From reading La Wik, semiotics seems like an interesting and important field of study.
However, my impression resonates with the comments I see here—the word has the stench of bullshit about it, whatever value some may have produced in the field.
If the field has produced useful work, it seems to be suffering under the same fate as quantum mechanics when Deepak Chopra types appropriate it’s language for their nonsense.
Is anyone here aware of something of valuable produced in the field of semiotics? A bunch of valuable things, maybe in a particular book?
There are many influential books in many fields that say they’re using semiotics. But I haven’t yet found the semiotics to do anything, or to introduce any new concepts. All I see is that it lets them express their thoughts in longer but more stereotyped sentences.
For instance, instead of saying, “The Serbians said Albanians were dirty, violent, primitive, and greedy,” they would write, “The significations given to the figure of the Albanian in Serb discourse is characterized by condensed images of Albanians as dirty, violent, primitive, and greedy.”
Introductions to semiotics talk about linguistic functions like metaphor or the relationship between an object and its name, but they don’t say anything you didn’t already know. They won’t help you understand metaphors better. They’ll make distinctions and then argue about them interminably without ever grounding those distinctions in reality. Like this:
Lacan’s reformulation of the Saussurean sign provides a crucial turn in the theory of meaning: rejecting the idea that signifier and signified are inextricably linked in the sign, … he argues that they form distinct planes.… Lacan establishes the difference between signifier and signified: metonymy, or displacement, is found ‘on one side of the effective field constituted by the signifier’, while the other side is linked to metaphor or condensation. The signifier operates associatively, displaced along a chain of signifiers into which the signified emerges to arrest the flow… As a result, meanings change, an effect of the ‘sliding of the signified under the signifier’ in which the latter predominates.
I don’t think that means anything. If it meant something, semioticians could take actual sentences, and then show how the two opposing views provide different interpretations of those sentences, and argue that one interpretation is better. I haven’t seen them do that.
If it meant something, semioticians could take actual sentences, and then show how the two opposing views provide different interpretations of those sentences
Is that fair?
Everyone agrees that 2+2=4, but people disagree about what that statement is about. Within the foundations of mathematics, logicists and formalists can have a substantive disagreement even while agreeing on the truth-value of every particular mathematical statement.
Analogously, couldn’t semioticians agree about the interpretation of every text, but disagree about the nature of the relationship between the text and its correct interpretation? Granted that X is the correct interpretation of Y, what exactly is it about X and Y that makes this the case? Or is there some third thing Z that makes X the correct interpretation of Y? Or is Z not a thing in its own right, but rather a relation among things? And, if so, what is the nature of that relation? Aren’t those the kinds of questions that semioticians disagree about?
Does the disagreement, whatever it is, have any more impact on anything outside itself than semiotics does?
I can’t say how it compares to semiotics because I don’t know that field or its history.
If you’re just asking whether foundations-of-math questions have had any impact outside of themselves, then the answer is definitely Yes.
For example, arguments about the foundations of mathematics led to developments in logic and automated theorem proving. Gödel worked out his incompleteness theorems within the context of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica. One of the main purposes of PM was to defend the logicist thesis that mathematical claims are just logical tautologies concerning purely logical concepts. Also, PM is the first major contribution that I know of to the study of Type Theory, which in turn is central in automated theorem proving.
Also, if you’re trying to assess whether you believe in the Tegmark IV multiverse, which says that everything is math, then what you think math is is probably going to play some part in that assessment. Maybe that is just a case of one pragmatically-pointless question’s bearing on another, but there it is.
I think it’s generally very hard to follow texts that use a lot of distinctions that one doesn’t use.
Metaphor seems to be a term that we all know Condensation, Metonymy and Displacement not so much.
After reading this text we can ask:
“Why is metonymy found at the side of the signifier but not at the side of the signified?”
“Why is metaphor found at the side of the signified but not at the side of the signifier?”
I’m not sure what kind of answer a person trained in Semotics would give but there might be meaningful answers.
From reading La Wik, semiotics seems like an interesting and important field of study.
However, my impression resonates with the comments I see here—the word has the stench of bullshit about it, whatever value some may have produced in the field.
If the field has produced useful work, it seems to be suffering under the same fate as quantum mechanics when Deepak Chopra types appropriate it’s language for their nonsense.
Is anyone here aware of something of valuable produced in the field of semiotics? A bunch of valuable things, maybe in a particular book?
There are many influential books in many fields that say they’re using semiotics. But I haven’t yet found the semiotics to do anything, or to introduce any new concepts. All I see is that it lets them express their thoughts in longer but more stereotyped sentences.
For instance, instead of saying, “The Serbians said Albanians were dirty, violent, primitive, and greedy,” they would write, “The significations given to the figure of the Albanian in Serb discourse is characterized by condensed images of Albanians as dirty, violent, primitive, and greedy.”
Introductions to semiotics talk about linguistic functions like metaphor or the relationship between an object and its name, but they don’t say anything you didn’t already know. They won’t help you understand metaphors better. They’ll make distinctions and then argue about them interminably without ever grounding those distinctions in reality. Like this:
I don’t think that means anything. If it meant something, semioticians could take actual sentences, and then show how the two opposing views provide different interpretations of those sentences, and argue that one interpretation is better. I haven’t seen them do that.
The ritual incantations of a vested priesthood. It means they can live off the productivity of others, and indoctrinate their children.
How’s that for semiotic analysis? Not obscurantist enough? Yeah, probably not.
Is that fair?
Everyone agrees that 2+2=4, but people disagree about what that statement is about. Within the foundations of mathematics, logicists and formalists can have a substantive disagreement even while agreeing on the truth-value of every particular mathematical statement.
Analogously, couldn’t semioticians agree about the interpretation of every text, but disagree about the nature of the relationship between the text and its correct interpretation? Granted that X is the correct interpretation of Y, what exactly is it about X and Y that makes this the case? Or is there some third thing Z that makes X the correct interpretation of Y? Or is Z not a thing in its own right, but rather a relation among things? And, if so, what is the nature of that relation? Aren’t those the kinds of questions that semioticians disagree about?
It’s about numbers. Problem solved. :)
Does the disagreement, whatever it is, have any more impact on anything outside itself than semiotics does?
I can’t say how it compares to semiotics because I don’t know that field or its history.
If you’re just asking whether foundations-of-math questions have had any impact outside of themselves, then the answer is definitely Yes.
For example, arguments about the foundations of mathematics led to developments in logic and automated theorem proving. Gödel worked out his incompleteness theorems within the context of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica. One of the main purposes of PM was to defend the logicist thesis that mathematical claims are just logical tautologies concerning purely logical concepts. Also, PM is the first major contribution that I know of to the study of Type Theory, which in turn is central in automated theorem proving.
Also, if you’re trying to assess whether you believe in the Tegmark IV multiverse, which says that everything is math, then what you think math is is probably going to play some part in that assessment. Maybe that is just a case of one pragmatically-pointless question’s bearing on another, but there it is.
I think it’s generally very hard to follow texts that use a lot of distinctions that one doesn’t use.
Metaphor seems to be a term that we all know Condensation, Metonymy and Displacement not so much.
After reading this text we can ask: “Why is metonymy found at the side of the signifier but not at the side of the signified?” “Why is metaphor found at the side of the signified but not at the side of the signifier?”
I’m not sure what kind of answer a person trained in Semotics would give but there might be meaningful answers.