Page 205 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

notion of sign is not bound to a specific system of expression, so there is no distinction between sign and text on the empirical level: a book can be a sign in itself or be looked upon as being built by signs; a city can be regarded as one single sign or it can be seen as a text constituted by a complex networks of signs. So, in this tradition distinctions also have to be made ad hoc between signs and texts and between texts according to the context and to the goal of the analy- sis.
But as signs in the pragmatic tradition are defined according to the inferential semiotic process, the whole range of discursive elements are also part of the sign definition. So, we will have at our disposal concepts outside the sign system, but inside the semiosis, to operate a distinction between texts.
Seen in this light, everything is a possible text or sign, but not everything has the status of text or sign at the same time, i.e., not everything serves the concrete production of meaning in the actual semiosis. In any concrete semiosis we have a text: a delimited material manifestation of signs containing elements (a) which are necessary to operate a distinction between text and nontext, and (b) which are necessary to draw the line between presupposed elements and explicit elements in the text in order to produce an under- standing of its meaning.
In a theater performance, everything on stage is part of a text in a complex network of individual sign systems. In everyday communication, words, gestures, facial expression, etc. as a whole make up a text. In both cases we have neutral elements which do not partake in the semiosis: they are not coded by the s- codes involved in the text in question. The archi- tectural construction of the room or the clothing worn during the communication is irrelevant to the text, not because they do not belong to the sign systems in question, as a partisan of the formal tradition would have stated, but because they do not contribute to the semiosis. On the other hand, they can be integrated in the semiosis: the director can use the auditorium as part of the theatrical space of the performance and the limits between text and nontext may even change during the performance; the interlocutors can dress in a way which improves or deliberately interrupts the communication.
Certain elements can never be part of the text: parts of the body of the actor will never be coded as signs (illness, sexual dispositions, etc.) and will impose definite limits on the text; during the conversation the telephone may ring or a third person may turn on the radio so that the interlocutors cannot hear one word. These are all elements which are not part of the text as an 'intentional discursive phenomenon,' but they may be components of other texts, and they definitely mark the limits of a text.
No text can ever be infinite from this point of view, but the text itself will contain a level of presupposed
elements which are necessary for the existence of the text as a discursive phenomenon. The presupposed elements which can be made explicit by the text, belong to the text, e.g., a theatrical metafiction with an autoreferential dimension may integrate auditorium, audience, technical staff, etc. in the text. Other pre- supposed aspects, like the actors' salaries, the state of the buildings, the budget of the house, etc. belong to other texts. This means that no text is self-sufficient in a kind of immanent infinity. When one cannot express oneself well enough in an oral verbal text, one can use gestures to compensate. This new verbal-gestural text as a whole now produces one meaning in an inter- semiotic textual totality.
In this way, signs and texts necessarily partake in a continuous semiosis through which the limits between texts and between presupposed and explicit elements are constantly moving. Signs are always meant to be transformed into other signs of similar or different types. The text is the materialization of this trans- formation.
2. Semiotic Schools
Semiotics has been institutionalized worldwide in many national associations, which communicate in journals and newsletters of more or less limited dis- tribution. All of them are united under the umbrella of the International Association of Semiotic Studies, with Semiotica as its official journal. There are a num- ber of centers and departments at institutions of higher education around the world offering semiotics programs on all levels, mostly integrated in more extensive programs. Apart from this administrative institutionalization, semiotics is guided by the con- cepts and ideas developed in four major schools.
2.1 Structuralist Semiotics
Structuralist semiotics was inaugurated by Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique generate (1916) and further developed especially by Louis Hjelmslev's glossematic theory and Algirdas Julien Greimas's (1917-1992) structural semantics in particular.
Saussure sets out to define linguistics as a specific science by assigning a specific object to it, the par- ticular aspect of language which can only be dealt with by linguistics. The genuine object of linguistics is the language 'system,' the closely interrelated struc- ture of elements that are different from the individual use of language, which it determines in such a way that it becomes an understandable chain of meaning carrying verbal unities, signs, and not just a series of sound waves. Although they are parts of language as a global phenomenon, the sociological, physiological, psychological, or aesthetic aspects of language can be left to other disciplines: they are not the differentia specifica of verbal production of meaning.
The aim of this project is not to isolate linguistics from other sciences and its object from other sign
Semiotics
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