Page 204 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Truth and Meaning
descriptions of explicitly purposive instrumental acts. First, there is the 'general' intentionality, because any process of creating meaning is directed towards an object in order to be meaning productive at all. This goes for animals and machines as well as for human beings. Second, there is the 'subjective' intentionality, giving the fact that there is consciousness or human subjectivity involved. Third, we orient ourselves in accordance with the 'ontologicar status of the object, the specific type of reality it presumably belongs to (dream, reality, etc.). Fourth, we have a 'specifying' intentionality which is inherent in the fact that a semiosis is aiming at identifying or giving a specific meaning to the intended object, e.g., in the semantic structure of a given sign system. Fifth, a discourse carries an instrumental purposiveness, a 'strategic' intentionality. In the discourse, all these types of inten- tionality work together so that virtual signs are real-
ized in an 'act.'
The turning point is subjectivity. In the discourse
the communicating subject is located in relation to other subjects and in relation to the referential dimen- sion. This situating function is brought about by spec- ific elements in the sign system which carry out this situational function, viz. the 'deictic' elements. Through these elements, e.g., a blast of a horn, a twitch of the eye, subjects and objects are located in time and space in relation to the semiosis. In verbal language, for example, pronouns, certain adverbs, forms of conjugation, are deictic elements; in a film, camera angle or perspective may carry this function; in gestural language, nodding and pointing may exercise deictic functions, etc. No system of elements can be a sign system without deictic elements, and each system is characterized by its particular deictic devices. Sys- tems without deictic elements, like a set of chess pieces, will have to be embedded into semiotic sign systems, like language or gestures, in order to function in a process which creates meaning, e.g., a game one prac- tices to win.
In this way the discourse is framed by a 'discursive universe' for the semiosis. The discursive universe is the set of'presuppositions' which situates the semiosis in relation to subjects and objects in such a way that a semiosis can take place 'concerning these subjects and objects.' To put it in a less abstract way: the discursive universe is a shared cultural knowledge and experience which is involved in the semiosis, but which we do not need to make explicit. It is the context necessary for the understanding of the outcome of a semiosis.
All the five aspects of intentionality are not listed explicitly when signs are used in a discursive process. But whenever one says 'Look!,' any understanding of this utterance implies that we agree that we have an object outside the speaker; that we communicate to other subjects; that we are looking for something real we want to identify, unless we are explicitly informed
otherwise. On the basis of these presuppositions we may want to make certain intentional aspects explicit, e.g., the purpose for the outcry, and ask 'Why?'
The discursive universe is a 'shared' and thus social universe of already existing and accepted knowledge about what we consider a 'possible' world which we make 'real' in producing 'collective' or 'inter- subjectively' 'valid' signs about it. The discourse makes the semiosis a 'communicative' act: the semiosis becomes a sign process between subjects about their world. This act is realized in 'texts'.
7.5 Text
The compound of actually realized signs, filtered through the discursive logic of intentionality, is a 'text.' The text might seem the most self-evident of the semiotic key notions: the material manifestation of signs, especially verbal signs. But it has in fact received different definitions and has been used on different levels of argumentation.
In Louis Hjelmslev's (1899-1965) linguistic version of the formal tradition, the text is the infinite chain of realized signs. The signs themselves are entities defined by elements in finite structures which are realized in the text. From the point of view of text 'production,' the text is the result of a code engendering an endless number of sign combinations based on a selection among a limited repertoire of sign components. From the 'reception' perspective, the text requires seg- mentation in delimited individual texts, according to certain methodological criteria which can separate textual featureswhichare pertinent for the signsystem in itself, from other features, e.g., genres or rhetorical elements. In this perspective, the discursive inten- tionality and the problem of contextualization are not taken into account. But on the other hand, the sign system as a stock of possibilities for an infinite sign production is important for semiotics.
When this conception is generalized in semiotics, other sign systems are dealt with as analogous with language. This means that other semiotic systems pro- duce an endless text in the same material space as language, and that they have to be received according to the same analytical linguistic procedures. In this way, the entire world of human activity is turned into one global text or intertextual compound of texts. The globalization of the text removes it from the position as a material object which is accessible through spec- ific methods, and turns it into a general notion con- cerning the status of objects in the world of human activity: they are all texts. Hence, on the metho- dological level the formal tradition can only make prescientific distinctions between texts according to the immediately perceived differences between expression systems: visual texts, verbal texts, gestural texts, etc.
The pragmatic tradition, too, also has its problems with the apparently simple notion of text. Here the
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