Abstract: Ferdinand de Saussure assigned to semiotics the mission to study “the life of signs as part of social life” and the conception of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics was even more extensive. But, in fact, semiotics in recent decades has been mainly occupied by a much narrower class of signs, those whose main function is “referential” in the sense of Jakobson (including the reference to possible words, as happens in fiction, paintings, literature etc.). There is a wide range of signs, (or as we prefer to say today, emphasizing the complexity: of texts) that work in a very different way. They do not refer to some external reality, do not stay “for the other”, but communicate a sender’s identity (function “expressive”), invite recipients to treat him/her in a certain way (function “phatic”), attest and often even form some standing or relation. They are signs because they literally make sense and it is possible to lie through them, but they do not have the same structure and working which characterizes the “regular” texts. These signs are “self-effective” or performative, as Austin would say, or expressive; that means they work just for the fact of being used and put in action, as happens in cases as diverse as intrinsically coded acts, many religious and civil rites aimed at tmemory, in clothing, status symbols, nonverbal language etc.
Sense beyond Communication
VOLLI, Ugo
2017-01-01
Abstract
Abstract: Ferdinand de Saussure assigned to semiotics the mission to study “the life of signs as part of social life” and the conception of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics was even more extensive. But, in fact, semiotics in recent decades has been mainly occupied by a much narrower class of signs, those whose main function is “referential” in the sense of Jakobson (including the reference to possible words, as happens in fiction, paintings, literature etc.). There is a wide range of signs, (or as we prefer to say today, emphasizing the complexity: of texts) that work in a very different way. They do not refer to some external reality, do not stay “for the other”, but communicate a sender’s identity (function “expressive”), invite recipients to treat him/her in a certain way (function “phatic”), attest and often even form some standing or relation. They are signs because they literally make sense and it is possible to lie through them, but they do not have the same structure and working which characterizes the “regular” texts. These signs are “self-effective” or performative, as Austin would say, or expressive; that means they work just for the fact of being used and put in action, as happens in cases as diverse as intrinsically coded acts, many religious and civil rites aimed at tmemory, in clothing, status symbols, nonverbal language etc.
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