Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine by John Deely

Author:John Deely [Deely, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, Semiotics & Theory, philosophy, History & Surveys, General
ISBN: 9780253056726
Google: VHjrDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-06-23T00:26:26.927551+00:00

Diagram II: A is aware of X by virtue of C2, the idea whereby X exists as something A is aware of.

Diagram III: A is aware of X and O together, making possible the formation of an idea of the two as a unity — a unity of thought.

Diagram IV: A is aware of X and O not only together, but also as connected, by a connection consequent upon the idea, C3, whereby X and O exist as something A is aware of “linguistically.”

Viewed in this way, there is no chance of committing the blunder of thinking that thoughts and words are two separate processes, each of which would be just what it is if one or the other were to be removed. On the contrary, discourse — the whole of thought, language, and object — is profoundly one, so unified that the intraorganismic thoughts and the extraorganismic words and objects are what they are precisely and only to the extent that each is simultaneously. For, inasmuch as the objects of cognition as such exist dependently on the thought from the standpoint of being, object and thought co-exist in perfect proportion to one another from a temporal standpoint. The object cannot be as apprehended save when and as an idea of it exists, and an idea as idea cannot be save as giving an existence of presence to an object. In a certain sense, therefore, only upon the formation of C3 in our sequence of diagrams do we have the existence of discourse properly speaking.

This reveals a profound import to the contemporary expression, “universe of discourse.” For, from the standpoint of the concept or idea, words are not opposed to objects as words are to things. On the contrary, words and things known are equally objects, but objects differing in status primarily as regards their manageability, as Gulliver had occasion to observe at the Academy of Lagado in Balnibarbi (Swift 1726: 3rd voyage, ch. 5 ad finem). Thus, words and sentences call things to mind and order our thoughts about things, but, equally, things suggest words and patterns of words. For both words and things exist, in discourse, in an objective unity derived from the concepts or ideas which give them their being — which “constitute them,” the phenomenologists say — as cognized or known.

A linguistic remark can fail to be understood — Q, on hearing X, may think of N rather than O. Or a perceived object may suggest no words to the perceiver but present itself, as it were, mutely. But in any case, whenever anything enters our consciousness, it does so by virtue of an intraorganismic occurrence C. (This analysis strongly supports the suggestion of Sebeok 1981d: 12, that much conceptual confusion today “comes about from considering language as primarily a communicative tool,” whereas in fact “language must have evolved as an … instrument for modeling man’s Umwelt in the mind [Innenwelt].” Chomsky 1979: 35-36 makes much the same point.)

Having said this much, let me add in

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