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Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio SEMIOTICS UNBOUNDED: INTERPRETIVE ROUTES THROUGH THE OPEN NETWORK OF SIGNS This page intentionally left blank Semiotics Unbounded Interpretive Routes through the Open Network of Signs Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2005 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-8765-5 Printed on acid-free paper Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication Editors: Marcel Danesi, Umberto Eco, Paul Perron, Peter Schultz, and Roland Posner Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Petrilli, Susan Semiotics unbounded : interpretive routes through the open network of signs / Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio. (Toronto studies in semiotics and communication) ISBN 0-8020-8765-5 I. Ponzio, Augusto II. Title. III. Series. P99.P48 2005 1219.68 C2004-904768-X University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). This book was conceived and completed in the fertile context of constant intellec- tual exchanges with the seminal semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok. He approved the general plan and suggested the title. Parts were e-mailed to him for his perusal and final approval, and he was keen to receive the complete manuscript, whose publication he was committed to promoting with University of Toronto Press as a volume in the series Toronto Studies in Semiotics. Our great master of signs and beloved friend died unexpectedly, although peacefully, on 21 December 2001 at his home in Bloomington, Indiana. It goes without saying that for the authors of the present volume, he is still alive and always will be as his signs flourish and continue to engender an infinity of semiosic chains in the great semiotic web. This book would never have been possible in its present form without Thomas A. Sebeok, and to him it is dedicated with gratitude and love. This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface xvii Introduction: An Excursion into Semiotics 3 I.1. Two Meanings of Semiotics 3 I.2. Protagonist: The Sign 6 I.3. Stooge: The Interpretant 8 I.4. Pragmatism as Pragmaticism 10 I.5. The Verbal Sign’s Influence on Semiotics 12 I.6. Signification and Significance 14 I.7. Signification and Denotatum 16 I.8. Beyond the Verbal Sign Paradigm 18 I.9. Subject and Alterity 19 I.10. Word and Dialogue 22 I.11. Dialogue and Inference 25 I.12. Inferences and Categories: Semiotics, Logic, Ontology 28 PART ONE: SEMIOTICS AND SEMIOTICIANS 33 1 An Itinerary: From Peirce to Others 35 1.1. Problems on Peirce’s Desk 35 1.1.1. Semiosis, Interpretation, and the Quasi-Interpreter 35 1.1.2. Sign Displacement, Identity, and Otherness 38 1.1.3. Knowledge in the Gnoseological Sense, but also as Responsible Awareness 40 1.1.4. Interpretation and Representation 41 1.1.5. The General Character of Peirce’s Sign Model 45 viii Contents 1.2. More Problems in Focus: Subjects, Bodies, and Signs 47 1.2.1. The Dialogic Self 47 1.2.2. Personal Identity and the Doctrine of Synechism 50 1.2.3. Consciousness, Body, World 52 1.2.4. Private Worlds and Public Worlds 57 1.2.5. Habit and the Play of Musement 58 1.3. Neglected but Foundational Aspects of Peirce’s Semiotics 59 1.3.1. Three Evolutionary Modes in the Cosmos 60 1.3.2. Axiological Problems as Semiotic Problems 62 1.3.3. Love and Logic 64 1.3.4. Agapic Comprehension and Welby’s Mother-Sense 70 1.3.5. Looking from Peirce’s Perspective 74 Biographical Note 79 2 About Welby 80 2.1. Why ‘Significs’? A Contribution to Theory of Meaning, and More 80 2.1.1. A Lady Significian 81 2.1.2. Three Levels of Meaning 83 2.1.3. Significance, Translation, Interpretation 87 2.1.4. A Method in Mental Exercise 88 2.1.5. Critique of ‘Plain Meaning’ 90 2.2. Departure: Exegesis and Holy Scripture 90 2.2.1. The Problem of Meaning and Interpretation of the Holy Scriptures 91 2.2.2. For a Dialogue between Religion and Science, a Question of Method 92 2.2.3. Light, Love, and Progress in Knowledge 95 2.2.4. From Exegesis to the Translative Method 99 2.3. Reading Significs as ‘Biosensifics’ 102 2.3.1. Sense and Its Organic Basis 102 2.3.2. The Plasticity of Language and Evolutionary Development of Consciousness 105 2.3.3. Signs and Evolution of Life: A Research Program 109 2.3.4. Organism and Environment in Cultural Evolution 118 2.3.5. The Biological Basis of Signifying Processes 123 Biographical Note 134 3 About Bakhtin 138 3.1. Philosophy of Language as Critique of Dialogic Reason 138 Contents ix 3.1.1. Philosophy of Literature and Philosophy of Language 138 3.1.2. Semiotics and Philosophy of Language 140 3.1.3. Bakhtin’s Sign Model 141 3.1.4. Bakhtinian Dialogue 144 3.1.5. Bakhtinian Dialogism and Biosemiotics 148 3.1.6. For a Critique of Dialogic Reason 151 3.2. An Interdisciplinary Perspective and Detotalizing Method 153 3.2.1. From the Boundaries of Art Criticism 154 3.2.2. Signs and Signals 157 3.2.3. On Ideology 158 3.2.4. The Unconscious and Ideology 159 3.2.5. The Question of Values 162 3.2.6. A Dialogic Method 165 Biographical Note 166 4 About Morris 167 4.1. Behaviouristic Semiotics and Pragmaticist Semiotics 167 4.1.1. Sidelights 167 4.1.2. Morris and Peirce 169 4.1.3. Returning to Peirce 171 4.1.4. From Scientific Empiricism Onward 172 4.1.5. Morris’s Behaviouristics 173 4.2. Semiotics and Biology 176 4.2.1. Criteria, not Definitions 176 4.2.2. Biological Terminology to Talk about Signs 179 4.2.3. Biology and Symbolism at the Origin of Morris’s Research 181 4.2.4. Behaviour Involving Symbols 182 4.2.5. General Linguistic Symbols and Verbal Linguistic Symbols 184 4.3. Sign, Dimensions of Semiosis, Denotatum, and Language 186 4.3.1. The Most Recalcitrant Term: Sign 186 4.3.2. Misunderstandings over the Dimensions of Semiosis 191 4.3.3. Designatum and Denotatum 193 4.3.4. Language and General Linguistics 195 4.3.5. Human and Non-Human Signs 200 Biographical Notes 201 5 About Sebeok 203 5.1. Modelling Systems Theory and Global Semiotics 203 x Contents 5.1.1. Semiosic Phenomena as Modelling Processes 203 5.1.2. Critique of the Pars Pro Toto Error 205 5.1.3. Semiosic Boundaries 206 5.1.4. Sebeok’s Semiosic Universe 208 5.1.5. Global Semiotics 209 5.2. Semiotics and Semiosis 211 5.2.1. Three Aspects of the Unifying Function of Semiotics 211 5.2.2. Semiosis and Semiotics: ‘Semiotics,’ Another Meaning 213 5.2.3. To Live and to Lie 214 5.2.4. Origin of Language and Speech 215 5.2.5. Iconicity and Language 216 5.3. Sebeok’s Works and the Destiny of Semiosis 218 5.3.1. A Tetralogy 218 5.3.2. Semiotics as a Doctrine of Signs and Metasemiosis 219 5.3.3. From the Non-Human Interpreter Sign to the Human Interpreter Verb 220 5.3.4. European and American Semiotics: A Dialogue 221 5.3.5. The Destiny of Semiosis after Life 222 5.4. Sebeok’s Semiotics and Education 223 5.4.1. The Role of Signs in the Educational Process 223 5.4.2. Implications of Sebeok’s Work for Education 224 5.4.3. Education to Mutual Adjustment of Language and Speech 226 5.4.4. Semiotics and Foresight of ‘Proximal Development’ 227 5.4.5. Global Semiotics and Education to Responsibility for Life 229 Biographical Notes 230 6 About Rossi-Landi 232 6.1. Rossi-Landi’s Philosophy of Language 233 6.1.1. His Semiotic Studies 233 6.1.2. Common Speech Theory 235 6.1.3. Language as the A Priori 241 6.1.4. Language as Work and Trade 245 6.1.5. Language as a Human Prerogative 248 6.1.6. Linguistic Work and Linguistic Use 250 6.1.7. On the Homology between Verbal and Non-Verbal Human Communication 251 Contents xi 6.1.8. Ideology and Linguistic Alienation 254 6.1.9. Social Reproduction 255 6.2. On the Tracks of a Multiform Research Itinerary 256 6.2.1. From Common Speech to Common Semiosis 256 6.2.2. For a ‘Homological Method’ 259 6.2.3. Morris in Rossi-Landi’s Interpretation 260 6.2.4. The Correspondence between Morris and Rossi-Landi 264 6.2.5. On Sign and Non-Sign Materiality 268 6.3. Communication, Mass Media, and Critique of Ideology 269 6.3.1. The Homination Process in Relation to Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Production 269 6.3.2. For a Critique of Linguistic and Ideological Alienation in a Semiotical Key 271 6.3.3. Social Planning and Multimedial Communication 276 6.3.4. Cultural Capital and Social Alienation 279 6.3.5. The Role of Signs in Neocapitalist Society 281 6.4. Rossi-Landi between ‘Ideologie’ and ‘Scienze Umane’ 283 6.4.1. Doctrine of Ideologies and Semiotics of Social Communication Programs 283 6.4.2. The Pars Pro Toto Fallacy 286 6.4.3. Ideology and False Consciousness 288 6.4.4. Semiotics and Critique of the Humanities 291 6.4.5.
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