Page 207 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

The basic molecule of the hierarchy consists of sev- eral sign systems: first, we have a 'denotative' language, constituted by the sign function and thus having an expression plane and a content plane, e.g., the language used by Humphrey Bogart when he orders a scotch on the rocks in a bar. Second, we have a 'metalanguage' which contains an exhaustive formal description of this language as English, thus having the entire denotative language as its content plane and the glossematic description as the expression plane. Also, glossematics will contain nonformal elements, i.e., certain indefinable elements which can be inte- grated in a 'meta-metalanguage' and there be given a formal definition, i.e., in a nonlinguistic science (phil- osophy, logic, mathematics, etc.). This language will constitute a third step.
Now, if the metalanguage has left out what is only concurrent in the denotative language, there will be the possibility that another type of metalanguage, called the 'connotative' language, will deal with those formal leftovers. Such a language will have the entire denotative language as its expression plane and also comprise, for example, the quality of Humphrey Bogart's almost mythological voice as a condition for a specific content which is more comprehensive than the whisky as such ordered by the movie star, it is the-scotch-ordered-by-Humphrey-Bogart. This ad- ditional creation of meaning can roughly be char- acterized as 'symbolic' and allows for a new met- alanguage that can provide us with a formal description ad modum glossematicum of this enlarged meaning, i.e., an analysis of aesthetic, ideological, or mythological effects. The connotative language is par- allel to the metalanguage. The hierarchical relation between the denotative language, the metalanguage, and the connotative language with its progress to higher levels has enlarged the possibilities in structural semiotics to take into account a multileveled pro- duction of meaning.
After the publication of A. J. Greimas's Semantique structural (1966), the ideas of structuralist semiotics have had an impact on a variety of subdisciplines of semiotics: literary studies, film studies, anthropology, art history, architecture, etc. Especially in France, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Canada, Brazil (and now also in the USA), an ongoing application and reworking of notions are taking place.
2.2 PhenomenologicalSemiotics
Semioticians inspired by phenomenology can hardly be said to form a school. What they have in common is the application of notions and ideas from Edmund Husserl's (1859-1938) phenomenology, particularly as expounded in his Logische Untersuchungen (1900- 01). They belong to a great variety of disciplines, and except for the activities of the Prague School between the two wars, they never formed a group. In the Prague group, influential personalities were Jan
Mukafovsky (1891-1975), Karl Btihler (1879-1963) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982).
Husserl himself was not primarily preoccupied with semiotic questions, but with the traditional philo- sophical problem of how to obtain true knowledge. In order to reach that goal, we have to direct our consciousness toward the objects; we have to express this relation in signs; and, finally, we have to acknowl- edge that objectivity is based on certain structural principles. This argument leads to the introduction of three semiotically relevant key notions: 'inten- tionality,' 'sign,' and 'foundation.'
Husserl wants to use these notions to go beyond the realm of the sign to the truth of the object. The pur- pose of semiotics, on the other hand, is to study the domain of the sign with the sign as its object, to see how the sign is founded, and to see how intentionality works in a sign process to create meaning. As this endeavor is only an intermediary step in Husserl's research, the reference to Husserl in phenom- enological semiotics is always selective and often indirect. He indicates a horizon for the semiotic research interest.
Husserl introduces two types of signs: first, the 'indi- cation,' which is a sign that points to a defacto pres- ence of the object, without attributing any content to it—the noise from an unidentified thing approaching you; second, the 'expression' in which a mind makes clear that it has been oriented towards an object—a shout like 'Watch out!' accompanied by a nodding head and a pointing finger. Here, the sign-object relation is rooted in a subjectivity, or to put it less phenomenologically: somebody wants to say some- thing to somebody.
Now, the point is that this combination of sign and intentionality as a communicative intersubjectivity is not in the first place an act of deliberate will. It is made possible by the fact that the sign is 'founded,' i.e., it belongs to a structure of relations, called a pure logical grammar, through which it is constituted as a specific type of object, namely as capable of carrying intentionality in intersubjective communication. The notion of foundation is adapted by the Prague School as the notion of structure.
When Husserl's discussion of the sign is transferred to linguistics or other disciplines with a semiotic per- spective, it is obvious that a sign structure can never be interpreted as an immanent formal structure. In the structure, the sign occupies the position of an intermediary instance in a communicative and ref- erential structure, and the grammar of any sign system will have to pay special attention to elements which articulate the communicative functions, such as deictic elements.
This is what happens in Karl Buhler's so-called organon model (Sprachtheorie 1934). Here the sign is the 'organon' or medium through which an expressive relation to the sender, an appellative relation to the
Semiotics
185