Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
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John Deely
John Deely (b. 1942) is a professor at the University of St. Thomas, Houston 〈jndeely@stthom.edu 〉. His research interest is the role of the action of signs in mediating objects and things, in particular the manner in which experience itself is a dynamic structure or web woven of triadic relations (signs in the strict sense) where elements (representamens, significates, and interpretants) interchange positions and roles over time in the spiral of semiosis. His publications includeWhat distinguishes human understanding? (2002);The impact of philosophy on semiotics (2003);Why Semiotics? (2004); andIntentionality and semiotics: A story of mutual fecundation (2007).
Abstract
As Thomas Sebeok led the move globally from semiology as a part to semiotics as the whole of the doctrine of signs, so his close colleague, translator, and collaborator, Susan Petrilli, has proven to be a central figure in the extension of semiotics (as a theoretical understanding of the role of signs in nature and experience) to the practical question of human responsibillty – as the only animal able explicitly to realize the role of signs in the maintenance of life – for the impact of human behavior not only within human society but on the whole community of living things, the biosphere. Just as Charles Peirce was for Sebeok the lodestar for semiotics in its theoretical development, so the close correspondent of Peirce, Victoria Lady Welby, proved to be a lodestar for Petrilli in the development of the practical, ethical extension of semiotics called by Welby “significs” but by Petrilli “semioethics.” Petrilli's vast archival work “reading the works of Victoria Welby and the signific movement,” embodied in her volume Signifying and Understanding, ensures the work of Lady Welby will be central to the developing extension of semiotics into the ethical sphere.
About the author
John Deely (b. 1942) is a professor at the University of St. Thomas, Houston 〈jndeely@stthom.edu〉. His research interest is the role of the action of signs in mediating objects and things, in particular the manner in which experience itself is a dynamic structure or web woven of triadic relations (signs in the strict sense) where elements (representamens, significates, and interpretants) interchange positions and roles over time in the spiral of semiosis. His publications include What distinguishes human understanding? (2002); The impact of philosophy on semiotics (2003); Why Semiotics? (2004); and Intentionality and semiotics: A story of mutual fecundation (2007).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
