significance’.
3. Trends
The study of signs has developed in various directions and in different fields.
We can form an idea of the difference between the various conceptions of semiotics simply by considering the term ‘symbol’. Used either as an alternative or as a substitute term for ‘sign’, the term ‘symbol’ in fact gradually assumes several different or even opposite meanings. It is polysemic both in everyday and in philosophical-scientific discourse, including the semiotic.
In Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923-29) Ernst Cassirer uses the term ‘symbol’ as a synonym for sign. The human being constructs culture through signs and is an animal symbolicum. The symbol is associated with symbolic form. This leads to Cassirer’s critique (in a Kantian sense) of symbolic reason or of the diverse aspects of culture including language, myth, religion, etc.
Too, for Charles K. Ogden and Ivor A. Richards in The Meaning of Meaning. A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism, their monograph of 1923, ‘symbol’ stands for sign. Their sign model presents meaning in terms of the interactive relation between what they call symbol, thought or reference, and referent.
Instead, Sigmund Freud uses the term ‘symbol’ to indicate a special type of sign. In fact, Freud and subsequent thinkers with a psychoanalytical bias use the term ‘symbol’ for all psychic and oniric activity insofar as it reveals the unconscious. The unconscious exerts a screening and protective function by presenting consciousness with the symbol of the symbolized object.
After an initial phase where the term ‘symbol’ is used for ‘sign’ in general, Peirce develops a typology in which ‘symbol’ indicates a special type of sign (CP 4.531): the symbol is a sign ‘in consequence of a habit (which term I use as including a natural disposition)’.
According to Morris (1946), the symbol is a sign that replaces another sign, acting as a guide to behavior.
On John Dewey’s account (in his monograph Logic, the Theory of Inquiry, 1938, ‘Introduction’), the symbol is an arbitrary or conventional sign.
The symbol is a special type of sign for Saussure as well. However, on his account the symbol is not completely arbitrary and therefore can be distinguished from the verbal sign. By contrast with verbal signs, in the symbol the relation between signifier and signified is always conventional to a degree (as in the case of scales symbolizing justice), though it is not wholly arbitrary.
With reference to the entry ‘Symbol’ by S. S. Averinchev (included in a Russian Encyclopedia of 1971), Mikhail M. Bakhtin (in his last article, of 1974) described the symbol as the sign that most requires answering comprehension, given the dialectic correlation between identity and otherness. The symbol includes the warmth of mystery that unites, juxtaposition of one’s own to the other, the warmth of love and the coldness of extraneousness, juxtaposition and comparison: the symbol cannot be circumscribed to an immediate context but rather relates to a context that is remote and distant, which accounts for its opening to otherness.
Without claims to exhaustiveness, the following is a list of perspectives and their most important representatives: linguistic (Saussure, Hjelmslev); linguistic-anthropological-cultural (Jakobson, Lotman, Greimas, Barthes); psychological (Freud, Bühler, Vygotsky); philosophical (Peirce, Welby, Husserl, Ogden and Richards, Wittgenstein, Morris, Cassirer); literary critical (Bakhtin); biological (Romanes, Jakob and Thure von Uexküll, Jacob, Monod); mathematical-topological (Thom). The approach adopted by Sebeok is a case apart given the extensive range of fields it involves.
Thanks to Sebeok a new trend in semiotics has been evolving since the 1960s, appropriately denominated ‘Global Semiotics’ or ‘Semiotics of life’. Sebeok expands the boundaries of traditional semiotics, what we have identified as semiology, which contrary to global semiotics is restrictively based on the verbal paradigm, and consequently is vitiated by the pars pro toto fallacy. He tags this conception of semiotics the ‘minor tradition’ and promotes what he calls the ‘major tradition’, represented by John Locke and Peirce and early studies on signs and symptoms by Hippocrates and Galen. In line with the so-called ‘major tradition’ in semiotics, Sebeok’s global approach to the life of signs presupposes a critique of anthropocentric and glottocentric semiotic theory and practice. In his monograph of 1976, Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs, on exploring the boundaries and margins of the science or ‘doctrine’ of signs, he no longer considers the debate on the classification of semiotics as a ‘science’, ‘theory’ or ‘doctrine’ of any consequence, and opens the field to zoosemiotics (a term he introduced in 1963) and even more broadly to biosemiotics and endosemiotics. In Sebeok’s conception, the sign science is not only the ‘science qui étude la vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale’ (Saussure), that is, the study of communication in culture, but also the study of communicative behavior from a biosemiotic perspective.
Consequently, by comparison with other approaches Sebeok’s global semiotics is characterized by a maximum broadening of competencies. This general approach to semiotics is represented in a recent Handbook of fundamental importance to semiotics today entitled Semiotik/Semiotics. Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture (1997 2004). This Handbook is edited by Sebeok with Roland Posner and Klaus Robering and consists of three volumes totaling more than 3000 pages with 178 articles written by 175 authors from 25 countries. In line with the overall project for global semiotics, as explicated by the foundational articles constituting chapters I-III, the focus of this Handbook is not limited to studies on sign processes relating to human culture alone – social institutions, everyday human communication, information processing by machines, human cognitive processes in scientific research, production and interpretation of literary works, music, and the various art forms, ecc. In addition to human culture, studies are also presented on sign processes and communication activities relating to nonhuman animals, to the metabolism of organisms, and to the behavior of all living beings generally. It may be considered as the most updated and exhaustive representation of the general state of research in theoretical, descriptive and applied semiotics in confrontation with other single disciplines and interdisciplinary approaches including medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, mathematics, logic, grammar, stylistics, poetics, musicology, aesthetics, philosophy, etc.
Modeling
Another concept in semiotics which must not be ignored is modeling.
Modeling is a process by which something is performed or reproduced on the basis of a model or schema. In semiotics modeling is based on a relation of similarity, therefore it is associated with the iconic sign, as understood by Peirce.
The concept of ‘modeling’ is present in the term ‘patterning’ used by Edward Sapir (1916) to designate the original and specific organization of culture and language: cultural patterning and linguistic patterning. Among all social behaviors none is as dependent upon unconscious mechanisms as language. Unconscious patterning operates at all levels of natural language – the phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. Natural language resists rationalization and intervention by the individual more than any other element in culture. However, language is also subject to transformation, but this is due to an internal ‘drift’ process. By comparison with all other cultural products, natural language in Sapir’s view is the most perfectly autarchic, unconscious and varied precisely because of its internal ‘drift’ processes. For this reason it is the most important instrument that the anthropologist has available for studies on the original patterning of culture.
‘Modeling system’ is an expression used by the so-called Moscow-Tartu school. ‘Primary modeling system’ is introduced to distinguish natural language from other semiotic systems, while ‘secondary modeling system’ is used for human cultural systems other than natural language.
The concept of modeling as proposed by the Tartu school comes close to Sapir’s conception. It invests language with an originating modeling function with respect to other systems. Therefore, similarly to Sapir, it implies the relativity of cultures with respect to primary modeling. Furthermore, the concept of language as modeling device, that is, as primary modeling does not solve the problem of communicability among different languages, that is, among different verbal sign systems, and cultures, nor does it account for the multiplicity of languages, still less for the problem of language origin.
One way of developing and extending the Tartu conception is by connecting it to the biologist and semiotician Jakob von Uexküll and his concept of Umwelt, which may be translated as ‘model’ (Sebeok). This is the approach adopted by Sebeok who elaborates on language as the capacity for primary modeling distinct from speech. As a specific communicative function speech only appears subsequently in the evolutionary process. Language is specifically designed to produce and organize worldviews, whereas speech is an adaptive derivation in Homo, which arises specifically for communicative purposes. Homo evolved into Homo sapiens sapiens thanks to its species-specific modeling device, that is, language, and its special properties. All living species construct their own worlds in which things assume a given sense; the distinctive feature of the human species may be identified in its capacity to confer an infinite number of different senses upon a limited set of elements and, therefore, to construct a great plurality of different possible worlds.
The plurality of languages and ‘linguistic (verbal) creativity’ (Noam Chomsky) testifies to the capacity of language understood as a primary modeling device to produce numerous possible worlds.
University of Bari, 3 November 2007
