Publication: Kull, K.; Salupere, S.; Torop, P. 2005. Semiotics has no
beginning. In: Deely, John, Basics of Semiotics. (Tartu Semiotics
Library 4.) Tartu: Tartu University Press, ix-xxv.
Semiotics has no
beginning
Kalevi Kull
Silvi Salupere
Peeter Torop
Juri
Lotman has once said that semiotics is a field that
one should not begin with. Moreover, it has also been said that it is not meant
for those who are not yet familiar with some field of study other than
semiotics. Such a view of semiotics as a superior, highly intellectual
discipline, however, brings along an unexpected and interesting conflict with
statements about the role and importance of semiotics. According to some
opinions, semiotics binds the methodologies of the humanities together and
offers a common theoretical basis for all qualitative approaches. As such, it
appears as an equivalent to the emperor of quantitative science — physics.
Alongside that timeless function semiotics also has a
specific mission relating to time: it is supposed to be the knowledge of the 21st
century as John Deely has underscored — and he is not the only one to hold this
view.
Using the history of the understanding of the sign as
his guide Deely presents a division of philosophical thought into four great
epochs. These include (ancient) Greek (up to the 6th century AD),
Latin (up to the 17th century), modern (up to the 20th century),
and postmodern (that is at its beginning) eras. According to Deely, semiotics
is definitely the philosophy of the postmodern age. As semiotics is
simultaneously an understanding and a way of seeing, we can find traces of it
long before Charles Peirce or Jakob von Uexküll — the great founders of the discipline at the
dawn of the 20th century — articulated their theories of the sign.
From a distance created by time, the simultaneous
emergence of three approaches, three trends that greatly influenced 20th
century thought can be detected in the 1880ies. These tendencies also
represented three very different approaches to the sign. Within the first
philosophical trend meaning appears as a phenomenon, as a given presence. It is
the phenomenological approach as designed by Edmund Husserl and further developed by Martin Heidegger. The second trend views meaning as a
relation — as is appropriate to the method of analytical philosophy in which
Gottlob Frege plays a major role. The third one takes meaning
to be a process, one which also engages the medium — this approach was
developed by Peirce and the whole semiotic theory.
The fact of the publication of the book by John
Deely, the director of the Semiotic Society of America, in Estonia is not just
a formal gesture towards a country that has played an enormous role in the development
of the discipline. The reason for its publication is of a much more substantial
nature. Usually the books presenting the basics of semiotics attempt to give a
comprehensible and complete picture of the field. At the same time it is also
well known that “semiotics” is an ambiguous term and there are different
possibilities to define semiotics. It could be described as a study of signs,
sign systems and communication. It could also be identified as that part of
various disciplines that establishes the systematic features of the object of
study and enables us to speak not only about natural language but also about
the language of literature in literary semiotics, the language of theatre in
theatre semiotics, the language(s) of
art in the semiotics of art(s), the language of cinema in the semiotics of
cinema, as well as of the language of behavior in the semiotics of everyday
life, and the language of landscape in ecosemiotics. Or to discuss vegetative
and animal sign systems in addition to organic codes in the field of biosemiotics.
At the same time all those “semiotics of” are parts of the disciplines that
study these objects. In addition, semiotics has also been characterized as the
science of sciences, the organon of sciences, facilitating the synthesis of the
methodological experience of sciences and improving interdisciplinarity. Deely
says,
This
[…] is a reference to a strategy for encouraging a view of semiotics not as a
theory in either the traditional critical sense or in the traditional scientific
sense, but as what Locke called
a doctrine of signs, a term which must be carefully construed. […] A doctrine
of signs, within this notion of philosophical doctrine generally, specifically
transcends the opposition of culture to nature, and thereby precludes an
autonomously linguistic or literary semiotics […]. Semiotics is a perspective
concerned with the matrix of all the disciplines, precisely as they are
offsprings within experience of anthroposemiosis. (Deely in the present volume,
ch. 5)
In
accordance with the possibility to define semiotics in multiple ways we can
also discriminate between different (pre)histories of the discipline. In a
sense the whole history of semiotics has developed “inside” the history of
philosophy, or is intertwined with it as currents merge in a stream. Thus we
can find many of these currents, or different sources of semiotics. In order
to define our point of departure in a more particular way we could of course
start with Charles Sanders Peirce as one of the most important classics of
today’s semiotics. But it is usually at the moments of cultural explosion that
history — as the history of culture — undergoes sharp turns. This indicates
that the greatest impact of works of arts and results of research upon society
does not begin with their birth or creation but starting from the moment of
their recognition and acknowledgement. As Juri Lotman has put it in his book Culture and Explosion, innovation does not manifest itself at the
moment of explosion but only when it is recognized and described some time
after the explosion itself.
This is also
what happened to the explosion of semiotics and semiology. Their
acknowledgement only began after the deaths of Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure and that were so close in time that instead
of a single approach a strange double identity emerged that Charles Morris attempted to weld into one. Later, however,
the two strands parted until T. Sebeok, J. Deely and others started to reconceptualize
this view.
Semiotics
therefore, has several beginnings which offer an exciting challenge to anybody who seeks to describe its
origins. It is very important that a systematic textbook of semiotics should
not attempt to artificially unify the different foundations, but would give its
reader an idea of the varied sources of semiotics and recognize several
beginnings as normal, as this alone would be appropriate to semiotic thinking
itself. And it is primarily this attitude that is characteristic of Deely’s
book when he writes,
Among the
human sciences, semiotics is unique in being a study concerned with the matrix
of all the sciences, and in revealing the centrality of history to the
enterprise of understanding in its totality. The centrality of history to
understanding is revealed through the codes of culture that alone sustain,
beyond the individual insight, the commens or shared mentality that defines a
language (such as English), a discipline (such as physics or literary
criticism), a subculture (such as the Gays), a nation (such as Israel), and,
ultimately, civilization itself in all its conflicting strands of historically
embedded interpretations giving structure to the everyday experience of the
conspecifics capable of language. (Deely in the present volume, ch. 5)
But
this is the kind of history in which the beginning may be missing or is
unimportant. In relation to his concept of the semiosphere Juri Lotman underscores that each culture is preceded by
another culture, and each sign system by another sign system.
One of the most significant topics in semiotic logic
is the replacement of the binary structure by the ternary. It is also the
central problem of Lotman’s Culture
and Explosion. Though he works in a totally different part of the world,
this is also important for Deely, who emphasizes that the dichotomous
differentiation between subject and object which governs modern thought and
culture, has to be substituted by a trichotomy. In the latter case a third — thing — emerges which is not an object. It is from this trichotomy, from
the ability to see things, or
differentiate between things and objects that the possibility of semiotics
arises.
Introductions to semiotics
If
we look at the existing handbooks of semiotics they can quite clearly be
divided into three groups — encyclopedias, anthologies and monographs. Those
that belong to the first group are comprehensive works seeking to offer a
“complete and objective” overview of semiotics. By nature they are descriptive
compilations. First and foremost, the four substantial encyclopedias of semiotics belong to this group.
The three-volume Encyclopedic
Dictionary of Semiotics (Sebeok 1994 [1986],
two editions already) gives a thorough overview of the terminology of
semiotics. It was aimed as a replacement for the earlier volume by A. J. Greimas and J. Courtés Semiotics
and Language: An Analytical Dictionary, a work which despite its title is
not limited to the theory of language but manages to provide a profound definition
of semiotics, yet relies mainly on the tradition of semiology.
Eventually all four volumes of the capital bilingual
(German and English) encyclopedia that was in preparation for a long time have
been published (Posner et al. 1997). This weighty work attempts to
exhaust all possible types of semiotics organized by subject areas,
historically and geographically.
Winfried Nöth’s Handbook
of Semiotics (Nöth 1990; 2000) is written by a single author but
owing to its historical approach and an unusually profound and diverse
references it rather belongs among encyclopedias than monographs.
The Canadian scholar Paul Bouissac’s Encyclopedia
of Semiotics (Bouissac 1998) is a good companion volume to the
former ones because of its compactness. The reference book by Paul Cobley (Cobley 2001) has less extensive scope. All
encyclopedias are characterized by the exhaustive bibliographies.
Another type of work that is different from the
encyclopedias comprises various anthologies which assemble (normally in chronological order)
key texts or extracts of significant texts in semiotics. Among this type one
should first mention an introductory anthology by Robert E. Innis (Innis 1985) that contains also introductory comments
to classic texts. In addition to this volume the collection Frontiers in Semiotics (Deely et al.
1986) with a formidable introduction by John Deely deserves greater attention
with its broad treatment of semiotics. The laconically entitled four-volume Semiotics (Boklund-Lagopoulou 2002) embraces a more recent
period including post-structuralism and postmodernism in addition to the
excerpts from principal texts; it also contains works of the members of the
Tartu-Moscow school. One should also mention the many-faceted Russian anthology
compiled by Juri Stepanov (Stepanov 1983). Canadian professors of semiotics have
recently compiled a few less voluminous collections of texts designed
specifically for introductory courses in semiotics (Danesi, Santeramo 1999; Perron, Danesi 2003).
The third group, also including Deely’s Basics of Semiotics — covers monographic
works (they usually define themselves as introductions), which first of all articulate the author’s
personal point of view and understanding of semiotics. A number of
introductions have been created in the course of teaching, inspired by the
practical need for study aids.
Leaving aside Charles Morris (e.g. 1946), the earliest among this group is
Roland Barthes’ Elements
of Semiology (1964) that first and foremost introduces the terminology of
the French structuralist school departing from Saussure. The pioneering role of this piece has been
pointed out by Umberto Eco. He says,
In 1964 Barthes published his “Elements of Semiology” in the
fourth issue of the journal Communications.
I consider it necessary to recall here what this short text, that was not aimed
at anything big and that was a compilation by nature, meant for all of us who
were fascinated by semiotics — it is this writing that forced us to work out
our own approaches to sign systems and communicative processes, while Barthes himself was moving away from pure theory. If
this book by Barthes had not existed, we would have managed to do
much less. (Eco 1998:4)
And
it was Umberto Eco who took the next step in his book The Absent Structure: An Introduction to
Semiology (1968) by
posing “a question about the nature of semiotic study[1]
and its meaning. In other words, the kind of study in which all phenomena of
culture are viewed as facts of communication, in which individual messages
become organized, and understandable in relation to the code” (Eco 1998: 27). This book, originally published in
Italian, laid the foundation for an English-language Theory of Semiotics published in 1976. Eco focuses on two major issues of the theory of
sign: communication and signification. Separate chapters have been dedicated to
the theory of codes and the theory of sign production (including the critique
of iconism). For an untrained reader this is not an easy reading. The most
often quoted passage of the book defines semiotics as a theory of lying.
In 1971 the Moscow linguist Juri Stepanov published a book titled Semiotics which was one of the very few of the kind in the Soviet
Union. The erudition of the author is amazing — the small book contains
remarkable knowledge about the study of signs, it describes different fields of
research, and offers definitions of basic terms. At the same time it does not
simply summarize previous ideas but also makes its own original contribution.
One of the most well-known introductions of the
present time is authored by Daniel Chandler — this is Semiotics:
The Basics (Chandler 2002[2]).
In the introduction the author says that the book grew out of his need to
explain to his students what semiotics was. The approaches existing in 1994
were, in his words, all obscure and dull, whereas semiotics itself was nothing
beyond comprehension. The book exclusively deals with human semiosis leaving
aside for example biosemiotics, computer semiotics and ecological semiotics as
well as the semiotics of music and architecture. The book is targeted at
Europe, and therefore its emphasis lies on the structuralist approach.
In 1997 Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz issued a comic book entitled Semiotics for Beginners (Cobley, Jansz 1997, in Estonian 2002) that made Chandler modify the title of the web version of his book
into Semiotics for Absolute Beginners.
Indeed, his presentation of the subject makes it intelligible also for absolute
beginners.
The introduction to semiotics by Thomas A. Sebeok (Sebeok 1994) differs from the rest mainly because Sebeok pays less attention to the structuralist
tradition, concentrating upon the study of the sign and building his approach
upon the all-embracing term of semiosis instead. In addition Sebeok suggests his own classification of signs.
The media-based course Messages
and Meanings: An Introduction to Semiotics by Marcel Danesi was transformed into a book in 1998 under the title Sign, Thought and Culture. As the
purpose of the book the author mentions the wish to provide students with a
textbook “[…] that would introduce the technical, and often abstruse, subject
matter of this fascinating field in a practical way, with plenty of
applications of semiotic techniques to contemporary social discourses and
lifestyle behaviours” (Danesi 1998: 5). Trying to avoid complicated terminology he wants to
lead his readers to independent semiotic discoveries by using what each of them
already knows intuitively. He defines semiotics as a study of the capacity to create
and use signs for thinking and communication. The emphasis is on media and
mass communication. Already in the following year Danesi published yet another book for even broader audiences, the title
of which speaks for itself - Cigarettes, High Heels, and
Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics.
Professors of comparative literature J¸rgen Dines Johansen and Svend Erik Larsen from Denmark have authored a balanced approach
to semiotics in which the concepts of discourse and narrative occupy a
prominent place (Johansen, Larsen 2002). Vivid illustrations and examples from
different walks of life render the subject comprehensible, yet not
oversimplified. A professionally compiled glossary and biographical sketches
of persons covered in the book provide a useful supplement to it.
A number of other introductions to semiotics in
different languages (e.g., see for Berger 1988) complement the picture. Special
reference has to be made to Kreidlin’s Russian-language introductions meant for
schools (Kreidlin, Krongauz 1997). Complete textbooks of semiotics have
also been published on the web, for example Tuomo Jämsä’s introduction in Finnish.[3]
About the author
Deely’s
book about the basics of semiotics holds a special place among other
introductions. As Paul Cobley has remarked,
It
is, unfortunately, not easy to find thinkers today both steeped in the
scholastic realist problematic stemming from the writings of Aquinas onwards
and convinced of the relevance of this tradition to the future shaping of
philosophy now that modernity, with all its cross-currents (including Analysis,
Phenomenology, and Neothomism), has become a matter of historical record. (Cobley
2003: vii)
The singularity of the book
owes much to the singularity of the author. John Deely was born in 1942, and
this is also the year that the bibliography of Thomas A. Sebeok assembled by Deely himself
begins with (Deely 1995). By mentioning this association we would like to make
reference to the important cooperation between these two men in developing
semiotics in the United States.
The first published papers by John Deely
(Deely 1965; 1966; 1969) as well as his first book (Deely, Nogar 1973) were written
about evolution in relation to his interest in the origins of humans.
Having studied in a Jesuit school Deely
is well versed in Latin and has a good command of scholastic philosophy. One
can detect his Catholic background also in the present volume.
One of his earliest books was about the
philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Deely 1971).
Well-acquainted with Jacques Maritain, Deely was also
influenced by the latter. But these influences preceded his acquaintance with
Thomas A. Sebeok that gave a powerful impetus to Deely’s
dedication to semiotics later on.
Deely wrote his first introduction to semiotics
in 1982 (Deely 1982). Already there the main features of the present volume are
visible: semiotics is seen first ands foremost as a doctrine based upon the
doctrines of the sign of the late Middle Ages with Deely’s original idea of
semiosis at the bottom. In 1990 that book was followed by the first version of
the present work.
Doubtlessly, Deely is above all a keen
admirer of Peirce’s semiotics. But one person is even more
important person for him — John Poinsot, a 17th
century thinker from Spain. Deely has even translated Poinsot’s Tractatus de Signis from Latin into
English — the task took him over ten years. He often quotes Poinsot also in the present
volume.
Deely has been a very productive writer
having published over ten books, a number of them in recent years (Deely 1994a;
1994b; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004). His opus
magnum, a book entitled Four Ages of
Understanding published in 2001 presents an overview of the history of
philosophy from the point of view of semiotics.
For an extended period he has been the
main editor of the yearbook of the Semiotic Society of America, often together
with Terry Prewitt (Prewitt, Deely 2003), and
has also edited other collections of articles, sometimes jointly with his wife,
the historian Brooke Williams. Deely is one of
the long-time leaders of the Semiotic Society of America as well as of the
International Association for Semiotic Studies.
Currently he is a professor of history
of philosophy at St. Thomas University, Houston, Texas.
Of some semiotic problems
The
capacity to err
C. S. Peirce defines the study of
sign processes, or semiotics through fallibilism — a field that studies the
possibility of being mistaken (Deely 2001: 636). While natural laws — the laws
of physics and chemistry — allow no exceptions, biological laws, on the other
hand, represent regularities with exceptions. It follows that fallibilism also
turns out to be the study of life, for the abiotic world is governed by laws
but the biotic by rules. The formation of rules is a very general process
resembling the processes of studying or habituation. Following Peirce’s idea of synechism
or continuity, semiosis (or such a study of life) extends across the universe.
It could include even lifeless processes, as Deely demonstrates through his
concept of physiosemiosis. This is a point in which Deely sharply differs from
his mentor Thomas A. Sebeok as Sebeok never considered it
appropriate to speak about semiosis in any other connection than life, or maybe
also machines, not mention the distance from the approach of Umberto Eco who sets the semiotic
threshold at the boundary of culture. It can be presumed that regarding this
matter it is indeed possible to interpret Peirce in various ways. The
knowledge about atomic and molecular laws in his lifetime was very different
from the knowledge in the period of the widespread emergence of semiotics
during the second half of the 20th century.
Evolution
(and emergentism)
The emphasis on continuity
is characteristic also of Deely’s approach to evolution. Or it may well be the
other way round — because of the importance of the concept of evolution for
Deely throughout his academic career (see for example Deely, Nogar 1973), it can also be
felt in his understanding of semiosis, i.e. it has strongly influenced the
latter. Still, the focus on evolution and the significance of evolutionary
explanation is a distinctive feature of the period that Deely himself calls
modern.
The emergentist views of evolution or of
the formation of the new that have developed in the course of the 20th
century (following Peirce), starting for
example with Lloyd Morgan and represented in
their contemporary form in the works of Stuart Kauffman, could provide a
more appropriate alternative to the narrowly Darwinian approach in
semiotic thought. Even Uexküll who has been
rendered so prominent by Deely is in a strong opposition with the Darwinian view. A possible
factor that might have influenced Deely’s idea of evolution, and that is also
related to his choices concerning the interpretation of Peirce in this respect,
could be the anglo-american cultural situation in which the mainstream of
evolutionary thought — neodarwinism — has been followed very closely and where
peripheral accounts of evolution have hardly been accessible to a
non-biologist.
However, as an exception among
semioticians Roman Jakobson has to be mentioned
who, while in Prague, tried to apply models borrowed from biology to linguistics
and found that Karl Ernst von Baer’s and Lev Berg’s models were suited to
his purposes. That he was able to use those models seems to be related to the
fact that he came from a different cultural background.
Modern
— ultramodern — postmodern
Deely draws the borderline
between modern and postmodern thought in a slightly unusual way. He is not
alone in this perception, but it is important to pay further attention to his
choice. Tying the beginnings of the modern period with the works of Descartes is a very
widespread view. For Deely, these works indicated the apotheosis of the study
of the sign of the Latin Age, leaving aside Poinsot’s account published
in 1632 (in the year of the founding of the University of Tartu) for three
centuries. Deely does not lay much weight on the French Revolution which is
often considered as the landmark of the modern period (see for example Foucault) or used to divide
the long period in two. Neither does he go along with the idea that the modern
period came to an end with the emergence of French postmodernism. He
acknowledges the works of Derrida, but considers them
as representing the ultramodern. Deely agrees with the critique of
postmodernism which for him is at the same time also the critique of modernism.
According to his views the whole tradition of semiology following Saussure belongs to the late
modern period.
Deely’s framework opens an interesting
perspective on the question of the position of Tartu semiotics in relation to
this periodization. For some researchers the turning point from semiology to
semiotics occurred in the 1980ies together with the adoption of the concept of
the semiosphere and, accordingly, they distinguish for example between early
and late Lotman (Mandelker 1994; etc.). But
when observations are made on home turf, a lot may appear differently than from
a distance. Thus it could also be claimed that seen from up close no such turn
actually occurred, and the main ideas of the concept of the semiosphere were
there already two decades earlier.
About Tartu semiotics and semiotics in Estonia
Estonia is a country of many
boundaries. A strange story that Deely has been telling for a while now is that
Tartu should become the center of world semiotics in the 21st
century. The concept of the center in science structure is of a suspiciously
modern nature. But still, if it does not refer to anything else, then at least
it indicates that the part of Tartu semiotics not covered in the book is worth
some attention.[4] And this
concerns not only what is happening in Tartu, but also what has not happened
yet.
The Estonian audience has received an
idea of semiotics from the translations of Lotman’s works into Estonian
and from the Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures of the Tartu-Moscow
school. Also, there are the Estonian translations of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, as well as the
predecessor of cultural semiotics in philosophy — Ernst Cassirer, and a kindred
spirit in ethnology, Clifford Geertz.
The comic-book/encyclopedia by Paul Cobley with drawings by
Litza Jansz was the first one to
introduce a more comprehensive historical account of the discipline to the
Estonian readership. In his foreword to the Estonian version Paul Cobley underscored the
significance of Estonia in semiotics in relation to the Finno-Ugric dimension
on the one hand, and the place itself, on the other. He says,
While the
English-speaking world has given us Peirce, the French-speaking
world has left Saussure as a legacy, and the Finno-Ugric world has
not only given birth to Thomas A. Sebeok, but has also
presented us a scholar of Estonian origin Jakob von Uexküll to whom we owe a
number of basic concepts in semiotics. And of course, there is Juri Lotman — an exceptional
Russian scholar of immeasurable significance, clearly ahead of his time, who
firmly took Tartu to the world map of semiotics […]. (Cobley, Jansz 2002:2).
It is indeed peculiar that
the oldest periodical in semiotics in the world — the journal Sign Systems Studies — was and still is
published in Tartu. Its first editor-in-chief Juri Lotman (1922-1993) lived
long enough to witness the establishment of the Department of Semiotics at the
University of Tartu in 1992. Tartu is also a place where semiotics has become a
separate field of study, and is taught and learned as a programme in Semiotics
and Theory of Culture. The students of Lotman have become the next
generation of scholars and teachers, already recognized under the name of New
Tartu Semiotics. In 2002 the journal S:
European Journal for Semiotic Studies published a special issue in Tartu
semiotics under this very title — “New Tartu Semiotics”. The priority of this
generation (soon already two generations) who represent institutionalized
semiotics in Tartu is wide-ranging and systematic education in semiotics. This
goes hand in hand with an active participation in international semiotics.
From the point of view of teaching it is vital to host semioticians from other
countries in Tartu, not only when they come visiting, but also through translations
of their works representing different schools and points of view. At the same
time we have to take into account our modest circumstances and consider
carefully the weight of each new publication in the field of semiotics in our
cultural and educational space.
A multiplicity of beginnings is also
characteristic of semiotics in Estonia, even from the historical perspective.
Alongside Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944)
there are other figures in the prehistory of semiotics that are connected to
Estonia, for example, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929), whose
study comparing the foundations of graphic and acoustic language largely took
shape while he was working in Tartu between 1883 and 1893 — and the study of
phonemes plays a significant role in the history of the formation of the
discipline of semiotics. There is also the Estonian interlinguist Jakob Linzbach who was born in
Harjumaa in 1874 and died in Tallinn in 1953. Research into his work
demonstrates his notable part in the history of semiotics. Thus, for example,
according to Isaac Revzin Linzbach found similar
solutions to the problems of general linguistics as did Saussure, but independently
from the latter (Revzin 1965). The book by Linzbach The Principles of Philosophical Language: An
Attempt at Exact Linguistics appeared in the same year (1916) when Saussure’s lectures were
published. In this book Linzbach establishes among
other things that each language is polyglot — an essentially semiotic problem
that arises from the practical need to use natural language to describe,
translate and interpret a multiplicity of widely different phenomena. He
writes,
There is a
considerable need also in the natural language to use different viewpoints
simultaneously, for because of our wish to formulate our thoughts as clearly as
possible we have to rephrase them many times using different words. […]
Speaking clearly and expressively requires repeated reformulation and
explication of the matter from different isolated viewpoints which are located in
such a manner that the assembly of images created through them evokes an image
in the minds of listeners and readers which closely resembles the real. (Linzbach 1916: 201)
Linzbach compares natural
language to the language of nature. He says, “It [the human language] differs
from nature in that it only uses a certain limited amount of perspectives.
‘Nature’, on the other hand, can be envisaged as a conglomerate that has an
infinite number of viewpoints” (Linzbach 1916: 202).
When on the one hand, we could describe
the development of culture as moving away from nature, we could, on the other
hand, view it as a contrary movement in the spirit of Linzbach. Both as a whole
and as a polyglot configuration culture is developing towards diversity and
heterogeneity. The Theses on the Semiotic
Study of Cultures of the Tartu-Moscow school contain the following
statement, “The pursuit of heterogeneity of languages is a characteristic
feature of culture” (Uspenskij et al 1998: 20).
Heterogeneity, in its turn, enables us to perceive scientific analysis not just
as departing from a single unified viewpoint, but as consisting of a system of
perspectives within which each scholar who studies culture has to start by
explicitly identifying his or her point of departure. The disciplines and
scholars studying culture therefore constitute a heterogeneous collection of
viewpoints within which efforts have to be made in order to relate different
perspectives to one another, to allow them interact and to unify them
methodologically. As a semiotic system, research will at some point develop a
need for a generalized description of itself. Lotman says, “The highest
form of structured organization of a semiotic system is the phase of
self-description. The process of description itself completes structural
organization” (Lotman 1996: 170). If this structural
organization does not cause stagnation, but retains its natural diversity and
prospects for further development, as exemplified by Deely’s book, then
organization means movement towards understanding and change. In his article
“Humans and signs” that was published in 1969 Lotman says,
It [science] often
takes that what seemed so simple and clear and discovers complexity and
uncertainty there. Science does not always make the unknown known, it often behaves
in a completely opposite manner. In the end, science does not always aim at
providing as many answers as possible, instead it departs from the assumption
that the right way of posing the question and the correct course of argument
embody greater value than ready-made answers even if they are right but have
not been controlled. (Lotman 1969).
A year later, in a newspaper
article entitled “Semiotics and the contemporary world” (which, however, could
be published only later in a collection of articles) he wrote, “Humans learn to
understand animals, prepare for contacts from outer space but they are only
starting to understand themselves and those who stand beside them, only
beginning to understand what it means
to “understand”. To understand understanding also means to understand
not-understanding […]” (Lotman 2003: 100).
In the development of the Tartu-Moscow
school of semiotics a distinction has been observed between the historical
tradition of Moscow linguistics that took an interest in simpler semiotic
objects, such as chess, detective stories, theatre of the absurd etc, and
aiming at the formalization of their analysis, and the Tartu and St Petersburg
traditions together with the Russian Formalist School as well as the tradition
following M. Bakhtin that were each more interested in studying
complex objects and the whole of culture as a complex object. This direction
has always been vital and vigorous in Tartu. Against this background it is only
natural that the experience of formulating the basics of semiotics be brought
to Estonia in the form of Deely’s book which presents semiotics as a complex
phenomenon with no simplifications.
As the text goes on, Deely shows himself
to be an ever more spirited and sharp-witted thinker whom it is hard to beat in
erudition. The dialogue between the book and the Tartu tradition becomes even
more exciting when, parallel to the mentioning of Thomas A. Sebeok in the text, the
reader recalls what Lotman has written about
semiotic modelling.
The reader finds here a complex basis
for semiotics as well as a whole collection of the basics of semiotics. The
reader who has finished this book
should comprehend that there are several ways leading to the
understanding of semiotics and that different beginnings may still lead us in
one direction — towards greater understanding.
About the Tartu edition
Compared to its previous
English edition (Deely 1990), the present version has been expanded and
revised. It has almost doubled in
volume — the chapters from eight to eleven are new, and the first, but
especially the third and fourth chapters contain important additions.
Earlier versions of this book have been
published in Portuguese (1990), Romanian (1997), Ukrainian (2000), and Italian
(2004). The Japanese and Bulgarian editions are being prepared.
The fact that the book is published in
two languages — English and Estonian — is itself significant. On the one hand,
this conveys Deely’s love for multilingual books; indeed, it is similar to the
book by Poinsot that he
has translated, displaying the English translation side by side with its Latin
original. The same pattern has been followed in the appendices to Deely’s Why
semiotics? (Deely 2004: 59–69) where the original English text by Locke is accompanied by a later translation into Latin, and the English
version appears next to the passages of Saussure in French.
We could also interpret this arrangement
as signifying the process of translation that is so essential for Lotman’s school. Two
languages have not been placed side by side in order to check the accuracy of
the translation. They are close to each other in order to speak, to interact,
to be more alive as a text.
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[1] In discriminating between semiotics and semiology Eco here
follows the schema by Louis Hjelmslev, calling the general theory of communication phenomena
semiology and individual sign systems semiotics. In a more recent edition (Eco
2002) he has added semiotics to the subtitle and substituted semiology by
structuralism.
[2] Also available on the web:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/.
[3] Available in the web at the following address:
http://www.internetix.fi/opinnot/opintojaksot/7taide/semiotiikka/etusivu.htm.
[4] See for example Sebeok 1998.