The Strategic Shift of the Domain of Theoretical Semiotics: From Reality to Discourse
Global semiotics can be taken as equivalent to comparative semiotics that leads to a new reflection on general or theoretical semiotics. The global/comparative semiotics must involve all social/human sciences. In fact, semiotics will become one of the theoretical bases for reorganizing and reforming the entire humanities of mankind. Signs have been the central conceptual units used for the study of meaning in semiotic history. While for the past decades the problem of meaning has been more and more expanded to the structure and formation of the entire discourse of the humanities. In other words, our concern with the progress of semiotics today is closely linked to our endeavor for the progress of human sciences in general. Therefore semiotics can be regarded as a main gateway to the process of epistemological and methodological modernization of global human sciences. With respect to this goal, the main object-domain of semiotic operation will be gradually shifted from the actual world to the academic discourse. Therefore international semiotic movement innately implies the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural theoretical practice. It is multiply comparative in general. This comparative methodology can be applied to different academic aspects regarding areas, disciplines, schools and cultural traditions. Globalization is equivalent to the topographic expansion of any kind with respect to its “spatial” integrity. Any comparative scholarly operation means an intellectual procedure performed, beyond the single-disciplinary framework, in combination with other disciplines formed in different cultural and academic contexts.
Furthermore, comparative studies refer to the dialogue among scholars with different backgrounds, bringing about a necessity for establishing the common semantic ground for carrying out the meaningful communication among different types of academic discourses that are determined by different scholarly constitutions and institutions. Semiotic globalization means the expanded dialogue and cooperation among agents with different disciplinary training and cultural backgrounds. The concept of sign provides with a common denominator for communication among different scholarly languages. While different cultural and academic traditions will make the formation of a common denominator in semiotic communication more difficult and accordingly increase intricacies for inquiry. In this sense, any Euro-American semiotic centrism would bring about an operative restriction on comparative studies. Therefore in the global semiotics there exist two different processes: the spreading of the Euro-American knowledge to other areas of the world and the latter’s further original study in a comparative term.
In fact, there is a self-contradiction implied in the term philosophy of semiotics. Many theoretical consequences in semiotic studies come from non-philosophical disciplines such as linguistics, anthropology, historiography, psychology and others. Furthermore, the philosophical-centrism of semiotic theory must involve different philosophical schools that differ from each other in different ways that would involve semiotic discussions into traditional philosophical disputes. The above distinction is further connected to different interpretations of the nature of knowledge in general and that of the humanities in particular. This distinction is also related to the different opinions about the status quo of the current humanities: is their present state naturally-historically justified, or something that should be more thoroughly reformed? The interdisciplinary character of semiotic theory is contrary to any philosophical reductionism. Therefore the semiotic way of thinking should become de-philosophical-centrist in character. This result will profoundly change the traditional way of theoretical practice in the humanities as well. In addition, the cross-cultural development of semiotics will further strengthen this tendency of the new theoretical reconstruction. One of the reasons, among others, lies in that the compositions and functions of the western and nonwestern philosophies are essentially divergent. This divergence nevertheless can be positively used to promote the development of semiotic theory in its interdisciplinary-directed practice. In this sense semiotics can be operatively used as a general name for academic-organizing strategy. By justifying the status quo of the social and human sciences, the present way of semiotic studies is naturally a mere part of the former. In order to reform or modernize the humanities, (general) semiotics is interpreted first as a tool for reorganizing the structure of the humanities. With such an expanded function (general) semiotics should readjust its traditional structure and function as well.
We may try to practically put it this way: is semiotics what it has been performed actually in its present manners; or is its identity to be defined in reference with all other existing disciplines currently performed in the academic world. But global semiotics will strengthen a desideratum for forming a new type of meta-theoretical practice in order to treat a general theoretical problem facing current semiotic studies: this is the multi-interdisciplinary-directed theoretical practice in human sciences. In this sense, semiotic theory should be linked to the entire theoretical structure of human sciences, and to participate in the current reorganizing process of the latter. This desideratum will be further requested when semiotics is to expand itself to the non-western academic world. In other words, the traditional philosophy-central semiotic theory should turn to be the present interdisciplinary-directed one. On one hand, the task of semiotics is much more expanded; and on the other its scientific significance could be more enhanced as well, for it now could become the very main impulse for modernizing the process of all human sciences. Accordingly semiotics lives in and merges itself with the entire humanities. The regular scholarly project is mostly organized in various disciplinary-central frameworks. While semiotic inquiry is always faced with the entire situation of rapidly changeable interactions between various traditional disciplines. The theoretical semiotician is not only a regular operator along the fixed procedure in the certain disciplinary field; he is also a creative adventurer working in interdisciplinary-boundary areas. Therefore we can see a basic contrast between two kinds of scholars: The disciplinary-specialist and the interdisciplinary-mediator. In other word, there is a problem of relationship between semiotics and other regular disciplines. In general, semioticians tend to have a special interest in theoretical interaction of different academic systems. We may say they are the specialists dealing with the multi-disciplinary-relational problems in the academic network. If so, IASS should make a great use of its academic image and resources to organize international semiotic activities in a more pluralist way. In terms of this new interpretation about theoretical and applied semiotics, the former is closer to the study of the interrelationship and interaction of all discipline-rooted theories, especially those originating from the humanities implicative of semantic ambiguity. A theoretical semiotician, besides being perhaps specialized in technical details of definite disciplines, is also specialized in the intellectual relationship of epistemological and methodological theories implied in various disciplines. No any other kind of scholars can be more suitable than semioticians for playing such a mediating role in the common enterprise for reorganizing the theoretical topography of social and human sciences in the world. In conclusion, the disciplinary-centrist scholarship and the interdisciplinary scholarship are mutual-complementary in our expanded semiotic academic contexts. In certain sense the both belong to the different strategic levels respectively: the single-disciplinary-methodological one and the interdisciplinary-epistemological one. The latter is the user or applicant of the former in a broad sense. We could say that semiotics is a new type of the learning about the multiple scientific relationships among theories in different disciplines.
Many contemporary semiotics-practiced scholars have cherished intellectually and academically more ambitious goals beyond their own respective specialties. This common tendency becomes the very source of and inspiration for their respective semiotic adventures. Therefore as the followers of the same line of semiotic adventure we should be inspired by the same kind of intellectual enthusiasm when we are involved in the global semiotic practice in the new century. In my opinion, semiotics has already become the very leading epistemology and methodology for the western-nonwestern academic dialogue in the humanities. Why does semiotics be especially related to human sciences? We have already much more practically reliable or objectively stable knowledge about natural and social sciences. It is the humanities that innately lack the common denominator concerning signification and evaluation for communication among different intellectual traditions or streams of thought. For the purpose of attaining mutual understanding and peaceful co-existence of different human beings in the globalization era, we have to find or create a common denominator for meaningful communication among different beliefs and thoughts. Semiotics has proved itself to be the most effective means for attaining this significant aim. Thus, semiotics should be linked to all practices concerning the semantic improvement of the global humanities. Its interdisciplinary strategy can be performed at two levels: the disciplinary level and the interdisciplinary level. The interdisciplinary operation at the double levels across academia will strengthen the process of reorganizing or modernizing human sciences. The interdisciplinary-directed semiotics will also further shift the disciplinary-framed scientific projects to the problematic-central projects. This will help us to consider our scholarly programs without being restricted by the established disciplinary patterns, thus making them more relevant to the new epistemological desiderata regarding scholarship and reality alike.
The international or global significance of Chinese and other nonwestern semiotics lies in that its development would also influence the constitution of the existing Euro-American semiotic traditions in future. The development of Chinese and other nonwestern semiotics will be helpful to reformulate the above-mentioned problems implied in human sciences in general. Therefore Chinese, Asian as well as all nonwestern semiotics are parts of the main developments of current interdisciplinary/cross-cultural semiotic practices. Among them the Chinese one presents its special potential in a quite unique way. A semiotic reformulation of the Chinese classical discourse can lead to making this heterogeneous dialogue possible. The process should be firstly based on a sufficiently interdisciplinary interaction between the Chinese and Western traditional academic discourses. The Chinese tradition basically consisting of philosophical, historical, literary and artistic discourses provides a different kind of intellectual sources of mankind that could complement, enrich, and even impact the knowledge of the Western humanities as long as the former has been suitably translated to the universally intelligible language at first. Unfortunately the value of the latter can hardly present itself at its original expression plane in the modern context. Chinese semiotics set in a suitable framework of cross-cultural semiotics will produce a double impact on the global humanities: to make the Chinese traditional scholarship more commensurable and communicable with the western humanities and to stimulate in turn a spiritual impulse to global semiotics. In the contrary, a philosophical-directed semiotic theory would perhaps hamper the development of Chinese semiotics. Despite using the same term “philosophy”, Chinese and western philosophies are widely divergent in constitution and function. The involved negative impact would be even doubly increased for Chinese-Western comparative semiotics because the latter must be involved in both interdisciplinary and cross-cultural operation.
Now we can put the above statements in a brief way: Semiotics can be taken as a general designation for the inquiry into relational structure of different disciplinary theories in global human sciences. In its global meta-theoretical sense, far from being a mere singly identified discipline, semiotics could become a general “conductor” for the “symphony” of human sciences, with a special attention upon the multi-relational problems regarding all their theoretical resources. The existing disciplines have been naturally and practically formed in history. As long as they are needed in the academic market they have a rationale to continue existing that way. The existing way of doing scholarship can of course satisfy the intellectual interest of the professional-directed educators. But a new type of intellectual interest directed towards the inter-relational problems among different theoretical resources of various disciplines can only arise after its relatively getting rid of the predominant professional patterns. Once again, semiotics would be therefore understood as a study of the relationship of different disciplinary theories.
This position presents itself as a typical rational/empirical character intellectually directed towards various domains of reality. Any type of science is directed towards certain kind of reality rather than to the mere fiction. Thus semiotic scholarship is in fact a science rather than an art. The distinction between the scientific and the artistic operations is also based on academic rationalism that is in contrast with the so-called post-modernism or epistemological nihilism in general. Why does semiotics be more capable of dealing with interdisciplinary and cross-cultural subject matters? Because interdisciplinary and cross-cultural semiotic communication firstly indicates a necessity for establishing a relevant semantic and grammarian means for bridging different traditional types of academic discourses. For example, we must create the common units at the expression plane for communication between some heterogeneously formulated discourses. With respect to either western interdisciplinary-academic or to the western-nonwestern comparative dialogues, we cannot use the terminology of one discipline to fully relevantly express the discursive content of other disciplines. That is why, for example, we cannot reduce theoretical principles of linguistics or anthropology to the philosophical one either. Similarly, we can hardly well describe Chinese philosophical discourse in terms of the western philosophical terminology. The present comparative theoretical studies among all cultures suffer from the lack of such a pertinent semantic commensurability.
The term semiotics is evidently far from being a sufficiently suitable designation for all studies of theoretical relations in different disciplines of human sciences, but it is at least a right name for the most crucial type of them: the multiple semantic commensurability among different academic discourses at interdisciplinary and cross-cultural levels in human sciences.
The semiotics in this expanded sense implies also its expanded object-domain: The pan-semantic institutions of academic discourses. As we point out before, in western semiotic history the sign is the basic concept to unify the semiotic way of thinking involving nature, culture, logic and language. However, the new situation in semiotic globalization requests a strategic expansion that leads to a double-structure of the elementary objects of semiotics: signs in natural, cultural and linguistic domains on one hand and semantic institutions in academic discourse on the other. This strategic turn accords with the scholarly expansion from the traditional sign-discipline to the semantic mechanism of global human sciences. The global development of semiotics even leads to a new fixation of semiotic/semantic units. Semiotics of discourse and of semantic analysis of artistic institutions in the current western semiotics will play a more and more expanded role for cross-cultural semiotics. The so-called semantic institutions, which are effective in forming the semantic constitution of the academic written texts, involve three different levels: the social-cultural conditional, the external academic institutional and the internal academic institutional. What we discuss here belongs to the last one, namely the semantic institution of disciplines in a narrow sense. After all, the semiotic-semantic units must be enlarged to include the more increased levels of the semantic mechanism that determine the constitutions and functions of academic discourses, especially those in human sciences.
When structural linguistics emerged the concept “sign” was generalized and taken as a general term with the double aspects: the linguistic and the (pre-scientific) philosophical. This double identity of sign has roughly been further expressed in the present two different intellectual directions: the French one and the American one. In a broad sense the former might be more related to human/historical sciences and the latter more to natural/social sciences. The both semiotic movements share the same traditional term “sign” but with different meanings and referents of it. The both are important for our further studies of semiotics. But the semiotic development for the past four decades urges a necessary reconsideration of the dominant role of this central concept used in semiotic studies today. Sign is used as the basic unit to deal with semantic analysis while this semantic analysis should involve multiple types of expressive and interpretive mechanisms in social/cultural world as well as in academic discourses. A proper semiotic “unit” could be larger and more complicated than what described by these original linguistic and natural units; it will be related to an organizational system with signs as mere constituent units. But the multi-structured semantic mechanism makes the basic constituent units less independent and less effective in shaping the semantic organization of academic discourses. A semiotics of academic discourses requires a more pertinent set of units to describe multiple semantic mechanisms, such as the linguistic, logical, intellectually and historically pre-determined expressive, pragmatic as well as political-ideological-procedural. All such added factors could be said to be “hermeneutic” in operational direction. In other words, an academic semiotics must be related to a semiotic-hermeneutic procedure. Therefore interpretative units could be more related to the “organizational units” than to the natural (both linguistic and physical) units. We call these organizational units as semantic institutions whose original modes are what we originally learn from cinematic-institutions in film semiotics. The request for these expanded semiotic units is especially due to the involvement of cross-cultural semiotic practice that discloses more complicated factors with respect to academic-semiotic communication.
This paper intends to indicate an emerging necessity for an epistemological shift of the basic conceptions in the present global semiotic development. In brief, we may accept a binary scholarly strategy in principle: the scientific and the semiotic; namely that which distinguishes the semiotic from the scientific operation in a general term. Different from the nature of general knowledge of nature and society, theoretical semiotics today is first of all a study of meaning of academic discourses as well as a study of relationship among disciplinary theories. In a deeper sense, semiotics is the study on how to understand the multiple semantic institutions of knowledge. Because of this, semiotics has different degrees of involvement in various types of knowledge: for example, at present it has little involvement in natural sciences, more involvement in social sciences, and the most involvement in human sciences. The last category of knowledge is characterized by its traditional blurry formulation and arbitrary way of reasoning. Precisely, semiotics is especially about the study of the theoretical-operational institutions with respect to the semantic and pragmatic constitutions of the humanities. Therefore, the institutional analysis of semantic mechanism of scholarly discourse will essentially expand and deepen our understanding of problems of constitution of the meaning in the humanities. Such a scholarly position makes semiotics much more related to the conditions of the current human sciences than to their historical traces. Rather than being directed toward its earlier story the current semiotic strength is firstly linked to its present academic context, especially to its desirable academic structure in future. The above-mentioned three dimensions of semiotic globalization could be further reduced to the corresponding institutional analysis at three levels: Sociological-political, cultural-historical and disciplinary-structural.
Semiotics as institutional semantics involves a disciplinary-directed/interdisciplinary-directed theoretical interaction. This non-philosophical-fundamentalist and interdisciplinary-theoretical approach could be not in accord with the codes and rules of the existing academic system across the world. A deeper epistemological and methodological challenge of semiotics to the present human sciences lies in its tendency to anatomize and reorganize the external and internal academic institutions. The concept “institution” here can be taken in both its “hard” and “soft’’ dimensions, referring respectively to the related social-economic-educational system and the related intellectually operative system. It tends to organize a separate academic program beside or beyond the regular academic systems. It will promote a more reasonable and effective cooperation with the traditional academic world characterized by its disciplinary compartmentalization. Semiotics will first learn from various disciplinary-specialties and then try to reorganize them or creatively re-use them at another level of academic practice. Semiotics is a synthetic practice to make use of specialized knowledge created by specialists in various disciplines. Without tending to replace or degrade various disciplinary specialties, semiotics learns from all kinds of disciplinary knowledge. But beside this, semiotics proposes to start or to continue an interdisciplinary research on the knowledge organized by disciplines, in which semiotics has to reanalyze and reorganize the disciplinary-specialized knowledge in variously created new contexts. This holistic way of semiotic practice can strengthen rather than weaken the specializing processes in the regular disciplinary practice. Therefore, a general semiotics is logically linked to the structure of the entire humanities. Accordingly, this epistemological turn of semiotics also accords with the methodological transformation from the traditional discipline-centrism to the problematic-centrism. (Edit:admin) |
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