Peeter Torop
Introduction
The concept of ‘cultural semiotics’ can be interpreted in three ways. First, as referring to a methodological tool which can be recognized simultaneously in various disciplines of con- temporary humanities and social sciences. It can also be considered as a concept representing the diversity of methods for analysing various aspects of culture as a research object in semiotic theory and applied semiotics; andfinally, as one of the subdisciplines of semiotics and culture studies. In the last case cultural semiotics has a holistic view to culture and features of discipline.
Early development
Cultural semiotics is one of thefields of semiotics still searching for its disciplinary identity, and has been doing so for more than forty years. The Tartu–Moscow School made a programmatic entry into international science in 1973 when Lotman, Ivanov, Toporov, Pjatigorski, and Uspenskij collectively published theirTheses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures. These theses laid the foundation for the semiotics of culture as a separate discipline, the primary aim of which was‘the study of the functional correlation of different sign systems. From this point of view particular importance is attached to questions of the hierarchical structure of the languages of culture.’ Every culture is characterized by a unique relationship between sign systems and therefore in discussing any culture it is important to understand its historical evolution. Lotman has said in his memoirs:‘I personally cannot draw a clear line where a historical description ends and semiotics begins.’Special attention needs the empirically oriented subheading of the‘Theses’:‘as applied to Slavic texts’. The publications in English translation followed the same principle:‘The Semiotics of Russian Culture’ (Lotman and Uspenskij 1984) and ‘The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History’(Lotman, Ginzburg, and Uspenskij 1985).
The study of a unique culture creates the need for new methods of research and thus the study of any new culture also enriches science itself. From here it follows that Russian culture, Estonian culture, or Chinese culture are all equally valuable for science, and each one of them adds something to the understanding of human culture as such. It is from this kind of approach that a general science of culture can evolve. The Tartu–Moscow school is not a representative of a unified system of knowledge in the semiotics of culture. Nevertheless, Juri Lotman was searching for a
disciplinary synthesis – a fact that was first noticed by Karl Eimermacher who entitled his introduction to the German collection of Juri Lotman’s works as‘Ju. M. Lotman. Bemerkungen zu einer Semiotik als integrativer Kulturwissenschaft’ (Eimermacher 1974) (‘J. M. Lotman.
Notes to a semiotic version of integrative culturology’). ‘Integrative’ is an appropriate word, taking into account Lotman’s special position in the typological studies of culture.
Historically, cultural semiotics grew out of the period of the diffusion of semiotic ideas after Peirce (1914) and de Saussure’s (1915) death. The second phase was represented by the creation of general theories of language (Bühler, Hjelmslev, Prague Linguistic Circle, Chomsky), literature (Propp, Tynyanov, Bakhtin), and culture (Malinowski, White, Cassirer, Geertz). The third phase marked the interdisciplinary development of different fields in the humanities (Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Todorov, Kristeva, Wiener, Eco, Lotman, etc.) and semiotics (Morris, Koch, Winner, Portis Winner). Their aspirations can be summed up as a desire to understand language and culture in as systematic fashion as possible, and fuse together quantitative and qualitative methods in this understanding. The first characteristic feature of semiotics of culture is that in this atmosphere, it attempted to be innovative on both the object level and the metalevel, offer new ways of defining the cultural object of study, and new languages of description (not just one universal language) for carrying out cultural analysis. As a result of all this, the emergence of semiotics of culture also meant the introduction of a new methodology.
Semiotics of culture has been strongly related to the development of general semiotics. One of the examples would be Roman Jakobson’s endeavour to create a new science with three distinct disciplinary levels: (1) study in communication of verbal messages = linguistics; (2) study in com- munication of any message = semiotics (communication of verbal messages implied); (3) study in communication = social anthropology jointly with economics (communication of messages implied) (Jakobson 1971[1967]: 666). Jakobson first demonstrated his model of verbal communication (seeFigure 12.1) in 1956 in his article‘Metalanguage as a Linguistic Problem’(1985a [1956]).
On the one hand, the given model ties its components to various functions of language:
‘Language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions’(Jakobson 1985a [1956]: 113).
On the other hand, along with the various functions of language, it is also important for Jakobson to distinguish two principle levels of language–the level of object language and the level of metalanguage:‘On these two different levels of language the same verbal stock may be used; thus we may speak in English (as metalanguage) about English (as object language) and interpret English words and sentences by means of English synonyms and circumlocutions’ (1985a [1956]:117). The actualization of the concept of metalanguage as‘an innermost linguistic
CONTEXT
(REFERENTIAL FUNCTION)
ADRESSER MESSAGE ADRESSEE
(EMOTIVE FUNCTION) (POETIC FUNCTION) (CONATIVE FUNCTION)
CONTACT
(PHATIC FUNCTION)
CODE
(METALINGUAL FUNCTION) Figure 12.1 Jakobson’s model of communication
Cultural semiotics
problem’(Jakobson 1985a [1956]: 121), which emerges from Jakobson’s logic, is important for an understanding of the psychological as well as linguistic and cultural aspects of the functionality of language.
He begins from the metalinguistic aspect of the linguistic development of a child:‘Metalanguage is the vital factor of any verbal development. The interpretation of one linguistic sign through other, in some respects homogeneous signs of the same language, is a metalingual operation which plays an essential role in child language learning’(Jakobson 1985a [1956]: 120). But the development of a child corresponds to the development of an entire culture. For the develop- ment of a culture, it is important that the natural language of this culture satisfy all the demands for the description of foreign or of new phenomena and by the same token ensure not only the dialogic capacity but also the creativity and integrity of the culture, its cultural identity: ‘A constant recourse to metalanguage is indispensable both for a creative assimilation of the mother tongue and for itsfinal mastery’(Jakobson 1985a [1956]: 121). The very concept of metalanguage turns out to be important both at the level of scientific languages and at the level of everyday communication.
The process of communication is viewed hierarchically by Jakobson, so that a comprehension of his model of communication has to rest not so much on a statistical, theoretical basis as on a dynamic, empirical one. Jakobson in his article calls for a consideration of the specificity of each act of communication and correspondingly sees in the act of communication a hierarchy not only of linguistic but also of semiotic functions: ‘The cardinal functions of language – referential, emotive, conative, phatic, poetic, and metalingual–and their different hierarchy in the diverse types of messages have been outlined and repeatedly discussed. This pragmatic approach to language must lead mutatis mutandis to an analogous study of the other semiotic systems:‘with which of these or other functions are they endowed, in what combinations and in what hierarchical order?’(Jakobson 1971d [1968]: 703). The linguistic and semiotic aspects of communication are interrelated and on this basis Jakobson distinguishes two sciences from a semantic point of view – a science of verbal signs or linguistics and a science of all possible signs or semiotics (Jakobson 1985b [1974]: 99).
Some activities in semiotics and semiology are interpretable as parallel to the Jakobsonian movement of thought. For Lévi-Strauss linguistics has a metalingual value for anthropology:
as a‘semeiological’science, anthropology turns toward linguistics–first, because only linguistic knowledge provides the key to a system of logical categories and of moral values different from the observer’s own; second, because linguistics, more than any other science, can teach him how to pass from the consideration of elements in themselves devoid of meaning to consideration of a semantic system and show him how the latter can be built on the basis of the former. This, perhaps, is primarily the problem of language, but, beyond and through it, the problem of culture in general.
(1963: 368)
Lévi-Strauss shows an aptitude forfinding analogies between language and parts of culture:
New perspectives then open up. We are no longer dealing with an occasional collabora- tion where the linguist and the anthropologist, each working by himself, occasionally communicate thosefindings which each thinks may interest the other. In the study of kinship problems (and, no doubt, the study of other problems as well), the anthropologistfinds himself in a situation which formally resembles that of the structural linguist. Like phonemes, kinship terms are elements of meaning; like phonemes, they
acquire meaning only if they are integrated into systems.‘Kinship systems’, like‘phonemic systems’, are built by the mind on the level of unconscious thought. Finally, the recurrence of kinship patterns, marriage rules, similar prescribed attitudes between certain types of relatives, and so forth, in scattered regions of the globe and in funda- mentally different societies, leads us to believe that, in the case of kinship as well as linguistics, the observable phenomena result from the action of laws which are general but implicit. The problem can therefore be formulated as follows: Although they belong to another order of reality, kinship phenomena are of the same type as linguistic phenomena.
(1963: 34) Barthes, who also dreamed about a new science, differentiated first and second order lan- guages and enlarged the borders of linguistics: ‘In fact, we must now face the possibility of inverting Saussure’s declaration: linguistics is not a part of the general science of signs, even a privileged part, it is semiology which is a part of linguistics: to be precise, it is that part covering the great signifying unities of discourse. By this inversion we may expect to bring to light the unity of the research at present being done in anthropology, sociology, psycho-analysis and stylistics round the concept of signification’(1967: 11). Language in the context of this logic is both object and metalanguage:
Thus, though working at the outset on non-linguistic substances, is required, sooner or later, tofind language (in the ordinary sense of the term) in its path, not only as a model, but also as component, relay or signified. Even so, such language is not quite that of the linguist: it is a second-order language, with its unities no longer monemes or phonemes, but larger fragments of discourse referring to objects or episodes whose meaning underlines language, but can never exist independently of it. Semiology is therefore perhaps destined to be absorbed into a trans-linguistics, the materials of which may be myth, narrative, journalism, or on the other hand objects of our civilization, in so far as they are spoken (through press, prospectus, interview, conversation and perhaps even the inner language, which is ruled by the laws of imagination).
(Barthes 1967: 10–11) The 1960s was typified by the search for analogies between language and different cultural artefacts for better analysability. Barthes was very influential in this type of methodological thinking:
‘We shall therefore postulate that there exists a general category language/speech, which embraces all the systems of signs; since there are no better ones, we shall keep the terms language and speech, even when they are applied to communications whose substance is not verbal’(1967:
25). Also representative of this approach is the book of MetzFilm Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema(1968) where the author, for example, found analogy between shots and utterances.
Within the same period, Umberto Eco’s workA Theory of Semiotics was published. In the preface, dated from the years 1967–74, Eco distinguishes between two theories: a theory of codes and a theory of sign production (1977: viii). Eco did not think about disciplinary cultural semiotics but culture was conceptualized as an important semiotic research object:
To look at the whole of culturesub specie semiotica is not to say that culture is only communication and signification but that it can be understood more thoroughly if it is seen from the semiotic point of view…In culture every entity can become a semiotic phenomenon. The laws of signification are the laws of culture. For this reason culture
Cultural semiotics
allows a continuous process of communicative exchanges, in so far as it subsists as a system of systems of signification.Culture can be studied completely under a semiotic view.
(Eco 1977: 27–8) It was also the period of time in which there was a movement from typological descriptions of languages to descriptions of the general typology of culture. According to Lotman, the typology of culture should be based on the universals of culture. The most universal feature of human cultures is the need for self-description. Every culture has its own specific means for doing this – its languages of description. The descriptive languages facilitate cultural commu- nication, perpetuate cultural experience, and model cultural memory. The coherence of culture is based on exactly the repetition and interpretation of the same things. The more descriptive languages a culture has, the richer is that culture. Consequently, every culture is describable as a hierarchy of object languages and descriptive languages, where the initial object language is a so-called home language and it is surrounded by semiotic systems related to everyday rituals and bodily techniques. There are certain languages of culture that can serve the function of both, object language and metalanguage from the point of view of everyday cultural experience (depicted inFigure 12.2).
While home language, native language, and everyday rituals as semiotic mediation are object languages, the experience of literature, art, and media can be both object and metalinguistic, depending on their position in and impact on a person’s (especially a child’s) life. In a common situation it can be claimed that literature, arts, and media channels depict a certain reality; the critic interprets it in a language of a given medium that is easily understandable for the audience;
the humanities do it in their metalanguage where strict terms exist alongside metaphors; sciences and natural sciences do it in strict terminological systems (and the process of interpretation takes place) up to formal languages and artistic languages. By means of object languages a human being acknowledges his or her relations to the world and by learning and using metalanguages shapes his or her individual identity. Culture does the same. The more descriptive languages there are in a culture, the more numerous are the possibilities for self-identification and the constitution of cultural identity.
Source languages or object languages
Metalanguages
Home language or dialect National language
Everyday rituals and behaviour Literature (fairy tales, novels, poems) Arts (cinema, theatre, paintings) Media(tion)
Criticism
Scientific languages in humanities Terminological languages Formal languages Artificial languages Figure 12.2 Hierarchy of objective and descriptive languages
Cultural semiotics
Cultural semiotics has the means to analyse very different languages of culture not only through the communication processes taking place in a culture but also by seeing these processes as culture’s self-communication. In the course of analysing a culture’s self-communication we inevitably arrive at the definition of its identity. In today’s world, between global and local processes there exists afield of tension in which many ambivalent and hybrid phenomena take place. Because of this, it is especially important to understand that the need of individuals and societies for defining their self, their identity, and the semiotics of culture is becoming increasingly relevant in achieving this understanding. A sign system and language become synonyms in this context, and the notion of language is metaphorized, especially when the notion of a modelling system is added. Afield of notions emerges: language–sign system–modelling system, and in addition, object language and metalanguage are differentiated.
The similarity between the notions of (cultural) language and a sign system in the semiotics of culture, gives us the possibility of distinguishing between two typological approaches. The first distinction is based on the juxtaposition of primary and secondary modelling systems.
I Language as a primary modelling system II Secondary modelling systems:
(1) language as a higher sign system (myth, literature, poetry),
(2) language as a metalanguage or a part of metalanguage (criticism and history of art, music, dance, cinema, etc.), and
(3) language as a model or analogue (language offilm, dance, music, painting, etc.).
Proceeding from this classification, language as a primary modelling system is the humans’main means of thinking and communicating. As a secondary modelling system, language is the preserver of the culture’s collective experience and the reflector of its creativity. As a metalanguage, natural language is the translator and interpreter of all nonverbal systems, and from a methodological perspective, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, language offered cultural analysis the possibility of searching for discrete (linguistic) elements also in suchfields of culture where natural language either does not belong to the means of expression, or does so only partially.
The second distinction is based on the possibility of differentiating between the statics and the dynamics of cultural languages.
I Statics:
(1) continual (iconic-spatial, nonverbal) languages, and (2) discrete languages (verbal languages).
II Dynamics:
(1) specialization of cultural languages, and (2) integration of cultural languages:
(a) self-descriptions and meta-descriptions, (b) creolization.
While the level of statics is based on the distinction between verbal and nonverbal languages, the level of dynamics is related to the different paces of development of the different parts of culture.
This means that during any given period in culture there are certainfields where there is balance Cultural semiotics
between creation and interpretation (criticism, theory, history) and it is possible to speak about specialization and the identity of thefield. At the same time, there arefields where, either due to the fast pace of development or for other reasons, a split between creation and interpretation brings about the need to integrate thefield into culture. This can be done in two main ways–by using the creators’ self-descriptions also for general interpretation, or by borrowing tools of analysis from otherfields and, combining them, creating new creolized languages of description.
As a result of descriptive processes, one can talk about cultural self-models. Cultural self- description can be viewed as a process proceeding in three directions. Culture’s self-model is the result of the first direction, whose goal is maximum similarity to the actually existing culture.
Second, cultural self-models may emerge that differ from ordinary cultural practice and may even have been designed for changing that practice. Third, there are self-models that exist as an ideal cultural self-consciousness, separately from culture and not oriented toward it. By this formulation Lotman does not exclude conflict between culture and its self-models. But the creation of self-models reflects the creativity of culture. In the 1980s Juri Lotman described creativity, calling on the work of Ilya Prigogine. In the article‘Culture as a Subject and Object for Itself’, Lotman maintains that: ‘The main question of semiotics of culture is the problem of meaning-generation. What we shall call meaning-generation is the ability both of culture as a whole and of its parts to put out, in the“output”, nontrivial new texts. New texts are the texts that emerge as results of irreversible processes (in Ilya Prigogine’s sense), i.e. texts that are unpredictable to a certain degree’(2000: 640).
Cultural semiotics started from the realization that in a semiotical sense culture is a multi- language system, where, in parallel to natural languages, there exist secondary modelling systems (mythology, ideology, ethics, etc.), which are based on natural languages, or which employ natural languages for their description or explanation (music, ballet) or language analogization (language of theatre, language of movies). The next step is to introduce the concept of text as the principal concept of cultural semiotics. On the one hand, text is the manifestation of language, using it in a certain manner. On the other hand, text is itself a mechanism that creates languages.
From the methodological point of view, the concept of text was important for the definition of the subject of analysis, since it denoted both natural textual objects (a book, picture, symphony) and textualizable objects (culture as text, everyday behaviour or biography, an era, an event). Text and textualization symbolize the definition of the object of study; the definition or framework allows in its turn the structuralization of the object either into structural levels or units, and also the construction of a coherent whole or system of those levels and units. The development of the principles of immanent analysis in various cultural domains was onefield of activity of cultural semiotics. Yet the analysis of a defined object is static, and the need to also take into account cultural dynamics led Juri Lotman to introduce the notion of semiosphere. Although the attributes of semiosphere resemble those of text (definability, structurality, coherence), it is an important shift from the point of view of culture’s analysability. Human culture constitutes the global semiosphere, but that global system consists of intertwined semiospheres of different times (the diachrony of semiosphere) and different levels (the synchrony of semiosphere). Each semiosphere can be analysed as a single whole, yet we need to bear in mind that each analysed whole in culture is a part of a greater whole, which is an important methodological principle. At the same time, every whole consists of parts, which are legitimate wholes on their own, which in turn consist of parts, etc. It is an infinite dialogue of wholes and parts and the dynamics of the whole dimension.
Yet the text will remain the‘middle’concept for cultural semiotics, since as a term it can denote both a discrete artefact and an invisible abstract whole (a mental text in collective consciousness or subconsciousness). The textual aspect of text analysis means the operation with clearly defined sign systems, texts or combinations of texts; the processual aspect of text analysis presupposes