Frances to William and listers... It is agreed that what Harris is attacking is indeed "verbacy" or "verbalism" that now exists as language in the current science of linguistics. This attack however does not negate the limit of language and linguistics to "verbacy" and "verbalism" in the least, not even for him. There is still only one language in linguistics to attack, and that is verbal language, given the present state of language and linguistics. Furthermore, for him the only sign that exists to attack is the language sign, which is that of lingual and verbal language. According to Harris if language is dismissed then there is no sign, and according to linguistic scholars if verbal language is dismissed then there is no language.
The current state of verbal language may have in fact fallen to become segregated, and it may be that his integrated approach to verbal language and his theory of lingual signs may be the best means to address this issue. Whether verbal language is a fallacy in need of correction, and whether an attack on it for that reason is warranted and justified, are of course other key matters to address. It is also agreed that Harris places semiotics over linguistics. For him signs and sign theory is an umbrella under which falls language signs and languages and linguistics. It however would be more accurate and precise to say semiology within the narrower francoeuropean structuralist vein is his umbrella, rather than semiotics, because semiotics carries the broader angloamerican pragmatist baggage with it. The semiology of Harris is merely a preparatory supplemental way of organizing and communicating the linguistic language signs of verbacy. For him the method of semiology and the process of linguistics are both sides of the same coin, which coin is his lingual theory of signs. Harris holds that for any ordinary sensed object at all to be a sign it must first be intentionally reduced to and translated into a verbal language sign by a group of capable human linguists. For him there are no signs other than languages, and there are no signers other than humans. Even if any extraordinary object is "scanned" or "probed" by the senses, and might further be intended as a sign, then that object must be "read" for meaning as if it were a stated remark or a documented script or a narrative discourse or a literary fiction. The signers as able linguists are like critical judges who agree to exchange an agreed lingual review of the sensed object. Harris also rejects the idea that verbal signs alone can exist outside the mind and be independent of mind. He insists on a mental determinacy and dependency for language signs of which only normal mature humans in agreed social groups can provide. His limited tern of interactive categories for human groups to make language signs in contextual situations of communication is quite sound in my opinion, at least as far as they go. One thorn for me is that he locates communication before signification and referention, so that the sign must presuppose the act of contact and exchange and accord. Whether such a structure however could or should or would be applicable to nonverbal signs and nonlingual signs, as used by say preliterate and immature humans or nonhuman organisms or nonorganic matter, is left unanswered by Harris so far in my reading of him. (It may be possible that we are using or misusing some terms differently, such as verbal and verbacy and verbalizing and verbalist and verbalism, which may be a source of some ambiguity and confusion.) William wrote to Frances... Frances, I can't believe we're referring to the same Roy Harris. His integrationist approach to communication in Signs, Language and Communication begins with his lengthy discussion of what he calls the "fallacy of verbalism". Chapter 2. Harris does not put language before semiotics but considers it as a subset of semiotics. There are, for him, three modes of contextualizing and thus creating signs (which never pre-exist a specific context): Biomechanical (p. 28) = our physical and mental capacities; macrosocial = communication practices of a group or community; circumstantial = what is possible as communication in particular circumstances. These three modes interact in varying ways to create signs. Verbalizing is just one possible way -- not restricted to "words". I could go to almost any page in this Harris book to cite examples of his rejection of verbalizing as the fundamental and necessary mode of semiotics and communication. The same view will be evident in his influential "The Necessity of Artspeak" and and in his many other Integrationist publications. Nowhere will you find Harris to be a "verbalist" or what he would call "segregationalism". I could copy out parts of his text but it would take too much space -- in fact, a whole book. That book would be Harris' Signs, Language and Communication. Unless I totally misunderstand what you say, I believe you have missed the essential point of Harris' theory. Harris does not accept the independence of a sign. To communicate -- by whatever means -- is to make signs. Communication and sign-making are one and the same. Verbalism and even non-verbalism presume fixed, independent signs. But neither is valid when the sign is made in the process of communicating. Frances wrote to William... You asked where in his texts does Harris claim that signs are only "verbal" and that you could not find this claim, presumably by searching in the present book under discussion and perhaps in his other writings. Off the top of my head it cannot be recalled if he stated the claim specifically with the term "verbal" or not, but my search at least in his book for such a claim and term will continue. In any event and although Harris may not specifically state in his book that signs are only "verbal" it is clear to me that this is his implied claim, because he holds that all signs are only of language, and to call a sign lingual is to call a sign verbal. His theory of integrationism is simply one of integrational linguistics; and there is only one linguistic language system at the present, which is verbal language that is made up of verbal signs. He denies that there can be any sign other than as language, and therefore any sign must only be verbal. It is my tentative stance that linguistics currently is only of lingual verbal language, but which linguistics may potentially be developed into accounting for some other virtual languages and variable languages, such as visual language and vital language for example. This future development of an expanded lingua is a good promise of nominalism and by extension of integrationism. If his theory of language signs is framed to now accommodate other than verbal lingua, this has not yet been found by me in his text.
