Information-theoretic confirmation of semiotic structures
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Vern S. Poythress
Vern S. Poythress (b. 1946) is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary 〈vpoythress@wts.edu〉. His research interests include hermeneutics, mathematical linguistics, and theology. His publications includeThe gender-neutral Bible controversy (2000);Redeeming science (2006);In the beginning was the word: Language – a God-centered approach (2009); andRedeeming sociology (2011).
Abstract
Information theory indirectly confirms some fundamental structures in semiotics. By offering quantitative criteria for efficient transmission of data, it suggests by analogy ways of thinking about efficient communication in language and other media. The criterion in information theory for maximal capacity for information at the source leads to preference for independent data, which can be generalized to the semiotic principle of approximate independence among many kinds of emic units. This independence is closely related to what Kenneth L. Pike's tagmemic theory has called distribution. The criteria in information theory for faithful transmission of data lead by generalization to the semiotic principles of contrast and variation. Together, the aspects of contrast, variation, and distribution constitute fundamental structures characterizing the whole field of semiotics. They also lead to the development of three interlocking views of communication, the particle, wave and field view, which enable us to explain a number of more complicated phenomena in communication. These tools for semiotics receive confirmation from the quantitatively more specialized concerns of information theory.
About the author
Vern S. Poythress (b. 1946) is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary 〈vpoythress@wts.edu〉. His research interests include hermeneutics, mathematical linguistics, and theology. His publications include The gender-neutral Bible controversy (2000); Redeeming science (2006); In the beginning was the word: Language – a God-centered approach (2009); and Redeeming sociology (2011).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Linguistics through its proper mirror-glass: Saussure, signs, segments
- The interrelation of metaphors and metonymies in sign systems of visual art: An example analysis of works by V. I. Surikov
- Information-theoretic confirmation of semiotic structures
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- An integrational response to Searlean realism, or how language does not relate to consciousness
- Peirce, meaning, and the Semantic Web
- The puzzling world of Harry Potter
- The sign system of human pretending
- Place and subjectivity in contemporary world: An analysis of Lost in Translation based on the semiotics of passion
- Peirce and the specification of borderline vagueness
- Marks as masks: A study of traditional African occupations and their visual indices
- The linguistic sign at the lexicon-syntax interface: Assumptions and implications of the Generative Lexicon Theory
- Presence of la femme: The semiotic silence
- On trans-semiosis
- Individual variation in participants' account of their own interaction
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Linguistics through its proper mirror-glass: Saussure, signs, segments
- The interrelation of metaphors and metonymies in sign systems of visual art: An example analysis of works by V. I. Surikov
- Information-theoretic confirmation of semiotic structures
- An information-based semiotic analysis of theories concerning theories
- An integrational response to Searlean realism, or how language does not relate to consciousness
- Peirce, meaning, and the Semantic Web
- The puzzling world of Harry Potter
- The sign system of human pretending
- Place and subjectivity in contemporary world: An analysis of Lost in Translation based on the semiotics of passion
- Peirce and the specification of borderline vagueness
- Marks as masks: A study of traditional African occupations and their visual indices
- The linguistic sign at the lexicon-syntax interface: Assumptions and implications of the Generative Lexicon Theory
- Presence of la femme: The semiotic silence
- On trans-semiosis
- Individual variation in participants' account of their own interaction
- From funeral to wedding ceremony: Change in the metaphoric nature of the Chinese color term white
