29.1232, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics: Bankov, Cobley (2017)

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Subject: 29.1232, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics: Bankov, Cobley (2017)

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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:39:58
From: Sara Vilar-Lluch [S.Vilar-Lluch at uea.ac.uk]
Subject: Semiotics and its Masters

 
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EDITOR: Kristian  Bankov
EDITOR: Paul  Cobley
TITLE: Semiotics and its Masters
SUBTITLE: Volume 1
SERIES TITLE: Semiotics, Communication and Cognition [SCC]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Sara Vilar-Lluch, University of East Anglia

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Semiotics and its Masters” (Volume 1), edited by Kristian Bankov and Paul
Cobley, presents the major lines of investigation in current semiotics
research. Primarily intended for semiotics scholars, it is also appropriate
for researchers of neighbouring disciplines –e.g. linguistics and philosophy.
The compendium is organized in eight sections. Section 1 examines the role of
semiotics within the humanities. Sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 explore semiotics
contributions to different fields: semiotics as metalanguage, and the
possibility of a phenomenological approach (Section 2), society (Section 3),
media studies (Section 4) and ethics (Section 5). Section 6 examines
performative signs and the concept of paradox. Section 7 considers semiotics
theoretical grounds, and Section 8 revises the contributions of some of the
leading figures in the discipline.  

Section 1: Semiotics in the world and academia

Cobley opens the compendium with “What the humanities are for –a semiotic
perspective”, an overview of the current popular debate on the future and
importance of humanities. The most common arguments in favour of the
humanities tend to adopt a liberal standpoint (humanities as the dwelling of
“good”, i.e. human nature, multiculturalism and diversity), and assume an
instrumentalist approach. Cobley distances himself from the usual positions
and presents semiotics as an anti-humanist interdisciplinary practice able to
bring humanities closer to the other sciences. From the semiotics’
perspective, humanities enable a form of knowledge which does not deny the
social significance of human understanding. 

The impossibility of dissociating human cognition from the social dimension is
examined in “Semioethics as a vocation for semiotics”, by Petrilli and Ponzio.
The authors portray two main approaches in semiotics: the “decodification
semiotics” (from Saussure), which regards meaning as a pre-established entity
independent from the signs (with the exception of truth value), and
“interpretation semiotics” (from Bakhtin/Voloshinov), which understands
meaning as the product of the (dialogic) interpretation of signs.
Interpretation is not a recognition (of the sign), but an addition of a
“signifying surplus” or value (i.e. it is dialogic). Semiotics accounts for
the ultimate reliance on signs of all human endeavours; semioethics remembers
that signs (and all communication and understanding) are not free of value.
Understanding semiotic relations impregnated with value establishes
responsibility as the nature of all human relationships. 

Li’s “‘General semiotics’ as the all-round interdisciplinary organizer” opens
with a criticism of current academic research (i.e. marketization and
vulgarization of content, and an insurmountable separation between Western and
non-Western research). The horizontal and interdisciplinary nature of
semiotics turns General Semiotics (GS) into a discipline able to resolve the
crisis in humanities. Yet GS will only provide the necessary “epistemological
directions” to humanistic studies if the discipline abandons all
philosophical-fundamentalism. GS is established as a “universal semantic
anatomical organizer” (p. 54) in opposition to philosophy, identified with
epistemological absolutism, a fundamentalist standpoint necessary to be left
behind for the progress of knowledge to be accomplished. 

Section 2: Semiotics, experimental science and maths

In “Semiotics as a metalanguage for science”, Danesi offers a semiotic
examination of representation in mathematics. The article presents different
historical attempts to achieve a consistent metalanguage, and examines Gödel’s
demonstration of the impossibility of a representation system free of
self-reference (i.e. there will always be a statement whose truth or falsehood
cannot be proved). Mathematics metalanguages constitute a paradigmatic case
because signs are not mere notation systems but a discovery in themselves that
enables progress in the discipline. For Danesi, examining metalanguages brings
the question of representation and reality, the “raison d’ être” of semiotics
(p.78) (i.e. up to which point our systems of representation offer a
transparent mirror of reality, and whether reality is independent of the signs
we use to represent it).

Sonesson continues with the topic of representation in “Mastering
phenomenological semiotics with Husserl and Peirce”, and establishes
phenomenology as a requirement in cognitive semiotics. Sonesson breaks with
the tradition and argues the possibility of bringing together Husserl’s and
Peirce’s phenomenology despite their multiple differences. Husserl understands
the perceptual world as pre-predicative, overriding all possibility of
determining any list of descriptive categories prior to the phenomenological
practice. For Peirce, “firstness”, “secondness” and “thirdness” constitute
universal categories and all perceived reality is constituted of signs.
Sonesson presents Peircean phenomenology as a variation of Husserl’s that
accounts for the epistemological domain of mediation between the subject and
the world. Husserl’s intentionality (i.e. directedness of the mind to the
phenomenon, consciousness is always consciousness of something) is associated
with Peirce’s “direct observation” (i.e. the observation of an appearance and
reaction to it that relate the subject to the world). The article ends
examining several applications of Peircean dyads and triads in social studies.

Section 3: Society, text and social semiotics

In “Farewell to representation” Marrone adopts a socio-semiotic approach and
presents the text as the starting point of all semiotic investigation.
Language, discourse and signs are understood as social processes, all semiotic
phenomena is inherently social. The dichotomy Text-Context becomes
meaningless: context is itself compounded of semiotic-load. “Text” is not
understood as “empirical object” but as a “theoretical model” that enables the
description of all cultural reality. The rest of the chapter develops the
criteria that need to be considered in performing a semiotic analysis, i.e.
negotiation, biplanarity, textual closure, holding (of the text as a whole),
multiple textual levels, enunciation and intertextuality. 

In “Social semiotics. Towards a sociologically grounded semiotics”, Lagopoulos
and Boklund-Lagopoulou argue that semiotics (especially cognitive semiotics)
has frequently adopted the “individualistic paradigm” of biology and
psychology, and attributed a “weak awareness of society”. Instead, the
discipline needs to follow the turn already taken in linguistics (e.g. Hymes,
Halliday, Bernstein, Hodge and Kress) and adopt a social stance. Semiotics
accounts of social phenomena have followed two directions: (i) “semiotic
relevance”, which equates the social with the cultural, and identifies both
spheres with semiotics, and (ii) the dialectic approach, which regards social
(i.e. material) conditions as irreducible to cultural phenomena. The authors
offer several case studies to sustain the suitability of the dialectic
approach and defend (i) the necessity to distinguish semiotic from material
conditions, (ii) the potentiality of material conditions to influence
semiotics, and (iii) the possibility to use semiotics to influence or maintain
the social reality. 

Section 4: Semiotics and media

In “What relationship to time do the media promise us?” Jost depicts our
relation with the media as being primarily temporal: the media constructs new
relations with time that condition audience’s beliefs and the narrative
tension unfolded in the programme. The genre of a programme evokes a double
promise that defines the expectations of the audience: ontological (i.e. what
is expected from the particular genre) and pragmatic (i.e. the name of the
programme conditions viewers’ beliefs). Genres are based upon temporal
promises that induce a particular construction of space and time in relation
to the events depicted. Jost distinguishes the phenomenon of indexicality
(attributed both to images and time), i.e. the more the broadcasted images
resemble an index, the more authenticity (and less intentionality) those will
be attributed. Still, even in programmes that portray themselves as shots of
reality (e.g. breaking news), the readability prevails and images and events
are aligned in causal relations. The narrative adds an iconic character to the
time of the programme, and the later ceases to be an imprint of the real (p.
156). In the news, the narrative inserts suspense and increases the tension
toward the outcome of the reported events. TV news turn banal objects into
“symbols of expectation” (p. 166) and the ambition of novelty shifts the
importance from the content to the form of the delivery.

Luis Fernández’s “Semiotics and interstitial mediatizations” develops further
the relation of semiotics with the new media and argues the current semiotic
models and methods need some innovation to give proper account of the new
types of mediatizations. The author stresses the importance of a semiotic
study of the graphics in public spaces and the media of sound, both of them
regular elements of our everyday life.  New social networks have called into
doubt the distinction between production (i.e. emission) and recognition (i.e.
reception) attributed to mass media and broadcasting (p. 175), the classic
objects of study in media semiotics. While traditional mass media is
correlated with a “spectatorial position”, the new mediatizations are regarded
as interstitial and interactive, which reaffirms the necessity of developing
new semiotic methodologies. 

Section 5: Semiotics for moral questions

In “Spaces of memory and trauma: a cultural semiotic perspective”, Violi
argues the appropriateness of adopting a semiotic approach for the study of
trauma. Traditional humanistic studies on trauma adopt a
“naturalistic-essentialist perspective” (p. 192): trauma is frequently
understood as an irreparable event that has broken the stability of life,
associated with the impossibility of representation and established as the
inherent nature of a place or object. On the contrary, a semiotic perspective
regards trauma as a semiotic product: events and places (the factual world)
have no inherent meaning (i.e. events are not traumatic in themselves), all
meaning is brought to existence when it is recognized as such by a social
community (i.e. the trauma emerges once the event has taken place). An event
and the sense-of-the-event remain separated by a necessary temporal gap.
Trauma objects are subjected to the double process of de-semantization (i.e.
of the object as thing) and re-semantization (i.e. addition of trauma). The
re-semantization constitutes an authenticity attribution or generation of an
indexical link (i.e. objects and sites are regarded as traces of the event).
Violi completes the article with a case study (the Bologna railway station)
and shows how a human’s relation with reality is always semiotically mediated.

Pardo Abril’s “Media coverage of the voices of Colombia’s victims of
dispossession”, constitutes a semiotic analysis of videos of testimony
denunciation (VTD) in Colombian mass media. VTDs are commonly employed to give
voice to those affected by social marginalization. VTD genre is described as
the capacity to communicate counter hegemonic stories and call into doubt the
collective memory as established by the institutionalized discourses (p. 206).
The study gives an account of how the distinct semiotic components operate and
examines the political and social effects derived. The analysis shows how
counter voices have been incorporated in the general dynamics of the mass
media; victims of the dispossession are “passivized”, presented as agentless
individuals, and audiovisual resources reflect and reconstruct social
hierarchical relations of power. 

Section 6: Questioning the logics of semiotics

Volli’s “Sense beyond communication” constitutes a criticism of the tendency
in semiotics to study signs with a representational function. The objection to
representation echoes the traditional conception of communication as depicted
in the conduit metaphor (cf. Reddy, 1979). Communication is portrayed as a
message (container of the informative content) transferred from a sender (or
deliverer) to a receiver. The model implies the existence of a channel and a
code (to be de-codified by the receiver). Representation is broken by signs
that are performative (i.e. self-effective) in themselves, i.e. do not refer
to or re-present any external reality. Performative signs communicate in
“being there”: the sign coincides with the (perceived) phenomenon. The
communication is the perception of the phenomenon in a certain way (p. 228),
the appearance of the phenomenon is its expression. The meaning attribution to
the phenomenon in the perception is ultimately grounded in the social context
(e.g. wearing a particular dress in a wedding). “Appearance” is important
insofar as it evidences that being in society implies being in constant
communication with others. The communication of “appearance” not only tells
about “what is there” (the perceived phenomenon), but also how we expect
others to treat us in doing something in a particular moment for the
appearance we have adopted (p. 236).

In “Semiotic paradoxes: antinomies and ironies in a transmodern world”, Seif
takes a critical stance toward the traditional perception of signs as
generating one interpretation (or meaning) at a time, and claims the need to
reconsider how we understand paradoxes. Paradoxes are constitutive of the
world and yet are commonly perceived as problematic due to a general
intolerance towards ambiguity and uncertainty. The issue with paradoxes is
that they are regarded as problems, which constructs them as a duality.
Paradoxical thought should not be understood as an exclusive disjunction
(either-or) but as an inclusion (both-and) (p.243), thus entailing the refusal
of absolute values. Paradoxes raise awareness of the misleading equation
between real and truth. Seif mentions irony as a common example of paradoxes,
i.e. “telling truth by lying” (p.246); two oppositional frames of reference
are juxtaposed so they cannot be conceived separately. Irony entails that we
are able to conceive different scenarios simultaneously, which would make
possible the paradoxical thinking. 

Section 7: Manifestoes for semiotics

Deely’s “Semiosis and human understanding” presents the theoretical
foundations of semiotics research and establishes semiotic awareness as the
major specificity of human understanding. Human understanding is “the ability
to discover the passage of being in time” (p. 257), and the whole chapter can
be read as a development of this opening statement.

Knowledge of things is ultimately obtained from experience, i.e. sensation.
Sensation, derived from our interaction in the world, is accompanied by
perception, our interpretation of the thing. We do not perceive nor deal with
“things” as they are in the world, but we perceive “objects”, products of our
perceptual (interpretative) relation with the world. Our primary relation with
the world is semiotic: we “concern ourselves” with objects, and we have
knowledge of things insofar we have objectified them, i.e. turned them into
signs –where sign is anything that generates an impression in our sensation.
The specificity of the human understanding is the capability to see objects as
things, i.e. entities that exist independently of the relation established
with them. The essence of human understanding is the recognition of the
process of objectification and meaning attribution or, in other words: the
discovery that our being-here is relational, which entails a constant removal
of the thingness of the world. 

Establishing semiotic awareness as a human specificity turns transcendence
into a pivotal characteristic of human existence –we are continuously
projecting (and interpreting) ourselves. In “Culture and transcendence –the
concept of transcendence through the ages”, Tarasti turns “transcendence” into
the guiding axis that enables to bring together different Western and Eastern
philosophies. Tarasti recognizes transcendence is understood differently in
different cultures and epochs, but argues the possibility of a transcultural
(and trans-historical) theory. Tarasti illustrates the historical development
of the concept, and distinguishes three types of transcendence: empirical
(i.e. entities absent in the world but present in our minds), existential
(i.e. the transcendental ego or condition of possibility of a unified
consciousness), and radical (i.e. the Absolut, impossible to be known and only
spoken about through metaphors). Understanding semiotic processes as a
relation between a signifier and an absent (projected) signified, turns
transcendence into a central element of semiotics.

Section 8: Masters on past masters

Gorlée‘s “From Peirce’s pragmatic maxim to Wittgenstein’s language-games”
examines the differences and similarities between Peirce and Wittgenstein,
commonly regarded as the two fathers of pragmatism. Gorlée draws some general
parallelisms between the authors, i.e. the usage of a fragmentary writing
style, and a shared concern for a non-deceptive terminology, which led Peirce
to the invention of new terminology, and Wittgenstein to the employment of
non-specialised terms. Gorlée argues the possibility to bring together
Peirce’s pragmatic maxim and Wittgenstein’s language-games. For Peirce, the
total meaning of a symbol is the sum of all the possible behaviours the symbol
can generate in all the potential circumstances of a particular type. Gorlée
points the Peircean maxim entails an open-ended conception of meaning, which
will vary according to the context of the symbol. Thus, the pragmatic maxim
ultimately negates the possibility of reaching a complete meaning attribution
to a symbol. Wittgenstein’s language games also portray meaning as
contextually generated in the use of signs, always in accordance to the rules
governing the particular context. Symbols do not have a static meaning:
meaning attribution is context-dependent. Both Peirce and Wittgenstein are
portrayed as opponents to all absolute truth/falsehood attributions to signs. 

Pezzini’s “Semiotics as a critical discourse: Roland Barthes’s Mythologies”
examines the origins of European semiotics and refers to Barthes’
“Mythologies” as one of the most influential works. Barthes established
semiotics as a critical analysis of the consumer ideology.  Ideology was
understood as a value system that had been naturalized, and which permeated
all everyday social productions and practices. Myths, the different products
of ideology, can circulate in society as given facts insofar as they assume
the existence of a common “significant consciousness” that acknowledges their
facticity (p.358). Since all myths employ symbols, semiotics enables a textual
analysis of all products of the mass culture.

In “Ricoeur, a disciple of Greimás? A case of paradoxical maieutic”, Hénault
examines the relationship between Greimás and Ricoeur. Ricoeur, initially
structuralist, adopted a belligerent position against structuralism after an
open dispute with Lévi-Strauss, who claimed Ricoeur’s hermeneutics were pure
subjectivism. The frictions with structuralism made Ricoeur accuse semiotics
of making abstraction of the texts, which led to a fierce confrontation in the
first debate with Greimás. Still, Ricoeur gradually changed his stance toward
Greimás’ semiotics and ended up adopting Greimás’ semiotic concepts in his own
hermeneutics. 

EVALUATION

The semiotic studies comprised in the volume address three main and
interdependent areas: (i) human beings live in a world of
“significance-addition”, (ii) the addition of meaning is already present in
perception, (iii) the awareness of (i) and (ii) has brought the crisis of
representation. 

As illustrated in Pezzini’s chapter, semiotics as social critique began with
Barthes’ “mythologies”: all social phenomena are permeated with (ideological)
meaning that has been mistaken by the natural, factual world. But
meaning-addition is not only a product of the consumer society, it rather
constitutes our primary relation with the world. Human portrayals of reality
are constructed as claims for authenticity (e.g. live-broadcasting, cf. Jost;
testimony sites, cf. Violi; scientific theories, cf. Danesi), but all
depictions entail a significance surplus, nonexistent in the factual world.
Echoing Roquentin (cf. Sartre, 1966), either we live or we narrate our living,
and all possible accounts will carry an addition (significance, causality,
good/bad luck) absent in the factual existence. News broadcasting removes
banality from ordinary objects and fills them with necessity (cf. Jost), and
objects in memory sites lose their mundaneness and are perceived as imprints
of trauma (cf. Violi).

Meaning-addition is not just a product of narrative. Meaning is already
embedded in perception insofar as perception is founded on a relation (cf.
Sonesson, Volli, Deely). The pen I use when I write is not a “raw thing” in my
hand: I see it, and I see an-object-to-write-with; the significance of the
pen, i.e. being-a-pen, is established in my relation with it as the object I
will use to write (cf. Deely). We encounter somebody and we do not see a “raw
face”, we interact with appearances that oblige us to take a particular
position toward the others and act in accordance. Volli’s account of
appearance as a self-effective sign brings together semiotics, aesthetics and
ethics. Following his point, it can be argued the aesthetic positioning (the
no indifference toward the Other, who demands a specific action based on the
attitude perceived) is a pre-condition for ethics (cf. Saito, 2007). Thus,
semiotics echoes Heidegger’s revelation about our relational being in the
world: we are in a constant relation with others (human beings and objects),
and it is in concerning ourselves with the other that the “meaning-addition”
takes place  (cf. Heidegger, 2003).

Understanding meaning generation in relational terms calls into doubt the
classic concern for representation. Representation, i.e. making present again
in the mind what is given outside, comes together with the concern for
adequacy with the real, and a perfect adequacy is attributed a positive truth
value. Questioning representation problematizes the possibility of an absolute
truth. Seif’s re-evaluation of paradoxes entails a reconsideration of the
correspondence theory of truth, ultimately based on the assumption of the
actual possibility of a transparent representation of the world. As it can be
inferred from Gorlée’s chapter, pragmatism stands in strong opposition to
truth by correspondence. The pragmatist negation of absolute truth/falsehood
attributions to signs retakes the consideration of all meaning as contingent,
i.e. not naturally given in the factual world. 

A constant dialogue between semiotics and philosophy is evidenced along the
collection (cf., for example, Sonesson, Seif, Deely, Tarasti, Gorlée,
Hénault). While philosophy stands as the theoretical procurer, semiotics is
attested as the discipline specialized in the study of signs with an
applicable vocation. In these terms, Li’s allegation that semiotics needs to
leave behind all “philosophical fundamentalism” in order to gain complete
knowledge integrity does not come without surprise and a certain uneasiness.
The studies comprised in the collection have shown how semiotics’ ability to
maintain a dialogue with philosophy and the rest of humanistic disciplines
constitutes one of its main strengths.  

REFERENCES

Heidegger, Martin. 2003. Ser y Tiempo. Madrid: Trotta.

Reddy, Michael, J. 1979. “The Conduit metaphor: a case of frame conflict in
our  language about language”. In: A. Ortony (Ed.) Metaphor and Thought,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.164-201

Saito, Yuriko. 2007. Everyday Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1966 La Nàusea. Barcelona: Proa.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sara Vilar-Lluch is a PhD student at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her
main research areas are Systemic Functional Linguistics, Appraisal Theory and
Discourse Analysis; she is also interested in metaphor and face theory. In her
PhD project she studies the representations of ADHD and the diagnosed
individuals in the psychiatric, educational, political and family
institutional discourses.





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