Page 201 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

thought, the structure is an immanent relational net- work of elements constituting an object. The network is the specific identity of the object. So, the notion of structure and the notion of s-code is the same. As the s-code is only of semiotic interest when connected with the code proper, it is necessary to modify the general and rigid definition of the structure, in order to make it a semiotic prerequisite for the understanding of the occurrence of signs. However, the notion of structure has played an important role in semiotics as an 'epis- temological' and 'methodological' entity.
In an epistemological perspective, the focus is on the ontological status of a structure. A structure is considered either as an immanent constitutive organ- ization of the object itself, or as a theoretical construct. According to the first conception, the structure is the 'idea' of the object, a structure an sich which defines the object as a whole. The second interpretation results in considering a structure as a construction, based on specific aspects of a given object and in accordance with explicit theoretical criteria. The struc- ture has to be related to a set of methodological pro- cedures so that the constructed structure can be tested in relation to the object.
Raymond Boudon (1968) characterizes the first conception as an 'intentional' context for a definition of structure, the second as an 'effective' context. The basic presupposition in the first case is this: any object has an essential form which can be revealed. In the second case the assumption is weaker: there are phenomena which, to a certain extent, contain aspects which can be systematized. A 'structure' is one of several possible 'specifications' of this generally pre- supposed structurability which Boudon calls the 'object-system.' Although both conceptions have been part of semiotics, the latter is the more predominant.
In the effective context, four different types of object-systems can be specified as structures. First, there are systems constituted by interrelated elements with finite definitions, such as the elements of the Indo-European vowel system, or of the system of poss- ible marriages in a South American Indian tribe, depending on kinship relations. The construction of a specific structure of vowels or of marriages can be tested directly or empirically in the linguistic and social reality.
A second type of object-system contains elements defined by an infinite number of features only delimited ad hoc. This is the case when, for example, a structure is ascribed to a population in an opinion poll during an election campaign, or to the semantic reservoir of a language. But still the structure can be empirically tested.
The traditional literary genres exemplify a third type of object-system. Like the first type, this one has a finite number of distinctive features according to specific literary theories. However, a structure of genres in a given historical period will be subject to
an indirect test, because the absence of a given genre or subgenre or the occurrence of literary works which do not belong to any genre, will not falsify the struc- tural analysis, which is concerned with the pre- dominant tendency or possible trends of literature.
Finally, if the psychoanalytical specification of the structure of associative networks in the human mind is taken into account, for example, we will meet the result of an analysis of a fourth type of object-system. It is defined by an infinite number of distinctive fea- tures and is only liable to indirect proof.
The classical notion of structure as a closed network of interdependent elements only covers the first type, and cannot, in semiotics, be identified with structure as such. However, it has been the basis of a widespread 'methodological' approach in semiotics: given one basic semiotic system, e.g., verbal language, others, like film, kinship relations, architecture, etc., will be conceived of as being 'analogous' to this system. This analogy permits the methods of structural linguistics in particular to be applied directly to the other systems in question.
However, when semiotics investigates all four types of object-systems, it cuts across epistemological as well as methodological borderlines. With the existence of an object-system, and thus of an s-coded phenom- enon, as a basic assumption for the construction of structural specifications, semiotics is based on a 'soft' epistemology: semiotics argues neither for a pure nom- inalism (there is a radically arbitrary relation between structure and object), nor for a pure realism (the ident- ity of the structure is derived from the identity of the object); neither does semiotics adopt a purely exten- sional view of the object (through the structure the object is identified as a member of a class of objects, the extension of the structure), nor a purely inten- sional view (the structure characterizes the object through the organization of its supposedly relevant features). Semiotics will assume a predominantly realistic and intensional attitude, because certain properties are presupposed as real, and because they are taken to be relevant for the production of meaning.
With regard to methods, semiotics often has to face objects which manifest several of the four types of object-systems at the same time, e.g., a theater per- formance or aspects of urban culture. Hence, semi- otics will have to work with a plurality of methods in an interdisciplinary perspective without giving absol- ute priority to one single semiotic system as a master system or to the methods connected with that system. On the other hand, structures in which the 'sign' is essential will play the leading role.
1.3 Sign
According to the Scholastic definition of the sign, a sign occurs when aliquidstat pro aliquo. This statement was valid before the Middle Ages and it still is in the late twentieth century (Rey 1973: 76): a sign is any
Semiotics
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