Semiotics of precision and imprecision

2.1 The precision/imprecision of the linguistic approach to semiotics

The linguistic approach, or its choice to treat the structures as opposed to one another, has long ago pushed scholars dedicated to semiotics to give their contribution to its development. The phenomenon of structuralism and functionalism in linguistics itself has established a semiotic system that even today is highly applicable. This in turn has not remained only a theoretical paradigm, but has as well shown a path to a new practical applicability of the semiotic discipline as such.

First, Saussure’s (1959) contribution has not only represented a huge step in the frames of modern linguistics, but has introduced semiotics into it, and even “embedded” the semiotic approach into it. Is it however linguistics or semiotics? Are both terms mutually exclusive or inclusive? As far as this kind of juxtaposing between the two is concerned, here is Rauch’s opening statement to such a phenomenon: “The intimacy of the relationship between semiotics and linguistics is accountable on the one hand to the role assigned to language within semiotics, and on the other hand to the role assigned to linguistics within language” (Rauch 1999: 49).

As can be seen, there is a “relationship” (Rauch 1999: 49), and such a relationship is of a semiotic nature. To what extent is one discipline, as I have claimed, embedded in the other (or otherwise inclusive, or exclusive), is well explained in Saussure and his semiotic discourse. One could think for instance of the dichotomy presented: the signifier and the signified. Such distinctions have been a characteristic of the period, nevertheless, it has to be stated that Saussure’s contribution has been dedicated to signs’ scientific definition(s). In the frames of his definition, Saussure tried to give a precise definition of semiotics as a discipline, as a science of signs, thus further claiming it to be a part of the social as well as general psychology (Saussure 1959). According to him, therefore, signs would also mean language, as language is only one of such semiotic systems (Saussure 1959). Everything else that could be excluded from linguistics seems to belong to the field of psychology, as well as to other socially-related disciplines. We shall therefore name a result of precision in semiotics and/or of the semiotics of precision the part of “his linguistics,” which treats the aforementioned issues.

Another of Saussure’s distinctions is by all means of a semiotic nature: the dichotomy between language and speech. Although such a paradigm may also be derived from other linguists, such as Sapir (or even other scholars which may and may not belong to the same linguistic evolutionary period), the dichotomy in question explains what one means, for instance, by a double articulation, as explained by Martinet. If language is abstract, speech is a concrete phenomenon. The aforementioned dichotomy can be explained in the following way: some psychological processes have to occur prior to our speech: or better, first we think and then speak. The closeness between linguistics and psychology here, especially its cognitive part, is more than evident. The ongoing processes within our brain are the following: cognition about reality, the perception of objects, their categorization, and finally their naming. Pronunciation, though, belonging to the speech element, is a physical act of our speech organs. This kind of analysis can be applied in terms of not only linguistic phenomena (as we have previously stated contradicting each other), but also other life phenomena, being thus a result of empirical contributions to scientific research in other spheres, as for instance, the social one.

Second, the Russian Formalists’ (Beker 1986) choice has also been a firm ground for a research in the field of semiotics. The methodology, as I would dare say, not only made semiotically inclusive determined distinctive features in the field of language study, but has also made artistic expression become an inclusive part as an object of the semiotic method in general. ^[5] Thus, for instance, the distinction between two elements (mostly opposed to each other), as in the clear-cut division in form and content (Chatman 1978), made analysts, literary critics, philosophers, mostly cope with a work of art, which could be signified, in the shape of adding meaning to a given form. In contrast to pure linguistics, where precision is and can be deduced as a result of determined processes, through the Russian Formalists the new entities of analysis could also cover the narrative structures (which later, through other scholars have been applied in the field of arts among other related disciplines). The use of that methodology has shown that imprecision in procedures and/or results can belong to a semiotic analysis. By the term imprecision, I intend the disproportionality of elements on both sides of the communicational channel, as well as the unequivocal elements (see Eco 1979), which, as a result (if one takes initially the communicative level as an instance), emanate the aesthetic message, such as, in the following instance: how much time do we need to understand an author’s message? Do we get what the author wished to say or not? Although it is true that the final semantic choice belongs to us (in this case to the destination of the transmitted message), another question might be a part of imprecision, as for instance: how many characters does Hamlet represent? Or: how many parts does he play (even if we imagined him in the play, concretely)? And finally, as a consequence, how do we treat such a situation semiotically? This shall not depend on our final semantic choice as a result only (due to determined semiotic processes), but on the author’s intentions as well.

It is also true that it is linguistics that has also contributed to the wider applicability of either semiotic or communicational processes. One has to think of Jakobson’s contribution, for instance. His communicational model (see other schemes of the communication process: Shannon and Weaver 1949; Eco 1968) has represented a step forward in terms of either precision within the semiotic approach, or in terms of expanding its competencies (aimed at a multifold signification process). Jakobson’s addition of three new elements in the communicational model, as well as his poetic functions of language (Innis 1985) have made linguistically-minded semioticians think of the extra-linguistic entities as objects of semiotic studies.

Jakobson’s contribution to the science of signs shall belong to the precision of his procedures and/or to the semiotics of precision (because of the supposed exact amount of transmitted information through the communication channel), whereas the establishment of the poetic functions shall belong to the imprecision of such procedures (and/or to the semiotics of imprecision). The reasons for this conclusion drive us back to the communicational processes that consider the exact proportion of transmission of the processing material. Eco’s (1979) explanation of codes’ theory in such respect, gives a clear-cut picture of the code’s shapes, the signal’s transmission, and their final form and content when reaching the destination. Based upon Jakobson’s poetic functions however, Eco makes another distinction within the frames of the last codes’ function (Eco 1975), which speaks of metaphoric language usage itself. This would as well argue for Jakobson’s emotive function (Innis 1985), as well as his further explication on the message’s meaning. If one treats the results of Jakobson’s analysis, it is to conclude that the final meaning choice is ours.

One can choose in conclusion which option to use. If, on one hand, it occurs that precision is in question (as, for instance, many linguists have demonstrated, in terms of the semiotically interpretable units), then the manifestation results, in terms of final semantic units, shall generate such a situation. If, on the other hand, it occurs that imprecision is our choice, then the manifesting of narrative structures as a result (Greimas 1973) shall consider the multiplicity of our choice.

Within the linguistic approach to semiotics as well, both precision and imprecision are applicable to the extent that one chooses them to deduce messages that can be either mono- or poly-semantic. The two items in question create a double semiotic discourse that must be in a permanent correlation. Such a correlation shall belong to the unlimited semiosis processes, at least in the frames of what can be semiotically interpretable.

2.2 On the overcoming of oppositions: Greimas’s elementary semantic unit

The oppositions themselves, as I have claimed, were a characteristic of the structuralism period, which, at many instances, showed grounds for a semiotic, formal analysis of contents and/or texts. The question however that I have raised is: how can oppositions be overcome, so that the semiotic object becomes analyzed otherwise? One such choice or options to treat a semiotic phenomenon is to overcome such procedures. In order to explain such a situation, one needs to assemble some more scientific data.

Besides the structuralists’ description of given phenomena, which may and may not contain oppositions (thus being ready to be semiotically treated), late structuralism (and/or post-structuralism) as represented by Greimas (1973), has to my view an important element: the manifestation after the formalization, and finally the semantic micro-universe of its units. This is due to the action element, which, among other related social contexts, could emanate meaning to such complexities as artistic expressions. ^[6] This is a result that is to be established after the gradual and procedural achieving of the narrative structures, as one of the important Greimasian elements.

A. J. Greimas is the last of the great thinkers and theoreticians of French structuralism and post structuralism to be translated into English and presented to the American public, and perhaps in many ways the most difficult and forbidding – bristling with scientificity, as these texts are, and breaking out at all points into graphics of formalization (equations, schemata, nonverbal symbols of variables and invariables) that always seems to the “humanist” to draw a boundary across which one looks with frustration at the forbidden promised lands of mathematics or symbolic logic, or of musical theory. (Jameson 1987: vii)

As can be seen from Jameson’s Foreword, one of Greimas’s “innovations” in this respect is the use of extra-linguistic tools to describe semiotic phenomena. It thus proves Greimas’s hypothesis of treating social phenomena using semiotic methods.

One can also notice the usage of “nonverbal symbols of variables and invariables” (Jameson 1987: vii), as a proof for the semiotics coverage in this respect. Greimas’s contribution here, among other related issues, is a derivation of meaning as a result. It is worth noting that besides the Saussurian definition of semiotics (as a science of signs), ^[7] there is another definition of it which says that the result of each semiotics (or its definition in general) should belong to the semantic field (and/or to the process of signification): in terms of the science which generates meaning.

The production of meaning is meaningful only if it is the transformation of the meaning already given; the production of meaning is consequently a signifying endowment with form (Mise en forme), indifferent to whatever content it may be called on to transform. Meaning, in the sense of forming the meaning, can thus be defined as the possibility of the transformation of meaning. (Greimas 1973: x)

Defining meaning, as can be seen, proves the semantic results in semiotics. The word “transformation” however reminds us of Chomsky’s grammar, which is also built upon determined procedures that contribute to processes of grammaticalization and lexicalization, in terms of generating meaningful sentences. If Greimas has contributed to the overcoming of the phenomenon of binary opposition, Chomsky has contributed to the universal acquiring of languages. The inclusiveness between the two in this respect is providing for results through transformational procedures. ^[8]

Here is how Greimas introduces his trajectory of procedures, which shall later lead towards a process of signification:

(1) Deep structures define the fundamental mode of existence of an individual or a society, and subsequently the conditions of existence of semiotic objects. As far as we know, the elementary constituents of deep structures have a definable logical status. (2) Surface structures constitute a semiotic grammar system that arranges the grammar contents susceptible of manifestation into discursive forms. The end products of this system are independent of the expression that manifests them, insofar as they can theoretically appear in any substance and, in the case of linguistic objects, in any language. (3) The structures of manifestation produce and organize the signifiers.

(Greimas 1973: 48)

Greimas here creates a double discourse at the beginning of his division into deep and surface structures. The existence of semiotic objects is conditioned as he says by the existence of individuals and societies. Such a statement implies that the basic notions and concepts of a semiotic treatment are taken from the external reality. The conceptualizing and/or naming of the aforementioned notions in terms of a linguistic expression, as well as the process of lexemes’ creation, belong to the normative part of linguistics. The regulations and/or rules of applied language, as it can be inferred from Saussure’s theory, make the language phenomenon and language usage a social phenomenon. Consequently, the structures (which in the Greimasian sense are not only a result of a linguistic procedure) can thus be manifested. Such a situation proves their practical application. In the given circumstances as described, Greimas creates his elementary structure of signification, in the following way:

If the signification S (the universe of a signifying whole or any semiotic system) appears, at the level of its initial apprehension, as a semantic axis, it is opposed to S-, taken as an absolute absence of meaning, and contradictory to the term S. If we accept that the semantic axis S (substance of content) is articulated, at the level of the form and content, in two contradictory semes: S1<> S2, these two semes, taken separately, point to the existence of their contradictory terms: -S1<>-S2.

(Greimas 1973: 49)

As can be seen, a double relation is thus created, expressing disjunction and conjunction (1973: 49), which in turn represents meaning at the level of manifestation.

Greimasian double relation, as can be noted in the two separate instances (named the elementary structure of meaning), can thus overcome the previously established structuralist dichotomy, through the semiotic square. As we can conclude, Gremias has precise transformational procedures in the frames of creating such a structure: therefore such an approach should belong to the semiotics of precision.

Besides the structures’ existence (named narrative in determined Greimasian procedures), created through a process of transformation the constituent elements of the semiotic process can further be developed towards a semiotics of action, thus providing the movability of states from one to another (see Greimas and Fontanille 1993). The semiotic process though, besides the aforementioned precision in its procedures towards manifestation (i. e., the deduction of meaning and its semantic units), can result in the imprecision of a process, or better expressed: in a deduction of a spectrum of semantic units. The conceptualization of different states of phenomena and/or beings as moveable within the mentioned theoretical approach lies on epistemological grounds. As it is rightfully observed:

It is therefore not surprising that the best-explored, and perhaps the most efficient, level of the generative trajectory is, in fact, situated in that middle area between the discursive and epistemological components. We are referring above all to the modeling of narrativity and to its actantial organization. The concept of an actant, freed from its psychological frame and defined only by its doing, is the sine qua non condition for developing a semiotics of action.

(Greimas and Fontanille 1993: xvi–xvii)

Owing to the fact that the previously mentioned basic model (and there are more if one intends their application aimed at the stage of tinniest semantic units) regards the signification process primarily, we shall give an example here. The relation between Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare represents a relation of conjunction because of their love, on one hand, whereas on the other, the relation between their parents respectively represents a relation of contradictoriness. Love (between Romeo and Juliet) and hatred (among their parents respectively), creates the emotional status of the play as well as of its characters. This is the reason for the tragic events in the plot of the play.

Is there any reason for a determined event to occur in the plot of a given work of art that a protagonist (and/or a viewer and/or a reader) might have wished that it should have happened otherwise? Can a semiotician perceive other sorts of events occurring so that he or she might rely on hypothetical situations that might finally build narrative structures ready for a semiotic context? Regarding such a prospective, Greimas and Fontanille (1993) have provided for an epistemological level, which establishes the semiotic preconditions, in a way that previously established topoi and/or focal points become transformable into a new state of existence. This is possible in the frames of a performative expression, such as, for instance, in a Shakespearean tragedy.

The aim of the Greimasian model was not as simple as one could conclude at first sight: such semiotic squares have to develop their manifestation trajectories, so as to reach meaning as a result. In relation to the example, questions like the following could be advanced: when have love and hatred reached their culmination and why? What kind of relation do the characters have within the development of the story? How much more time is needed so that the mentioned semiotic topoi reach the level of a comparison among each other so that a determined relationship may be established? Reaching a level that can clearly show the relationships and/or phenomena becoming passionate in an applicative and a manifestation stage at the surface structure (named a semio-narrative level), due to deductive procedures in terms of a generative trajectory, is a proof of a multifold semantic specter.

In the aforementioned context for instance, one would advance the following question: was it something that Hamlet or any other protagonist of the play wanted to do, or anything else that could not have been done so as to reach the mentioned culmination point (and/or the tensitivity component in the Greimasian sense of the word) of the tragedy? Greimasian theory provides us with instances of modality in action, which prove the imprecision of elements exposed in his semantic models.

We should note also that Greimas himself offers a semiotician more than one option: for instance, besides the elementary semantic structure, the mentioned relations later develop into actantial relations which, besides the manifesting status of various analyzed phenomena, can show their actions. The actions in turn are being performed by subjects, seen as semiotic systems, which may contain semes, transformable into passions as taxonomies, in their final manifestation results like: emotionality, sadness, happiness, death, hatred, etc.

2.3 On the logical option of semiotics: Peirce

Besides the structurally-minded semiotics and Greimas (which I consider to be different from previous structuralists’ mainstream), Peirce brought to general semiotics another approach. An inclusive element however of all theoreticians we have mentioned until now, is doubtlessly the process of signification.

If the aforementioned process, in the frames of the linguistically minded semiotics, is claimed to be derived or deduced by a psychologically originated paradigm (Saussure 1959), in Peirce’s terms semiotics is deduced by a philosophically originated paradigm, which makes the two points of view different in the frames of their methodological approach. Differing from Saussure, Peirce “… derives semiotics from logic, a normative science branching from philosophy” (Rauch 1999: 49).

The mutually exclusive factor between the two approaches is semiotics’ definition on the one hand, and on the other, the mutually inclusive factor between them: the process of signification. Here is how Peirce defines semiotics: “logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown only another name for semiotic, the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs” (CP 2.227). It can be noticed from this statement that he treats semiotics as a science of representation. If psychologically-minded semiotics on one hand treats it as an ongoing process, like dichotomies (as we have seen) out of which one is abstract (as determined processes must take place), and the next is concrete (as such process has to be performed), on the other, then, logically-minded semiotics treats it as a deduction, out of which a signification must result. The obvious difference in terms of both approaches, as can be noticed, lies within methodology.

To prove such representational importance in this respect we shall quote some of his basic definitions in terms of the semiotic elements:

A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.

(CP 2.228)

If a sign stands to represent something else, it means that such an entity would not perform any processes in advance (in case one compares it with any other issue or, if one stated that it is an entity, a smaller unit, which has to be processed). On the contrary, such a sign in Peirce’s terms would refer to a signification. Peirce, out of such a model, infers meaning in his representing three things or issues. Therefore the sign, or representamen, is his First or Firstness, “which stands in a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object [or Secondness], as to be capable of determining a Third [or Thirdness], called its Interpretant” (CP 2.274). Thus, for instance, in Shakespeare’s Othello, Firstness is his being a successful worrier (which can be concluded from his behavior, clothing in the scene, etc.), Secondness is his being a Moor, whereas a Thirdness is his naiveté, which is a cause of the tragedies happening in the play.

One should bear in mind that this is not the only triadic relation expressed by Peirce. One could even analyze the symbolic element as a consequence of a procedural deduction, which in turn brings about distinctive features as a result.

We may thus place Peirce’s Firstness and Secondness within precision in semiotics, as they represent a Subject-Object-like representation, or a first level of signification. The Thirdness, which is the Interpretant itself, shall belong to its imprecision, because of the possible symbolic reference in it.