What Is Signifying?

IRMENGARD RAUCH

I

From 28 to 30 June 1978 approximately two hundred persons, representing eighty-five institutions of higher learning and fifteen nations around the world, convened at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in order to bring into open and direct association the disciplines of semiotics and linguistics. The locus for this gathering of interested scholars and students was particularly felicitous, since the 1978 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute was in session at Illinois in that period. Indisputably, the time for such a conference was ripe, in view of what appear to be the ever fading borders of certain allied humane sciences, in particular those of philosophy and linguistics, psychology and linguistics, and anthropology and linguistics, and, in turn, their probing research into the realms of the natural sciences.

Why then was semiotics chosen as a “cover” term for those sciences which were regarded as being juxtaposed to linguistics? That is, Why was this meeting not simply conceived as one concentrating on linguistics and its related sciences? The answer to this question is not a simple one. It resides within the very nature of the two disciplines of semiotics and linguistics, both in their noncontroversial characteristics and in their vigorously disputed properties. Linguistics in its tendency to be reductionistic ardently strives to contain its interests within the bounds of language, even at a time when the very definition of language is becoming increasingly elusive. Semiotics in its expansionistic tendencies claims, nevertheless, a unified object—the sign—whose better understanding is progressively strengthening the scientific underpinnings of this discipline. An alleged tug-of-war ensues then between these two disciplines, with the premier sign system language in the middle. But is this tug-of-war real?

A bond between contemporary semiotics and modern linguistics was assured by their common rebirth out of structuralism and indeed was determined by the inalienable position of language within semiotics. Charles Sanders Peirce, master of synthesis that he was, equated language with man, man with the sign, the sign with thought, and thus thought with man. Goudge interprets Peirce’s equations as suggestive of the conclusion “that the major factor in the development of mind has been language. To the use of words and allied signs the human spirit owes its evolution” (1950:233). For Peirce the evolution of the human spirit is correlative to man’s biological development; Goudge explains that “rational thought is held to have arisen in the course of the human animal’s struggle to escape from a state of doubt and reestablish stable belief. Certain procedures of thinking prove themselves efficacious in this struggle, are repeated until they become fixed habits, and are eventually formulated by the logician as the principles of inference” (1950:128). Peirce underscores the fact that man’s ability to hypothesize is instinctive, a product of nature, comparable to the instinct of any species of animal for feeding and breeding. Thus man as “The Signifying Animal” portrays in a few words the heart of Peircean phenomenology underlying semiotics. It shows language to be integral to thought, thought to man, and man to nature—elements welded into a framework eminently appropriate as a construct for effecting cross-fertilization between linguistics and its sister disciplines.

Many linguists and semioticians would be startled to learn that in 1978 Noam Chomsky, called “the greatest theoretical linguist of our time” by Bar-Hillel (1970:214), wrote that “the philosopher to whom I feel closest and whom I’m almost paraphrasing is Charles Sanders Peirce” (Chomsky 1979:71). However, Chomsky’s turn to Peirce can only surprise those unaware of the history of the independent, parallel, complementary, and mutual developments in linguistic method and in semiotic method. If we suppose recent semiotic history to begin with Peirce and with Ferdinand de Saussure, we can perhaps uncover some of the seeds of the seeming tug-of-war between linguistics and semiotics with the reawakening of semiotics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Saussure was first and foremost interested in defining the linguistic sign, and he saw the understanding of it as the key to unraveling all other semiological systems, while Peirce did not base his sign system on any particular modality. Subsequently, linguistic literature is filled with references to the primacy of linguistics in semiotics, such as the claim by Leonard Bloomfield, another linguistic leader of the century, “Linguistics is the chief contributor to semiotic” (I939-55).

Not only was the association of linguistics with semiotics cultivated, but the indispensable presence of language in life was stressed, with the understanding of language as the object of linguistics. By implication, the verbal language of humans within the life of humans was thus stressed. As is to be expected then, from another spokesman of this century’s linguistic heritage, Edward Sapir, we hear, “Every cultural pattern and every single act of social behavior involve human communication in an explicit or implicit sense. . . . Language is the communication process par excellence in every known society . . (1931 [1958]:104-105).

The central position of language was advocated in nonlinguistic circles as well. Claude Lévi-Strauss, in formulating a concept of society with an integrated theory of communication consisting of the exchange of messages, of goods, and of mates, observed that “language comes into play at all levels” (1963:83), while Julia Kristeva wrote that “the major constraint affecting any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies, i.e., that it is articulated like a language” (1975:47).

It is likely that this increasing momentum to viewing language within semiotics as an analog to language within linguistics has exacerbated the tug-of-war between the two disciplines. On the semiotic side there result widespread speculation and doubt about the existence of a unified method; and linguistics, for its part, is concerned that a gradual erosion of precision and rigor in its approach may take place. This bewildering state of semiotic and linguistic affairs prompted another of the twentieth century’s giants, claimed rightfully by both disciplines, Thomas A. Sebeok, to say: “The subject matter of linguistics, as we all ‘know,’ is communication consisting of verbal messages and the under-girding verbal code enabling them. By contrast, the concept of nonverbal communication is one of the most ill defined in all of semiotics” (1977:1065).

II

The declaration of Sebeok confining linguistics, although not linguists, to verbal language, and, in turn, laying bare the indeterminate state of nonverbal communication represents a sobering moment in this history which we have been describing. It brings to a sudden halt the territorial struggle between semiotics and linguistics, for the striking clarity of Sebeok’s conviction provokes researchers on both sides to reassess their positions. The researchers who convened to address the grammar of language and experience at the conference on The Signifying Animal were essentially confronted with the task of answering the singular question, What is signifying? that is, What does it mean to signify and what sort of agent does the signifying?

To address this question, the working plan of the meeting was constructed around six particular topics. The opening session focused directly on the problem of the nature of language. Charles E. Osgood, in “What Is a Language?” aims to answer, “How would one identify something as a language if he encountered what might be one in an obviously nonhuman species? . . . for that matter, is the natural signing of deaf-mutes a language? The game of chess? And what about the language’ of music or art?” (p. 9). These questions posed by Osgood indicate the leitmotiv of the conference. Osgood for his part undertakes to consider them by proposing a definition of language. Indeed, he hypothesizes a definition of language consisting of six criteria general enough for measuring communication in several species; assesses various animals for possession of language; and concludes a total no for the clam, a partial yes for the bird and the dog, and a solid yes for the bee and the ape. Ten additional characteristics, five structural and five functional, are minimally necessary for a language to cross the threshold into being a strictly human language. Besides these sixteen universal features, Osgood postulates a set of five nondefining traits of human language, without which a language would still be considered human but nevertheless “rather strange” (p. 27).

William Orr Dingwall, in “Human Communicative Behavior: A Biological Model,” deals a further blow to traditional definitions of language. In studying communicative behavior as a biological function, Dingwall concludes that “the determination whether one communicates in a human manner cannot be made in absolute terms; rather, some gradient measure must be employed” (p. 78), and he designs six biologically based features against which he measures nonhuman and human primates and normal and abnormal humans, both adults and children. Significantly then, the two linguists Osgood and Dingwall approach a Peircean semiotics in extending the domain of language possibilities to include nonhuman species.

The second conference topic considered the language act, which, by consisting of an organism that produces an expression in order to refer by the expression to something, correlates to the semiotic act, comprising an interprétant, a sign, and an object, that, in turn, correlate to the triad pragmatics, syntax, and semantics, respectively. The reformulation of the definition of language is particularly conducive to constructing linguistic descriptions pragmatistically; indeed this was clearly demonstrated by the fact that papers presenting linguistic data around the second topic turned to pragmatics. Thus, Roland Posner, in explaining the “Semantics and Pragmatics of Sentence Connectives in Natural Language,” shows, on the basis of primarily English examples, the indispensable role played by larger linguistic context and by extra-linguistic context.

It would seem that the so-called linguistic sentence, that is, a sentence descriptively self-sufficient within its own immediate confines, is dead—not a minor matter in the history of modern linguistic method. In fact, the conceptual dependence of semantics on pragmatics is understood so clearly by William P. Alston in “The Bridge between Semantics and Pragmatics” that he states it in the form of a “Use Principle,” followed by the identification of the meaning of a sentence in terms of his postulated “Illocutionary-Act-Potential Thesis”. The pragmatic turn in linguistics certainly mirrors, albeit still somewhat dimly, the semiotic attitude toward words and sentences which is grounded in Peircean pragmatism—a tradition in the light of which Carnap proclaims: “pragmatics is the basis for all of linguistics” (1959:13).

Appropriately, the third topic considered by the conference went to the core of Peirce’s method of observing all phenomena, of which language of course is one, namely, Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness—the all-pervasive categories in his cognitive procedure. For Peirce “the entire universe . . . is . . . composed exclusively of signs” (CP 5.448n) whose “most fundamental division” (CP 2.275) is effected by the trichotomy icon, index, symbol, correlating to his phenomenological categories, respectively. The icon, the index, and the symbol correlate back to the sign, the object, and the interpretant, respectively, since they are obviously a First, a Second, and a Third, in that order. Peirce’s elegant superstructure is elucidated by Joseph Ransdell in his comparison of “Semiotic and Linguistics.” Ransdell understands the essence of signs, and therefore words, to reside basically not in their use, but in their using, that is, in their doing, and he shows how the life of a sign or a word is ultimately explicated by the icon/index/symbol distinction.

In discussing the category “Thirdness and Linguistics,” Rulon S. Wells highlights additional properties of language, specifically its creative aspects and its constraining aspects, to which he finds an analog in art. Both the rules of language and the rules of art are Thirds, but they differ from the rules of nature, which are also Thirds, in that the latter are laws rather than rules, in a strict sense. The distinction between rule and law is vital to the axiomatic method by which the interpretation of signs takes place—a topic which fittingly formed part of the final session (see below). The present session served well to underscore the trichotomous epistemological nature of Peirce’s model in distinction to the strongly dichotomous model of Saussure.

The fourth conference topic exploited another contrast between the linguistically based and the philosophically based nineteenth-twentieth century traditions of semiotics, namely, a semiotics particular to human language and its immediate modalities, and a semiotics general to all communication, the former indicative of the Saussurean convention, the latter of the Peircean. Accordingly, the fourth topic sought out the language-inlay in nonverbal communication. John N. Deely, in a stunning reverse approach to the topic, opens with “The Nonverbal Inlay in Linguistic Communication.” Deely posits a prelinguistic zoo-semiotic level of experience common to both man and higher anthropoids, a level of experience which can yield postlinguistic sociocultural institutions only by passing through a language layer. Thus, while the philosopher Deely is magnifying the crucial role of language, he is simultaneously presenting the nongeneral view of language, which would equate it with linguistics.

All the more stunning then, in contrast, is the paper of the linguist Robert B. Lees, “Language and the Genetic Code,” which entertains the analog of the language of the mind to the language of the cell. In maintaining that “the mind arose and evolved in parallel fashion, aided by the invention of an internal representation system, language, in much the same way that biological evolution was aided by the invention of the genetic code” (p. 218), Lees echoes Peirce’s understanding of the evolution of the human mind (see sect. I above). With Peirce, Lees might fittingly conclude: “It is somehow more than a mere figure of speech to say that nature fecundates the man with ideas which, when those ideas grow up, will resemble their father, Nature” (CP 5.592).

The strong analog of language to biology continued into the fifth topic of the conference, which expanded the language-inlay to language-likeness in all of animate existence. Paul Ekman, in designing a system to describe “Facial Signals,” suggests the possibility that facial actions as conversational signals derive their specific role from their biological function. Whereas raising the brows enlarges the visual field, lowering them diminishes it. As he observes: “It seems consistent for a movement which increases vision to be employed in greetings, exclamations, and question marks, and for a movement which decreases vision to be employed in calls-for-information, and in emphasis marks and question marks where there is some uncertainty or difficulty” (p. 237). Differing from Ekman, who considers conversational facial actions with speech and without speech, David McNeill concentrates on the interlacing of motor action with speech. In “Iconic Relationships between Language and Motor Action,” McNeill implies that the long-disregarded symbiosis of language and motor action is of such an extent that the universal grammar of language is adapted according to that relationship. Obviously, this contention introduces a further parameter in the definition of language, and McNeill holds that confirmation of his theory depends on the thorough investigation of the affinity between language and thought.

The closing topic, language at the crossroads of linguistics and semiotics, elicited papers which exploit Peirce’s theory of how we reason, how we introduce new ideas. The conference has finally come full circle in the “cover” discipline, semiotics, proceeding from the nature of language through the tools of semiotic to the nature of thought, which interlocks again with language (see sect. I above). For Peirce, the mind is commensurate with cognition through the laws of inference; it is equal to the continual interpretation of signs and, therefore, “all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language” (Peirce 1955:258). It is for the theory of inference, specifically abduction, that the Peircean model finds an advocate in the linguist Chomsky (see sect. I above). Strikingly, Saussurean semiotic tradition takes a turn toward formalized language in the history of linguistics through the application of Peircean abduction to linguistic problems. While David Savan in his paper “Abduction and Semiotics” chose an Old Czech sound change as data for elucidating the subtleties of the three types of reasoning, Raimo Anttila in “Language and the Semiotics of Perception” applies the Peircean categories Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, which have correlates in abduction, induction, and deduction, respectively, to general linguistic concepts such as phoneme, morpheme, and allophonic variation. With regard to allophonic variation, Anttila asks “Why would such a disturbing agent be the rule in the languages of the world?” (p. 275). He answers that language perception, to which abduction is integral, feeds upon variation, and that “[t]hrough this variation, phonemes absorb signals of individuals, emotional states, geographical regions, and social strata” (p. 276). The final paper of this volume, “Between Linguistics and Semiotics: Paralanguage,” has been added to the conference collection as an example of phonological variation signaling geographical region. Such variation is not unusual for linguistics; what is unusual is the fact that this paper uncovers a unique type of verbal communication, that of a dead language whose primary characteristic lies in the twilight zone between linguistics and semiotics.

The tug-of-war between linguistics and semiotics (see sect. I above) appears negligible, perhaps only a mirage, after one has viewed the amalgam of autonomous but dependent disciplines which emerge from the papers of the conference on The Signifying Animal: The Grammar of Man’s Language and of His Experiences. That these two humane sciences, as demonstrated in this conference, have the ability to harness, albeit to varying degrees, a common object, is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the common object, communication, represents, in Sebeok’s words, “the capacity . . . that distinguishes living beings from inanimate substances” (1978:20). To signify then, is ultimately to be alive.

REFERENCES

Bar-Hillel, Y. 1970. Aspects of language. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University.

Bloomfield, L. 1939. Linguistic aspects of science. International encyclopedia of unified science, vol. 1, no. 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Carnap, R. 1959. Introduction to semantics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chomsky, N. 1979. Language and responsibility. J. Viertel, trans. New York: Pantheon.

Goudge, T. A. 1950. The thought of C. S. Peirce. New York: Dover.

Kristeva, J. 1975. The system and the speaking subject. In The tell-tale sign: a survey of semiotics, T. A. Sebeok, ed., 47-55. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press.

Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963. Structural anthropology. C. Jacobson and B. G. Schoepf, trans. New York: Basic Books.

Peirce, C. S. 1931-58. Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vols. 1-6, C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss, eds.; vols. 7-8, A. W. Burks, ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

——. 1955. Philosophical writings of Peirce. J. Buchler, ed. New York: Dover.

Sapir, E. 1931. Communication. In Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, D. G. Mandelbaum, ed., 104-9. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958. (Reprinted from Encyclopedia of the social sciences, vol. 4, 78-81. New York: Macmillan, 193 1.)

Sebeok, T. A. 1977. Zoosemiotic components of human communication. In How animals communicate, T. A. Sebeok, ed., 1055-77. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

——. 1978. “Talking” with animals: zoosemiotics explained. Animals, December 1978, pp. 20-23, 36.