The dialogical semiosis of self-narrative in Burning

1 Introduction

This paper is geared to investigate ongoing research topics on the self. Such topics necessarily involve an interdisciplinary approach from psychology, philosophy, linguistics, narrative studies, film studies, and semiotics. As we all know, the concept of the self is equivocal, and thus we can assume that it is somewhere in our brain or in our thought or in a personal relation as transcendental being. In this regard, we hypothesize the reality of the self and follow an inferential process, producing some effects on us, so that this process urges us to believe in the proposition that the self is real. But there will still be misconceptions in this process in that we believe in the proposition that the self belongs to me, identifying it with ego. Indeed, it is not easy to distinguish ego from the self, since they are intimately related to each other. However, we shall see the distinction in the process of sign activity throughout the argument of this paper, analyzing three persons in mutual relation.

In addition, when we express the self in language, we use a personal pronoun “I,” which makes us more confused when it comes to the distinction between perspectives of the subjective and the objective, concerning the concept of the self, because the word “I” refers to the speaker, not myself. Perhaps the word “I” is indirectly referring to myself by means of the speaker. Thus, the word “I” replaces the proper name, and not the other way round (W 1: xxix). This means that the little word “I” bears significant character as a modeling device from which we discover who we are.

For Benveniste, who emphasizes discourse rather than language, the word “I” is an empty signifier, so it needs to fill a blank, signifying the word in the discourse domain through intersubjective communicative act by personal pronouns I and you as a pair concept, which shows the dialogical nature of speech (Benveniste 1971: 195–230; see also Stawarska 2009: 76; Viola 2011:401). This does not help in understanding the concept of the self; yet it can be a starting point in becoming aware of the concept of the self which is expressed in language through the first-person access to the self. As language is a source for sharing the concept in terms of convention, language users are able to attain thoughts in language as a form of concept.

Ego encounters non-ego in language when a child hears from his mother, “The stove is hot” as in Peirce’s discussion of self-consciousness (EP 1: 18–21). On disagreeing with this proposition and touching the stove, the child becomes aware of ignorance by supposing a self in which this ignorance is inhere when the testimony confirmed the fact in a striking way. Thus, Peirce remarks that “testimony gives the first dawning self-consciousness” (EP 1: 20). Through testimony, the child also becomes aware of error by supposing a self which is fallible when appearances are contradicted by testimony (e.g. the table wants moving). Thus, “he adds to the conception of appearance as actualization of fact, the conception of it as something private or valid for only one body” (EP 1: 20). In this regard, ignorance and error learned by means of testimony in language “distinguish our private selves from the absolute ego of apperception” (EP 1: 20).

For Peirce, self-consciousness is the equivalent of attention, concentration, or reflex consciousness in mental phenomena (CP 7.547; Sheriff 1994: 30). The conscious person is expressed in a form of discourse, presupposing the speaking subject to be a sign of the self: that is, the perceiving “I” and the narrating “I.” From this example, we can understand that the self is inferred through experience in language by naming and in discourse by narrating, thus connecting word and thing and also the narrative world and the actual world. In this regard, we ourselves are a mediator between the two worlds, the external and the internal. Accordingly, we can assume that the self is a sign as a Third which is to be also interpreted in the domain of transcendental phenomenology of the ego and non-ego relation, insomuch as phenomenology between you and I cannot be reversed as in a language as a relation of I–YOU discourse (Stawarska 2009: 77). In this regard, first person access to non-ego is not possible without imagining the other by means of narrative imagination.

My argument is that the concept of the self is constructed by narrative as a Third for a thought or cognition; thus, the self as “a living legisign” (Raposa 2020: 74), functions to connect the virtual with the actual by narrational activity. Through a narrative world for the future conduct of life, a general idea embodied in a person as a sign develops to personal identity by way of dialogical narrative semiosis from three persons’ perspectives, namely, the first-person perspective, the second-person perspective, and the third-person perspective. So, the question “Who am I?” as personal identity will attain its meaning in the sense of oneself as “self-same identity” (Ricoeur 1988: 246), leading to the response to “What am I?” The former question is concerned with formal identity associated with sameness or consistency, but the latter one with narrative identity as the narrated self-same subjectivity of selfhood. Following Ricoeur, narrative identity will thus function as a model of human action (Ricoeur 1988: 246). In this regard, I will place emphasis on the semiotic self as a narrating subject and a mediator between sign and object.

Concerning this argument, three discussion topics are: first, the relationship of personal identity and narrative identity in terms of temporality and purposefulness in narrational activity by examining the interrelation of metaphor and narrative; second, the semiotic self and three persons in relation, from which the idea of three persons turns into that of participants; third, dialogical semiosis of narrative to see how the semiotic self is functioning as an interpreting agent of the transactional self and the dialogical self. Finally, I shall illustrate what the dialogical semiosis of narrative means for identifying selfhood as co-identity through narrative imagination. Identifying selfhood in this way is attained by the second-person relational experience, embedding the third-person self-knowledge which in turn embeds the first-person access to the self. I will examine this by analyzing the film text of Burning (2018) so as to make the point that the narrative becomes a mode of interpersonal communication by way of the semiotic self.

2 Personal identity and narrative identity

As Peirce remarked, a person is a general idea which is experienced by feeling as an effect (EP 1: 322–333). Then the feeling is nothing but immediate consciousness. Peirce also said elsewhere that there was a little person in us, to cherish and make grow. In this regard, the concept of person is one we have in us but also we are in it. Personality or personal identity in this sense is characterized by a general idea appearing as consistency or regularity in connection of ideas (EP 1: 331). From this characteristic, an institution can also be regarded as a person, according to Peirce (EP 1: 331; Murphey 1993: 343).

My question is then how the consistency will be acquired. We can assume that the constant factors result from a habit of action or thought (EP 1: 343; Sheriff 1994: 28–29). In other words, through a tendency to follow a habit, personality is built. If so, what is a model or a controlling element for following a habit? It could be a kind of law, so that generality will operate in an individual event. This generality is a character of Thirdness in Peirce’s categories of being. A symbol as common character is embodied in a form of replica which is an index referring to a real object. Following this line of thought, the mind shows a tendency to follow a habit and the subject to take the role of an agent to bring the habit into practical effect (Sheriff 1994: 18). Therefore, the mind is related to reality through the agent of the subject, and the subject should be a Third functioning in a mediating role. In other words, it is a semiotic agent that connects the two realms of the external world and the internal world or compares them as an interpretant. This semiotic subject is a concept of the self which we can acquire from linguistic community. Through this concept of the self as subject in mind dealing with object in reality, a little person grows as an idea to become a symbol such as law, representing reality. In this way the self has a significant role for knowing who we are, leading and directing us to conform to personality by self-controlling thought.

Then my question is partially answered in providing the explanation of the concept of the self in relation to personal identity. But the answer is not sufficient in that the concept of the self as a Third should be enacted in a narrative world, so that the character of the self as generality, which is understood as continuity in Peirce, is explained in other, who sees the world differently from the self. This can be described in this manner. The self as a concept in speech is limited to one’s mind, connecting substance and predicate. This is remarkably explained in Helen Keller’s “water moment” as in “(This is) w-a-t-e-r!.” She herself is taking the place of the copula “is,” connecting the substance water and a concept of water (Percy 1975 [1954]: 36–39). This event occurs by naming activity in the consciousness of Thirdness. Besides, the testimony “This is water,” supposing the speaking subject as a self, is also confirmed by other through joint attention to the substance water in a narrative discourse. Thus, one idea of a person as a sign affects the other idea of a person through the consciousness of Thirdness, that is, the mind which is described as the continuity of consciousness by Peirce (Sheriff 1994: 25). Therefore, the concept of the self is embodied as an individual self to be interpreting agent in a narrative world, from which we understand the concept of reality and being, through a semiotic activity in that, without representation, the universe of being is not intelligible according to Peirce (EP 2: 300–324).

This point is illustrated in Paul Ricoeur’s studies on metaphor and narrative. These studies formed the basis for the proposition of ‘oneself being as another’. Ricoeur’s assertion is supported by the idea that personality occupies time as a process in connection of ideas and implies purposefulness in ideas for development. This reflects the law of mind in Peirce’s synechistic philosophy that “ideas tend to spread continuously to affect certain others which stand to them in a particular relation of affectability” (EP 1: 313). Thus, it is not surprising to see that the study of the self as a sign of continuity through a philosophical view of ontology is related to language and narrative.

Stated above, the concept of the self is attained through language; the concept of the self as an interpreting agent is narrating and is also narrated in narrative discourse where the agent’s role is as a subject in relation to object in reality within the process of sign action (see Ricoeur 1974). The meaning of the semiotic self in a narrative world as a subject is discovered from a relational perspective of a person, that is, the self from the three persons’ perspectives in dialogical semiosis of narrative, resulting in the proposition “oneself as another” (Ricoeur 1990: 16–25). This is the way to see I myself objectively in you yourself, seeking resemblance as common character but with a difference. This will be done by subject’s deliberate action towards dynamic object of other. In this regard, Ricoeur’s proposition involves the ethical self^[1] with purposefulness. Thus, the semiotic self encompasses the ethical self. Doing something morally is understood as the expression of the esthetic self and is dependent on Firstness of consciousness, the quality of feeling.^[2]

The aim of this research on the self is ultimately to understand the concepts of a person and personal identity with which the personal self is constructed and at the same time personal identity is explained in the narrative process of semiotic activity. Regarding the concepts of identity and subjectivity, Ricoeur’s two realms of language and discourse are connected in the form of metaphor and narrative by virtue of the semiotic self. First, metaphoric formulation is constructed by an interpreting agent of the private self, connecting substance with predicate based on similarity. Second, narrative imagination is performed by the individual self, connecting the virtual or potential world with the actual world by means of a character. Therefore, Ricoeur’s metaphoric construction is shaped by the formula “seeing as” subjectively, while narrative imagination consists in the formula “being as” objectively. For Ricoeur, the relation of metaphor and narrative culminates in transformation of “seeing as” into “being as,” so as to connect the potential world of art with the actual world of life by way of interpreting subject (Venema 2000: ch. 4). Even though metaphor and narrative have a symbolic nature, both operate in relation to reference and reality as an index, encompassing icon.

This forms a narrative world where a character who replaces us as utterer and interpreter perceives the world, as the pronoun “I” replaces the speaker. By narrative imagination as in ‘being as’, the narrative world becomes the representation of reality in the actual world. So, the self as an idea of the utterer and the interpreter is narrated by means of a character, narrative identity thus being constructed through ‘temporality’ and ‘emplotment’ (Ricoeur 1984: ch. 2). Thus, the narrative world represents the actual world as three modes of mimesis, namely, prefiguration through which life prefigures narrative, configuration or emplotment as synthesis of heterogeneous events, and refiguration which connects narrative with life (Ricoeur 1984: ch. 3).

3 Three persons in relation and the semiotic self: from person to participant

To go further on the subject of the self, let us look at the concept of three persons in relation in connection with the semiotic self. They are the first person, the second person, and the third person. They are interrelated in a way that shows the concept of the self. Put differently, to understand or attain the knowledge of the self, it is a prerequisite to understand the concept of three persons and how they function for discovery of the meaning of the self.

In nature, they are places, being positioned in first, second, and third. They are in relation. That is, the first person presupposes the second person; the second person embeds the first person; the third person is embodied in the second person. Being a person can mean that a semiotic subject takes up a first person or a second person or a third person for its participant role. Thus, for example, someone takes up a first person and the subject plays a role from the subjective perspective while dealing with the second person. Taking up a third person, the subject plays a role from the objective perspective. Taking a second person, the subject plays a role from the subjective and the objective. Peirce wonderfully described this relationship in this way: “I looks in, It looks out, Thou looks through out and in again” (W 1: xxix).

The concept of each person is unique and they are independent of each other; yet they are in a triadic relation. As is implied in the above description, Peirce attempted to use these terms, personal pronouns, as his categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness (W 1: xxix); however, considering language in connection with thought, Peirce tried to use a personal pronoun as a categorical term, holding that nouns are substitutes for pronouns, differently from its conventional use in linguistics. Considering the concept of person with Peirce’s categorical thinking, there are advantages in understanding the concept in different domains, as in linguistics, narrative, and philosophy (hermeneutics) insomuch as Peirce’s category is characterized as universal and thus methodological and dialogical. Following Peirce’s categorical understanding, we encounter nonconformity with the term in linguistics. That is, the second person does not belong to Peirce’s category of Secondness; it belongs to Thirdness. Further, the third person belongs to Secondness. This will provide the reader with an understanding of how the dialogical self is operative in dialogical semiosis of narrative. I will discuss this point in Section 4.

Bearing this in mind, the three persons are discussed in linguistics, narrative, and philosophy. While he explains the concept of the third person for self-understanding and self-knowledge, Bruce B. Janz remarks that the frame of three persons is rooted “in linguistics and passes through literature before arriving as a philosophical concept” (Janz 2018: 160). He posited that in linguistics the three persons as sign were used to refer to reference. For instance, “I” refers to the speaker. In literature, the word “I” is used for voice and perspectives, so we have a first-person narrative and a third-person narrative, and a second-person narrative. Narrative is not limited to language but creates a virtual reality through a character. So, who speaks is important in a narrative world. In philosophy, the concept of person is the main concern in that it is related to metaphysics and hermeneutics of the self. As mentioned earlier, a person is a general idea, so personal identity is consistent with character or self’s identity. For this reason, this is also related to self-consciousness. According to Janz, from the first-person perspective, the self becomes solipsistic as in Descartes’s self, and from the third-person perspective the concept of the self is eliminated as in a Buddhist’s view. The second-person perspective is the one that Martin Buber emphasized in the relation of I–you (Janz 2018: 166).

Then how are these domains related to each other in terms of knowing the self? At the start, a search for the meaning of the self is not possible, because we cannot have any meaning unless we have a concept. However, we can get the idea of a person through language, that is, self-consciousness, where the word “I” indicates the self in sign activity. Then we assume that there is a self as a concept, and the self is embodied as an agent connecting a narrative world with an actual world. It thus acts as a deliberate subject with autonomy and inwardness (Colapietro 1989: ch. 5). Thus, being equipped in a transition from linguistic reference to narrative reality, the concept of self evolves from a negative feature to a positive and deliberative feature to become objective “I” as a living symbol.

In literary narrative, we interpret the self which is mediated by a character. While doing the interpreting activity, we can gain knowledge of the self, leading to self-control through narrative consistency, but the modalities of perspectives in narrative are interrelated with each other as in language.

In terms of modality of person and narrative, first in first-person narrative a narrator expresses the self through the subjective perspective. Autobiography is an example. Second, in third-person narrative a narrator observes other through an objective perspective (see Janz 2018: 167–169). Biography will be an example. Third, in second-person narrative, a narrator addresses a narratee through dialogical imagination. Epistolary writing is such a case. Such second-person narrative is not common but draws attention from narratologists because of its hybridity among addressees. The addressees could be the narrator him or herself or a narratee or both. As a dialogical mode between I and you, this second-person perspective is unique in being distinguished from the other two perspectives, which are both considered as observational modes, implying that I observe myself and I observe him/her/it. This dialogical character of the second-person relational perspective is aptly described by Stump:

A second-person experience is different in character from a first-person or a third-person experience because it is necessary for a second-person experience, as it is not for a first- or third-person experience, that you interact consciously and directly with another person who is conscious and present to you as a person, in one way or another. (Stump 2013: 163, cited in Gallagher 2018: 151)

This dialogue is communicated by narrative or story between the author and the reader through many layers of meaning in the dialogical semiosis of narrative because narrative sign determines interpretant agent directly and is thereby determined by object indirectly. A dialogue involves transaction between the text and the reader, establishing a common interpretant between them. In the second-person narrative, the author and the reader experience a dialogue through imagination and read the meaning of text by reason. By this process, the reader transacts with the text so as to interpret the self.

4 A second-person relational experience

Based on the understanding of the three persons in relation, I will elaborate the second-person relational experience from a dialogical perspective in order to see how it mediates the first-person access to the self with the third-person self-knowledge, thus leading to self-interpretation.

Narrative is a form of representation of experience. Once we acquire the concept of the self, the concept will have a meaning in reality by embodiment in a narrative world. The embodied figure “I” in a narrative world as a storyteller reveals who I am or what I am through inference by interpreting sign activity. In this activity, three terms are operative, namely “I” as an experience subject of a teller, “you” as a correlate of the teller, and “it” as a story itself.

Face-to-face conversation narrative is represented in spoken language where I and you are in a dialogic situation and they interchange their roles by taking turns. The dialogue is performed in spoken language, which is called an oral narrative as in an interview. The actual speaker I and the hearer you are on the surface; yet the invisible relationship of I–you is mediated when using written language narrative. I and you have a common character in a narrative for joint attention so as to share the viewpoint and yet they as individuals have different interpretations of the same character. This is a mediated dialogue by written narrative as in fictional or factual narrative.

Here, oral narrative does not mediate between you and I internally unless “I” is imagining you by way of dialogic imagination through a representation of our action of dialogue in the actual world. As Peirce said, we cognize and think by way of sign, a representation of the external facts (EP 1: 30). This can lead to the idea that human action in the actual world is represented in a narrative world by way of narrative signs. In this sense, narrative becomes a cognitive tool for understanding dialogical phenomenology between you and I through narrative modeling (see Cobley 2014: 233–241). In this sense, we will deal with written narrative in three modes: the relationship I–you is represented in a second-person narrative; the relationship I–it(he/she) is represented in a third-person narrative; the relationship I–I is represented in a first-person narrative. Unlike in linguistics where a personal pronoun refers to reference, in literary narrative a personal pronoun is used as a tool for a perspective and a voice (Janz 2018: 162–163). Thus, in the first-person narrative, as if I am another I, another I’s perspective and voice are used. The relationship I–I is thus represented in the narrative. This narrative embeds “I,” so called, in observing another I. Consequently, by a first-person experience the subject “I” can access the self, not knowing what it is; it could be you or he/she/it. In the third-person narrative, as if I am he, a third person’s perspective and voice are used, representing the relationship I–it(he/she). This means that with an objective perspective I can understand myself by gaining knowledge of the self.

Unlike the other two, which involve an observational mode, the second-person narrative is characterized by a dialogical mode. As if I am you, a perspective and voice by you are used in the narrative. This is regarded as a dialogical mode, since the relation of I–you is neither subjective nor objective; it is intersubjective and relational as in the form of speech. The relational experience is a primary factor, while the knowledge of the self is the secondary effect from interpreting activity by inferential reasoning. Thus, you speak and I hear, and in turn I speak and you hear. Through this dialogical way or rather a transactional way, we come to understand that the knowledge of the self is the effect of inference, which is determined by the fact that knowing you in person amounts to knowing me, myself. Thus, the subject I cannot access you unless they have commonality to mediate you and I, speaking of the same thing, it as an objective I.

The relationship of I–you remains in an actual world with immediate experience as in oral narrative, but this relationship is represented in a narrative world for narrative communication. I and you both read a narrative as if they are the characters of the narrative, participating in the virtual world as an idea of a person by telling and hearing. Thus, the self as interpreting agent connects the virtual or potential world with the actual world in narrative semiosis. This means that in the narrative world or virtual world the minds of the author and the reader are conflated with each other. Thus, the second-person perspective and voice presuppose the first-person perspective and voice mediated by the third-person perspective and voice. Accordingly, the second-person perspective encompasses the third-person and first-person perspectives.

In the first-person narrative, the reader and the author are regarded as in a dialogue by means of a first person as the semiotic self of interpreting agent. The exemplary narrative is autobiography, where a subjective perspective is used for expressing the self. For the author, the experiencing subject “I” is narrated by the interpreting agent in the writing process; for the reader, the experiencing subject “I” is narrated by the interpreting agent as responding to the narrative through narrative imagination. Even if the first-person narrative is supposed to be subjective, it is not totally subjective, but somewhat intersubjective between I and another I, thinking of the presupposed dialogical relationship between the author and the reader in extradiegetic narrative. Thus, it becomes a matter of involvement in the narrative world by the two. These interpreting activities by the dialogical self belong to the First category of being in Peirce as a sign of possibility, concentrating on the virtual world where “I” observes another I.

In the third-person narrative, the “I” observes IT in an impersonalized manner. This implies that experiencing “I” as a narrator or an actual author narrates IT objectively as far as the author can. The exemplary narrative is biography or history. But interestingly, the objective perspective is mixed with the subjective in that the author is also participating in the life of the object with his lens; there is even a case where autobiography and biography are not distinguished. From this aspect, history is considered as a story told by a historian, rather than a fact, which is narrated from the historian’s perspective. It is thus called historiography, where history is regarded as a construction by writing.

In this view, a third-person narrative of biography encompasses a first-person narrative of autobiography through which the biographer’s perspective and voice have an impact on the writing. In this sense, the biographer and the object, that is, a social actor, in biography are in a dyadic relation of action and reaction by way of causality. This relationship belongs to the Second category of being as a sign of fact.

A second-person narrative is not commonly used, due to the fact that perspectives are multiple and voices are a polyphony. Like the little word “I,” referring to the self as an idea of the speaker or the teller, the word “you,” by referring to the self, has consciousness, responding by listening and hearing. The words “I” and “you” thus have consciousness, being accompanied by the concept of the self as a thought or law. An exemplary narrative of the second person is a form of epistolary writing, revealing a representation of dialogical relation on the surface. Linguistically, the word “you” refers to the hearer, but the word “you” could indicate an imaginary character in narrative. In this case, you could be I, you, he/she/it as the narratee. In this sense, the second-person narrative encompasses both the first-person perspective through a subjective view in the way that “you” is another I and the third-person perspective through an objective view in the way that “you” is not-I. In this regard, the second-person narrative mediates the first-person experience with the third-person knowledge based on relational second-person experience; it resides in a triadic relation through the process of interpretation of the self. This process belongs to the Third category of being as a sign of reason. I will call this a self-narrative. That is, in a self-narrative, the dialogical relationship of I and you in the actual world is narrativized as a process of sign activity.

5 From the transactional self to the dialogical self

The transactional self is making meaning through transaction between the virtual self and the actual self by diagrammatic reasoning. This will occur when the reader’s experience responds to the text. In the process, two different modes of thinking operate, namely the paradigmatic or logico-scientific mode and the imaginative application of the narrative mode (Bruner 1986: 12–13), which are analogous with the photographic image and the filmic narrative in film text as being derived from emotion and reason. The transaction between the text and the reader is performed; this is based on convention by using a symbol. As stated earlier, for the quest for meaning in the text, perspective and voice are used by character using the idea of person. The complex of usage of the idea of the second-person relation draws our attention to further observation in light of the idea of the I–you relationship in a narrative or possible world and how this affects the actual mind; in other words, how the symbol in literature influences us in the actual world. I consider that this question will arise more effectively in film than in literature, insomuch as filmic representation is characterized by appearance using sensations like seeing and hearing, not by imagining in the mind but by actually seeing and hearing just as if we are in a dialogue with the other person, though we are taking the role of the hearer/viewer. So, in film, as visual narrative unlike literary narrative, we follow a formula of who sees, hears, and perceives, following and understanding the narrative. There are multiple perspectives and voices produced in filmic image. They could be the director’s or the character’s or the audience’s. In this case, the audience may see a filmic image like a photographic image by the physical eye, but also, he or she may see it through the mind’s eye as a mental diagram which is depicting the relationship between the director and the audience.

The filmic image is iconic in showing the quality of relation and at the same time the image is indexical, referring to the relation in the actual world. In this regard, the transactional self is not sufficient for interpreting this complex narrative, which seems to be a third-person narrative as in biography but also appears in describing the second-person relational experience: for the director, a dialogic relationship with the character and the audience, and for the audience with the character and the director. In this way, the transactional self operates on the level of the text and the audience, while the dialogical self performs on the level of the discourse between the utterer and the interpreter for seeking the communicational interpretant (Liszka 1996: 93–98). Apparently, the two levels are connected through immediate and dynamic consciousness of the object and are represented both in the text and in the minds of the director and the audience. That is, the transactional/individual self is in a mutual relation with the dialogical/personal self, so that the dialogical self can be embodied in the transactional self as a symbol, embedding an index, which in turn embeds an icon.

In summary, the transactional self is based on convention or a law on the text level between the film text and the mind, while the dialogical self is based on the relationship on the discourse level between the minds of director and audience, being divided into two: dyadic and triadic. The dyadic relation has individual characteristics where the individual self is involved, while the triadic relation has general characteristics where the personal self is active in the interpreting activity. Also, the former reveals causality involving both material cause and efficient cause, whereas the latter reveals causation due to the final cause. Thus, we pursue a final cause in order to understand the semiosis of relation in narrative world; this functions as a cause of motive and desire, through which we can know who we are by way of narrative identity.

6 Dialogical semiosis of narrative of film text

I will try to show the interrelation of the transactional self and the dialogical self by looking at the diagrammatic filmic image of the relation between three characters in the film Burning (2018) directed by Lee, Chang-dong. By analyzing the filmic image, searching for the meaning of the self, my intention is to show how we identify selfhood which is mediated by the idea of a second person belonging to the Third category of being in a triadic relation of the three persons.

The second-person narrative is individualized in a replica; otherwise, the meaning of the narrative is too vague. Insomuch as the Third category is general, its embodiments as replicas appear as different modes. Consequently, the replica of the second person could be an abstract idea, or a signifying character of an imaginary object, or a reference in the actual world, or the concept of “we” as co-identity. I will discuss the possibility of the second-person experience in the filmic image identifying co-identity for selfhood by narrative imagination through collateral observation and experience.

The audience as a first person experiences the signs on the screen, which indicate the actual world, and the actual world signifies the general idea which comes from the director as a second person. So, this formula involves rhetoric of narrative for communication between the director and the audience, supposing the dialogical self. The second person is a law but it is not a force which discourages the audience from making their own diverse interpretations. So, experiencing film requires a twofold reading through diagrammatic reasoning. Thus, to perceive the diagrammatic image on the screen, then experiencing it by responding to the image through mental operation by modification and adaptation of the image, the quality of relation of I and you is inferred in the diagram, thus creating a new image as the meaning of the text. The new idea will be in the mind of the first person, the audience, who views the filmic image which was transmitted by the second person, the director, through the third person, the movie character as object of thought. So, we all participate in the semiosis of narrative, being positioned in persons, playing this role not only by the transactional self but also by the dialogical self, that is, the individual self responding to the relation of characters in film text and the personal self as narrative identity connecting the director’s personality and the audience’s personality.

Identifying selfhood as a dialogical self in the main character of the film, named Jongsu, in three persons is observed in a semiotic process where a sign determines an interpretant in the same way as the sign is determined by the same object. Thus, between the sign and the interpretant there are two kinds of objects: one is in the sign, which is immediate and visible, and the other is mediate and invisible. The director, as an object, determines the character to convey the meaning of his idea, so he resides in the character; however, the character has his own quality as individuality of ideas and interacts with the director’s idea to enact. This character affects the audience, not because of his appearance but because of his action in understanding his motive and desire. Following Ricoeur, narrative is a three-fold mimesis of prefiguration-configuration-refiguration, which is representing human actions, and narrative identity which derives from the self-same consistency throughout the narrative in time and with purpose functions to model for personal identity in life (Ricoeur 1988: 246). We read the character’s motives or desires for him to act. The cause of action is a symbol. It could be brute force or a gentle law of love as in Peirce’s theory of evolution (EP 1: item 25), the visible sign as an index of an action in the actual world, or the invisible sign as an icon of a memory in the virtual world. Regardless of the mode, the character is real by feeling in the relationship of three persons because it is a general, that is, the continuity of consciousness.

Peirce says, “the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is … the vulgarest delusion of vanity” (CP 7.571). The self is not an individual entity but a general in a semiotic relation between persons, and thus we participate in the relationship of the three persons, resulting in the construction of the self in evolutionary processes of semiosis. The first-person access to the self results in awareness of who I am by self-consciousness. The third-person knowledge of the self leads to the understanding of what I am by action. The second-person relation by way of the dialogical self in a self-narrative is directed to what the self is, that is, selfhood as co-identity. Through the idea of the second-person relation, we discover co-identity between you and I.

A self-narrative deals with a general idea for a person who is embodied as an individual. The film Burning illustrates this point, demonstrating a concept of the dialogical self in sign processes. The filmic image depicts three persons in relation, being individuated in three characters. They are Haemi, Jongsu, and Ben. A presupposition is that the director and the audience are in dialogical relation. Thus, the mind of the director and that of the audience are mediated by the narrative mode of film. This is characterized by a rhetorical perspective of narrative for interpersonal communication. Consequently, they are telling of something in common as a general idea covertly, and yet the idea is revealed as an individual self based on each other’s life experience. Bearing this in mind, I will analyze the film with an abiding focus on the identity of the self, that is, selfhood and subjectivity. For this reason, I shall place emphasis on the discourse level between the two minds, rather than the textual level of transactional self between the text and the mind. This means that narrative analysis on the film text is regarded as the act of understanding the director’s ideas in a second person by reading narrative through imagination, thus refiguring the film narrative for the purpose of modeling our action in life.

In the narrative world, a main character Jongsu, a part-time worker and prospective writer, as an experiencing subject “I” is in a relationship with Haemi, who functions as “you,” that is, NOT-I in that Haemi existed in his past childhood, and yet his memory of the past events was not shared with her, as they remembered the past differently from each other. Jongsu does not remember the past event when Haemi fell down into a well nearby in the village, and he does not remember that he saved her either. Haemi seems to be an interlocutor as You in a speech act; however, her position is not in a dialogical relation with Jongsu in narrative discourse, insomuch as in Jongsu’s mind, Haemi is considered to be an impersonal object from the external world when he encounters her accidentally on the street at her part-time workplace. Accordingly, Jongsu’s feeling towards her appears to be the consciousness of Secondness, that is, double consciousness.

The double consciousness is expressed by Jongsu’s action. While Haemi was away from home on a trip to Africa right after they met, he was imagining Haemi in her room by means of masturbation. This action can be interpreted as responding to her through his body, treating her as an opposing entity from the external world. But at the same time, he agreed to feed her cat named Boyle, which never appears but bound them together by its name, the linguistic symbol “Boyle.” This particular scene shows temporality, prefiguring future event in narrative, providing Jongsu with a clue to Haemi’s disappearance, suggesting that the relation of Jongsu and Haemi will develop into the genuine Thirdness of continuity, that is, identifying selfhood, co-identity.

Another character, Ben, taking the role of object for society, is wealthy and good-natured but a mysterious man whom Haemi brought along when she came back home from Africa. Jongsu’s motive for suspicion of Ben as a cause of Haemi’s disappearance was derived from a metaphor of ‘burning a greenhouse every two months’ as his hobby. Jongsu’s action in shadowing him can be seen as the relation of Jongsu and Ben from a third person-perspective. While Jongsu is searching for Haemi, his actions are narrated based on a desire and motive, revealing temporality where the present feeling of Jongsu, which is associated with past ideas will lead to a future idea. Thus, the present individual self connects Haemi’s remark on the well from the past idea with societal inequality in the present idea, anticipating the future action of burning Ben in narrative imagination. The last scene of Jongsu burning Ben can be understood as a metaphor for expressing anger against an unjust and unequal society. This metaphor can be interpreted as the beginning of Jongsu’s first novel for a prospective writer, thus identifying selfhood as the narrated and narrating selves.

Ben’s position as a third person plays a significant role in the development of the dyadic relation to triadic relation between Jongsu and Haemi. While Jongsu was searching for Haemi, Firstness of consciousness and Jongsu’s reflex consciousness became connected through Ben who plays a role for Jongsu as third-person knowledge to the self as a sign of fact. This means that we cannot approach the second person without the third person, implying the individual self’s narrating activity in time and with purposefulness. In this regard, the triadic relationship connecting “you” and “I” involves the dyadic relation by way of dialogical/personal self.

Ben’s killing of Haemi as suggestion or Jongsu’s killing of Ben in the actual scene provides us with an idea of the dyadic relation: the killer and the killed or an agent and a patient. In this action and the dyadic relation in consciousness of Secondness, no time is involved. However, continuity of consciousness of the semiotic self makes us think of a triadic relation of three persons in terms of time and purpose (motive or desire), discovering the meaning of the very idea of killing. As a result, narrative can be a model for those who are willing to refigure the idea of killing, thus searching for the meaning of narrative by interpreting activity.

In this regard, identifying selfhood takes the form of consciousness activity. Thinking of Jongsu’s killing of Ben for audience is somewhat similar to the suspicions of Ben’s killing of Haemi for Jongsu with reference to the perspective and the voice of narrational activity. That is, as when shadowing Ben out of suspicion, Jongsu comes to discover who he was, audience’s thinking of Jongsu’s killing of Ben will make the audience engage in a dialogue with the character and in turn with the director of the movie. The way I see Jongsu’s killing of Ben as a form of metaphoric narrational activity amounts to engagement with the filmic narrative world, which shapes the concept of the self as co-identity with the character and the director.

Now, we can think of this film text as a diagram giving an inkling of truth of the self. The self is a living legisign which expresses and represents itself in a process of growing through narrational activity; this activity is enacted by semiotic subject of the self in the triadic relationship: private self, individual self, and personal self. In this regard, as each of us is a person as an idea which is developed by narrative identity from narrational activity, our mind can gain access to other mind through narrative imagination.

7 Conclusion

I have discussed narrative identity in relation to the concept of the self, employing the idea of a person. As I explained throughout the paper, the idea of person had already been discussed in linguistics and narrative before any philosophical ideas on the person. These three fields are not exclusive but related to each other in a rather complex way. Especially, the ontological idea of the second person is not equivalent to the use of linguistics and, more specifically, it is related to narrative for a relational perspective rather than a referential function. Furthermore, the second-person relation is characterized by the idea of Thirdness in Peirce’s categories, which has the nature of generality. Generality imparts the meaning of the whole to individuals as part of the whole, attributing its quality. In this regard, the second person, you, presupposes it, the third person; in turn, it presupposes I, the first person. Therefore, I and you are connected by it. That is the common idea.

Sebeok used the expression “I think I am a verb” as the title of his book (1986); reiterating what I have said, I will now adapt this, in connection with the concept of the narrated self from the semiotic perspective on human subjectivity in this paper. First, in “I think I am a copula,” connecting the world and the concept by way of the first-person perspective as in a form of autobiography, “I” represents the private and individual self. Second, in “I think I am a transitive verb,” “I” connects a subject and an object to represent a dyadic relation between agent and patient, where the word “I” represents the transactional self, exchanging something in transaction based on an obligatory law. Biography based on the third-person objective perspective is a narrative in the form of the biographer telling another’s life story and at the same time the story told is unfolding the story of the biographer himself, thus affecting each other. Third, in ‘I think I am a dative verb’, connecting the three, the giver, the receiver, and a thing transmitted, “I” represents the dialogical/personal self by means of a self-narrative where the second-person relational narrative is dominant. The dialogical self represents itself as a living symbol to be represented in a triadic relationship. This is a process of evolutionary self, where the self is interpreting self to be interpreted, going through corrections. The more the process progresses, the more generalized self becomes.

More importantly, the semiotic self is the dialogical self which derives from the moral self because the narrating and the narrated self are relational, responding to quality of things. It thus connects the narrative world and the actual world, proceeding in the quest for meaning, love, and purpose in life, imagining other as myself. Accordingly, the motto “I think I am a verb” shows a process of evolving spiritually by virtue of a dialogical semiosis of narrative.