Semioticians reflecting on the interdisciplinary character of semiotics
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Gloria Withalm
Gloria Withalm (b. 1955) is Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Cultural Studies, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Her research interests are general and media semiotics, especially self-reflexive discourse in narrative films and television shows. Her most recent publications include
Kunst/Kontext/Kultur (co-ed., 2012),Zeichen und Zauber des Rechts (co-ed., 2014). “When worlds perfuse or: The breaking of the fourth wall” (2015), and“Revelio! A (socio-)semiotic reading of the Harry Potter saga” (2016).
Semiotic has for its goal a general theory of signs in all their forms and manifestations, […] Semiotic is thus an interdisciplinary enterprise. (Morris, 1964: 1)
This oft-cited programmatic statement on semiotics by Morris was not the first and definitely not the last depiction of semiotics as being interdisciplinary. Both the nature of semiotics – which, according to many authors, is inherently interdisciplinary – and its relation to other disciplines were constantly under cogitation and in discussion at least during the last five decades.
From the late 1970s throughout the 1980s we could observe a peak of this self-referential discourse (cf. Withalm, 1988). Conferences invited scholars to contribute to dialogic reasoning on semiotics, and questionnaires were sent out to members of the community asking for their view on certain topics (Sebeok, 1986b; Marrone, 1986; Withalm & Bernard, 1988; Withalm, 1991).
A number of publications appeared, focusing either on the state-of-the-art of semiotics in various countries, on different research areas, or on the major figures in semiotics (Sebeok & Umiker-Sebeok, 1986; 1987, etc.; Krampen et al., 1981; 1987). They posed a specific question, like Eco in the title of his 1978 publication, “Semiotics: A discipline or an interdisciplinary method?” or formulated a sort of manifesto like the “Position paper” by Myrdene Anderson et al. (1984). Though the texts present many debates regarding what semiotics actually is – an approach, a discipline, a field, a method, a movement, a science, a theory, etc., most of the authors agree on its interdisciplinary status. Finally, not to forget of course, the mid-1980s had the first editions of both the Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok (1986a), and Winfried Nöth’s Handbuch der Semiotik (1985).
Another intensive phase of semiotics dealing with itself occurred around 2000. This time, the emphasis was on reference works in order to both clarify and promulgate the major notions and concepts, and to position semiotics with regard to other disciplines and its own history (Bouissac, 1998; Cobley, 2010; Danesi, 2000; Posner, Robering, & Sebeok, 1997–2004; Petrilli & Ponzio, 2005).
So far the latest publication, the International handbook of semiotics, appeared only last year (Trifonas, 2015). As to the proclaimed “interdisciplinarity” of semiotics, this volume deserves a closer look and a deeper analysis: just a brief search showed that, in fact, interdisciplinarity seems to be a central focus in a dozen articles, some even heralding the very notion in section headings or even in their title.
True, over these last five decades since Morris made the above quoted remark, a lot of research has contributed to a thorough debate on the status and the structure of semiotics, in particular whether it is indeed inherently interdisciplinary. However, reflections on how this specific trait positions semiotics with regard to other disciplines – both in the humanities and in science – are still ongoing and not likely to end soon. And I consider it among the tasks of an international scholarly society like the IASS to offer possibilities for fruitful discussions on the topic on a worldwide scale including all the different semiotic traditions and schools.
About the author
Gloria Withalm (b. 1955) is Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Cultural Studies, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Her research interests are general and media semiotics, especially self-reflexive discourse in narrative films and television shows. Her most recent publications include Kunst/Kontext/Kultur (co-ed., 2012), Zeichen und Zauber des Rechts (co-ed., 2014). “When worlds perfuse or: The breaking of the fourth wall” (2015), and“Revelio! A (socio-)semiotic reading of the Harry Potter saga” (2016).
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the Festschrift
- A semiotic way of being sixty
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- Introduction: semiotics is interdisciplinary: but how can you ensure interdisciplinarity is practiced?
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- The treasures of world semiotics
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- To what extent can it be argued that semiotics is an interdisciplinary methodology?
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- Westerners taste, arabs get drunk
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- The interdisciplinary languages of semiotics
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- Semiotics as an interdisciplinary methodology
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- On the interdisciplinarity of semiotics
- Contributions
- Semioticians reflecting on the interdisciplinary character of semiotics
- Contributions
- Why life presupposes semiosis
- Contributions
- How to encode and infer linguistic actions
- Contributions
- The Bakhtinian revolution and the i-other relation
- Contributions
- Communication-production and the right to non-functionality
- Contributions
- Metaphors, semiotics, and future studies
- Contributions
- The artist’s self-reflection: A pluralistic interpretation of the artist-characters in Eugene O’Neill’s plays
- Contributions
- On anti-identity construction and anti-modeling
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the Festschrift
- A semiotic way of being sixty
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- Introduction: semiotics is interdisciplinary: but how can you ensure interdisciplinarity is practiced?
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- The treasures of world semiotics
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- To what extent can it be argued that semiotics is an interdisciplinary methodology?
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- Westerners taste, arabs get drunk
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- The interdisciplinary languages of semiotics
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- Semiotics as an interdisciplinary methodology
- Essays by Officers of the IASS
- On the interdisciplinarity of semiotics
- Contributions
- Semioticians reflecting on the interdisciplinary character of semiotics
- Contributions
- Why life presupposes semiosis
- Contributions
- How to encode and infer linguistic actions
- Contributions
- The Bakhtinian revolution and the i-other relation
- Contributions
- Communication-production and the right to non-functionality
- Contributions
- Metaphors, semiotics, and future studies
- Contributions
- The artist’s self-reflection: A pluralistic interpretation of the artist-characters in Eugene O’Neill’s plays
- Contributions
- On anti-identity construction and anti-modeling
