7.25.2006

triangle battle!

here's a version of the semiotic triangle from seb's last post:
it was made famous by ogden & richards in a 1923 book known as 'the meaning of meaning.' it's important to note that the line along the bottom is dashed and labeled 'an imputed relation,' since symbols can only refer to objects (referents, that which is referred to) through a concept or thought.

here's how ferdinand de saussure, writing slightly earlier, saw the relation between thought and language:
where A is the medium of thought (nebulous, undifferentiated), and B is the medium of language (undifferentiated sound material). the vertical lines are the arbitrary connections between the two media.

roland barthes, an interesting theorist who bridges the structuralist/post-structuralist gap in the mid-20th century, used this model: i personally like the more specific labels of the relations between the three vertices of the triangle. later, he turned to this image to explain the structure of the 'myth': here, the sign is a more complicated amalgam and the whole process of sign formation/understanding is recursive. (derrida, in particular, is known for his claims about the infinite play of signs and meanings).

another more recent semiotic triangle is extended to include the term 'definition'. this one is from 1997 and is credited to Suonnuuti, who i've never heard of before. i guess the definition is added based on other conceptual systems or something like that.

here's what i guess could be called a post-structuralist semiotic schema. it's greimas' semiotic square. it's not actually about the structure of a symbol, but the structure of a particular opposition within a text. remember, post-structuralism isn't a philosophy per se, it's just a way of handling texts and their meanings. in this example, the 'deconstructed' binary is 'beautiful/ugly', and the corners represent (more or less) different positions that characters in a story can occupy or represent.

and here's an epistemological model of the semiotic triangle that i think tries to explain what an artificial intelligence would have to have in order to understand signs: pretty, no? i don't really understand it, but it has the most lines, squiggles, and circles so far!

i guess the point is that these kinds of models are very vague. what lines and circles mean is pretty debatable and not even very empirically useful. also, the value of using a little picture to talk about symbols seems dubious at best to me. these kinds of diagrams only make sense when they're responding to one another, or when one philosopher says 'but what if it did work like this...' and uses an illustration to demonstrate their difference from some other tradition. someone should probably launch a study of these kinds of diagrams as a form in the semiotic/linguistic/cognitive fields. maybe someone already has...

6 comments:

Cristi said...

also, note that on the original ogden triangle the sides are labeled 'true', 'adequate', and 'correct.'

does this mean that these designations are a function of language? that only the relation between a symbol and object can be 'true'?

something to think about.

Seb said...

I disagree with your general condemnation of using diagrams. I think they are often clearer than words. What's your beef with graphical representations? Is using a visual symbol to describe visual symbolism any more dubious than using words to describe verbal symbolism?

I thought most of the diagrams communicated something interesting--debatable, certainly, but at least interesting. Except for Saussure's. That diagram was total shit.

Cristi said...

nope. using symbols to describe symbolism is exactly as dubious as using words to describe language.

interesting, yes. debatable, of course, but to what end?

if we arranged a formal language for use on this blog, we would be committing ourselves to the existence of coherent categories of things like 'concept', 'referent', 'refers to,' just by creating the language and defining our terms.

if we could agree on terms, we wouldn't even have to have the debate at all!

Cristi said...

also, to be fair to saussure, his famous diagram (the two part sign business) is a bit more coherent than this one. i picked this one because it IS absurd and demonstrates just how little it takes to create a diagram.

how can anyone debate some squiggles with lines connecting them?

Seb said...

interesting, yes. debatable, of course, but to what end?

A descriptive, predictive (maybe even prescriptive) theory of meaning, of course!

if we arranged a formal language for use on this blog, we would be committing ourselves to the existence of coherent categories of things like 'concept', 'referent', 'refers to,' just by creating the language and defining our terms.

Not so! That's the problem with your whole world of language: acting as if talking in a certain way commits us to anything.

All an agreed-upon notation does is reduce ambiguity. There's no rule against saying "this notation is incoherent." In fact, many times formal notation has been invoked precisely to prove its own limitations.

Anyway, it wasn't a serious suggestion, although one day I may go crazy and formulate one anyway.

But if agreeing on the terms is a problem, let's argue those terms. What I don't understand is why you think that distinctions between symbol, concept, and referent are suspect, because they seem so clear and useful to me. When thinking carefully there is just no ambiguity between the word "tank," actual tanks, and my tank-concept, in my belief system.

how can anyone debate some squiggles with lines connecting them?

(1) By agreeing on an interpretation and then debating what is true about the world,
(2) barring that, by debating the most reasonable interpretation of them.

academicusmoronicus said...

try looking at Lacan's play on the Saussurian model of S1 over S2 to get really confused.

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