Semiotics is an ancient mode of enquiry which incorporates all forms and systems of communication as its domain. The development of semiotic theory and methods took place within specific fields, first in medicine, then in philosophy and, in the twentieth century, in linguistics. The rapid development of semiotics since 1950 spans several fields, including sociology, anthropology, literary and cultural criticism, linguistics and psychoanalysis.
The central idea in semiotics is a particular conception of the structure of the sign which is defined as a bond between a signifier and a signified: for example, the bond that exists between a series of sounds (signifier) and their meaning (signified) in a given language, or the social convention that the colour red stands for danger. Semiotic research involves the study of conventions, codes, syntactical and semantic elements, and logic: in short, all the mechanisms which serve both to produce and obscure meanings, and to change meanings in sign systems. As such, semiotics is uniquely adapted to research on several questions which fall in the domain of the social sciences: communication conduct, myth, ritual, ideology, and sociocultural evolution and change. Major contributions to socio-semiotic research include Erving Goffman’s studies of face-to-face interaction, Roland Barthes’s critique of modern material culture, Lévi-Strauss’s research on American Indian myths, and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic investigations.
Historical origins
The first known synthesis of semiotic principles was accomplished in Classical Greek medicine, a branch of which dealt with the symptoms and signs of illness. It was in this applied context that the Greeks made explicit the principle of the arbitrariness of the relationship of the signifier to the signified that became the basis for the first accurate diagnosis of disease. The Greeks noted, for example, that a pain in the wrist may indicate a problem with the vital organs, not the wrist, and began to base their diagnosis on the pattern of relationship between signs. The combination of arm pains, pale skin, and difficult breathing was given a more nearly correct medical meaning in the place of the incorrect array of meanings they might have for someone operating within the primitive framework of a concrete, analogical connection between signifiers and signified. This effected a transfer of phenomena that formerly could be understood only within a religious framework into the scientific domain.
Semiotics flourishes during times, such as the present, when there is general anxiety about the capacity of western science to solve important problems, or when there is widespread questioning of the ultimate validity of western cultural and philosophical values. When there is an intellectual crisis, the problematical relationship of the signifier to the signified is not a secret buried deep in the heart of the sign and social consensus. Rather the signifier/signified relationship appears to almost everyone as a series of discontinuities between events and their meanings.
Peirce’s typology of signs
The intellectual base of current semiotic activity is mainly the writings of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the American pragmatist philosopher, Charles S.Peirce. Following Peirce’s synthesis of semiotic principles, there are three major types of signs based on the structure of the relationship of the signifier to the signified: icons, indices, and symbols. An iconic sign depends on a bond of resemblance between the signifier and the signified and requires social and legal arrangements and agreements concerning authenticity and originality. Indices are produced by the direct action of that which they represent, such as the line left at high tide, and they engage scientific, historical and other forms of curiosity and detective work. Symbols are arbitrary and conventional (such as the words in a language) and they require community consensus on proper meanings. Since any object or idea can be represented by each of the three types of signs, the mode of representation implies the form of interpretation and specific social arrangements as well. In short, every mode of scientific and other discourse is the result of (unconscious) decisions that reflect basic, often unstated, social values. Semiotics can function as a metalanguage by analysing the ways the various fields and disciplines represent their subject matter, for example, the frame of mind and form of social relationship that is implicit in experimental science or in Marxist theory.
The semiotic critique of ‘rational’ science
Semioticians often make a claim to be both more rigorous and more politically engaged than their colleagues in disciplines which base their methods on Cartesian rationalism. The source of this seemingly paradoxical claim is found in the contrast of the signifier/ signified relationship which is the basis of semiotics, and the subject/object relationship which is the basis of rational science. According to the semiotic critique of rationalism (and its offspring, positivism), the subject/object opposition takes the form of an imperative to establish a hierarchy in which scientific subjectivity dominates its empirical object. This originally innocent formulation, which unleashed enormous intellectual energy, contains no safeguards against excesses and abuse. Specifically, the subject/object split is the ultimate philosophical justification for one group or class (for example, the ‘west’ or the ‘east’) to claim the right to dominate others, to assert that the meanings they provide are the only correct meanings from the range of possible meanings. Of course it is possible to advance scientific understanding and social thought within this paradigm by policing deviant intellectual tendencies and precisely calibrating social ideology to scientific theory, but the successes of this approach should not render it less suspect. From the perspective provided by the signifier/ signified relationship, it appears more a moral or political position than a rigorous analytical mode.
Dean MacCannell
University of California
Further reading
Barthes, R. (1972 [1957]) Mythologies, trans. A.Lavers, New York.
Baudrillard, J. (1981) For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, trans. C.Levin, St Louis, MO.
Burke, K. (1973 [1941]) The Philosophy of literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, Berkeley, CA.
Eco, U. (1976) A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, IN.
Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, New York.
Greimas, A.J. and Courtèes, J. (1979) Sémiotique: dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, Paris.
Lacan, J. (1966) Ecrits, Paris. (Trans. A.Sheridan, 1977, London.)
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1976 [1958–73] ‘The scope of anthropology’, in Structural Anthropology, vol. II, New York. (Original edn, Anthropologique structural, 2 vols, Paris.)
MacCannell, D. and MacCannell, J.F. (1982) The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation of Modern Culture, Bloomington, IN
Peirce, C.S. (1940; 1955), Selected Writings, selected and edited by J.Buchler, New York.
Saussure, F. de (1959 [1916]) Course in General Linguistics, New York. (Original edn, Cours de linguistique générale, Paris.)
Sebeok, T.A. (ed.) (1978) Sight, Sound and Sense, Bloomington, IN.
