I have to disagree with Michael, not that I have any special insight. Instead I merely snip others' ideas and make a collage.
If there is a knowable order, as Michael says, between sign-object, I'd like to know what it is. And the construction "sign-object" is redundant since in semiotics, the sign IS an object and the signified is the concept. The two are joined together in traditional linguistic theory, but this is an arbitrary relationship, according to Saussure. He, like so many others, says this arbitrary relationship is a matter of conventions that one must learn. Isn't it strange that the conventions always seem to already be there? Another problem with Michael's view is that nothing falls beyond his requirements for a sign. What, then, according to Michael, is NOT a sign? Furthermore, how do we ascribe "knowable order" to mute objects. Objects are what they are and if we project some notion of order to them that order does not become, magically, intrinsic to them. The same of course, can be said of "knowable". What, after all, does a rock "know"? What "order" does it have? Bishop Berkeley? The philosopher? I used to like his idea about the perceiver as the initiator of realty. His notion is compatible with the idea of a sign as something created, not found. Michael claims that the unseen photograph still "conveys" meaning (as a "picture" instead of an undesignated mass of light-dark). How? By some secret perceiver? No, I do agree that the thing to be named a photograph is present if I am not present but I can't agree that it is a photograph, a picture of a barn, say, until I claim it as such. Or I might claim it as a bird. Or a thousand other things. If we speak of signs, signified, and the like, we should at least turn to those who have devoted careers to the topic, like Saussure and Barthes, yes, even Peirce and my choice, Harris. Let poor Berkeley lay (not lie). The photograph gives us an occasion to use it as a sign, to create it anew each time we see it as a sign. We may rely on some conventions to do this -- participate in some "network" of image-text (see WTJ Mitchell, Downcast Eyes) ) but we are not limited to conventions and may invent a uniquely new relationship between the photograph and the signified (concept). Saussure would, not, I think, agree, but Harris would because he, Harris, claims there is no inherent relation between sign and signified. We may have trouble with signs created and used in this fashion because we may not be able to escape conventions either because we are reluctant to do so or lack the inventive wit. Yet, if the photograph "image-text" carries, in a sense, all signifieds of all photos (Barthes) it is certainly understandable that the specific work (Barthes separates the text from the work) can be a new case of sign-signified. I am still trying very hard to understand Roy Harris' Integrationist Linguistics, (see his Signs, Language, Communication) which is a radical departure from all traditional linguistic theories that rely on a fixed sign (he calls those fixed signs "segregationist"). For Harris, all communication, verbal written, aural, physical (gesture, etc) involves creative acts by which the "speaker" creates signs and signifieds and so does the recipient. Societal and local conventions of course play a role in this but it is an integrated role, subject to the creative communicative act. To understand Harris well, I need to become better acquainted with Saussure, for sure, since Harris builds on Saussure even as he rejects the fixed sign notion. Michael is a traditional "segregationist" in Harris' scheme. He apparently believes that a sign has a particular signified (or meaning) and we just need to learn the codes. WC ----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, January 17, 2011 4:59:42 PM Subject: Re: representation and its sgnification On Jan 17, 2011, at 5:23 PM, William Conger wrote: > One could argue that all signs are made by people. A photograph, for instance, > is not a sign until someone designates it. This is very close to Cheerskep's assertion that the notion that is formed in the hearer's mind is paramount, almost to the exclusion of the importance of the picture or written squiggles or other artifact. I maintain that there is a knowable order in the sign-object that can then be interpreted by the viewer and used to construct the signification. The photograph is indeed a sign, an image of some kind whose forms can be used by a viewer to create an interpretation in his head. Your second sentence resembles Bishop Berkely's tree in a forest: If there is no one to look at the photograph, does it still convey a picture? I say, Yes. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
