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Author | Zhao Yiheng
Both ‘sign’ and ‘symbol’ are words with a long and polysemic history in Western culture. Moreover, the 120-year history of the modern semiotics movement has failed to provide a highly needed definition of these most basic terms,thus resulting in ambiguity of the definition of the discipline itself. This paper proposes defining ‘sign/symbol’ as ‘a sensuous entity to be regarded as carrying meaning’. Furthermore, the terminological chaos that arises between ‘sign’ and ‘symbol’, which originated in Western languages, has caused chaos for translators in selecting the appropriate Chinese term from the options Fuhao and Xiangzheng, since a phonetic rendition is hardly possible in Chinese. On this basis, the paper attempts to define ‘semiotics’ as ‘the formal study of meaning-making’. In this understanding, semiotics covers not only signification but also communication and interpretation of meaning.Keywords
sign – symbol – semiotics – meaningWhy should we invest so much effort in redefining the term 'sign'? One reason is that its Chinese counterpart Fuhao is abused to an intolerable extent in daily usage of the Chinese language today. We often see sentences such as: 'This has only the significance of a sign' (implying 'no viable meaning'); 'Simple GDP ranking is only a sign' (implying 'no substance'); 'She has not the sign of an artist' (implying that 'she keeps a low profile and works diligently'); or 'For them, Confucius has become a sign’ (implying 'an empty icon'). Even well-educated people use 'sign' in this manner and if we do not make diligent efforts to contain this popular misuse, 'sign' is in danger of becoming synonymous with 'insignificance', and semiotics with 'drawing-room chitchat'. The misuse in Chinese can partly be blamed on the lack of a clear definition of the term 'sign' in Western languages, to which the modern Chinese word Fuhao is the counterpart. In Euro-American semiotics circles (where the modern discipline of semiotics has been firmly founded), the definition of 'sign' has remained very much the same as its traditional definition established in classical times, that is, 'Aliquid stat pro aliquo', as attributed to St. Augustine. Although in the twentieth century, semiotics was rapidly developed by generations of scholars into a sophisticated discipline to the degree that it is often nicknamed 'the math of cultural studies', the definition of 'sign' has remained unchanged. The irony is that though semioticians have been working hard to redefine terms such as 'culture', 'ideology', 'value', 'intention', 'cognition', and so on, as each of these terms suffers from too many definitions, the time-honored basic term remains unchallenged.Neither of the two founders of the discipline of semiotics, Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce, felt uneasy about this millennia-old definition. Saussure sticks to the old phrasing 'something standing for something else' ('Language is a system of signs that express ideas', Saussure 1959:16), while Peirce attempts to expand the definition in saying that 'a sign … is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity' (1931–1958: 2.228), a definition that, in fact, adds only a receptive dimension to the original definition. We may call this the substitutional theory of sign. Its shortcomings are obvious and manifold, as this theory cannot explain why human beings cannot exist at all without substitution. Somehow, semioticians today try their best not to touch the definition despite some finding it inadequate.Daniel Chandler's Semiotics: The Basics (2002) has been widely used as an introductory textbook for beginners. After a lengthy discussion on the lack of a clear definition of 'sign', Chandler simply gives up: 'Assuming that you are not one of those annoying people who keeps everyone waiting with your awkward question' (2002: introduction). Although this is an attempt at sarcasm, it comes across more as an apologetic and embarrassed laugh. Meanwhile, David Lidov writes pages on the definition, only to beat a retreat in the end: 'Does semiotic theory even require a definition of sign? It is a commonplace that sciences require primitive terms that they do not define. Physics does not define matter, nor biology life, nor psychology mind'. Lidov acknowledges, however, that this is no excuse for the failure to define the term, because in semiotic studies, without the definition of 'sign', 'the ongoing dialectic of exemplification and delineation … achieves no axiomatic basis' (Bouissac, 1998: 575). What is anticlimactic, however, is that Lidov then does not write another word after acknowledging the necessity of redefining the term.In fact, generations of scholars have expressed their dissatisfaction with the substitutional definition, the most vocal of whom is none other than the founder of semiotics Charles Sanders Peirce himself. In his scattered notes, he often hints that there must be something underlying the substitution. He sometimes calls it an 'idea': 'The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for the object, not in all aspects, but in reference, to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen' (Peirce, 1931–1958: 2.228). On other occasions, he calls it 'emanation': 'every Sign has, actually or virtually, what we may call a Precept of explanation according to which it is to be understood as a sort of emanation, so to speak, of its Object' (2.230). More often he calls it 'Truth': 'the purpose of signs – which is the purpose of thought – is to bring truth to expression' (2.444).Only in his final few years did Peirce begin to use the word ‘meaning’ to describe what is beyond the substitution, albeit hesitantly. In his 1903 essay“Foundations of Mathematics,” he identified meaning with the object: ‘A sign is supposed to have an object or meaning’ (Peirce, 2019). In his 1907 essay“Pragmatism,” however, meaning is the interpretant: “The two correlates of the sign have to be carefully distinguished. The former is the object of the sign; the latter is the 'meaning', or, as I usually term it, the ‘interpretant’, of the sign”(Peirce, 2019). In my opinion, both statements are correct: the object and the interpretant could be understood as either or both of the two kinds of meaning (in other words, reference and connotations) carried by the sign.With this understanding, Peirce tentatively rejects the substitutional definition in a letter he wrote to Victoria Welby: 'I thought of a representamen as taking the place of the thing; but a sign is not a substitute. Ernst Mach has fallen into that snare' (Peirce and Welby, 1977: 193). Thus, as his thinking evolves, Peirce's approach comes closer to a 'meaning definition.’The reason that gradual formation of a new 'meaning definition' has been ignored by a century of semiotic studies is that his argument is far from systematic. This, however, is no reason that his insight should have gone unnoticed.The definition of 'sign' is the starting point of the whole enterprise of semiotics, of which the single purpose is to ascertain how signs operate in the world of meaning. Therefore, it is imperative to find a workable definition of 'sign' before any issue can be tackled properly in semiotics. Winfred Nöth acknowledges: '[The sign] has either the broader sense of a semiotic entity which unites a sign vehicle with a meaning, or it has the narrower sense of a sign vehicle only' (1990: 79). He further explains: ‘the concept of sign is generally used in its broadest sense of a natural or conventional semiotic entity consisting of a sign vehicle connected with meaning’ (3). The connection of the narrow definition with the broader one emphasizes, then, that meaning is what signs are all about.That being the case, the first question is: what is a sign vehicle? It appears that we require a more precise description of this term, however obvious and straightforward it may seem at first glance. As is known, Saussure calls the sign vehicle the ‘signifier,’ which, in his words, is a ‘sound image’(Saussure, 1959: 67), whereas Peirce calls it ‘representamen’, which is ‘an object perceptible, or only imaginable, or even unimaginable’ (1935–1958: 2–230), while Charles Morris defines ‘sign vehicle’ simply as ‘a particular physical event or object’ (1946: 96).Must a sign vehicle be ‘physical’ or an ‘object’? Obviously not, as it must cover such a variety of uses as mental activities ( 'We think only in signs’, Peirce, 1931–1958: 2.302), images in hallucinations, fantasies, and dreams (otherwise, why do we weep for what we have seen in a dream?), virtual data marks on a computer, and what Umberto Eco called a “blank sign”, or the so-called ‘zero sign’ (which is a perception of the lack of perception where there should be one). The only appropriate phrasing I could think of to cover all of the above is 'a sensory entity’, as suggested by Peirce.However, in a sign relationship, this sensory entity should be united with some meaning to form a sign entity; thus, it must be 'a meaning-carrying sensory entity'. Since the meaning intended by the sender often fails to reach or be accepted by the receiver, a sign must be interpreted as meaning-carrying by the receiver. That is, whether something is a sign or not should be decided by how it is received, and, as such, the definition should be rephrased as 'a sensory entity regarded as carrying meaning'.So far, this appears to be a nice and neat definition of 'sign' that combines the sign vehicle and its meaning connection. In human culture, however, there are a large number of intentionally created objects or images that are meant to carry meaning but, for whatever reason, fail to reach the receiver; that is, they are not yet actually regarded as carrying meaning. An unsent love letter, a postage stamp tucked in a scrap pile that has never been used either by a sender or philatelist, a radio SOS signal that has never been received, or a sigh over the phone after the receiver has already hung up. All these artifacts are created through human efforts and intended to be meaning-carrying signs but end up unrequited as they fail to reach an interpretation.There are also signs that do reach their receiver, but the receiver fails to interpret, or even to misinterpret, or to find any interpretation that is accept able to the receiver himself. Such signs undeniably carry meaning, but their meaningfulness is reduced to ‘insignificance’, as argued by Massimo Leone(2019). Among millions of other such signs, we could mention a few: listening to opera in Italian, reading Egyptian hieroglyphs before the Rosetta Stone was discovered, or a lady’s meticulous make-up when a phone call cancels the party. In a sense, any interpretation is effective as it turns a sensory entity into a sign. In this function, there is no such thing as ‘misinterpretation,’ as any interpretation offered by the receiver is equally valid so far as the meaningfulness of the sign is concerned. If, however, the receiver fails to provide any interpretation, and the degree of meaningfulness sinks to zero, a sign is still a sign, even when it is absolutely insignificant. Otherwise, what are these entities? Noone can deny that hieroglyphs, whether they have already been deciphered or remain undecipherable for now, are all valid signs.That is why the journalists searched high and low, but to no avail, to discover the meaning of 'rosebud', the last word uttered by citizen Charles Foster Kane.[note1]They continued their search because it must carry some meaning but the opportunity for interpretation had never arisen. If it is not a sign, what could it be and why the fuss? It is justifiable to declare it a sign since its meaning was discoverable. These are signs because they fall neatly into that category in human culture. It is definitely inappropriate to declare it not a sign, since it is obviously a human-made sensory entity that attempts to convey meaning, and no one can say for sure that no interpretation is available (in the past or future).Therefore, signs in the human world should include the above-described two kinds, that is, signs unsent, or those sent but uninterpreted, for the simple reason that they are cultural products in the category of 'sign', and they enter the world for the purpose of carrying meaning. A viable definition of 'sign', therefore, must include those 'failed' signs because, despite having failed so far, there is the possibility that in the future they will succeed in being regarded as meaning-carrying. Since such failed signs are apparently much more prevalent than 'fulfilled' signs, we are left with no option but to rephrase our definition as ‘a sensory entity to be regarded as carrying meaning'.With this broad definition of 'sign', it is all but reasonable to say that signs solely exist to carry meaning that is to be (though has not necessarily yet been) interpreted. On the other hand, no meaning can be carried, communicated, or interpreted without signs. Sign and meaning are so tightly interlocked that there is no such thing as a meaningless sign, nor is there a meaning independent of sign. That being the consensus in semiotic circles, I merely propose to add that this is also true for those sensory entities that were born to carry meaning but have failed thus far to be interpreted, for these entities accord with the new definition 'a sensory entity to be regarded as carrying meaning', and the very potentiality is sufficient for them to be called signs.Regrettably, this suggestion challenges the celebrated rule laid down by Peirce:'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign' (1931–1958: 2.308). However, if an unheard sigh, an untold hallucination, an unobserved gesture, a scene hidden in memory, an unsent file lying idle in the computer, a Sanskrit line in the sutra that even the chanting monk does not understand, or an image carved on the cave wall that is not yet discovered let alone deciphered are not signs, what could they be? Interpreted or not, they are born into the human world to carry interpretable meanings.In this respect, Roman Jakobson's observation is more accurate than that of his predecessors when he declares that 'the signans must necessarily be perceptible whereas the signatum is translatable' (1985: 30). Jakobson's word 'translatable' is remarkably accurate as it means the capability to be translated into another sign. Jakobson does not require that a sign must be interpreted, however, and in this paper I am merely picking up his line of argument and pushing it to its inevitable conclusion.
More confusion arises from the use of the word 'symbol' either synonymously or not with 'sign'. Many authors use the two alternately, causing great trouble to readers and particularly to translators of non-phonetic languages like Chinese. The problem lies in the fact that 'symbol' has at least two distinct meanings. Let us here simply quote the most commonly used source rather than consulting professional sources that could make the situation more complicated than practically comprehensible. According to the online version of The MerriamWebster Dictionary (n.d.), the term 'symbol' has five meanings. I list two that are relevant to my account here:1. something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship,association, convention, or accidental resemblance, especially:a visible sign of something invisible; 2. an arbitrary or conventional sign used in writing or printing relating to a particular field to represent operations, quantities, elements, relations, or qualities. Other dictionaries follow more or less similar definitions; that is, there are two kinds of symbol: one, listed as definition 1 above, is virtually synonymous with 'sign', and these terms are virtually interchangeable, perhaps having only different stylistic nuances. The other, listed as definition 2 above, is a special kind of sign, which could be an icon that represents an état d’âme or a sign that becomes much more suggestive than an ordinary sign through collective pragmatic use. In his Routledge Companion to Semiotics, Paul Cobley writes succinctly in agreement with the above-cited dictionary definitions that symbol may have two meanings: ‘a synonym for sign, or a special type of sign’(2010: 339).However, the situation in Western writing is not so clear-cut. Winfred Nöth, for instance, lists four different types of symbol (Nöth, 1990: 115–120), while some other lexicographers simply skip defining this troublesome yet oft-used term (Boussaic, 1998; Colapietro, 1993). This linguistic headache should remain in European languages and should not infect Chinese, in which two separate words are used for the two definitions of ‘symbol’: Fuhao for 'sign' and 'symbol' (definition 1) and Xiangzheng for ‘symbol’ (definition 2). For instance, symbolism as a movement in art and literature can be confidently translated into Chinese as Xiangzheng Zhuyi as the symbolism here is based on definition 2. However, the serious challenge that Chinese translators and scholars often encounter is how to recognize the exact meaning of the word ‘symbol’as used on each occasion in Western scholarly works. This is partly because the Western authors themselves are not clear which ‘symbol’ they are using, and mix the two definitions rather casually and liberally, and partly because the Chinese translators are unable to discern the exact meaning on each occasion. This is also true for Western readers, though their 'ignorance' does not show up. The result is that Western scholarship has influenced the Chinese scholarship, which should not have suffered this confusion in the first place, with its confusion regarding symbol. There are, in fact, two traps: in phonetic languages, there is a confusion regarding which definition is followed by the word ‘symbol’ we are reading, whereas in Chinese we are confused regarding which translation should be used.This awkward situation also exists in Japanese, whose writing system is half-phonetic. In that language, both 'sign' and 'symbol' used to be translated into Chinese characters pronounced in the Japanese way, kigō for sign and shōchō for symbol, and thus falling into the same translation trap (that is, either treating all symbols as definition 1, or all as definition 2). Fortunately, Japanese is a half-phonetic writing system, allowing translators to switch more or less freely to phonetic transcription, and, to avoid the headache of distinguishing the two types of symbol, they switched to a sort of alphabetic rendition of the Western word ‘symbol’ in either of its two definitions as sinboru. In this way, they escaped the Chinese trap of having to decide upon the definition, but they fall into the Western trap of suspending the choice of meaning.
For instance, for Ernst Cassirer’s well-known saying that the human being is 'animal symbolicum' (1944: 44), the Japanese translation of the final word was first shōchō as opposed to kigō, subscribing to definition 2. Later, however, they switched to the phonetic rendition sinboru, thus adhering to the Western confusion. Meanwhile, in Chinese, symbolicum was first translated as Xiangzheng (taking definition 2) and later collectively switched to Fuhao (symbol as sign) after a careful distinction of what the word ‘symbol’ actually means in Cassirer's context, leaving much room for argument. Such is the advantage of phonetic (e.g., Japanese) translation – it maintains the ambiguity.
Yet the confusion in Western languages could become even more troublesome. According to Cobley, Ogden, and Richards, Cassirer's term belongs to definition 1, whereas many scholars, including Freud, Peirce, Morris, Saussure, and Bakhtin apply definition 2 (Cobley, 2010: 339). In fact, not all of them follow definition 2, and definition 1 has the potential to develop into definition 2, mainly through sufficient society-wide repetition of the former (e.g., the swastika for Nazism, five rings for the Olympics, or a bull for the dominance of Wall Street). So far so clear, but the problem remains that in everyday use of the language, and, more seriously, in academic or even semiotic writing, the two definitions are difficult to distinguish.
Although Ernst Cassirer's well-known description of the human being as 'animal symbolicum' caused confusion in Japanese and Chinese, this was eventually settled in different ways, as described above. When it comes to his three-volume magnum opus Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen(1923–1929), however, uncertainty remains regarding how to translate it, as the use of the term ‘symbol’ in the book jumps back and forth between the two definitions, rendering translation impossible in Chinese. The same is true of Tzvetan Todorov’s Théories du symbole (1977). Translators into any phonetic language had no choice but to stick to the phonetic transcription of ‘symbol’, whatever the definition in the text, and readers simply follow whatever spelling is given. Chinese translations must use different words after ascertaining which definition is actually used. In fact, Western authors themselves might not be clear which they are actually using on each occasion. They might, intentionally or unintentionally, mix up the two. Jean-Jacques Lacan’s Symbolic Order or Pierre Bourdieu's Symbolic Capital are, I would guess, actually using definition 1 as they were discussing signs that bring order, and signs changeable to financial or social benefit. Indeed, Umberto Eco commented that Lacan's Symbolic Order is closely connected to language, and, therefore, should be called ‘Semiotic Order’ (Eco, 1984: 203). Yet, Chinese translations of these works all use Xiangzheng, following definition 2, simply to make their translations more high-sounding or seemingly profound.
Peirce, for that matter, adds to the confusion by adopting the term 'symbol' neither in definition 1 (synonymous to 'sign') nor in definition 2 (with connotations beyond the ordinary 'sign'), but as a subgroup of 'sign'. He describes his particular usage of the term in an apologetic way: The word Symbol has so many meanings that it would be an injury to the language to add a new one. I do not think that the signification I attach to it, that of a conventional sign, or one depending upon habit (acquired or inborn), is so much a new meaning as a return to the original meaning.(1931–1958: 2.297)After acknowledging that his symbol, which is in fact a 'sign by convention', belongs to neither of the two definitions listed above, he excuses his aberration by saying that this is how the Greeks used it; that is to say, it is the most time-honored and accurate definition. In Greek, watch-fire is a 'symbol', that is, a signal agreed upon; a standard or ensign is a 'symbol', a watchword is a 'symbol', a badge is a 'symbol'; a church creed is called a 'symbol,' because it serves as a badge or shibboleth; a theatre ticket is called a 'symbol'; any ticket or check entitling one to receive anything is a 'symbol'. Moreover, any expression of sentiment was called a 'symbol'. (1931–1958: 2.297)Most of the above-listed seven examples of ‘symbol’ in Greek use basically adhere to Saussure’s idea of sign as ‘arbitrary’ or conventional signs, and, in his own triadic taxonomy, should comprise one subgroup of ‘sign’ parallel to icon and index. As such, neither definition 1 (a regular sign) nor definition 2 (a connotative sign beyond the regular sign) pertain and instead, he creates definition 3 (in his own words, ‘new meaning’) of ‘symbol’. Regrettably, most Chinese scholars and students apply definition 2 to this type of symbol, and use the term Xiangzheng. This seriously increases the difficulty in reading Peirce’s works in Chinese, which are by no means easy to understand in the first place.In contrast, Ferdinand de Saussure is relatively sober regarding the usage of‘symbol’ and drives it wisely away from his system: The word symbol has been used to designate the linguistic sign, or more specifically, what is here called the signifier. Principle I in particular weighs against the use of this term. One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified. The symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just any other symbol, such as a chariot. (1959: 68)Saussure’s stand makes his works clearer though he fails to recognize that symbols of definition 1 could be synonymous with arbitrary signs (as Peirce’s examples show), while symbols of definition 2 are still a kind of sign. However, his alertness against possible confusion helps to make his doctrine straight forward.To provide an even more enlightening example: semiotics, which is called Fuhaoxue in Chinese, was first proposed by the great Chinese linguist Y. R. Chao. In 1926, when he had just returned to China after four years of teaching philosophy at Harvard, Chao published a long essay “A Syllabus of Sign Studies” in the Shanghai journal Kexue (科学, Science), in which he clearly states at the very beginning: ‘Signs have existed since ancient times, but there has been no effort whatsoever to launch a discipline to study all signs, their nature and their usage’ (2002: 178). After long years in the United States, at Cornell as a PhD student and lecturer, and at Harvard as professor, he would most certainly have acknowledged his indebtedness, if he had ever heard of Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, or others working in the same trajectory, since, at that time in China, knowledge of Western scholarship was something to be proud of. He also suggests: 'the English equivalents to his Fuhaoxue could be symbolics, symbology or symbolology'(2002: 179). Therefore, his term Fuhaoxue was not a translation, but should be considered the fifth name independently suggested for the discipline, after Welby's 'significs’, Saussure's 'semiology', Peirce's 'semiotics’, and Ogden-Richards’ ‘Science of Symbolism’. One thing is for sure, however, from the very beginning of the development of this discipline, Chinese scholars realized that ‘symbol’ should, in many cases, be understood as synonymous with regular sign, but not with the special type of ‘connotative sign’ of definition 2, which should be translated as Xiangzheng.Some scholars argue regarding whether ‘symbol’ is the genus with sign as a specie. Umberto Eco writes: ‘Either the symbol is the semiotic genus of which all the other semiotic phenomena are species, signs included, or there is a semiotic genus called “signs” of which symbols are one among the species’(2011: 1049). The latter is certainly a more sensible suggestion, although the name of the genus should be sign/symbol definition 1, while definitions 2 and 3 are species.3 Definition of 'Semiotics'
The discussion regarding 'sign' and 'symbol' leads, unavoidably, to a reconsideration of the definition of semiotics. Generally speaking, all definitions of semiotics are variations of the same formula: ‘Semiotics is the study of signs'. Saussure defined his semiology as a discipline that 'would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them' (1959: 16). He also called the discipline 'a science that studies the life of signs within society’(16). The modifier 'social life' is a superfluous limitation he imposes upon himself, as signs can often be used interpersonally or intrapersonally. Peirce, without knowing Saussure’s definition, offers a similar definition of semiotics as 'the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs’ (Peirce, 1931–1958: 2.227) where the modifiers are also unnecessary. Such a definition is, in fact, a cyclical one, using a word of Greek-rootsemeon to define its Latin-root equivalent 'sign' (signum). However, this definition, with its predicate virtually repeating its subject, fails to explain anything.Later semioticians follow more or less in the same vein, only adding this or that modifier. The definition offered by Umberto Eco, for instance, goes as follows: 'Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign' (1976:7), while Morris's definition is taut, 'the science of signs' (1938: 1). Thus, all these efforts boil down to the century-old definition: 'Semiotics is the study of the sign'. Recently, some efforts have shifted to a new phrasing ‘study of semiosis’, or even to the following: 'Semiotics can amount to syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic properties of the sign' (Pelz, 2011: 927), all of which are only variations of the old formula. After reinstating a similar definition, Paul Cobley immediately follows with the caveat that the definition itself is 'not appropriate for getting this book started' (2010: 3).If, as this paper has discussed, we could establish that signs are locked to meanings, and that there can be no sign that does not carry meaning, or no meaning that is not carried by a sign, what naturally follows is the question: why cannot semiotics be understood as ‘the study of meaning’, following the‘meaning definition' of ‘sign’?This is not a new idea proposed by this paper, as quite a number of semioticians have made extremely similar statements in the last century. In their seminal work The Meaning of Meaning, C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards suggested that the most viable definition of meaning is ‘that which is Actually related to a sign by a chosen relation’ (1923: 186). In another chapter (“Sign-Situations”) of the same book, the authors propose that symbolism is ‘the theory of Meaning dependent upon the theory of Signs’ (xvi). The two are actually conjugated. Their definitions have recently been echoed by scholars such as Daniel Chandler, who suggests: ‘[Contemporary semioticians] study how meanings are made … since we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of signs’ (2002: 13). Moreover, Jerzy Pelc declares that ‘characteristic of all kinds of applied semiotics is that they strive to uncover the meaning of the investigated reality’ (2011: 932).To cut to the chase, 'semiotics is the study of meaning' could be a straightforward definition for the discipline. Why, then, has it not been widely accepted as a clear definition? I surmise that there is hardly an equivalent meaning in other major European academic languages. French has sens and signifiance, German has Sinn and Bedeutung, whereas in English there are three words (‘sense’, ‘significance’ and ‘meaning’). While each set of terms can cover the whole area of linguistic denotations in its own language, the jigsaw pieces cut out by these words hardly overlap, with the English word ‘meaning’ notably isolated. Thus,attempts to match these words are terribly messy, no matter how basic they are in modern philosophy. Though Frege’s term Bedeutung has from the outset been translated into English as ‘meaning’, the argument has never abated for more than a century. In 1970, the renowned scholarly publisher Blackwell held a symposium devoted solely to the translation of Bedeutung, but despite the intense debate, no conclusion was reached. Finally, a vote was called and it was decided, by compromise but not by consensus, that ‘meaning’ is the English equivalent for Bedeutung (Beaney, 1997: 36–46). That being the case, it became more difficult to reinstate the above-mentioned definition in a straightforward manner in German or French. For a similar reason, A. J. Greimas’ book Du Sens has been rendered into English as On Meaning (1974), not using the English word 'sense'. Apparently, the word 'meaning' could be the common denominator if other nations were to adopt it, but this is not possible as the boundary of our words is that of our thoughts.Nevertheless, in English, the matter is also complex. Clive Bell’s celebrated motto of ‘Significant Form’ could actually be ‘Meaningful Form’. Victoria Welby’s notion ‘Sensifics’with the etyma ‘sens-’ is actually discussing perceptions and meaning, but she realized the inherent inconvenience and later called her doctrine significs. Welby’s succinct summary ‘The sense of sign follows the sign of sense’ (Petrilli, 2009: 109) shows what the core idea of her thinking is. The polysemy of this set of synonyms of the most basic term ‘meaning’ makes it difficult to fix the definition of 'semiotics’. Another reason might be more important in deterring the definition of 'semiotics' as the study of meaning. Many modern disciplines also take meaning as their core issue, notably hermeneutics, phenomenology, semantics, as well as the two time-honored traditional disciplines – logic and rhetoric.Many scholars used to share the idea that the study of meaning is split into two parts, with semiotics covering the making and sending of meaning and hermeneutics its receiving and interpreting. Bronwen and Ringham claim that the emphasis of semiotics is on signification, that is the ‘articulated meaning’ (2006: 119). Alfred North Whitehead, the celebrated philosopher, declares that human beings seek signs in order to express themselves, and, in fact, 'the expression itself is sign' (1928: 62). Michel Foucault’s explanation in his An Archeology of Human Sciences is perhaps most explicit: we could call the way in which the signs 'speak' and develop meaning hermeneutics, and all the knowledge for the distinguishing and ascertaining of what turns a sign into a sign, and understanding its connecting rules, semiology (2002: 33). This idea persists even today, as Anne Henault opens her book with a similar definition: ‘la sémiotique est avant tout l'étude du rapport d'expression’ (2002: 1).This division of labor, however, no longer holds water as it was mostly based on the Saussurean conception of semiology. Peircean semiotics, particularly after Eco’s revamping, is often called interpretive semiotics, as its emphasis has shifted from signification to interpretation. Hermeneutics, with its long tradition, still stands, but many of its concerns are shared by semiotics, and the two disciplines are mutually supportive.The difference between phenomenology and semiotics lies more in how meaning arises and transmits. Edmond Husserl and other phenomenologists devote large parts of their work to the emergence of meaning. In their works, signs only enter when the formed meaning must be expressed or communicated. This differs considerably from Peirce, who, in his effort to construct his 'paneroscopy', claims that 'we think only in signs' (1931–1958: 2.302); that is, signs come into being right at the beginning of meaning emerging in our mind, not after the meaning has been formed. However, Peirce only mentions Husserl twice and casually in his voluminous notes and shows no evidence of actually having read Husserl (Peirce, 1931–1958: 1.7, 8.189), despite Spiegelberg’s insistence that Peirce knew Husserl's ideas well (Speigelberg, 1998: 52). Thus, according to him, there could not be any budding meaning that is not yet carried by signs.Space limitations prevent us from indulging in a detailed comparison between the 'meaning theory' of semiotics and other disciplines. We can only briefly state that since semantics has been developed from a branch of linguistics to one of semiotics, the former has no monopoly on the study of meaning. Logic and rhetoric are the two disciplines from which Peirce developed his semiotics; their resources and some core ideas had already been appropriated into semiotics. However, logic deals with reasoning and proving, while semiotics deals with all kinds of meaning activities, in most cases decided by cultural conventions or human comprehension, which are hardly rational. Rhetoric is the discipline of how speeches and writings can be made more effective and persuasive, which inspired Peirce in his development of semiotics, but the latter covers a much wider range of meaning-making than rhetoric figures could cover.In summary, from the discussions above, we could say that semiotics attempts to explain the formal aspects of all meaning-making, meaning-communication, and meaning-interpretation, conducted by signs, thus becoming the most comprehensive study of meaning, though it does not replace any of those disciplines. We could say that all the above-mentioned movements and disciplines have been part of what Richard Rorty later called 'The Linguistic Turn' of modern thinking (Rorty, 1992) and therefore they are mutually supportive and often converge in dealing with difficult issues. Since we cannot deny that these disciplines also take 'meaning' as their core concept, we could try a safer and less inclusive definition: 'semiotics is the study of sign-conducted meaning activities'. However, semiotics studies meaning in its most fundamental sense and all aspects with which meaning is concerned, while the other disciplines emphasize one or other aspects of the study of meaning. However, since we are sure that the sign is locked onto meaning: ‘semiotics is the study of meaning’stands as a definition.Zhao Yiheng is director of the Institute of Semiotics & Media Studies, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. The article is supported by Shuangyiliu Program, Sichuan University
Note
[1]Charles Foster Kane is a fictional character who is the subject of Orson Welles' 1941 film Citizen Kane.
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本文刊载于 Signs & Media 2 (2022) 55–70
