To what extent can it be argued that semiotics is an interdisciplinary methodology?

Since Charles W. Morris (1901–1979), the developments of the pragmatic approach to signs, imagined by Peirce, James (1842–1910), then by Dewey (1859–1962), and Mead (1863–1931) rest on the idea that the nature of the human spirit is above all instrumental and social, which leads them to consider that the spirit is none other than the symbolic functioning of experience. As a good disciple of these precursors, Charles Morris attempted, with his work Signs, language and behavior (1946) to construct a semiology that would be an empirical science of the sign, i.e. of all signs generated by all that lives (human or animal signs, truthful or not truthful, normal or pathological, etc.). The behaviorist approach determined the methodology of this semiology that described signs from biological behavioral processes, interpreted in turn from dispositions and interpretations that the sign triggers in whom it is destined for. Thus, the pragmatics of the sign crosses the characteristics of the various languages implicated by the diverse fields of action: science, philosophy, fiction, religious life, love life, etc., that produces the various types of discourse, as well as the different kinds of disciplines that this semiology is called upon to consider as.

Certain European scholars of the subsequent generation have partially taken up this point of view. Abandoning behaviorist requirements and methods, they attempted to exploit certain aspects of linguistics, itself in full renewal. In 1947, Roland Barthes (1915–1980), unknown to date, is described by Maurice Nadeau, the influential journalist who gave him the opportunity to publish his first article on August 1, 1947, in the prestigious newspaper Combat (an article followed by some others until 1950) as “a language enthusiast (for the last two years his only interest is this question)” but also as “a young man who has something new to say”. In 1953 Barthes published his first book, Le degré zero de l’écriture, a development of these first articles and a real success in academic circles as well as with the general public. During the same period he wrote short notes (the first of which, published in the very intellectual journal Esprit, concerns all-in wrestling shows and the following (fifty or so) appear as “little origin of the American semiology mythologies of the month” in Maurice Nadeau’s Lettres nouvelles. Barthes shows how a global image of French cultural identity can be traced out of small concrete facts, until then experienced but not analyzed. The young semiologue succeeds in demonstrating to which point they signify, describing them as small mythologies that give color to the everyday life of a given society. The 54 notes, gathered in a single volume in 1957, met with considerable success. They provided a range of very diverse centers of interest, but did not instantiate an interdisciplinary methodology in the scientific sense of the term. Rather, the volume reflected a sensitive process that interprets the circulation of meaning within a given social group, with the help of some implicit linguistic concepts (denotation/connotation, signifying/signified, metalanguage, etc.). These concepts were made clear in 1964 in Communications/4 (the journal of the Center for the Study of Mass Communications) according to the principles of exactness, depth, and coherence instilled by his training as an arts graduate. This new approach to meaning met with global success.

From 1963, with Diario minimo, and with Apolittici e integrati, published in 1964, Umberto Eco (1932–2016) took up the recipe, while freeing himself from the implicit principles and the frame of logical references that guided Barthes. When, later on, he took an interest in American mythologies, Eco seemed to give himself up to an inspiration without constraints or limits, which he offered to the world in joyful, abundant books, where reflection became an easily accessible pleasure.^[1] These interpretative attempts with a very broad inspiration exemplify the interpretative semiology that is his secret. As background they have a marked mistrust of a robust theorization of human sciences, mistrust that is formulated in 1968 in La struttura assente.

But, in parallel with some various works of epistemology,^[2] the semiologue displays, on the contrary, a concern for exactness and scientific approach that aspires to the constitution of a theory of signification, beside this art of interpretation that he practiced. He endeavors to jointly think up semiology, semiotics, and philosophy of language. He attempts to give a speculative definition of the contours of Peircean semiotics, which we have observed at the origin of the American semiology of communication, with respect to the contours of European semiotics (Saussure, Troubetzkoï, Hjelmslev, Greimas), which construes semiotics of signification and with respect to the encyclopaedic history of conceptions of language that he calls “philosophy of language”. He pursued these interrogations in 1992–1994 with La recherche de la langue parfait dans la culture européenne and, in 1997, with Kant and the platypus. These various endeavors constitute erudite memoranda that have but contributed indirectly to the progress of semiotics as they redefine the past, without addressing the crucial question of the rational means that would permit new discoveries on the functioning of the deeper structures of language. Umberto Eco’s continuous mistrust of a real science of language contradicts his innate penchant for a founded and objective knowledge, especially expressed in his works marked by Hjelmslev’s theory of language (cf. n.2). Well, it is this robust theorization that distinguishes semiotics (sometimes called semio-linguistics) from semiology and that allows us to speak of “methodology”, in the disciplinary sense of the word.

The semiologues and their numerous disciples have proposed very stimulating interpretations of the circulation of meanings within social life; however, they thus assume that the constitution of these significations is known and they satisfy themselves with their intuitive perceptions, without attempting to construct an access to these significations, which can be objectified and authenticated by all. On the contrary, the scope of European semiotic research is that, most ascetic and arduous, of the discovery of abstract concepts that led to the outlining of the deep and quasi universal laws of the phenomenon /langue/, at the root of the various existing languages. This theoretical effort, which has been in existence only for a hundred years or so, spread out, in brief and dense texts, in the strictly interdefined manner of mathematics. From this theory stems the totally explicit semiotic methodology that is expressed by a meta-language, of which Sémiotique, dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, by Greimas and Courtès (1979), offers the first rudiments. This dictionary gathers together, in a cumulative manner, the diverse discoveries that have been coherently set, validated by reasoning, and tested by methodical applications, all through the twentieth century. It presents the first schemas of the deep structures of human language.

We observe that a certain number of disciplines are beginning to make use of this theory, this methodology, and its meta-language. Can one yet make the case for an interdisciplinary methodology? Semiotics, today, is above all a discipline under construction, still very close to its beginnings. One knows that it can assist other disciplines. Its position may be compared to that of mathematics which, respectively, assists physics, medicine, biology or, henceforth, psychology, and psycholinguistics. Will we accept the idea of presenting semiotics as an interdisciplinary method? From its initial concern, it tends foremost to advance its theory and thus, its scientific autonomy; it tends first to constitute itself as a discipline.

As for what semiotics of signification allows itself as interdisciplinary methodologies, I refer the reader to my recent article in CSS “Semiotic theory and experiences of life” (2014), an assessment we think we can formulate given the present state of our knowledge.