Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
-
Giorgio Borrelli
Giorgio Borrelli (b. 1983) is a PhD student at the University of Bari Aldo Moro 〈giorgioborrelli83@yahoo.it 〉. His research interests include materialistic semiotics, sociology, and ethnography. His publications include “Rossi-Landi's and Ponzio's methodics”: For a socio-dialogical critique of “communication-production” (2013).
Abstract
“Philosophical Terminology” (1899–1900), the essay by Ferdinand Tönnies with which he won the Welby Prize, constitutes the first – and for long the only – example of dialogue between sociology and semiotics. Tönnies delineated a complex theory of signs beginning from his theory of will as developed in his monograph Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887). Through an original interpretation of the analogy between word and money he was ahead of his times in foreseeing the fundamental role carried out by language in structuring social relations. All the same, his analogical approach to the relation between word and money – as had already been observed by Victoria Lady Welby – also represents the weak point in his argumentations in the essay in question. An important contribution for a better understanding of the relations subtending the social production processes of signs and language is that offered by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi with his homological method. Tönnies' own work can be read in this framework and further developed.
About the author
Giorgio Borrelli (b. 1983) is a PhD student at the University of Bari Aldo Moro 〈giorgioborrelli83@yahoo.it〉. His research interests include materialistic semiotics, sociology, and ethnography. His publications include “Rossi-Landi's and Ponzio's methodics”: For a socio-dialogical critique of “communication-production” (2013).
©[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