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A Signification Community

Werner, Oswald 1969. The Basic Assumptions of Ethnoscience. Semiotica 1(3): 329-338. DOI: 10.1515/semi.1969.1.3.329

Ethnoscience is the ethnography and/or ethnology of knowledge, or ethno-epistemology, or descriptive epistemology, ethnographic ethnoscience includes such sub-areas as ethno-anatomy, ethnobotany, and ethnozoology. Ethnologic ethnoscience is a theoretical science which is comparative in the sense that it seeks to formulate universal laws of knowledge. It is meta-epistemology because it deals with formal and substantive constraints of particular descriptions in ethnographic ethnoscience. (Werner 1969: 329)

Don't we already have sociology of knowledge for that? Do we also need an anthropology of knowledge, a semiotics of knowledge, and so on?

Ethnoscience deals with the ideational order (in the sense of Goodenough 1964b), primarily with cultural knowledge rather than cultural behavior; observation is used predominantly to generate further questions about the informant's knowledge. At some point, knowledge and behavior must fit consistently. (Werner 1969: 330)

All natives must immediately relinquish their emic ideas to the closest ethnoscientist at hand.

Explicit Culture which is Language - Linguistic ethnographic ethnoscience deals with that part of cultural knowledge which is accessible through the language of the informants. The implicit parts of a culture are considered neither unimportant nor unnecessary; they are simply outside of the self-imposed limitations. Since very large parts of any culture are transmitted through language, this restriction seems not too limiting. (Werner 1969: 330)

If language is explicit culture, what is implicit culture? The signified? Or behaviour? Moreover, is language as a system of signs explicit? I would think that the products of language, e.g. speech and texts, are.

Language may be defined as a potentially infinite set of sentences. Sentences are neither grammatical or ungrammatical. Ungrammatical sentences differ among themselves in the degree of their ungrammaticality or deviance from theoretical wellformedness. (Werner 1969: 330)

I might start collecting unnecessarily long words like this and unobjectionability. Possibly for a spoof written completely in unnecessarily long words. Let such instances be designated with the tag unwellformedness.

Part of human language competence is the ability to interpret sentences which are slightly ungrammatical, for example, much of ordinary conversation or the speech of foreigners speaking English. (Werner 1969: 311)

Those darn uneducated classes know not how to speak properly.

Culturally appropriate sentences considered for a description in ethnographic ethnoscience must be available for judgement by informants. [|] That is, they must be potentially 'true' or 'false', with possibly a third class of undecidable sentences. Thus culturally appropriate sentences must be in the form of propositions. Sentences of undecidable status are neither unimportant nor uninteresting. They present a complicated problem which is also beyond the scope of this paper. (Werner 1969: 331-332)

Aletheism (cf. Hiż 1969: 147). The ending here is neat - proclaim an idea "neither unimportant nor uninteresting" and push it beyond the scope of your own work (let someone else handle it?). It's a very high-minded academic way of saying "F it".

All occasional sentences may be converted into appropriate generic ones. This is perhaps better stated the other way: Generic sentences are prerequisite to the understanding and interpretation of specific and/or occasional sentences. Many generic sentences are probably axiomatic, that is, they are either learned by an informant or unknown to him. (Werner 1969: 332)

Looks like generic and occasional sentences follow the token/type dualism. The dictionary definition of "axiomatic" says "self-evident or unquestionable". May add something to Clay's definition of axiomatic knowledge.

Ethnoscience, in common with standard ethnography and linguistics, is potentially exhaustive (holistic). Exhaustiveness of description is a principle which, in practice, may be only approximated to some degree. [↩] The knowledge of informants varies with their intelligence, interest, opportunity, and with the facts of the social division of labor. No informant has a total knowledge of his culture. A full description approaching a 'complete' description must be a composite picture of the cultural [|] competence of many informants. Such a complex picture is conceivable only as the supra-individual record of an ideal 'omniscient' native speaker-hearer. (Werner 1969: 332-333)

A point made in "The Consequences of Literacy", which I need to re-read to get it on here.

One possible solution may be concentration on semantic field properties rather than lexical domains; in other words, concern for the organization of knowledge rather than the substantive extent of knowledge. [↩] Limiting the analysis to the highest, or near highest, level terms embedded in folk taxonomies may be another possible method for a systematic reduction of bulk and complexity. (Werner 1969: 334)

Breadth and depth? (cf. Savan 1965: 36).

Masing, Uku 1969. Review of The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumézil by C. Scott Littleton. Semiotica 1(3): 339-355. DOI: 10.1515/semi.1969.1.3.339

[...] he [Dumézil] seems to think that F. Cumont (1956) was the first one to point out some parallels between Mazdaism and Judaism). (Masing 1969: 339)

Something I've only met in Olev Remsu's Kurbmäng Paabelis (1989).

He often mitigates or retracts his own justified criticisms; has nothing to say against "another example of the mutability of D's thinking" (L 135) where 'unsettledness' would be a more suitable term; a great many of D's errors and shortcomings are accepted by him without the least reserve. (Masing 1969: 340)

Unwellformedness.

A representative of the 1 f(unction) can be treated as a representative of the 3 f when he is bathing, since "the act of bathing is conductive to a sense of physical relaxation and well-being [...] a bather is, for the moment at least, neither sovereign nor possessed of effective physical prowess, and would indeed seem to relate to the thirst function" (D 1956b, L 124). (Masing 1969: 342)

Manifesting the same logic as one of the poems in Tyler Fugazzie's Hool (2013): if a man sits down he ceases to be human because the common iconic image of humankind is a standing person.

Bernard, Jeff 1998. Conceptions of life and man - basics of "social communications" (as exemplified by the "Charter on the (re-)presentation of disabled people in the midea"). Sign Systems Studies 26: 372-391.

"World vision" and the "vision of man" cannot be separated from one another. Their common denominator is the factor "image", a simplifying formula for an infinite number of interwoven projections which, first of all, necessarily have to be correlated appropriately to achieve a correct "vista". "Image" means at the same time that one refers to something else: societal facts, structures, interactions (as pertinent fundamental instances, i.e., if religious-metaphysical foundations are excluded from a scientific-logical point of view, without their individual-motivational importance being denied). (Bernard 1998: 372)

In the first instance image has the quality of simplification in common with model; in the second instance it has the standing for quality in common with signs and, evidently, information (cf. Farina 2008: 77).

The "image" is a sign. A sign is something which stands for something else, being as such interpreted by something or somebody. It is a relationship S = R (O, M, I), whereby S is the sign, O is the object (the signified), M is the means (the signifying), and I is the interpretant (a further sign) or the interpreter himself (his interpreting consciousness). The means M, or sign vehicle, or representamen, is at the same time the means of communication. Communication without sign use is by definition impossible. (Communication is, according to Ch. W. Morris, the formation of a signification community, or, as stated by F. Rossi-Landi, "sign exchange".) (Bernard 1998: 372)

Similar formulae have been constructed by Nauta (1972) and Lotman (1976). Not at all sure if "a signification community" is Morris's - it doesn't sound like him (he had "interpreter-family" for what Jakobson called a "speech community". Also, he had a pretty systematic definition of communication in which the construction of a community did not figure.

Against merely mentalistic orientations in semiotics it should be emphasized, in the end, that here M and O are to be understood in the sense of Rossi-Landi's socio-semiotic theory, that is, M serves the identification of an already socialized piece, part, fragment of society (= O). The intended transformations of O (i.e. O1, O2, O3, ... , On) are contrived by sign work which by mediacy is, at the same time, consciousness work. Non-profit PR can therefore, appropriately adjusted, play an active and even initial role in this consciousness work - it cannot be the one and only agent, however, if it does not want to unfold mere illusion over deficient reality. (Bernard 1998: 385)

Fairly convoluted paper with too many formulas and initializations.

Randviir, Anti 1998. Sign as an object of social semiotics: evolution of cartographic semiosis. Sign Systems Studies 26: 392-416.

The current essay attempts to view a possible distinction between social and cultural semiotics, and finally their interconnectedness via the semiotics of sign. On the basis of maps, viewed below as manifestations of culturally accepted social representations, we shall try to demonstrate the interrelated nature of the semiotics of the code and that of the sign in the manner that it is exemplified in a cultural semiotic system. (Randviir 1998: 392)

One may venture a guess that Peirce represents the semiotics of sign and Saussure the semiotics of code.

Now, the two general categories would be 'cultural semiotics' and 'social semiotics' (in line with hypothetic statements e.g. 'semiotics of literature belongs to the sphere of cultural semiotics, semiotics dealing with mass communication - to the one of social semiotics'). (Randviir 1998: 392)

An implicit reference to "The Social Semiotics of Mass Communication" (Jensen 1995)

However, this may also be expressed by a conditional contrast - while cultural semiotics sets its object into the light of the context of cultural tradition, sociosemiotics looks at a cultural object within social dynamics (for the latter, see e.g. Riggins 1994: 111). We can also say that cultural semiotics deals with the object 'as a structure', treating relations between objects as structural, too. Hence, one can state that this point of view is ontological; meaning and code are ontological, whereas for sociosemiotics, objects and relations between them are not ontological but processual and semiosic as the latter (semiosis) conjoins the semiotics of the sign and the semiotics of the code. (Randviir 1998: 393)

Thus, a series forms between several antinomies: cultural/social; diachronic/synchronic; and structural/processual.

Also, the structural tradition can be taken as following Saussure's doctrine in the sense that meaning emerges or emanates from differences between intrasystemic signs. Still - meaning would, in this respect, as if belong to the realm outside that of signs, since its locus is, so to speak, in-between signs; the meaning (of a message consisting of more than one sign) is directed by relations between signs, but not as much by the relationship between the signifier and the signified, as one could interpret from has been ascribed to Saussure. (Randviir 1998: 394)

Interestingly, Peirce's semosis follows an obverse logic, where meaning emerges, so to say (because Peircean semiotics does not substantialize "meaning") from similarities between (extrasystemic) signs. At least this can be inferred from the definition of sign given in some instances, e.g. "anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way" (Lenzen 1965: 3).

In the current paper space is proposed as such a 'natural semiotic system'. Space is a matter where socium's general principles of code usage, therefore also 'regularities of modeling', are laid open. At the same time, space is a wholly ordinary environment of everyday life and a naturally signified dimension. It is commonplace that the cultural behavior of an individual is largely dependent on how his/her mental map has developed and has been made to develop. (Randviir 1998: 396)

Presumably, "natural semiotic system" is a Greimasianism. Recording this for a future list of what phenomena are considered as "sign systems" in Sign Systems Studies.

At this point one can distinguish between so to speak primary (or initial) and secondary semiosis, the first of which is related firsthand to signgenesis and the latter to interpretation. (Randviir 1998: 396)

Synonymous with the so-called front- and "the tail end of the semiotic chain" (Violi 2007: 68).

In connection with the symbol as a means of construing a model, we have to refer to a treatment of model by E. T. Hall, who asserts the function of the model for an artist (the authors of the maps viewed here were definitely artists, too) to be an instrument for filling gaps in visual memory. For this reason a model is a pseudoreality (compare with Merrell's treatment of 'semiotic reality', see e.g. Merrell 1992: 39-40, 44-45) created in the course of communication (see Hall 1981: 12). For Hall this is connected with the 'screening function of culture' which lies in socium's self-defense against informational overload (Hall 1981: 85). Taking this treatment into account, symbol, as an information carrier, has hence quite an ambivalent constitution, comprising of informational condensation on the one hand, and on the other 'postponing' the decoding of information (as a 'minus device'). (Randviir 1998: 406)

Reminiscent of the bio-anthropological perspective, in which "symbolic forms are to be understood as collective coping devices" (Oakley 2007: 28-29). Makes me wonder if a proposition like "A surprisingly large part of every culture is merely the phatic sharing of common emotional burdens, and has no relevance at all to the outside world" (La Barre 1954: 306) could similarly be translated into explicitly semiotic theory.

On the basis of this, we can create the following branching range of the sign:
→ Signal - Index - Icon - Symbol | Sign.
Here sign appears as an individual synthetic category. (Randviir 1998: 408)

How is semiosis different from general synthesis?

Melvil, Yuri K. 1966. The Conflict of Science and Religion in Charles Peirce's Philosophy. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2(1): 33-50.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) has recently become one of the most fashionable philosophers in the U.S.A. Almost unknown during his lifetime, having tried unsuccessfully for decades to obtain a position at a university, failing to publish a single book on philosophy, and dying penniless and in complete obscurity, he has unexpectedly become the subject of honor and veneration (Melvil 1966: 33)

I wouldn't say complete obscurity, as the likes of Josiah Royce (cf. Kernan 1965) were very much fascinated with him, and had Royce not passed away prematurely, he would have brought Peirce's manuscripts to a larger decades earlier than they were. Also, the posthumous Chance, Love and Logic: Philosophical Essays (1923) appeared a decade after his death, which was pretty soon, considering.

It is to Peirce's credit that semiotics (the teaching of symbols) has been established as an independent scientific branch, the importance of which needs no proof in our time. (Melvil 1966: 34)

The what now?

But Peirce was not only a man of science. Like the American scientific intellectuals of his time he remained a religious man until the very end of his day. Peirce was convinced that "all realty [sic] is due to the creative powers of God" (6.505), that science is "knowledge of God's truth" (1.239), that for the support of the social order and morality "the great catholic church is wanted" (6.443). (Melvil 1966: 35)

God, the omnipotent real estate agent.

The highest principle of reason which, according to Peirce, should direct the scientist, is the following: "In order to learn, you must desire to learn" (1.135). This thesis seems to be rather trivial, but its meaning is more profound than it would appear. (Melvil 1966: 37)

At no time has this been a truer truism than now, when anyone with a device able to connect to the world wide web has immediate access to nearly all science. (Thank you, sci-hub!)

According to pragmatism, "inquiry" does not proceed at all from no knowledge to knowledge, but only from doubt to belief. It does not assume either knowledge or truth. Peirce rejects as being a groundless fancy the idea that man strives not simply toward an opinion but toward the true opinion. He claims that the truth or falsity of belief does not have any connection with the goal of inquiry, "for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief is true or false" (5.375). (Melvil 1966: 40)

Isn't this related to Peirce's fallibilism? ("the principle that propositions concerning empirical knowledge can be accepted even though they cannot be proved with certainty"; "the philosophical claim that no belief can have justification which guarantees the truth of the belief")

In this way the explanation here, too, consists of an equation of the phenomenon to be explained with the peculiar nature of mind which apparently needs no explanation, since for the idealist, mind is "the sole self-intelligible thing" (6.61). (Melvil 1966: 44)

The brain named itself.

Fisch, Max and Atwell Turquette 1966. Peirce's Triadic Logic. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2(2): 71-85.

Alonzo Church expresses essentially the same points in the following way:
Using three truth-values instead of two, and truth-tables in these three truth-values, Łukasiewicz first introduced a three-valued propositional calculus in 1920. He was led to this by ideas about modality, according to which a third truth-value - possibility, or better, contingency - has to be considered in addition to truth and falsehood; but the abstract importance of the new calculus transcends that of any particular associated ideas of this kind. Generalization to a many-valued propositional calculus, with υ + 1 truth-values of which μ + 1 are designated (1 ≦ μ > υ), was made by post in 1921 [...]
Chuch points out further that 1921 denotes the date of the published version of Post's dissertation of 1920. (Fisch & Turquette 1966: 72)

The excluded middle and abduction.

The suggestion becomes even more plausible in the light of the fact that just prior to the period when Peirce was developing his triadic logic, he was giving serious consideration to problems of trichotomy or triadic modality. For example, under the date of January 1908, The Prescott Book (Ms. 277) deals with modality in terms of the triad "potentiality," "actuality," and "necessitation." Peirce characterizes these as follows:
Potentiality is the absence of Determination (in the usual broad sense) not of a mere negative kind but a positive capacity to be Yea and to be Nay; not ignorance but a state of being [...] [↩] Actuality is the Act which determines the merely possible [...] [↩] Necessitation is the support of Actuality by reason [...]
On August 28, 1908, Peirce records in his Logic Notebook (Ms. 339) an account of the co-reality of the three universes: "1) of Ideas, 2) of Occurrences [...], and 3) of Powers." He then argues that the "mode of being" of an Idea is that of "Real Possibility," that of an Occurrence is "Actuality," and that of a Power is "Real Necessity." Then, in the same Logic Notebook (Ms. 339) on December 27, 1908, Peirce lets "1" denote Idea, "2" denote Occurrence, and "3" denote Habit, which is presumably a kind of Power. (Fisch & Turquette 1966: 78)

The origin of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. Thus: Potentiality - Ideas; Actuality - Occurrences; Necessitation - Powers - Habit. On the latter point, habit being a kind of power, think of the phrase "the power of habit".

Cowley, Stephen J. 2008. Meaning in Nature: Organic Manufacture? Biosemiotics 1(1): 85-98. DOI: 10.1007/s12304-008-9003-7

Far from representing 'knowledge', language may be grounded in deeds. In Maturana's (1978) terms, languaging may be structural coupling whereby a system brings about changes in its own state. What Turing (1950) called our 'intellectual powers' may arise from the biomechanics of languaging. Skills that derive from acting, speaking and hearing may be precisely what transform human observers into world-modellers. (Cowley 2008: 87)

Language, says Malinowski, is a mode of action; soon followed by Austin and Wittgenstein with elaborations.

From cell to culture, organisms are regulated by history. For older and newer traditions alike, it matters that self-organizing, adaptive agents model the world. In the qualitative tradition, with Peirce and von Uexküll, semiosis is traced - not just to sign and world - but also to models (or interpretants). (Cowley 2008: 87)

...or habit.

In contrast to the DEEDS tradition, biosemiotics can draw on its own self-constructed history. The field is less reliant on negative argument, currents of fashion, technological change, or careerism. Conversely, it can seem isolated, disconnected from current debates, and redolent of discarded views. To the uninformed, this raises fears about its scientific status. (Cowley 2008: 88)

Exactly why semiotics is so darn appealing.

A history of organism-environment relations gave rise to two-way structured couplings. Semiotic causation makes nutrient concentration meaningful to the cell. By contrast, Varela explains similar facts by appeal to autopoiesis (roughly, self-organization). (Cowley 2008: 89)

Earlier, "Howard Pattee finds an epistemic cut between physics and biology" (ibid, 87). Does the concept of causation not make that cut too shallow?

Whether called semiosis or self-organization, adaptation is the basis for sense-making. Contra Hoffmeyer, the communicative world is one of (inter)action. (Cowley 2008: 89)

Both "learning" and "habit-formation" could be added to this list of near-synonymous terms.

In Inner Representations and Signs in Animals, Stephen Pain sketches how such views might be built into empirical work. To this end, he suggests attributing sentience to a system that integrates information across modalities: its indicators are thus signs of interest (and, presumably, decline in interest). Accordingly, sentience arises in - not bacteria - but perhaps jellyfish and, almost certainly, in earthworms. (Cowley 2008: 94)

"The microscopist looks to see whether the motions of a little creature show any purpose. If so, there is mind there" (CP 1.269; in Nöth 1998: 338) - replace purpose with interest.

Neuman, Yair and Ophir Nave 2008. On the Semio-Mathematical Nature of Codes. Biosemiotics 1(1): 99-111. DOI: 10.1007/s12304-008-9004-6

Biosemiotics is an emerging field of theoretical biology that involves "the study of signs, of communication, and of information in living organismS" (Smith 1997: 72). A basic tenet of biosemiotics is that the behavior of biological systems should be studied as a mediated realm (Barbieri 2003; Hoffmeyer 1996; Neuman 2008) in which signs or codes establish a correspondence between two different worlds (Barbieri 2003). Codes are described as having three unique characteristics: (1) they connect two independent worlds; (2) they add meaning to information; and (3) they are conventions (ibid.). (Neuman & Nave 2008: 99)

Pretty vague - what worlds are these? That of the living and non-living? Physical and semiotic realities? In Saussurean semiology, the signifier and signified ary by no means "worlds"; and in Peircean semiotics the sign certainly mediates, but does it mediate between worlds or between sign-vehicles and objects?

The central dogma portrays genetic coding as a linear, one-way flow of "information" from DNA to RNA to protein. We put the word "information" in quotation marks because the meaning of biological "information" is far from clear. The term "information" originated in Latin and entered the English language around 1450 in the sense of "knowledge communicated" (Online Etymology Dictionary). In modern scientific discourse, however, "information" is commonly associated with information theory and Shannon's definition and mathematical measure of information. (Neuman & Nave 2008: 101)

Very true, and conversely, communication originally had the connotations of information, i.e. the Queen was received communication from a diplomatic envoy, in which we today would say "received information". Communication, of course, also had the connotation of transportation (e.g. water and rail communication; the term "channel" originates from the water-way figure).

RNA self-replication suggests that RNA can serve as a template for its own replication. That is, RNA has the ability to act as both genes and enzymes. This incredible property was proven by Nobel laureate Thomas R. Cech (Cech 1986) and is one of the theoretical justifications for the "RNA world" hypothesis (Gesteland et al. 1999; Gilbert 1986) - the hypothesis that the modern DNA world was preceded by an RNA world. (Neuman & Nave 2008: 103)

Ah! Those worlds.

The interesting thing is that the shift from the alphabet (e.g., RNA units) to higher-order combinatorial structures (e.g., codons) involves a qualitative shift that infuses "information," in the sense of differentiation, with "meaning." "Dog" and "God" have the same informational value when taken as mere collections of the letters G, O, and D. However, combining the letters to form higher-order structures adds "order" to the differentiated tokens and thus infuses them with meaning. (Neuman & Nave 2008: 108)

Is double articulation really the primary mechanism of meaning-making? Mere otherness does not sense-discrimination make.

Collins, Christopher 2008. Palaeopoetics: Prefatory notes toward a cognitive history of poetry. Cognitive Semiotics 2: 41-64. DOI: 10.1515/cogsem.2008.2.spring2008.41

But then, of course, the follow-up question becomes "what is poetry?". A convenient first answer would be: "Poetry" is what most people around the world and down through the ages have assumed it to be, namely, the practice of making self-contained, formally patterned verbal compositions. (Collins 2008: 41)

Self-contained, implying "closure" (cf. Sonesson 1998: 99-100).

Over the past two million years it was culture, that is, "collective mentality" that drove cognitive evolution. "Cultures are more efficient than individuals at exploiting the fitness value of genetic variations, which might otherwise have a negligible impact" (Donald 2001: 259). (Collins 2008: 42)

What's the difference between collective mind and collective mentality? The latter term has two distinct meanings: "the characteristic way of thinking of a person or group" and "the capacity for intelligent thought". Presumably the second one is relevant here, as the first one approaches "attitude" and is rather derogatory.

His [Donald's] four stages are, in brief:
  1. The Episodic, associated with the perception and storage of whole events. This evolved with the primate apes.
  2. The Mimetic, associated with the communication of thoughts through actions, for example, gestural representation and the teaching of skills through showing. This began among early hominids and became fully developed in Homo erectus.
  3. The Mythic, associated with linguistic communication - telling, as distinct from showing; symbolic signs, as distinct from indices and icons. This appears at the beginning of our own subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens, at some point between 100 thousand and 50 thousand years ago.
  4. The Theoretical, associated with the trascription and external storage of symbolic signs, viz., writing. Begun some 5 thousand years ago, this led to the development of literate cultures and what we customarily refer to as "civilizations".
(Collins 2008: 43)

The second one is problematic: "imitation is based on a conceptual understanding of the imitated behaviour, in contrast to mimicry" (Østergaard 2007: 116). Were this distinction taken seriously, the mimetic stage could not involve "teaching of skills" - they would not stick, would die out with individuals.

In modern humans, such episodes can extend in duration well beyond the interval we identify with "working memory" - 7 items, plus or minus two, within a period of 20 seconds (Miller 1956). (Collins 2008: 44)

A popular psychological myth.

The analog mind, which up till then had been the sole cognitive operating system, receives impressions and rearrances its neural networks accordingly. These networks "form impressions in essentially the same way a time-exposed astronomical photograph does, by passively gathering data over time. (Collins 2008: 45)

The analog/digital distinction is again something that is outdated by at least half a century, if not more (cf. Ruesch & Kees 1956). The distinction is still valuable, e.g. "digital-analogical consensus" (Bruni 2008: 126-127), but digital and "analog mind" is a patented absurdity.

One kind of episode that even our pre-hominid ancestors understood well was social play. Our mammalia nforebears must have had a mutual awareness that some threatening displays might not be what they seem, enough skill in mind-reading to interpret outwardly aggressive behavior, under certain circumstances, as non-aggressive in intent. We assume so because they and we still exhibit this awareness. "How do animals read play intention in any conspecific? Cooperative social play may involve rapid exchange of information on intentions, desires, and beliefs" (Bekoff & Byers 1998: xvi). Gregory Bateson has his own term for this pre-play exchange he called it a "metacommunication" (Bateson 1972, Collins 1991: xxiii-xxiv). This was a signal that invites the addressee to enter into what Bateson called a "play frame" within which actions, for example, chasing, nipping, and sparring, would not indicate the sort of hostility that might otherwise lead to injury or death. (Collins 2008: 47)

A bold simplification because that is not all that metacommunication embraces. Cf. Communication, the Social Matrix of Psychology (Ruesch & Bateson 1951) for the definition of metacommunication.

This is also quite different from episodic play, which involves two sociall identified individuals engaged in enacting a socially recognized play script - two dogs, for example, barking and taking turns chasing one another, or two humans exchanging soft punches to one another's shoulder to communicate good-natured bonhomie. (Collins 2008: 48)

Define: "cheerful friendliness; geniality"; synonymous with conviviality.

When forms imitate themselves, their repetitive structure constitutes what Roman Jakobson (1960) called "iterative form" and saw operating in verbal compositions on the levels of semantics, syntax, and phonological expression. Even earlier, Suzanne Langer (1953) declared rhythmic patterning to be the form of feeling and, as such, an aesthetic universal across all the arts. (Collins 2008: 50)

Never noticed this. He probably has better means to treat rhythms.

The iterative aspects of these two - on the one hand, a rapid rhythmic repetition of movements and sounds and, on the other hand, a slower, visual representation of past events - correspond rather closely to Nietzsche's well-known distinction in The Birth of Tragedy between the Dionysian and Apollinian factors at the heart of Greek tragedy and modern music drama. These two gods represent for him the polar oppositions of self and selflessness, reason and [|] rapture, dream and dance, vision and music. At the Apollinian pole, we enjoy an illusory, yet stabilizing, belief in the unique wholeness of our self, a belief grounded in the principium individuationis (the principle of individuation). The latter, as he understood from Schopenhauer, was formed by our sense of existing in time and space - in particular moments and particular places. At the Dionysian pole, this sense of separate individuality surrenders to a mystical participation in a larger reality. (Collins 2008: 51-52)

I have no idea how this is related to rhythms, but, knowing that Malinowski wrote his very first (preserved) essays on this very text (cf. Malinowski 1904/05), it now makes a bit more sense why he protested so much against "collective consciousness" and similar formulations.

With population growth, skill-based divisions of labor must have been introduced and, to the extent that every individual needed to share in the work of the community in order to share in its benefits, the principle of reciprocal altruism became the governing ethos. This was the Paleolithic golden rule: I will do unto others a kindness (whatever the immediate cost to myself) with the understanding that, if ever I need the same, those others will do that unto me (whatever the immediate cost to them). Persons unwilling to abide by this rule would be banished from the group; those found to be slackers or cheaters would be punished. (Collins 2008: 58)

Tediously iterative content: haven't I read this paragraph in this very journal? (cf. Brandt 2007: 53) What a pedestrian paper this is. It made absolutely no head-way into anything and contained infuriating pot-holes. Ragequit a few pages before the conclusion.

Ross, Haj 2008. Structural Prosody. Cognitive Semiotics 2: 65-82. DOI: 10.1515/cogsem.2008.2.spring2008.65

The crucial problem that year (1965, I think) was poetics. I knew nothing about it, had never availed myself of the rich literature that Jakobson had already written on poetics. (Ross 2008: 66)

I have to say, for a journal titled Cognitive Semiotics, it contains an unexpected amount of poetics instead of, say, psychology or neurology.

I have never met anyone who had the ability to speak in a fashion as concentrated as could Roman. I think that that density was one of kinds of bait with which he sweetened the hook on which I was impaled. I had found out for myself that syntax was bottomless; he showed us that poetics was equally, or perhaps more, so. I had the supreme good fortune to not only be able to hear him talk on many subjects, for the last twenty years of his amazingly productive life, but to become his colleague and friend. I once proposed to him that we collaborate on the analysis of a poem, he agreed - but as is so often the case in life, I thought there were other things of greater urgency to accomplish, and then he grew ill, and was gone. (Ross 2008: 67)

I, too, think that Jakobson was a linguistic genius, but this here is bordering on verbal fellatio.

While even higher-order sectionings are theoretically possible, I have not encountered many, and I tend to doubt that they can exist productively. After all, we are getting close to George Miller's famous Magic Number Seven ± 2. (Ross 2008: 70)

Tediously iterative content: the quality of "cognitive science" in this here cognitive semiotics. I'm seriously considering dropping this journal.

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