Page 200 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Truth and Meaning
The following notions, 'sign' and 'discourse,' bring out the increasing complexity of the process of cre- ating meaning. The final notion 'text,' encompasses the whole field of semiotics.
1.1 Code
Imagine a painter at work. He chooses different colors at the palette, mixes them, and, through repeated strokes of the brush, he combines the colors on the canvas. When he is finished, he adds his signature. A process of selection and combination of colors and letters has taken place, and a complex cultural sign, a work of art, has come into being.
This process is a rule-governed activity. The rules governing the combination and selection are called codes. Not all the coding mechanisms involved in the process are semiotically relevant, and the study of codes in general is broader than semiotics. From a simple definition of code, the discussion now moves to a more complex one of genuine semiotic character.
Assume that there are two elements which can be distinguished from each other. If a rule for their inter- relation can be set up, the minimal requirement for the existence of a code will be fulfilled. The rule is a code. If the elements are characterized by one feature, say a straight line and a curved line, and if the rule dictates size, distance, iteration, vertical and hori- zontal order, it would be possible to produce most of the letters of the Latin alphabet through a coded pro- cess of 'combination' of the elements according to the rule. That is what the painter actually did when he signed the painting with his name.
If the elements are characterized by more than one feature, for instance if color is added to the straight- ness and curvedness of the lines, the rule must also be capable of'selecting' among the different features, for instance shape 'or' color, or shape and color, in order to convey a 'specific identity' to the element in relation to other elements. Thus, the relevance of the selected features, and hence the identity of the element, is con- text-dependent, i.e., dependent on the context in which the rule-governed combination is to be realized.
If color and not shape is selected as the relevant feature, the rule of combination may produce an aes- thetic object and not the letters. The elements are placed in an aesthetic context. If color is irrelevant and only shape is relevant, letters may be produced. One's signature on a contract is valid whether it is signed with blue, black, or green ink. But the two features, color and shape, may interact, as is most often the case, and create the signature of a painter on canvas, for example.
So far no specific semiotic codes, but only the code in general, has been dealt with: a rule for the selection and combination of relevant features in given elements. But when the painter has finished his picture through the coded combinations of (at least) color and shape, ending with a signature, an object with a
content has emerged. The codes have been creating 'meaning.' Only codes such as these are 'semiotic codes.'
The minimal requirements for the existence of semi- otic codes and of the process they initiate are more complex than for the code in general. In semiotics, two elements and a combination rule will not suffice: the elements 0 and 1 combined through a rule creating the series 0101010101... do not necessarily produce meaning. At least two sets of elements are required, each of them combined by using one or more rules according to selected features, e.g., clothing as fashion as one set and a more or less closed system of per- ceptual categories or social values as another. If one then has a rule for the combination of the two systems, so that one system can refer to or represent the other, it can be said that 'meaning' is produced.
In semiotics two levels of coding are at work sim- ultaneously: at one level a code unites a set of elements as a well-defined, but not necessarily closed system, and at another a code combines at least two such systems. Here it can be said that the code transforms or translates one system into the other.
In agreement with Umberto Eco (1984:164-88), the codes working at the first level could be called code systems or 's-codes,' and the codes working at the second level could be called transformation codes or simply codes. In language for example, the s-codes organize the semantic system and the expression system, while the codes bring about the combination of these systems into meaningful language signs. Semi- otics works on the assumption that s-coded systems from which features relevant for the production of meaning can be selected already exist. The way these systems are built up in detail is not the subject of semiotics (but may be an area for linguistics, per- ceptual psychology, etc.).
When the painter puts his name on the canvas, the s-coded expression system of colored letters and the s-coded system of the more or less institutionalized social activity of creating art are combined through the coded process of signing, and the meaning 'Picasso did this painting' occurs.
If a more complex case like a theater performance is looked into, then a whole series of s-coded systems is met (dress, verbal dialog, hairdo, body movements, lighting, etc.) and a tight network of codes combining them in different ways and perhaps ways which change during the performance. The result is a highly complex and often, as in most works of art, ambiguous mean- ing. The two-level semiotic coding process does not normally give rise to propositions which are clearly true or false as in logic, but to a complex meaning which functions on all levels of our culture.
1.2 Structure
Semiotics has often been seen as totally absorbed by the structuralist wave. According to structuralist
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