Re: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions

[Michael Shapiro]

Dear Frederik,
It's too bad that Hjelmslev ultimately went wrong with his utterly sterile glossematics, but his ideas about linguistic structure aside from this misstep are just as valid today as they were in his own time
Apropos of neo-structuralism, do you know the work of another one of your compatriots, Henning Andersen? It bids well to go down as the most significant and fecund continuation of his teacher Roman Jakobson's structural linguistics.

Best regards,
Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Frederik Stjernfelt
Sent: Sep 2, 2014 12:59 PM
To: Michael Shapiro
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions

Dear Michael - 

I do know Hjelmslev's work, and as a young scholar I was even pretty enthusiastic about it. 

I have lost confidence, though, in Hjelmslev's and other structuralists' idea of language as a  "passkey semiotic" as you call it. I do not think all contents of diagrams and pictures may be adequately expressed in language, for instance. But I do understand why the structuralists could get that impression. There is indeed something peculiar about human language - namely its generality in the sense that any issue may be addressed using it (but that is not the same as saying that  every possible content may be expressed in it). I try to address this feature of language in a more modest way in one of the later chapters - ch. 7. 

I also lost confidence in the structuralists' hesitation with if not rejection of realism (cf. Hjelmslev's idea that substance of content was completely amorphous and only shaped by linguistic form). Here, Peirce's realism to me offers a semitiotics which is better as a basis for a philosophy of science. 

- Which neo-structuralist are you quoting at the end of your comment?

Best

F

Den 01/09/2014 kl. 16.42 skrev Michael Shapiro <poo...@earthlink.net>

:

Frederik, List,
The book's leitmotif of not limiting dicisigns to human language sounds right, and I look forward to finding out how you develop this part of your treatment as I continue reading the book. However, as your compatriot Louis Hjelmslev also insisted (successfully, in my opinion), human language is "the passkey semiotic," by which he meant that all other semiotic systems can be expressed in human language but not vice versa. Also, as in your earlier book "Diagrammatology," your conceptualization of language and linguistics seems not to take into account the work of linguists who have a neo-structuralist conception of their field that utilizes Peirce's semeiotic and this brings to bear his insight that explanation is tantamount to the "rationalized explication of variety [including historical change]." 

Michael

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