PERSPECTIVES
FOR CULTURAL SEMIOTICS
CONTENTS
4.1 MODERN
WESTERN TRADITIONS OF SEMIOTIC STUDIES
4.2 TRADITIONS
OF PROTO-SEMIOTIC STUDIES
4.3 TOWARD
A UNIFIED PERSPECTIVE
4.4 POSSIBILITIES
AND CHALLENGES IN CULTURAL SEMIOTICS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
4.1
MODERN WESTERN TRADITIONS OF SEMIOTIC STUDIES
Curiosity and concern
with respect to signs and symbols and their meanings is quite old
– especially with respect to language signs and symbols and their
meanings. But the focussing of this concern and curiosity leading
to the emergence of signs, symbols, and meanings as a distinct field
of inquiry had to wait till the middle of the 19th century
in the West. Man is so much
immersed in it all the time that he is prone to miss the wood for
the trees. The French proto-Symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-67)
has said in his famous 1857 poem “Correspondances” that
man passing through Nature passes through “de forėts de symboles”
– which is a remarkable poetic anticipation of the thinker’s insight,
namely, that man passing through life itself passes through forests
of signs and symbols. The
poet’s perception was matched only slightly later by two thinkers,
the largely self-taught American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce
(1839-1914) and the Swiss philologist who taught himself modern linguistics,
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) – the three getting a glimpse of
this forest of signs independently of each other. Peirce and Saussure between them laid the foundations
of modern semiotics – Saussure called it semiology. In spite of this formal naming of a field of
inquiry, the inquiry as such has been sustained till today in the
form of three traditions pursued in relative independence of each
other. (There are indications of late that a synthesis
is slowly emerging or going to emerge. But we anticipate.)
Peirce and Saussure approached the problem in the spirit of
scientists, the latter more so in that he was much more intimately
concerned with the science of language, which he regarded (and I think
rightly so) as a branch of semiology. (Linguistic scientists of course
must resist the temptation of making semiotics merely a branch or
an extrapolation of linguistics! The language metaphor mustn’t be
taken too seriously – thus, to speak of the language of music can
be misleading no less than illuminating.) Is semiotics a human science?
Or rather, is it a life science in view of sign processes sustained
by sub-human organisms? (Already zoosemiotics is a flourishing branch
of ethology, the science of animal behaviour.
If one trusts the observations of Jagadish Chandra Bose, 1858-1937,
one day there may be room for a phytosemiotics also.) As an empirical
enquiry semiotics should emulate rather than ape the rigour of natural
sciences (mere aping will lead to rigor mortis). As a theoretical
enquiry semiotics should neither get lost in carefully piled up and
pigeonholed detailed nor lose itself in careless, woolly, amateurish
philosophizing (the shunning of rigour will
lead to flaccid paralysis). Linguists have now been joined not only
by ethologists but also by communication and control engineers, students
of communication media (especially mass and folk media), and, following
the lead of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gregory Bateson, Mary Douglas, and
Clifford Geertz, cultural anthropologists. (There is no reason why
economists interested in symbols of power, loyalty, and hostility
shouldn’t join the fun.)
The second tradition of semiotic inquiry is the philosophical
one. (Philosophers have been calling it philosophy of language or
of meaning or more simply philosophical semantics and are only now
catching up with Peirce’s tripartite division of semiotics into syntactics,
semantics, and pragmatics.) Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austria engineer-philosopher
(1889-1951), is of course the important name here though of course
not the only one. (In particular, the phenomenology of Husseri and
his successors has played its important rôle here.) To put it crudely,
Wittgenstein replaced the traditional dyad of subject and object,
mind and matter by the triad of speaker, utterance, and thing – perhaps
he would have preferred to say, peoples, languages, and worlds. The enabled philosophers to separate to some
extent the problem of truth (language – world), the problem of knowledge
(people-world), and the problem of understanding (people – language)
from each other.
While the two traditions mentioned so far, semiotics as science
and semiotics as philosophizing, tend to focus on logic, mathematics,
and ordinary language, the third tradition tends to focus on poetic
language, art, narrative, rite, and magic – including of course sacred
poetry, sacred art, sacred narrative (myth), sacred rite (ritual),
and sacred magic. The pedigree
of this line of inquiry can be traced through symbolist criticism
to Baudelaire, through structuralist anthropology to Saussure, and
through symbol-oriented aesthetics to Ernst Cassirer, the German idealist. The best way of describing this tradition or
more accurately this cluster of sub-traditions (in which critics of
literature and of art, critics of culture and of society join) is
to identify it as observant participation in human life (with the
accent on participation). Thus we distinguish it from participant observation
on the part of the human scientist (with the accent on observation).
(An interesting kind of culture criticism will be the criticism of
a natural language – pointing out, for example, how to particular
language may encourage hypocrisy or bombast.) Semiotics as criticism
proposes to undertake not only evaluation but also interpretation. In so doing the literary critic mustn’t push
the language-oriented metaphor of taking any sign-construct to be ‘text’ too far. Calling everything human a ‘text’ is no better than calling everything
human a ‘language’. The key names in this third tradition would be
Barthes, Derrida, Eliade, Foucault, Ricoeur, Althusser, Trilling among
others.
4.2
TRADITIONS OF PROTO-SEMIOTIC STUDIES
The relative recency of semiotics must not make
us lose sight of the fact that curiosity and concern with respect
to signs, symbols, and meanings – especially in the domain of language
– is quite old, In particular, the Graeco-Roman civilization together
with its successor the Western civilization and the Indian civilization
have shown this concern and curiosity to an especial degree.
IT is no accident that ancient Greece and ancient India have
been the cradles of philosophical and grammatical activity of man,
as KROEBER (1962) has pointed out.
This should lead us to expect that both Europe and Indian show
up a good deal of what one might call proto-semiotics – semiotic inquiry
without the rubric.
I have no intention here to present
even a thumbnail sketch of the history of proto-semiotics in the ancient,
medieval, and early modern West and in ancient and medieval India.
For the West, Tzvetan TODOROV’s Theories of symbol (1982) is a good
survey. For India, KUNJUNNI RAJA’s Indian theories
of meaning (1963, 1969) is more expository than historical in scope.
Actually in India proto-semiotic enquiries turn up under various rubrics
- vyākaran*a (grammar), nirukta (etymology), mimamsā (hermeneutics),
nyāya (logic), ānvīks'ikī (philosophical analysis),
and of course sāhityasāstra (poetics). Contemporary Indian
enjoy the special privilege of double inheritance – the Indian and
the Western. They have a special obligation to quarry the
Indian inheritance for its insights with respect to signs, symbols,
and meanings.
My motive in adverting to proto-semiotic traditions in the West and in
India is merely to remind ourselves that people were doing very interesting
things in semiotics long before they started calling it as such and
that cultural semioticians will do well to avoid too myopic a vision
of their inheritance.
4.3
TOWARDS A UNIFIED PERSPECTIVE
The poor communication between the scientific,
the philosophical, and the critical-interpretative traditions- especially
between the philosophical and the other two -
and the poor awareness of the proto-semiotic inheritance is
hampering the proper development of semiotic studies.
It will be too much to expect any immediate unification but
surely it will not be too much to expect greater openness across the
boundaries. The proto-semiotic inheritance need not remain
the preserve of philologists and antiquarians. The sharp and shiny conceptual tools that philosophers have developed
over the years need to be put to use and in the process to be tested.
The less formalized insights of the critical-interpretative
effort or for that matter of the creative aritist should sere to enrich
the scientific effort and make its formulations more comprehensive.
There is altogether too much ad hoc and improvised systematization
all around – this is of course inevitable in the early phase of a
discipline, but the infant industries suffer in the long urn from
underexposure to the cross-traditional winds.
In short an integrated semiotics will not lay too much emphasis
on the pedigree of the insight. It
will also not lay emphasis on the area of semiosis – to recognize
divisions such as the semiotics of language, of art, of mathematics,
of scientific discourse, of religion, of positioning-posture-and-gesture
(proxemics-cum-kinesics), of advertisement, of mass media, and so
forth is more a matter of convenience than one of theoretical significance.
More to the point will be to work out the implications of the
frameworks such as the triad proposed by Peirce.
Charles
Morris, the intellectual descendant of Peirce, through the sociologist
George Mead, codified the Peircian triad (with an assist from Rudolf
Carnap whose amendment he gladly accepted).
Morris said that semiotic enquiries can be made in three successively
more inclusive perspectives –
(a-1) the
syntactic which relates signs in loose-knit assemblies and close-knit
codes, in languages and texts;
(a-2) the
semantic which relates signs to other signs to signates so that signates
of related signs constitute universes of discourse, worlds, or even
possible worlds;
(a-3) the
pragmatic which relates signs to other signs and to signates and to
the life of the users of signs so that signs so that signs may fit
situations, impress recipients, and express sources in certain ways.
How should one relate this triad from the first tradition to
the triad from the second tradition that we briefly looked at?
(b-1) the language-world relations –the problem
of truth or sense – satisfaction or reference;
(b-2) the language-people
relation –the problem of understanding;
(b-3) the people-world relation –the problem
of knowledge; alternatively the problem of action (work or play, praxis
or poesis)
And then there is the other triad recognized when one sees
semiotics as a critical – interpretative activity.
(c-1) the exegetic level – where the parts of the text are related to
each other and to the whole, where the text is related to the language
that it exemplifies;
(c-1) the hermeneutic level-where the text and its parts are related
to the imaginative or the postulated objects, topics, worlds that
the texts directs us to;
(c-3) the homiletic level – where the text and its parts are related
through the imaginative or postulated world tot he actual world of
the author and the recipient of the text.
4.4
POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES IN CULTURAL SEMIOTICS
Cultural semiotics is
sometimes called semiotic (cultural) anthropology.
The semiotics of culture promises to be an important tool of
investigation for the study of culture i general or for the study
of any of the large canonical segments of culture
science
the technology of use
and production of capital and consumer goods
ideology, dogma, and criticism;
philosophy
religion, myth, ritual,
and magic
arts, crafts, and games
economy
plays, festival, raptures,
and conviviality
health and care of the
handicapped
narrative, literature,
folklore
technology of defence,
aggression, and control of the recalcitrant
The semiotics of society
promises to be an important tool of investigation for the study of
society in general and for the study of any of the large canonical
segments of the social fabric.
rôle and status
modes for social transaction
relations and groups having
to do with blood and marriage kinship, age-grading, sex, territory,
power, interests, congeniality
social organization
political organization
instrumentation and control
(this includes polity, education, morality, law, manners, incentives
and disincentives, labour and management, defence and aggression policy,
loyalty and hostility patterns)
Whether we are enquiring
into culture – ways of man
with the world at large – or into society – ways of man with other
men – semiotics provides us with invaluable indices of the inner workings
that are otherwise not always directly accessible. Signs and symbols
are, as it were, the tracer elements that the investigator keeps track
of to find out the inner processes of the body of culture or the body
of society.
The rest of this section will be no more than a programmatic
statement of the possibilities that this approach opens up and of
the challenges that these various opportunities constitute.
(1)
The human sciences (I find this a more satisfactory rubric than the
excessively limiting and limited rubric ‘social sciences’) have been
haunted by the dichotomy between facts and values so clearly recognized
by the natural sciences – even by the life sciences.
Meanings offer us a common ground : we begin to realize that
the dichotomy is no absolute, rather is it a spectrum with polarities. The ‘facts’ are not wholly free from values
in so far as they are meanings. The ‘values’ are not wholly free from
facts in so far as they too are meanings.
(2)
What is the best view of a given cultural or social whole? Is it the
ringside view, the inside story that we get from a participation,
even a critical participation in the life of that whole?(I call it
the exocentric view.) Or rather is it the bird’s eye view, the detached
report that we get from an observation, even a critical observation
of the life of that whole? (I call it the exocentric view.) Is the
endocentric view simply a view from the vantage point of participation
in another cultural or social whole? What is wisdom to the participants
may be superstition to the observers, for example. Or can such an exocentric view ever aspire
to be a universalist view, aspire to the Archimedean stance? In other
words, the exocentric view may be either allocentric or anthropocentric.
(3)
Is the cultural fabric closely woven where loose ends are only an
exception? Is cultural change almost wholly to be accounted for where
conscious intervention or accidental shifts are only an exception?
Or rather is culture a loose-knit affair with only islands of precariously
achieved order? And is culture change full of accidents and interventions
where detecting larger patterns is at best a spare-time exercise?
Are these patterns of causation or patterns of meaning?
(4)
Are cultural patterns individually acquired and socially ratified?
Or rather are they socially acquired and individually ratified? In
accounting for cultural change what is the locus of innovation and
the locus of ratification? Or again are we barking up the wrong tree
altogether? Are cultural patterns largely a matter of genetic inheritance
and shifts in the genetic inheritance? The debate about the existence
of an ‘abiding’ human nature is really a part of this larger debate.
(5)
We have already touched upon the question of mediation in the preceding
section. Those who think that
all of man’s coping with things in the world is essentially mediated,
think that man has no access to the Dinge an Sich naturally
expect a good deal from semiotics, especially the semiotics of ordinary,
natural language. Those who think that mediation is only a secondary,
additional route linking man and things naturally think that the current
excitement about language and signs is not wholly justified.
(6)
Finally, what is the nature of this mediation (Whether it is the only
route or the additional route)? Is it essentially experiential? Essentially
a form of knowledge? OR is it essentially behavioural? Essentially
a form of activity – productive activity or even creative or revolutionary
activity?
I hope
I have said enough to bring out how cultural semiotics is not another
passing fad in human sciences, another gimmick to be marketed in human
sciences. IF it is realized that a good deal is at stake, then cultural
and social semiotics can serve to bring to a boil a number of debates
that have been going on in Western man’s attempts to know man.
Each debate may be settled one way or the other or may be transcended,
taken beyond the original question. But it will be a sad thing if
the opportunity is not taken up as a serious challenge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A part from amplifying
the references in the text, the bibliography also serves to draw attention
to the other publications of the author where he has amplified or
applied some of the points made in the text.
KELKAR, Ashok R. (1976a),
Modern Linguistics: A Historical Perspective from a South Asian Viewpoint”,
in : Seminar Papers in Linguistics. Kathmandu: Institute of
Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University, 21-34.
KELKAR, Ashok R. (1976b),
“A Note on the Meanings of ‘Form’”, in : Indian Philosophical Quarterly.
N.S. 3, 325-33.
KELKAR, Ashok R. (1980), Prolegomena to an Understanding
of Semiosis and Culture. Mysore
: Central Institute of Indian Languages.
KELKAR, Ashok R. (1983),
“Communication and Style in Legal Language”, in : Indian Bar Review
10 (1983), 363-78.
KELKAR, Ashok R. (1984),
“The Semiotics of Technical Names and Terms”, in: Recherches semiotique/Semiotic
inquiry 4 (1985), 303-26.
KELKAR, Ashok R. (1989),
“Aesthetics of Food: A Case Study”.
In: Poetics East and West, ed. Milena Doleźelova-Velingerová.
Toronto Semiotic Circle, Victoria College, University of Toranto,
Toronto. Presented at Mysore, January 1985.
KROEBER, Alfred L. (1962). A Roster of Civilizations
and Culture. Chicago: Aldine for Wenner-Gren Foundation of Anthropological
Research.
KUNJUNNI RAJA, K. (1963,
1969), Indian theories of meaning. Madras : The Adyar Library.
TODOROV, Tzvetan (1982),
Theories of Symbol. Oxford : Blackwell.
COLOPHON:
This
was published in Achim Eschbach and Walter Alfred Koch (ed.). A
Plea for Semiotics Brockmehyer, Bochum, F.R. Germany, 1987.
