Frances to interested members...
In light of recent discussions turning on the review of some posts and books, allow me to start a new topic on the theme of sign jargon, which may help me sort out the snarl of twine that pragmatism has dropped on us. My motive here is based on the assumption that this rather specialized jargon is useful in addressing the aesthetic and artistic issues at hand, if the jargon can be mastered at all. The jargon of many pragmatists like Peirce is usually very baroque and dense and opaque, yet it is likely often all that is available to get my points across. Another reason in my using the stuff is that it gives me an opportunity to better know it, and to decode it into more common words and terms, thereby making it accessible to a broader public or to a special public. One frequent task for me is to tailor it for a selected naive audience, such as senior high school students. Another aspect of sign study for me is to gather all the numerous terms used to build typologies by diverse theorists, for reasons of comparison or integration. The main sources of such jargon seems to be from angloamerican semiotics as well as francoeuropean semiology and structuralism, but other sources include mathematics and logics and linguistics, along with some sciences like anthropology and pathology that have made their own unique sign jargon. In the humanal arts or humanities for example the term sign is well known, and has a respected position going back to classical antiquity. The term sign however is still used differently with various meanings in many fields, as are the terms icon and index and signal and symptom and symbol, with the result that they all seem to defy any agreed standard. One of my goals as a learning semiotician is to work toward realizing a global sign theory that would likely accommodate and assimilate and appropriate most of the jargon now available. Another goal is to see if it is possible to develop a nonverbal virtual language such as a visceral or visual language, but structured along linguistic lines, yet using semiotic models. Seeking and finding or making a unified field theory of signs may not be a new idea, but it is an old hope. Another thorn is relating semiotics with logics and mathematics, and also relating linguistics with them all. Linguistics it seems is held by some theorists to be merely a practical science, rather than a theoretical science, with no role to play especially in logics; although linguistics is now clearly an established science in its own right. Semiotics on the other hand was traditionally equated as logics, yet in a somewhat broader way, but today it seems to have become distanced from logics through applications in such fields as literary criticism and cultural studies. It may be that semiotics is ready for some kind of revision. Any sign theory would of course need a supporting philosophy and be consistent with its categories, yet be empirically viable. My tentative bias admittedly leans toward idealist realism and its naturalist pragmatism, but this like all approaches is fallible. If members know of recent readings that touch on these many issues, posting them here would be helpful. In a separate but continued post on this topical subject some pragmatist sign terms will be listed and defined by me for further consideration.
