Page 211 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

semiosphere is a result of the continuous replacement of its limits by the production of texts confronting the nontextual sphere in a ongoing cultural attempt to integrate it into the world of human activity, pro- ducing an interior reorganization of this world of activity.
3. SemioticDomains
A survey of the different fields of research in semiotics is given in the general semiotic encyclopedias (Noth 1985; Sebeok (ed.) 1986; Posner (ed.) 1997). Con- tributions from the humanities (literary studies, epistemology, logic, hermeneutics, aesthetics, architecture, design, linguistics, film studies, musi- cology, theater studies) are abundant, but the social sciences (mass media studies, communication studies, studies of urban culture and popular culture, cultural anthropology, ideology studies, women's studies, pedagogics, marketing) and psychology (psycho- analysis, cognitive science) are also richly represented, as are theology and law. Less numerous are works in the sciences and medicine (animal communication studies, biology, computer sciences, pathological stud- ies of body signs), but a growing interest is shown in these fields. Many of the separate domains organize the research in special associations with journals and congress activities.
4. Future of Semiotics
The late-twentieth-century activities of semiotics in an international perspective indicate at least four main roads for the future progress of semiotics, which will run parallel to a continuous activity in the particular fields of research.
4.1 Cooperation of Schools
The historical differences between two basic traditions and between the main semiotic schools will tend to disappear in the years to come: the formal tradition needs the global perspective of the pragmatic tradition which will, in turn, need the detailed knowledge of specific sign systems presented by the formal tradition. The turning point will be the elements in the specific sign systems, which define their particular pragmatic capacity, namely the elements through which any sign system is anchored in a discursive process in relation to other sign systems and to situational conditions. These are the elements carrying the 'indexical or deic- tic functions,' which will attract increasing attention also inside the specific branches of semiotics.
4.2 CulturalSemiotics
There is a growing interest in 'cultural semiotics.' This will encompass the study of whole cultures, such as European culture, or larger segments of culture, like youth culture, as complex sign systems, with a special emphasis on the intercultural dynamic exchange of signs. The endeavor of this study is to cover all cultural
activities, from the basic establishment of time and space relations and structures of subjectivity to spec- ific cultural phenomena such as political rhetoric or the arrangement of pedestrian zones, seen in the per- spective of meaning production through signs. In this way, semiotics tries to integrate the more specific semi- otic studies from recent years in a global perspective. But in the field of cultural studies, semiotics is at the same time constantly confronted with nonsemiotic approaches which are necessary to delimit the texts to be investigated, so that semiotics has now been forced into an open interdisciplinarity, breaking down the walls around semiotics itself.
4.3 Human and Nonhuman Signs
Another trend will be the 'combination of human and nonhuman sign production,' be it animal com- munication or the computerized processing of infor- mation. This orientation leads to a reevaluation of the notion of sign and will focus on other types of units which create meaning, like signals, units with one articulation, etc., and it will open to a stronger interest in communicative and informational acts which are not, like the more traditionally conceived interpret- ation, exclusively bound to doubly articulated signs and complex sign systems. Here an interest in studying the cooperation between signs and nonsigns will emerge.
4.4 Possible Worlds
An important aspect of our modern culture which has been permeated by the effects of computer technology, is the way the logical problem of 'possible worlds,' dating back to Leibniz, becomes part of the meaning production, not only in different types of fiction or of logical constructs, but in the process of the planning of the future. We have to be able to construct scenarios for the long-term consequences of things such as the depositing of nuclear waste, of huge climatic changes, of computerized communication processes and their influence on local cultures, etc. We are able to con- struct such scenarios in great detail, but none of us will live long enough to see if they will ever be real or true.
But despite the fact that these possible worlds (or virtual realities) only exist in sign systems, we have, nevertheless, to respond to them in terms of practical actions here and now, and in doing so we inevitably take a stand as to their reality. Semiotics will be of increasing importance in the construction of possible futures as cultural and not only technological universes.
See also: Literary Structuralism and Semiotics; Prag- matics.
Bibliography
Boudon R 1968 A quoi serf la notion de structure? Gallimard, Paris
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