Epistemological Reflection on Semiotic Approach:  Semiotics and the Humanities  

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* This article was originally prepared for the special issue of Chinese semiotics, American Journal of Semiotic Studies, 1995. But finally it was first published in European Journal for Semiotic Studies,vol.7-3/4, Vienna 1996.

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   The Scientific orientation of one discipline or one field is not only linked with its internal scientific arrangement but also with its external connections with other disciplines and socio-cultural contexts. Similarly, the identity of semiotics should also be defined in terms of two different parameters: semiotics as  scientific research and semiotics as the professional field. When describing semiotics as a working field elsewhere I attempt to combine the two parameters in my discussion in order to  indicate its character more precisely. The second parameter could make semiotics welcome a "diplomatic" ambiguity or flexibility about the pragmatic potential of the discipline title in connection with the complicated situations of the academic world. As an academic title semiotics can designate at least three different dimensions:

a) the definite scientific researches (in various semiotic areas);

b) the general theoretical works to prepare a foundation for the field of semiotics (general semiotic theory which is more tied to other theoretical disciplines);

c) the professional potential for creating new academic activities in addition to conventional semiotic studies).   

   The first two are about existing scholarly activities and the last about the possible extension of the semiotic works because of its interdisciplinary traits which  cover both  scholarly and professional aspects. Semiotics becomes gradually important; but it can become more important after expanding its intellectual horizon. The present article attempts to explain this possibility andnecessity. 

I.                         

It is true that there are two aspects of semiotics which concern its scientific dimension: first, the special subject matters in association with various established disciplines (film semiotics, literary semiotics, etc.) and second, the working fields for any interdisciplinary operation (one project is performed in terms of various approaches: linguistic, historical, philosophical, psycho-logical, etc.) The former is based on the definite discipline or field (film, music, painting, linguistic, philosophy, etc.) and the latter is an effort to get free from the dominance of a definite discipline. The oppositional directions converge in forming our operational field and the fact is that each semiotic project, in a dialectic way, combines the two directions together with the latter being more original and creative in its effects. Therefore we may say semiotics is first characterized with its interdisciplinary tendency. This "essence" indicates that a semiotic theory cannot be only an appendage of some individual discipline like philosophy or linguistics which has been formed to become a "disciplined" field over a long academic history. It is well known that the interdisciplinary tendency is a general trait of the development of modern sciences. Human sciences also recently have been undergoing an ever more interdisciplinary shift. While semiotics as the most typical interdisciplinary activity lies in the center of the strategic shift of those sciences. In other words, readily or reluctantly, further progress of the humanities must be connected with  semiotic inquiry because of two main requirements: semantic reorganization in the entire field of the humanities and institutional reorganization of their research procedures/strategies. Semiotic approaches contain both semantic and procedural aspects.

II.

     The presently existing semantic formulations and operational procedures in discourses of the humanities traditionally have been shaped, still richly keeping their historical trace which is widely in disharmony with the changed and changeable natural/social sciences and technical conditions. Under the cover of a historicity of the traditional humanities the insufficient communicability between the scientific and humanitarian disciplines has been concealed because of the double (semantic/procedural) obstructions. As a result, the humanities as a whole have become less active and less effective in promoting academic, social and political progress in our era. It is now time  to reconsider the more suitable epistemology and methodology of the traditionally established disciplines in the humanities, including the comparative studies. The recent European interdisciplinary tendency just indicates the crucial academic requirement of our times. However, this possibility for a theoretical reorganization still has been hampered by the institutionalized situation of the humanities which are parasitic on  modernized society. Simply speaking, the object, objective, motive, procedure, effect and function of the humanities, with their academic and social interests, have been systematically defined and regulated within the historically and socially institutionalized framework. Therefore academic agents work in the institutionalized contexts and the terminological autonomy of various kinds. One result of this situation is that the relevance of texts to reality has been widely neglected; academic people are content in living within their textual world. Furthermore, some avant-garde semiotic activities even employ the artistic type of creation to replace scientific reasoning and to destroy the relation of the textual to the real. 1 They tend to mix the scientific and artistic and therefore make our knowledge of the humanities further unsuitable for understanding and explaining reality, including the more immediate ethic-political situations.     

   A substantial result of this inadequacy is that the professional working fields have been controlled by the established organizing principles of the existent disciplines. The stability of the professional hierarchy can be so strong that epistemological reform has been neglected constantly. As a result, the intellectual development in the present humanities has been obstructed both semantically and institutionally. Therefore, we can say that the room left for free inquiry is limited by the rigid constitution of the academic world itself. Consequently, the first obstacle for the substantial development of the humanities is a practical and professional one: the lack of the convenient working ground free from the established disciplines or professional areas. In regard to this problem semiotics as a newly established "professional" field may provide people with a "professional" possibility to do freer inquiry along the multiply interdisciplinary direction, including the cross-cultural one. This is related to the second aspect of semiotics mentioned above as an operative ground which allows freer exploration. With this "professional guarantee" many interdisciplinary and cross-cultural efforts, which are not encouraged or even restricted within many normal fields, can be made effective. Thus semiotic also exhibits a practical function making interdisciplinary activities more operational in our disciplined academic world.    

III.

This interdisciplinary possibility of semiotics is worthy of being  expanded further in the near future not only for the development of semiotic research as such but also for the epistemological renovation of the humanities in general. Let me just mention two remarkable examples. First, traditionally philosophy has been taken as the theoretical foundation of all sciences. The current situation of the humanities urgently requires the formation of  some new epistemological and methodological foundation which accounts for the new achievements of human knowledge. The conception of the theoretical foundation of the humanities should be much wider than a philosophical one. If no any other established field can undertake the leading role in constructing the new theoretical foundation for the humanities, the semiotic, because of both its scientific and professional possibilities, can try to undertake the revolutionary task within its field. Certainly, it should work together with the philosophical as well as other theoretical fields while still keeping an independent, epistemologically guiding role. It is theoretical semiotics which can be a more pertinent and capable operator to organize the new theoretical synthesis within the interdisciplinary framework which intends to break up the traditional monopoly of philosophy.2      

   Second, the Western/non-Western comparative studies have become more and more important in our times. In many fields the comparative aspects become the necessary constitutive parts of the present humanities such as literature, history, religion, ethics and, especially, political philosophy. We may say that without the oriental experience no human ethics and political philosophy can be established completely or to a satisfactory degree. But as a matter of fact, non-Western or comparative studies have been even much more guided by conservative strategies, and they have formed a greater and greater academic world along historically established, philologically/metaphysically mixed academic orientation. Because of this conservative tendency, they are more dominated by professional regularity and practical interest. Owing to its more intercultural-commensurable possibility semiotics can promote the modernization or theoretization of those non-Western disciplines which are still content in keeping a prestige of their historic-geographical originality more effectively.3 Semiotic approaches can therefore help bring about an epistemological breakthrough first by dint of the semantic and institutional analysis of those traditional learning. In my opinion, it is  Western semiotic approaches, rather than Western philosophical systems, which can more pertinently cause the determinative development of non-Western traditional scholarship.4 A more comprehensive study of ethics and political philosophy covering both Western and oriental traditions can only be established through semiotic analysis which can better help solve problems of semantic commensurability between the different historical texts of two traditions. 

IV.

The implication of semiotics as a professional ground is much deeper, however, than what discussed above. But the two great possibilities in connection with philosophy and comparative studies are already great enough to make semioticians appreciate their own chance and mission at the end of this century, when the humanities remain relatively weak and ineffective, despite their having certain social and academic influence. The theoretical task of semiotics as a professional field should expand its ground more consciously and create a new "working area" in connection with  other theoretical parts of the social and human sciences; or semiotics should take care of all theoretical contributions of social/human sciences and try to synthesize those theoretical achievements more originally and relevantly. The theoretical goal of semiotics should be overlapped or unified with that of social/human sciences; or semiotics should be more active to take the entire epistemological foundation of social/human sciences into its account. Practically speaking, theoretical semiotics could compete with philosophy in matters of guiding theoretical reconstruction in the humanities world, although it has a much weaker professional position than the latter. Nevertheless, semiotics still has its own operational advantage: it has been less restrained by the institutional preconditions of any kind. Contrarily, any philosophically directed approach is still affiliated with some fixed position defined within the traditional discipline. Therefore, theoretical semiotics can become an intellectual apparatus operating with the theoretical results of all disciplines. It can set up a new operational framework to handle the problems of the theoretical construction in a new era and more relevantly and roundly to share in organizing the epistemological and methodological foundations of the entire humanities. This is not so because present semiotics would possess  some huge mythical force, but straightforwardly because it can professionally provide a working field for striving towards the correct direction. Our era demands more holistic approaches to harmonize the divergent developments of social/human sciences, and the present-day semiotics happens to be in accordance with the new academic direction. That's why we need a field of theoretical semiotics open and independent enough, without being parasitic on other disciplines, including philosophy or philosophy of language. The idea could remind us of the Greimasian ideal as to epistemology of social scineces.5 But the difference is that theoretical semiotics should have a much wider horizon than a linguistically semantic one. Precisely, beside the semantic aspect, theoretical semiotics should approaches exist, operate, develop and transform itself within the entire field of social/human sciences. 

V.

There were and are two different important intellectual movements concerning reformulating the humanities during this century: the philosophical and the semiotic. In confrontation with the ever advanced progress of sciences and technology Western philosophy has tried hard to readjust or strengthen the humanities (Geistwissenschaft or human sciences) in terms of a direction different from the natural science. The more successful types which stress an intellectual autonomy of the humanities are the Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics and Western Marxism; let's put aside the more synthetically formed analytical movement at the moment. Meanwhile, there has implicitly existed a separate movement to be devoted to the same kind of work - to redefine or to rearrange the humanities in confrontation with natural science. It is the structural/semiotic movement starting from the linguistic / sociologic We are lucky enough that human conditions in democratic countries are mainly determined by the institutional social forces rather than by some extremist intellectual trends. When such trends try to exert social influence the consequence tends out to be vague and even negative due to the lack of the precision and relevance of their descriptions of and arguments about social reality. al achievements at the turn of this century and turning toward a universally semantic study since the Second World War. According to its role in social/human sciences, the semantic direction of semiotics should be first secured. Mathematic and natural science, by dint of logic and experiment, have successfully solved their semantic problems, historically establishing themselves. By contrast, the humanities, to a large extent, still suffer from their traditional semantic disorder.6 The rapid development of the structural/semiotic movement in the Sixties presents a more effective perspective for the commonly shared goal. Thus all efforts in social/human sciences along this line are directed onto the semantic clarity and precision. While the traditional weakness in the field of the humanities is first expressed in its incapability of solving problems concerning semantic consistence, causal explanation and axiological coherence. The more serious situation is that the humanities have been more closely involved into human reality, including the political reality. Therefore there are two relevant aspects of modernization of the humanities: the scientific improvement and the practical utility. And the ethic-axiologically permanent disorder in human history has been partly caused by the inefficiency of the scientific analysis in the humanities.7  

VI.

The institutionalization and professionalization in the academic humanities have tended to create circumstances of intellectual self-referring ability and circularity. The scientific agents of the humanities operate according to the fixed system of standards and procedures without an effective reference to the entire reality. Or the textual world itself is tended to become the only object of the scientific reflection, and to become so an operationally feasible procedure for intellectual game. In other words, the textual world of the scientific objects has been pragmatically simplified so as to keep an academic operational capability within the closed academy which must be conservative in a deep sense, even if the intellectual impact can be created someway according to the same set of goals and criteria in the textual world. One external reason for the operational feasibility of such spiritual tendency is that the humanities would not be responsible for the actual situations of our society and culture. They enjoy their academic life in segregation from the precise attention to social reality. They claim they do not need to follow the exter-textual criteria. Their socio-institutional autonomy (in particular the campus scholarship) guarantees their academically institutional autonomy (the self-readjusted textual creation). Nevertheless, they are still determined by, rather than determine, the direction of social development. As a result, whether  socially committed or non-committed, and regardless of their varying social impacts, the involved social praxis does not need to externally check their own conditions and efficiency externally ‑ an existence within its own textual world. Ironically enough, the retardation of the scientific improvement of the humanities is just due to the humanitarian protectionism set against natural sciences which are formed by the more effective methodology in dealing with the external reality.      

   What kind of attitude should the humanities take up under the pressure of the natural sciences? Strengthen themselves for acquiring a better "truth" in commensurability with natural sciences or just seek for the rhetoric means to protect its professional benefits or safety? For whatever reason the humanities remain far from being playing an active role in contemporary life. Epistemologically speaking, there are two unsuitable tendencies: the narrow-rationalist (to say, following a nature-scientific model) and the irrational. The influence of the latter is relatively more negative because it refuses the explanative and interpretive clarity and consistency by dint of an axiological arbitrariness and a rhetoric nihilism or escapism. It is just in this aspect we should remember the Husserlian attitude described with the words like "theoretical", "precise", "positive" or simply "scientific". 8 Of course a scientific operation must be readjusted according to many other related developments, including the linguistic one.9     

   One part of semiotic language can be used as the tool for artistic creations; another part can be used for the scientific inquiry. Exactly like the same text-writing process can be used for the scientific and poetical purposes alike. Both share the same basic grammar but differ by the stylistic grammar. There cannot be an operative ambiguity between both procedures despite their existence in the same language. Theoretical semiotics, however, must be a rational activity in conformity with the innate principle of science. It is a pity that not few agents of human sciences today tend to blend the two different functions in performing discourses on the basis of an absolute relativism. If so, they should move to the field of artistic creations; human science is an intelligent work as a science rather than as a rhetoric fantasy. One cannot use the logically organized texts, which are innately communicable with others, to express the illogically organized ideas, which innately refuse logical dialogue with others. Modernist painting is a private language; it has reason for this mode of existence. But it cannot replace the normal mode of visual communication in social life.        Similarly, without a principle of logos there cannot be human sciences at all. As a matter of fact, there is only a problem of typology of logos which is immanent in any argument. Of course, a verbal modernist has a right to make use of the grammatically organized material for his own artistic purpose. In this case, however, he shouldn't try to mix himself up with the normal discourse formation in human sciences again. These two fields belong to different categories in human culture now. The artist shouldn't interfere in the scientific work, the same goes for the reverse. Thus, we can understand that the rhetoric tactic to use the logical-organized texts artistically as a means of modernist aesthetics to "destroy" its immanent logic is a problem about the "usage" of the scientific text rather than one of scientific texts themselves. An artist can of course "use" a "normally" made table to express an abnormal idea through a distorting way of using the table. But these two things should be clearly separated: the normal context wherein a logically organized text functions, and the abnormal context, wherein an artist illogically use the same logically-shaped text. In short, an logically formed matter can of course be pragmatically used in an illogical way. That may be the point of the fashionable trick in "deconstructing" the normal scientific texts! There exists a basic ambiguity about the separation between the irrationality of the object and the irrationality of the inferential procedure. The former can be of course "irrational", in any sense different from the natural and from logical nature; while the latter should be constantly "rational". Otherwise you are playing a trick to hurt the categorical demarcation necessary for any performance of intelligent activity. There should be an intellectual area in humanities parallel "the scientific". If you cannot play the same trick with physics or economics, you shouldn't try to exclude a similarly structured zone for scientific operation from the humanities. Particularly when it happens to be connected with human ethic-political life.    

   Human existence is at large rationally conditioned in respect to its both physical and spiritual aspects. Both good and evil manifestations in human history have been caused by the rational (including both right and wrong directions) calculations despite the hidden irrational impulses. The entire progress of mankind is due to different types of "logos", the Aristotelian or the Confucian. Deconstruction of logos itself can only lead to further conceptual disorder, bring about an ethically negative consequence. However, human ethics can only be based on a more operative or more positive rationality. And all of social/human sciences have a necessary link with the ethical progress. A more effective ethics can only be based on the rationally improved humanities, in addition to the socially and naturally desirable  technical conditions. Therefore the improvement of the humanities implies a profound ethical point of view. This is an immediate reason why we should care about the more promising directions within the humanities which, unfortunately, have been still over-determined by the social

institutionalization. The state of the less social applicability and the less objective examination of the humanities is essentially caused by the structure of our modern society itself which makes that the humanities are so irrelevantly performed. And just that is the serious background with which theoretical semiotics is faced.                       

VII.

Broadly speaking, the semiotic movement covers three main trends: structural, pragmatic and phenomenological. Despite the constitutional mixture of the three trends, each one of them shares a common effort, first, directed toward the semantic clarification, and then towards  more effective communicational process and more exact internal and external reference. The semiotic-semantic studies cover therefore the significative, communicational, rhetorical and referential levels, including the institutional aspect of each. The synthetic-semantic inquiry of semiotics is only one important stage in the entire field of social and human sciences. Free from the disciplinary limitation semiotics can more relevantly apply the theoretical procedures of various sorts to promote the readjustment of the structure of the humanities where the se-mantic "crisis" remain crucially serious. Concerning relationship of semiotics to the philosophical, theoretical or epistemological domains, it must be linked with a new conception of scientific foundation. We do not need a new metaphysical hierarchy and we can not stand an academic anarchy either. The theoretical or epistemological level handled by the semiotic is more connected with the operative principles of holistic/structural coherence, significative/communicative precision, multiple/stratification reference, and pragmatic/stylistic relevance. Theoretical semiotics searches for a comprehensive set of rational and feasible procedures applicable to all social/human fields in respect to the complex semantic level. Here, so-called theoretical, epistemological and fundamental claims just modestly mean the semantic area in an expanded sense. But all of the above operative procedures could come in conflict with the philosophical ones, because philosophy is based on a traditional system which could exercise an institutional restriction over the new theoretical efforts. In contrast, the objective of semantic reorganization displayed by interdisciplinary semiotics must be, first of all, to get rid of the old semantic organizations of any kind. This is a procedural or technical necessity. In its theoretical effort, nevertheless, semiotics must keep many philosophical results within its system, but must use them more effectively. On the other hand, however, with its epistemological minimalism semiotics attempts to arrange those locally effective results in a more reasonably organized network mainly consisting of the semantic and institutional dimensions which can more relevantly position the content of the selected objects of our studies. This is exactly in accordance with the current tendency of interdisciplinary humanities which try to reorganize all related theoretical results in various working fields more synthetically and more holistically.     

   Generally speaking, this is the point now to redefine the concepts of theory, foundation, system and discipline in social/human sciences according to a more positive and more operative position; that means to keep a natural distance from the ontological/metaphysical direction. Beside the self-maintaining tendency of history of science the humanities in general and philosophy in particular have been still determined by the professional, habitual and utilitarian factors. The historically formed hierarchy has obtained its practical security within the academic arena. Therefore the customary strategy of scholars professionalized  are still too much influenced by the rule of the hierarchy itself. Even the so called academic originality is no less determined by its relatedness to the academic structures which themselves have not sufficiently become the object of theoretical investigation. Consequently, scholars arrange their scholarly program closely in reference to the well established procedures authoritatively accepted within the academic hierarchy. And the tendency is towards to more security because of the traditional disconnection between the textual world and the real world. Accordingly the scholar only needs to take  account of all other related products within the same textual autonomy. That's why the textual reproduction can become a self-referential activity. But, in consideration of early formalism and later post-structuralism, we shouldn't forget the constant warning uttered by Paul Ricoeur that the humanities should be eventually directed to the real human conditions as "reference" through the textual medium. These human condition are complicate-constituted, covering various dimensions ranging from the psychological to the social. The seemingly amorphousness  of the human phenomena, due to of their heterogeneous composition (especially as to psychological and axiological domains) makes the precise descriptions rather difficult, and the semiotic app-roaches (towards complex semantic process) becomes more suitable and necessary to encounter the foremost task of treating a world of semantic disorder.    

   The semantic description carried out by semiotics is multifariously organized in its textual studies, covering several institutional levels: such as the individual disciplinary, interdisciplinary, the one of academic totality, the intercultural-comparative, and pragmatically operative. 10 By applying the semiotic approaches to various fields of the humanities the task of semantic reorganization must necessarily be onerous and complicated. But we should recognize that the world of social/human sciences is in need of a systematic reorganization of its semantic formulations since the beginning of our semiotic era. This asks us not for exaggerating the greatness of semiotics but in stressing the immature stage of modern humanities. While the theoretical seriousness of semiotics must lie in refusing an immature or rash manner in dealing with the humanities. Instead of some rhetoric game aiming at gaining market effect, the humanities should learn from natural science the same strictness and serious-ness in searching for a suitable scientific objective. By touching the problem of true meaning, contrary to a modernist warning, we may say we are just returning to a new Socratic era at the end of this century.11 History and human life prove once again that human beings are the semantic-questioner. That does not mean playing with semantic ambiguity but on the contrary, searching for the semantic certainty. Unlike some modernist players searching for pragmatic  utility, we, as rational semioticians, should search for an semantically operative certainty about understanding and interpretation. To make a difference between two senses of the term "interpretation", the interpreted content and the interpreting procedure, search for semantic certainty is the immanent requirement of human reason which is innate to human existence.    

* This article was originally prepared for the special issue of Chinese semiotics, American Journal of Semiotic Studies,  ,1995. But it was first published in European Journal for Semiotic Studies,vol.7-3/4, Vienna 1996.