A Polyadic Relation

[pt. 2]

Preface | Abduction | Abelard, Peter (1079-1142) | Abstraction | Semiotic Aspects of Abstraction | Addressee | Advertising | Advertising | Aesthetics | Ambiguity, Aesthetics, and Philosophy | Analogy | Analytic/Synthetic | Anselm (1033-1109) | Anthropology | Aphasia | Aquinas, Thomas (1225-1274) | Architecture | Argumentation Inference | Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) | Poetics and Rhetoric | Articulation | Artificial Intelligence | Atomism, Logical | Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus), Bishop of Hippo (354-430) | Austin, John Langshaw (1911-1960) | Automatization | Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) | Bacon, Roger (ca. 1220-1292) | Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua (b. 1905, Vienna; d. Sep. 15, 1975, Jerusalem) | Barthes, Roland (1915-1980) | Bateson, Gregory (1904-1980)

Sebeok, Thomas A. 1986a. Preface. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, v-viii.

As Klaus Oehler later insightfully espied, I was animated to develop a project of this sort as I browsed, then ruminated, over Peirce's ethics of terminology and the relevance thereof for "all areas of lexicographic practice," particularly "the preparation of philosophical and scientific dictionaries" (Oehler 1981: 348). Far from envisaging this labor as a monumental "cooperative summing up" (Gerber 1967: 199), the last words carved into granite, I thought of it as a modest further step "in the work of clearing up and opening up [...] semiotic," in the memorable locution of the self-declared pioneer, or backwoodsman, of the field, Charles S. Peirce (cf. 5.488). (Sebeok 1986a: v)

Peirce's ethics of terminology having fruit-bearing effects. As my own foreword to this post, I'll note that I've perused this ecyclopedia at the library a few times and left dumb-founded at how much information is in it. Now that I have some experience with reading an encyclopedia (one that's mostly about phlogiston and fixed air, dynasties of Dutch engravers, and how many pistilla various plants have), I think I'm finally up for it. These 1179 pages look like a daunting read still, but very likely quite worth the effort.

• Oehler, K. 1981b. The significance of Peirce's ethics of terminology for contemporary lexicography in semiotics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 17: 347-357. [JSTOR]

When I started, I knew only of a few lexicons devoted to semiotics: Maldonado's (1961), for instance, contains fewer than one hundred terms in the compass of 21 pages. The dictionary of Bense and Walther (1973) had just appeared, consigned, however, all but exclusively, to Peirce's semiotic. Later, other lexicons were to appear, the most ambitious among them being Greimas and Courtés (1979, 1982), a polemical piece of work which has been judged "far from being a survey of the terminology in use in semiotics [...]" (Serge 1984: 269-270). (Sebeok 1986a: v)

Only 21 pages? I could do that with my favourite obscure terms alone. Greimas's analytic dictionary is indeed far from a survey, and I'd say completely useless if you don't subscribe to his particular idiosyncratic interpretation of semiotics.

• Maldonado, T. 1961. Beitrag zur Terminologie der Semiotik. Ulm. [ESTER]
• Bense, M.; Walther, E. (eds.) 1973. Woerterbuch der Semiotik. Koeln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch.

[...] I set forth my thoughts for an Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics, to comprise three interlaced categories of interalphabetized articles:

1. Entries tracing the historical background and range of the present usage of terms - seme, for instance - with recommendations, where appropriate, for standardizing current convention;
2. Evaluative biographical sketches of leading figures in semiotic studies, such as Charles Morris; and assessment of aspects of the work of others, such as Aristotle, who have made pivotal contributions to semiotic studies, yet are not commonly thought of in this context;
3. Expositions of the impact of semiotics on various traditional arts and sciences, say, Architecture, Mathematics, Music, and the like; and of the penetration of semiotic methods of inquiry into the study of established academic fields of study, such as the Philosophy of Language, Logic, and the like.
(Sebeok 1986a: vi)

I'm particularly interested in those "others" who are not usually thought of as having something to do with semiotics. It would be especially interesting, for my purposes, to see if those obscure figures who developed John Locke's Σημιωτικὴ in the early days - I've met a few in the Internet Archive, and would like to take a jab at their ideas at one point; curious to see if they're included.

After protracted and convoluted negotiations with a variety of major publishing houses, located both in the United States and the United Kingdom, a contract was at last signed with the foremost Continental firm that has the longest and most distinguished commitment to semiotic studies - Mouton de Gruyter - and that also has amply demonstrated its experience with the production of substantial reference works, comparable, more or less, with this one. (Sebeok 1986a: vii)

A good choice in the long run, too, considering how digital-forward de Gruyter have been. Back when Tartu University bought institutional access to de Gruyter, I went absolutely hog-wild downloading anything even remotely related to semiotics. In other words, I didn't have to hover over these pages with my smartphone for hours on end to get access.

Ayim, Maryann 1986a. Abduction. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 1-2.

The technical sense of the term abduction appears to be almost completely confined within the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce attributes the origin of the term to Aristotle's Greek word ἀπἀγωγη 'apagoge,' claiming that an editorial blunder in the original text of the twenty-fifth chapter of Prior Analytics led to a mistranslation of Aristotle's term into abduction; the correct term, which most closely captures Aristotle's meaning, is retroduction, according to Peirce (1931-66: 1.65, 2.776, 5.144). (Ayim 1986a: 1)

Recall that Peirce emended Aristotle's texts. Curious that he took the mistranslation and made it his own.

In this broader contexts, abduction was characterized as "a method of forming a general prediction" (1931-66: 2.270). It "consists in studying facts and devising a theory to explain them" (1931-66: 5.145). Abductive inference carries no guarantee of certainty with it, but "merely suggests that something may be" (1931-66: 5.171); it is what Peirce calls "an originary Argument" (1931-66: 2.96). (Ayim 1986a: 1)

The logic of guesswork.

It is only through abduction that new or original ideas are devised and made accessible to science. The scientist's use of abduction is justified in that scientific discovery would be unthinkable without it. (Ayim 1986a: 2)

Hence why Peirce's abduction pairs so well with some of Juri Lotman's ideas, which are geared toward the generation of new meaning/information.

As Peirce characterizes abduction, it is based on instinct (1931-66: 5.173, 6.475), in particular, on a "natural insight into the laws of nature" (Ayim 1974: 35) captured by the phrase il lume naturale 'the natural light.' In spite of its instinctive base, abduction is clearly classified by Peirce as a method of reasoning. (Ayim 1986a: 2)

What might be lurking behind this use of the word "instinct" - especially with regard to "the natural light" - is probably intuition (the etymology of which he explains himself in adequate detail in one of his published papers, "Questions concerning certain faculties claimed for man").

Eco, Umberto 1986a. Abelard, Peter (1079-1142). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 3-4.

Abelard developed a theory of logic as scientia sermocinalis 'science of discourses': while metaphysics concerns things and their properties, logic is strictly concerned with nomina 'names' or 'linguistic terms,' and it is not interested in the truth of things but with the truth of propositions. In the course of his logical works (commentaries to Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's De Interpretatione, the treatises called Ingredientibus, Nostrorum, Dialectica, Abelard developed a theory of meaning, definition, propositions, discourses or texts. Many of his ideas sound absolutely original from a semiotic point of view, even though his philosophical lexicon was stil in progress, so that he frequently used in two different texts the same term with significant shifts in its technical meaning. (Eco 1986a: 3)

He was also "one of the most famous doctors of the twelfth century [...] he was well learned in divinity, philosophy, and the languages; but was particularly distinguished by his skill in logic, and his fondness for disputations, which led him to travel in several provinces in order to give public proof of his acuteness in that science" (EB I, 1797: 13). That he had theories spanning up to discourses/texts is interesting. Though, knowing Eco, "text" is probably his own addition.

Abelard distinguishes between natural voces 'sounds' and sermo or dictio (which is the sign as a bifacial entity) established as a significant sound. (Eco 1986a: 3)

See Roman Jakobson's "mere otherness" (voces) and "sense-discrimination" (sermo or dictio). Jakobson advocated for not neglecting the scholastic philosophers' linguistic insights: "the historic attainments of the Schoolmen's linguistic (particularly semantic) theory were dismissed after, as Charles Sanders Peirce used to say, "a barbarous rage against medieval thought broke out"" (1985[1972b]: 81).

However, the only signification interesting for the logicians is the one per impositionem 'by convention.' The linguistic convention is considered as inventio 'invention' (the activity of the first man imposing the right names to the things), as institutio 'institution' (the intentional aspect of a language), and as imposition, which specifically concerns the correlation between vox and intellectus. (Eco 1986a: 3)

I also recall Jakobson being quite impressed with (possibly Saussure's agreement with) Dwight Whitney's "thesis of language as a social institution" (1971[1966d]: 348).

Abelard seems to reserve the term significatio only for the relationship between a sound and the internal concept it elicits. A significant sound signifies an intellectus (or an internal represetation); nominat or appellat 'names' or 'refers to' individuals; and designat or denotat both the corresponding sententia 'meaning' and the definitio 'definition': the double difference between signification and designation or denotation, on one side, and between definition and meaning, on the other, depnds on the Abelardian notion of universal. (Eco 1986a: 3)

This intellectus or "an internal representation" would be Peirce's interpretant, no? Morris's take no signification vs denotation is slightly different, I think. Here the designat or denotat seems to hinge on something not only having a "meaning", but knowing what that meaning is (its "definition").

Abelard is neither a nominalist nor a realist, but rather a "conceptualist." The human intellect considers various aspects of the individuals and by abstraction produces a confused common image (conceptio communis confusa), a figmentum 'fiction,' which is expressed by the name and does not correspond to any real essence; it is possible to conceive of it even when the corresponding object does not exist. (Eco 1986a: 3)

Sounds approximately like Saussure's "a vague, uncharted nebula".

In this sense intellectus is everything that can be understood of a given word in a given context. Words can have multiple signification and Abelard insists on the importance of the determinatio as contextual disambiguation. (Eco 1986a: 3)

I.e. what are we talking about, specifically.

Brainerd, Baron 1986a. Abstraction. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 4-5.

Abstraction is the process or result of developing a concept through concentration upon certain parts or characteristics of an object which are relevant to the special interest of the moment and a resultant disregard of those which are not relevant. (Brainerd 1986a: 4)

Or, "in a general sense, any thing separated from something else" (EB I, 1797: 29).

More specifically, a total or precisive (due to C.S. Peirce) abstraction disregards particular characteristics of its carriers and moves toward more universal concepts, as, for example, man, red, chair. A formal or hypostatic (C.S. Peirce) abstraction disregards the carriers of the abstraction by separating out its form-giving essence, thus humanity from human beings. (Brainerd 1986a: 4)

Separating adjectives from nouns (precisive) vs separating nouns from adjectives (hypostatic). This distinction may actually come in handy for my own work - "phaticity" is a hypostatic abstraction.

When an abstraction becomes a permanent possession of the intellect and achieves a measure of independent substantial existence, it becomes an abstract idea. This aspect of the abstraction process is embodied in the linguistic distinction, abstract vs. concrete, as in the case of abstract noun (humanity, courage, happiness) as opposed to concrete noun (horse, chair, sea). (Brainerd 1986a: 4)

"I contend that the mental process termed abstraction is not fitly denotable by that name; that what are termed Abstract Ideas are mere terms which substitute and do duty for ideas; that, therefore, concepts do not depend upon a process fitly denotable by the name "abstraction," and are not abstract ideas." (Clay 1882: 235) - Abstract Ideas are just terms pretending to be ideas.

When used as a tool, an abstraction may possess both an intensional and an extensional aspect: intensional through its definition (the notion of group in mathematics is defined by a set of axioms) and extensionally through its carriers, the objects that possess its defining characteristics, (the instances of groups). (Brainerd 1986a: 5)

Listing all the things ever called "phatic" (communication, social media culture, fountains, etc.) would be an extensional abstraction.

Niklas, Ursula 1986a. Semiotic Aspects of Abstraction. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 5-6.

The classical British Empiricism offers a conceptualistic account of abstraction. According to Locke words signify things only indirectly; what words stand for are ideas in the mind. For him, then, the question how general words mean is how abstract ideas are formed, and his answer is that they are formed by the mental process of abstraction. "The mind makes particular ideas, received from particular objects, to become general; [...] This is called abstraction, whereby ideas taken from particular things become general representatives of all of the same kind" (1961: Book II, ch.11:9). (Niklas 1986a: 5)

So Clay was beefing with Locke? Curious.

Elam, Keir 1986a. Addressee. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 10.

The party toward which an act of communication is addressed or directed. Bühler's model of linguistic communication (1934) represents the addressee (Adressat) as one member of a triad of components, together with the speaker and the external situation; Bühler defines as one of the three possible functions of language a vocative orientation toward the addressee (Appell). In Jakobson's expanded version of the model (1960) - adapted by many commentators to nonlinguistic communication - the addressee is seen in relationship with five other elements (addresser, or sender; message; code; context; and channel); Jakobson terms the orientation toward the addressee the conative function. (Elam 1986a: 10)

Just loving the word "triad" here. Note that Bühler's third leg is "the external situation", whereas Jakobson's context is not necessarily that, but primarily the verbal context of the interchange of messages (what was said before, what will be said after, etc); that is, in Jakobson's scheme "the external situation" is relevant only insofar as it is referred to. Not sure how much this actually differs from Bühler's model.

More recent theory has suggested, however, that the single category of the addressee in fact brings together at least three complementary but distinct factorS: (1) the actual receiver of the message; (2) the intended addressee of the message as conceived by the sender; and (3) the virtual addressee immanent within the message itself. The noncoincidence between factors (1) and (2) has been noted by Lotman (1971a), who emphasizes the autonomy of the actual receiver and his codes with respect to the sender's intention and codes. Factor (2), instead, has been defined by various commentators as a set of presuppositions on the part of the sender regarding the semiotic competence, social status, social roles, and attitudes of the addressed party (see Wunderlich 1971a: Schmidt 1976; Lyons 1977). Such presuppositions will normally influence the precise form of the message, particularly its indexical elements marking the presence of factor 3: in the case of linguistic discourse, these chiefly comprise deictics (second-person pronouns and possessive adjectives, verb inflections indicating the vocative case or a symmetrical or asymmetrical relationship between sender and addressee, etc.) (see Benveniste 1966a). (Elam 1986a: 10)

Did not expect to see Lotman here (reference to The Structure of the Artistic Text). Too bad the definitions of the intended and virtual addressee are so damn basic. At first I thought this was heading towards a noncoincidence between intended and virtual addressee - as in, you're overtly addressing one person, while speaking to him or her, but are actually covertly addressing the person standing next to him or her (or who is simply within hearing distance).

The distinct constituents of the addressee function are further multiplied in the case of artistic, and especially literary, texts. Theorists of literature have identified, in addition to the actual reader, a model or ideal addressee presupposed by the author, an internal addressee (or narratee in the case of narrative [Prince 1973]), and an encoded or implicit addressee toward whom the text is apparently oriented [...] (Elam 1986a: 10)

That's what I was thinking of.

Nöth, Wilfried 1986a. Advertising. Translated by Neal Norrick. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 10-13.

The approach characteristic of semiology (cf. Victoroff 1972) was first introduced by Barthes (1964a) in his exemplary analysis of the "rhetoric of the picture." On the basis of Saussure's dyadic model of the sign (signifiant + signifié = signe) and Hjelmslev's further distinction between denotation and connotation, Barthes recognized three messages in the illustrated advertisement text he investigated. A first linguistic message consists of the product name and the linguistic commentary. The two additional messages inhere in the picture (a photograph): one is the uncoded iconic message, in which the photographic image analogously denotes the "real" objects in such a manner that the signifier and the signified are "quasi-tautological," and the other is a coded iconic or symbolic message. The latter includes the connotations of the picture that form the "image" of the product. These connotations are coded, since they depend upon the "cultural knowledge" of the viewer. This implies that an advertisement text, a "form of speech" (lexie), can be subject to different interpretations or "forms of reading" (lexiques). In advertising and in the mass media generally, connotations in fields of association amalgamate into systems of connotations, in which the ideology of the society represents itself. The totality of the "connotators" that form an ideology Barthes calls a rhetoric. (Nöth 1986a: 11)

An apt reminder that the proper context for the denotation/connotation distinction is advertisement. It somewhat bothers me when it turns up elsewhere, because Barthes' concepts are propably ways away from Mill's original conceptions. I guess a simple illustration would be a smiling face next to a product. The image of the product is an uncoded iconic message - it represents ("quasi-tautologically") the product sold. The smiling face on the other hand is a coded iconic message effectively representing something like this product will make you happy. In the next section, following Peninou's further analysis, this is aptly put as "the connotative message predicating the value of the product" (ibid, 11).

Peninou (1970) distinguishes further, dependent upon the type of assertion about the product, three types of advertisements, each with its own characteristic use of pictures: (1) the "appearance advertisement," which introduces a new product; (2) the "constative advertisement," which refers to the existence of a product; and (3) the "predicative advertisement," which intends to emphasize the value of a product. (Nöth 1986a: 11)

Not bad. A recent annoying television commercial comes to mind; a woman went around the shop, grabbing things off the shelf, uttering "if I buy this then I can also buy this" or something to that effect. The predication being that the store is extremely cheap.

The relevance of Charles S. Peirce's triadic sign model for the analysis of advertising was first shown by Bense (1965b). Every type of sign Peirce classifies can occur in advertisements: the sign in itself (representamen) can be qualisign (e.g., a color), sinsign (e.g., a product sample), or legisign (e.g., a maxim); depending upon its relation to its object, it can be an icon (a picture of the product), a symbol (the name of the product), or an index (to the degree that it points to qualities of the product). Finally, with respect to its interpretant, it can be rheme (as a single word), dicent sign (as assertion about the product), or argument (e.g., in the form of a logical conclusion). For the purposes of advertising analysis, the sign types of the object relation are of primary importance, since they concern the semiotic connection between the advertisement and the product. (Nöth 1986a: 12)

Nöth's takes on Peirce are naturally very good. I recall reading one of his papers (in SSS), and successively predicting what the following paragraph was going to say. Logical to the extreme.

Krampen, Martin 1986a. Advertising. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 13-14.

As to all advertisements, Jakobson's (1960) six functions of language apply also to posters. Where posters are employed for commercial and political reasons the appellative (conative, persuasive) function tends to dominate, followed by the referential function (presentation of the merchandise or candidate, etc.). But posters are frequently applied to announce cultural events. They may even become an integrated part of the organization of such an event, as Bouissac (1971, 1976a) has shown for circus posters. The less commercial or political the task of a poster is, the more the expressive and artistic (aesthetic) functions of language are emphasized in its composition. This implies that posters become more experimental as far as the parallelism of typographic and iconic elements is concerned. Icons do not serve merely to attract attention, but become metaphors; typefaces are not only used to render a message legible, but also as a pretext for formal de-automatization. In short, the poster becomes a work of art. This tendency has been particularly pronounced in traditional Polish posters (Krampen 1982). (Krampen 1986a: 14)

Metalingual and phatic functions get no love from posters. Note that Paul Virilio's (1984) phatic image concerns posters and advertising, so there at least is such an interpretation out there.

Gerhardus, Dietfried; Lorenz, Kuno 1986a. Aesthetics. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 15-21.

Aesthetics (Greek αὶσθάνεσθαι; Latin sentire 'perceive'), in a broad sense, is that branch of philosophy or that philosophical theory that deals with actions leading to perceptual knowledge as opposed to those leading to conceptual knowledge. It is its aim to provide theoretical foundations for perceptual cognitive processes so that it becomes possible to improve them rather than letting them go on as special kinds of naturally evolving processes. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 15)

Aistinguteadus.

Within a (general) theory of art it is common to distinguish between aspects of production and reception (aesthetics of production, aesthetics of reception) and aspects of formation (aesthetics of works). Production and reception refer to the use of works of art (i.e., to the processes of producing and experiencing them), whereas formation refers to the works themselves. The (general) theory of art is concerned not only with the genesis of actions leading to an artistic product, but also with its materials, its media, its procedures (its matters and its manners, Goodman [1968],), as well as its uses. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 15)

Nearly the triad: addresser/production, addressee/reception, object/formation.

Since antiquity man has been regarded as a deficient being (Mängelwesen), which implies that he is seen as an object. However, seen as a subject, as when he experiences himself as acting artistically and aesthetically, man has been regarded as an endowed being (Ausstattungswesen), again since antiquity. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 15)

Whose antiquity? According to one of the Pythagorean symbols, "the truest [thing is that], that men are wicked" (Burkert 1972: 171), but no amount of artistic activity or enjoyment will make him any less wicked; the recommended treatment is "purification" - a virtuous way of life, not picking up the paintbrush or staring art.

Originally, in the history of philosophy since antiquity, especially in Aristotle, the doctrine of signs had been an integral part of logic and of the philosophy of language, overlapping of course with metaphysics and rhetoric. Only since the middle of the eighteenth century has the doctrine of signs acquired a leading role in aesthetics, which Baumgarten founded as a scientific theory. This new role came about through a change in epistemological considerations: signs, especially linguistic signs, came to be acknowledged as the decisive means for accomplishing acts of cognition. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 16)

The founder of aesthetics as a scientific theory - sounds interesting; but then again that this Baumgarten precipitated the connection between signs and cognition is a robust anachronism (John Locke beat him to the punch, at the very least).

• Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 1954[1735]. Reflections on Poetry: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus. Edited by K. Aschenbrenner and W. B. Holther. Berkeley: University of California Press. [lg]

Usually, sign-actions and their combinations into sign-processes - since Peirce a sign-process is called semiosis - are treated as having three aspects (called "dimensions" by Morris): pragmatics, when production and reception, and hence their use by the agents, is of concern; semantics, when their representative force, irrespective of the agents, is of concern; syntactics, when only their internal structure as mere objects is of concern. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 17)

I think these authors was given too much space. Why is this paragraph here, for example? With no elaboration as to its application to aesthetics? Didn't Charles Morris also write extensively on aesthetics? The longest entry yet, and it reads like a sophomore's final essay.

Owing to the influence of Helmholtz's view that perceptions are signs, the theory of perception in the twentieth century leaves little doubt about the cognitive character of even the most elementary acts of perception. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 17)

Ah, yes, "when the cheese is in front of our noses, we see signs of cheese" (Austin 1970: 15, fn1).

Any foundation of aesthetics with respect to its semiotic aspects (i.e., of a semiotics of aesthetics) will, from the necessary pragmatic point of view, have to take account of the fact that signs are never natural objects, not even the traditional "natural signs" like smoke for fire. The reason is simply that the property of being a sign is not a natural property that can be searched for and found, but a property that is given to objects, be they natural or artificial, through the kind of use that is made of them. Both as objects and as means, signs have to be treated as something invented, and in this sense they are correlated to actions. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 18)

A cumbersome way of saying that there are no signs without sign-users. The thing is, there's a distinction between natural and artificial signs since Augustine since it enables us to differentiate between man-made and non-man-made sign-vehicles. In his defense of the semiotics of aesthetics, this guy is as-if attempting to erase biosemiosis.

Depending on the cotext (i.e., the linguistic surrounding) and on the context (i.e., the extra-linguistic surrounding), these expressions may be part of a nonscientific treatment of aesthetic matters (object-level: "speak of something," e.g., on the occasion of looking at a painting) or parts of a scientific treatment of aesthetic matters (meta-level: "speak about something"). (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 18)

The first useful piece of information in this entry. define:cotext - Words that surround a node or another word; the linguistic environment of a word. (Above I should have said that Jakobson's "context" factor should be seen more like cotext.)

Within ordinary or everyday language, for example, the so-called commonsense judgments occur that make use essentially of the knowledge of everyday life; here, ordinary language is that vaguely determined part of a language in use that presents no real problems of intelligibility, since it refers back directly to the network of actions in everyday life. (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 18)

"As work began, the members of the Editorial Board were obliged to make certain decisions of principle: for instance, that entries in and environing linguistics would be minimized, since there already existed quite a few good independent, and comparable, works encompassing that well-established field - namely, the branch of semiotics which is devoted to verbal signs." (Sebeok 1986a: vii, infra) - The decision apparently wasn't very resolute, because these guys are going on and on about the distinction between everyday language and technical language, and saying very little, if anything, about aesthetics.

It was thus possible to avoid merely taking over ready-made theory pieces from classical authors in semiotics (mainly from C. S. Peirce, though Peirce's conception of the role of semiotics within aesthetics is still in need of a rational reconstruction; and from Morris, whose rich and fruitful conceptual framework for semiotics of aesthetics has found widespread propagation). (Gerhardus & Lorenz 1986a: 21)

Yeah, thanks for wasting 7 pages on nothing, instead of introducing his theory.

Steiner, Wendy 1986a. Ambiguity, Aesthetics, and Philosophy. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 25-26.

But perhaps nowhere has the notion of ambiguity been as central as in twentieth-century literary theory. The New Critics located the essence of poetry in the tension between word and context (Brooks 1949), between the intensional and extensional meanings of its terms (Tate 1965), and in the polysemy and compression of meaning of its metaphors (Richards 1934: 75-84). (Steiner 1986a: 25)

Unsurprisingly it is Richards' take on literary theory that is closest to Jakobson's (and in a publication Jakobson cited).

• Richards, I. A. Coleridge on Imagination. London: Routledge & Paul. [Internet Archive]

The concept the icon itself seems to invite such an approach. If, as Charles Morris claimed (1939a), the icon's sign vehicle is one of its denotata, the iconic sign vehicle functions ambiguously as both a signifier and a signified. It refers, in other words, to what is both a signified and a signifier. Thus, Prague Structuralists such as Jan Mukařovský (1978c: 85-86) characterized the aesthetic sign as having a dual semiotic orientation - a reference both outward toward the extra-aesthetic world and inward toward itself. This ambiguity Mukařovský found definitional of art. (Steiner 1986a: 25)

Vaguely related to what I used to called the intrinsic sign (after Ekman & Friesen). Seeing Morris and Mukařovský in the same paragraph is also pleasing - I have a pet theory that they might have even met when Morris traveled to Eastern Europe during the early 1930s.

Frege's (1892) contrast betwen Sinn 'sense' and Bedeutung 'meaning' also depends upon the notion of ambiguity. "A man walked on the moon" has the same Sinn is spoken in 1981 or 1881, but a different Bedeutung each time, in that its denotation (and its truth value) differ. This sentence is thus diachronically ambiguous. (Steiner 1986a: 26)

Very good illustration. Analogously, Herodotus of Heraclea, writing in the fifth century B.C., that "women on the moon lay eggs" (Burkert 1972: 346) does not have the same denotation in the 25th century A.D. when humankind has discovered egg-laying insectoid aliens inhabiting the core of the moon.

Ambiguity has proven an especially productive notion in attempts to account for linguistic and other semiotic change. The Prague School linguist, Sergej Karcevskij, found the essential dynamism of language to lie in the two processes of homonymity and synonymity. Every new application of a word to reality extends it homonymically and synonymically according to Karcevskij, in that, first, it refers to a meaning different from any to which it has previously referred, and secondly, it is ranged against a unique set of alternative expressions that might have been used in its place. Karcevskij terms this phenomenon the "asymmetric dualism" of the linguistic sign (1929), contrasting the lifeless nonambiguity for the laber with the orderly slippage of actual words. In this constantly shifting ambiguity, Karcevskij locates the life of language. His concept has been used (Steiner and Steiner 1979) to explain the various degrees of poetic metaphor and is profoundly important in overcoming the conceptual split between Saussurean synchrony and diachrony. (Steiner 1986a: 26)

Odd, having known the name for so long, and only now finding out the specifics of his theory. The "unique set of alternative expressions" sounds like Jakobson's axis of selection, or set of equivalent linguistic units.

• Steiner, P; Steiner, W. 1979. The axes of poetic language. In: Odmark, J. (ed.), Language, Literature and Meaning I: Problems of Literary Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 35-70. [Google Books]

Brainerd, Baron 1986b. Analogy. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 27.

Analogy, accordingy to Peirce (1931-66: 1.69), "is the inference that a not very large collection of objects which agree in various respects may very well agree in another respect." The word derives from the Greek ἀναλογία used by Plato and Aristotle to stand for the identity of ratios (proportionality): a is to b as c is to d (a/b = c/d). (Brainerd 1986b: 27)

"The term λόγος, in its mathematical sense of "relation, ratio, proportion," has been attributed by von Fritz to the Pythagoreans, and, conjecturally, to Pythagoras himself" (Burkert 1972: 438).

Stanosz, Barbara 1986a. Analytic/Synthetic. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 28-29.

The terms analytic and synthetic were coined by Kant. He defined analytic proposition as "the proposition in which the content of the predicate is included in the content of the subject," and synthetic proposition as "the proposition in which the content of the predicate is richer than the content of the subject." His own examples of the distinction were: "All bodies are extended" (analytical, as the property of being extended is, ex definitione, included in the property of being a body), and "All bodies are heavy" (synthetic, as being heavy does not belong to the definitional properties of bodies). Thus, according to the definition, distinction between analytic and synthetic is limited to the propositions having a subject-predicate structure. In fact, however, Kant intended to apply the term analytic to any proposition which was true by virtue of its logical form and the meanings of its components, and the term synthetic to any proposition which was empirically true or false. (Stanosz 1986a: 28)

In other words: analytic = logically sound but "not interested in the truth of things" (cf. Eco 1986a: 3, above); synthetic = true?

Rey, Alain 1986a. Anselm (1033-1109). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 29-30.

The semiotic relevance of Anselm's writings comes from (at least) two points. First in trying to prove "ontologically" the existence of God, Anselm has built up a theory of truth answering what he considers a logical scandal: even if only [|] the fool can think "there is no God" (Psalms; XIII, 1), anybody can say "there is no God." Thus, De Veritate, having developed a theory of the proposition (enunciato) contrasts the propositional truth (truth and/or "rectitude") with the referential truth. In order to reach referential truth, the proposition must add to its consistency another property, which is its right (rectus) finality: to assert existence, being, to deny what is not. Any utterance, even well formed, that is to say, even possessing a "truth of signification," must add to it an ontological "rectitude," which is the actual truth. These positions lead Anselm to an analysis of the properties of language. The internal truth of any well-formed utterance, which allows falsity and deceit, is nothing else than the semantic consistency, the internal laws governing the use of signs in language. The "truth of signification" would be called semanticity today. Anselm is one of the first thinkers to consider semantics at the sentence level (Satzsemantik). (Rey 1986a: 29-30)

Already so many of the entries here have touched upon what we say vs what is.

The second point that deals with semiotics is Anselm's writings is the theory of God's language, which is to be compared with Plato's Logos and with Augustine's Verbum. Here, God's speech, contrary to man's speech, is consubstantial with Nature: it is an exact image of the nature of things. God's "words" are in fact iconic signs of reality. On the contrary, the man's words, which are used by him "in order to think the things," are imperfect images of these things (Monologium, 31). (Rey 1986a: 30)

Augustine's point summarized as: "God has the capacity to scrutinize men's interiority" (Gramigna 2011: 38).

Karp, Ivan 1986a. Anthropology. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 30-35.

The scholars who represent exceptions to the generalization, Sapir (1934) and Hallowell (1955), were influential in anthropology in spite of, rather than because of, their semiotic interests. Sapir formulated a semiotic conception of symbolic behavior and Hallowell's interests in concepts of self brought the Mead-Dewey tradition of American Pragmatism into his anthropological concerns. (Karp 1986a: 30)

This I did not know about Sapir. Overall, I think I've only ever read one piece by him, though I recall enjoying it immensely. Shame.

• Sapir, E. 1934. Symbolism. In: Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: MacMillan. [Mead Project | Internet Archive]
• Hallowell, A. I. 1955. Culture and Experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Internet Archive]

Bateson's 1936 monograph, Naven, was an early example of an anthropologist largely concerned with communication processes in relationship to social and cultural forms in other societies. This work attracted little attention and Bateson left anthropoloy to do work in psychiatry, systems theory and other disciplines that influenced the development of semiotics greatly. Only recently has his interest in paradoxes of communication and metacommunicative devices reemerged in anthropology (Turner 1975b). (Karp 1986a: 30)

I didn't know Bateson worked on metacommunication from the very start.

• Bateson, Gregory 1936. Naven: A Survey of Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Internet Archive]
• Turner, Victor W. 1975b. Symbolic Studies. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 137-143. [JSTOR]

Until recently semioticians such as Peirce have been little referred to by anthropologists; the primary exceptions being Singer's interest in "signs of the self" (1980) and Firth's general survey of anthropological theories of symbols (1973). The absence of a systematic [|] semiotic focus has resulted in a proliferation of common terms defined differently and the semiotically sophisticated reader must beware of assuming that when anthropologists use the term symbol, for example, they are defining it in a Peircean tradition. Usually, symbol is a general term used to refer to all varieties of sign behavior. (Karp 1986a: 30-31)

In its earliest usage, "In the realm of mystery religion, σύμβολα are "passwords" - specified formulas, sayings" (Burkert 1972: 176).

• Singer, Milton 1980. Signs of the self: An exploration in semiotic anthropology. American Anthropologist 82(3): 485-507. [JSTOR]
• Firth, Raymond 1973. Symbols, Public and Private. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [Internet Archive | lg | ESTER]

More recently the critical reception of these trends and the publication of a number of semiotically sophisticated studies of other societies has led to a conception of social and cultural anthropology that is more directly related to semiotics. (See especially Geertz 1973; Crick 1976; see also Evans-Pritchard 1956; Lienhardt 1963; Turner 1967, 1969, 1975b; and the volumes edited by Geertz in the series Studies in Cultural Anthropology for Cambridge University Press). (Karp 1986a: 31)

A colourful selection of literature, for some reason veering towards religion:

• Crick, Malcolm 1976. Explorations in Language and Meaning: Towards a Semantic Anthropology. New York: Wiley [Internet Archive]
• Lienhardt, Godfrey 1963. Divinity and Experience: The Religion of Dinka. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [lg | ESTER]
• Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1956. Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Internet Archive]
• Turner, Victor W. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Nbembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [Internet Archive | lg | ESTER]
• Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge and Paul. [Internet Archive | lg | ESTER]

The reason for the difficulty faced by this school is that the practitioners of symbolic anthropology take a position that moves their approach away from a true semiotics. It is an implicit assumption of Schneider's symbolic anthropology that a distinction can be made between the symbolic and nonsymbolic. This corresponds to the distinction made by Parsons between the cultural and the social systems referred to above. Underlying the symbolic/nonsymbolic distinction is another, more fundamental distinction, that between the expressive and the instrumental. Schneider appears to assume that expressive functions of forms are mutually exclusive. (He fails, as well, to discuss either of these relationship to aesthetic functions, which have been less neglected in folklore and literary studies). (Karp 1986a: 32)

This criticism is correct, though the distinction is much older in symbolic interactionism, e.g. Herbert Blumer's "Social Attitudes and Nonsymbolic Interaction" (1936).

Perhaps the most interesting elaboration of the assumptions of this position is Sahlins's Culture and Practical Reason (1976). Sahlins attempts an ambitious synthesis of a number of diverse orientations including French structuralism, Marxist thought, the social anthropological interest in ritual, and the traditional American emphasis on culture abstracted from social action. While the ambition of Sahlins's project is sufficient to ensure its failure as a synthesis, he is able to show convincingly that a semiotic perspective that combines a concern for formal aspects of sign systems with attention to the pragmatics of communicative processes in society is the only framework capable of bringing back together the separated strands of contemporary social and cultural anthropology. Sahlins is less successful in his reconstruction of the history of anthropological thought. His mixture of historical materialism, American cultural relativism, and French structuralism simply does not work. Yet his study stands as a lively example of some of the best semiotic thinking in contemporary anthropology. (Karp 1986a: 32)

I've only read one article (Sahlins 1963) from him, but this sounds very enticing.

• Sahlins, Marshall David 1976. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [lg | ESTER]

Geertz's account of "deep play" as a form of social experience attempts to show that the qualities of experiences differ in situations with different structures. He tends to underplay The degree to which situations are problematic to the actors. In one situation in an African society, beer drinking, Karp has shown that the definition of the situation as a highly formalized context of sociability is often contradicted by the actors' experience of the situation as conflictual. In this instance actors use metacommunicative devices to distance themselves from public definition of the situation (1980). This stance returns to Bateson's interest in metacommunicative devices. A significant difference is that the pragmatics of Bateson have been combined with a more adequate conception of the properties of sign systems. This perspective brings the analysis of social situations closer to the developments in semiotics; (see especially the papers in Kapferer 1979a). (Karp 1986a: 35)

A bit of self-promotion, but related to the topic of phatic communion.

• Karp, Ivan 1980. Beer drinking and social experience in an African society. In: Karp, Ivan; Bird, Charles (eds.), Explorations in African Systems of Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 83-119. [Internet Archive]

Social anthropologists are skilled at relating different contexts and situations to one another. A major contribution of anthropology to semiotics can be to show how symbolic forms in one context are related to and transformed by actors in another context. The best recent work in anthropology moves towards a semiotics of social situations. (Karp 1986a: 35)

More-or-less where I'm heading.

Grossman, Murray 1986a. Aphasia. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 35-42.

A similar analysis also applies to distinguishing between schizophrenic language and aphasic language (Chaika 1974; Lecours and Vanier-Clément 1976). The schizophrenic may withhold speech entirely or engage in uninterpretable verbal play (schizophrenic jargon), but these linguistic states are reversible spontaneously or with drug-induced changes of emotional status. (Grossman 1986a: 36)

Cool term. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve to shore to bend of bay, bings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Finally, some polyglots who become aphasic after a left-sided lesion discover that they can still use their other language(s), even though they apparently can rely only on their right hemisphere to process the language (Albert and Obler 1978). The sweeping conclusion that only the left hemisphere subserves language skills, then, no longer seems tenable. (Grossman 1986a: 36)

Here's a trick: learn a new language later in life, so if you suffer from aphasia at some point, you'll retain the new language because it may be stored in other areas of the brain, unaffected by the lesions.

To be sure, all cases of aphasia do not manifest selective disturbances of language: a global aphasia follows a massive left hemispheric lesion. This reveals patients able to produce only one or two meaningless automatisms (sometimes intoned appropriate to the situation), to understand only gross differences in grammatical form class, to distinguish between a foreign word and a word in their native tongue, and, surprisingly, to respond to commands involving the patient's trunk (e.g., Stand up!). (Grossman 1986a: 37)

I've read about a French-Canadian novel, where the main character was like this, and could live his life using only phatic utterances (meaningless automatisms). See "Alexandre Chenevert: Prisoner of Language" (Babby 1982).

The first systematic characterization of a language disturbance following confirmed brain damage was made by Broca in 1865. This French neurologist reported an impoverished, effortful, somewhat "telegraphic" language output in the context of apparently preserved comprehension after insult primarily to the left frontal lobe. The sparse and labored output of Broca's aphasics, or nonfluent aphasics, is due to their elimination of small grammatical words from their speech. Consequnetly, their linguistic production consists primarily of contentives used appropriately but often stripped of grammatical morphemes. These contentives are arrayed in a canonical, declarative order (subject-verbobject). (Grossman 1986a: 38)

define:contentive - a content word or a morpheme that is the root of a content word. E.g. Kevin Malone's famous "Why waste time say lot word, when few word do trick?"

Eco, Umberto 1986b. Aquinas, Thomas (1225-1274). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 42-44.

Aquinas established, on the ground of Aristotle, a semantic triangle not so different from that of Augustine. On one side, alphabetical letters are signs of verbal term, and these are signs of the passions of the soul (i.e., concepts), and this kind of relationship is a conventional one (ex institutione humana 'by human convention'). On the other side, concepts refer to things ex vi similitudinis 'by likeness'. Aquinas seems to prefer to call signs only the conventional ones; he speaks of (natural) signs even in the case of the relation of similitude, but at this point he makes clear that the study of such a relationship of resemblance has nothing to do with logic (implicitly: with semiotics), and concerns rather a theory of perception. (Eco 1986b: 42)

The "not so different from that of Augustine" refers to the latter's signa data vs signa naturalia (cf. Jackson 1969).

Aquinas thus admits that (while the principal cause cannot be the sign of its own effect) the instrumental cause, when it is evident, can be viewed as the sign of its hidden effect (Aquinas; Summa Theologiae III; 62, 1). In this sense the Sun and the Moon, instrumental causes of meteorological phenomena, are also their signs (Summa Theologiae I; 70, 2 ad 2). Aquinas seems thus to accept a metonymical notion of the sign, according to which the instrument is ostensive sign of its own possible effects. (Eco 1986b: 43)

Those damn intrinsic(ally coded) signs.

Preziosi, Donald 1986a. Architecture. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 44-50.

By contrast, Mukařovský distinguished five functional horizons in architectonic signification: an immediate purpose (referential-usage context); a historical purpose (preoccupation with inherited rules and norms of design); a social function, in terms of organizing the collective to which producer and client belong; an aesthetic function, rendering the object itself as its purpose, foregrounded when the direct or usage function is disregarded or made secondary; and an individual function, conceived as a violation of functionality on the part of particular users contradicting inherited norms. These five functions constitute in effect a hierarchy of compositional emphasis which is seen to differ from building to building. (Preziosi 1986a: 47)

Oh dang, Mukařovský had a social function in his semiotics of architecture.

• Mukařovský, Jan 1978b. On the problem of functions in architecture. In: Burbank, J.; Steiner, P. (eds.), Structure, Sign and Function: Selected Writings of Jan Mukařovský. New Haven: Yale University Press, 236-250.

In reality, the processes of architectonic communication are quite complex. In architecture, the original generator of a formation may be a person or persons who design a formation, who may also (but need not) construct that formation for a client or collective (which may or may not include generator or builder), who employs that formation significantly, and thus in a real sense may serve as a transmitter of that signal to himself (or themselves), to others, or to both. (Preziosi 1986a: 48)

Building your own house is architectural autocommunication.

A detailed description of a hierarchy of architectonic sign types was also made by Preziosi (1979a, 1979b), based on extensive analyses of architectural material. He distinguished three generic levels of architectonic signs: sense-discriminative or indirectly-meaningful units, sense-determinative or directly-meaningful units, and patterns of aggregation of sense-determinative units. In contrast to earlier discussions, Preziosi construed all levels of sign articulation as meaningful, but meaningful in different ways. (Preziosi 1986a: 49)

Categorematic and syncategorematic in another guise.

As an entirely relational typology of sign types, it also arrives at a perspective on visual semiosis correlative and homologous to the relational hierarchy of linguistic sign types elaborated in the work of Jakobson (Jakobson and Waugh 1979). (Preziosi 1986a: 50)

A rare of mention their The Sound Shape of Language.

Günther, Arnold 1986a. Argumentation Inference. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 50-52.

An argumentation, in the first sense, is a semiotic process by which someone tries to convince [|] someone, possibly himself, of something by citing evidence and drawing, or suggesting, inferences (see below) from this evidence and from other beliefs or assumptions (hypotheses). (Günther 1986a: 50-51)

More autocommunication.

Oehler, Klaus 1986a. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 52-54.

In the first chapter of De Interpretatione can be found the locus classicus of semiotics, a short summary of the Aristotelian theory of signs which has had an unparallelled influence on the history of semiotic thought. The passage (16 a 3-7) reads:

Now spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of - affections of the soul - are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of - actual things - are also the same. (Ackrill 1963)

[|] In this passage Aristotle introduces the expressions of spoken language as sēmeia (16 a 6), as signs. (In Aristotle's writings there is a certain terminological difference between semeion and semainon: the former terms means sign in general, the latter term accentuates the processuality of the act of sign process, i.e., semeiosis; cf. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus 1870, 676 f.). But he introduces them not as signs for things that are spoken about, but as signs for affections in the soul, which he calls likeness (omoiōmata) of things (pragmata) (16 a 7). (Oehler 1986a: 52-53)

This is indeed so influential that we've already met it above in relation with Thomas Aquinas, and in relation with Locke's influences there is a brief summary in Latin: "'Conceptus sunt signa sive notae rerum, Voces Conceptuum, Literae vocum' ['Concepts are signs or marks of things, utterances of concepts, letters of utterances.]" (Ashworth 1984: 63, fn 36).

Thus Aristotle distinguishes two semantic functions of a linguistic sign: to express something as its meaning, and to relate to something through its meaning. He thereby formulates a basic distinction also made in modern semantics by Peirce (immediate object and real object), Frege (Sinn and Bedeutung), Carnap (intension and extension), and Quine (meaning and reference). Thus Aristotle says of spoken expressions that they are in the first place (prōtōs: 16 a 16) signs for affections in the soul, making clear that he sees them in the second place as signs for those things of which these affections of the soul are the likenesses. (Oehler 1986a: 53)

One could add to this list emotive/expressive and referential, as well as the many other distinctions like Anselm's propositional truth and referential truth (see above), Kant's analytic and synthetic (above), and so on and on and on.

The linguistic sign thus owes its symbolic meaning to the process of intersubjective agreement between those who speak and listen to each other. This pragmatic dimension of the meaning of a linguistic sign is frequently emphasized by Aristotle (e.g., De Interpretatione, ch. 3). His schema of the affections in the soul symbolized by the spoken word and understood as the representation in thought of the thing meant by the word thus gives at the same time the conditions under which intersubjective agreement is possible with the conventional signs of language. It must be assumed that Aristotle understands the semantic relationships between a linguistic sign and the things that it refers to in a way that lays weight on the pragmatic relationship between the sign and its users. But it is important to note that Aristotle analyzes signs and sign processes in the context of his general paralellism of being, thought, and language. This parallelism, which is basic to his whole epistemology, also determines the structure of his semiotics. [|] Thought follows external things, and speech follows thought. This scheme found its successor during the Middle Ages in the so-called Sequitur order (Pinborg 1972). (Oehler 1986a: 53-54)

Somewhat related to "code-switching", which is how structuralistl (e.g. Jakobson) deal with this problem of "intersubjective agreement": if the other person doesn't understand a given word or expression, one can just switch it out with something he or she might understand. In any case, I'm loving the parallels here: (1) being/external things/object; (2) speech/language/representamen; (3) thought/interpretant.

• Pinborg, J. 1972. Logik und Semantik im Mittelalter. Ein Ueberblick. Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, Holzboog.

In spite of the fact that Aristotle, like Plato, founded his philosophical system on non-empirical grounds, his inference-from-signs theory was of great influence on the empiricism of Epiculus and the later Epicureans, including Philodemus, and the Skeptics. The Hellenistic theories of inference of the unperceived from the perceived or from apparent and present things to future things or from similar to similar by means of signs from Aristotle's first analysis and formulation of this method. Peirce had a profound knowledge of these early beginnings of semiotics (Oehler 1981a). The elements of Aristotle's semiotics in the Organon anticipate rudimentarily Peirce's concept of logic, considered as semiotics. (Oehler 1986a: 54)

Exactly the vibe. Too bad De Gruyter doesn't show Oehler's paper:

• Oehler, K. 1981a. Logic of relations and inference from signs in Aristotle. Ars Semeiotica 4(3): 103-146.

Eco, Umberto 1986c. Poetics and Rhetoric. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 54-55.

In Poetics and Rhetoric Aristotle discusses for the first time in the history of western thought a series of questions which have remained central until today and which constitute still precise issues of a text semiotics: political discourse, narrativity, persuasion and so on. The Poetics is a paramount example of research on communicative strategies and on the narrative rules that govern every fictional discourse (epic, tragedy and comedy: in fact Aristotle also develops a theory of genres). (Eco 1986c: 54)

Sounds way too promising.

In its turn, Rhetoric does not only constitute a study of techniques of argumentation but also a very developed example of pragmatics (chronologically second to the more informal attempts of the Sophists) since it investigates language as action, that is, as a social force able to produce rational agreement and to elicit passions. (Eco 1986c: 54)

Sounds like the beginnings of emotive (to elicit passions) function, at the very least. Unable to say whether "to produce rational agreement" is referential or conative (presumably both?).

Waugh 1986a. Articulation. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 55-56.

While the general principles of double articulation have been accepted by most linguists, specifics have been criticized, for example by Malmberg (1962), who insists that intonation is articulated, and by Jakobson, who insists that phonemes (and distinctive features) are themselves signs the signifieds of which is "mere otherness" (= distinctiveness - see Jakobson 1949c); furthermore, phonemes and features may themselves be directly associated with meaning and thus may evidence not only mediacy (or an indirect relation to meaning) but also immediacy (or a direct tie to meaning) (see Jakobson and Waugh 1979: ch. 4). (Waugh 1986a: 56)

Their "mere otherness" is more-or-less tantamount to Preziosi's sense-discriminative (1986a: 49, above). As to directly significative phonemes, see sound symbolism, e.g. "In some cases to a wider, and in many others to a lesser extent, most languages of the world show a marginal set of vocables which are semantically fluid, more expressive than cognitive, and which open broader possibilities for sound symbolism." (Jakobson & Waugh 1987[1979]: 198)

de Beaugrande, Robert-Alain 1986a. Artificial Intelligence. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 56-58.

Artificial intelligence is a research field in which human processes of thought, reasoning, perception, and task performance are explored by means of simulation on computers. (de Beaugrande 1986a: 56)

Almost a neat triad: (1) perception; (2) task performance; (3) thought/reasoning.

Knowledge cannot be seen as as a neat dictionary [|] of facts, but only as an immensely intricate interactive relational network of concepts whose meaning is their function in the contexts and task environments where they are actively used. (de Beaugrande 1986a: 56-57)

Dictionaries don't think. The wording reminds me of Blumer: "human groups can be viewed in one of its aspects as a network of affective relations" (1936: 523).

This research has significant implications for semiotics. First, it stresses the distinction between virtual signs in abstract systems and actualized signs in texts (cf. Bense 1975; Beaugrande 1980b). The analytic study of abstract systems must be enriched with the synthetic study of actually occurring systems. (de Beaugrande 1986a: 57)

Having just found out these terms (cf. Stanosz 1986a: 28, above), they do be hittin' different.

In return for such contributions, semiotics can make its own contributions to artificial intelligence. One important area is the concern of semioticians for aesthetics (cf. Eco 1968; Moles 1968; Schmidt 1971; Bense 1975; Laferrière 1978. Aestheticity is evidently an extremely high-level function in which the conditions of sign creation and usage are expressly contemplated, e.g., the constitution of equivalence and differenc. Within this function, the potential for expanding conventional design procedures or introducing wholly new ones is far greater than in other area[s] of communication (de Beaugrande 1986a: 58)

Art is, once again, where something new (e.g. design procedures) is made.

A further contribution could come from semiotic studies of ideology (e.g., Rossi-Landi 1972b, 1973) as a constituent factor in human processing dispositions. Very few domains of communication are totally free of ideological influences. Yet work on this factor has been rare in the field of artificial intelligence (e.g., Carbonell 1978). (de Beaugrande 1986a: 58)

Very commonplace and unremarkable today - "sentiment analysis" (cf. e.g. Gaspar et al. 2016).

Niklas, Ursula 1986b. Atomism, Logical. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 58-62.

Russell's way out of the difficulty consists in reinterpreting the status of "p" in "A believes that p." Namely, a belief-proposition does not contain a proposition as its constituent, hence it does not state a dyadic relation between a believer and a proposition; it only contains the constituents of the proposition as constituents, hence it states a polyadic relation. (Niklas 1986b: 61)

define:polyadic - involving three or more quantities, elements, or individuals.

That interpretation entails a theory of belief according to which mental states like belief, understanding, desiring, etc. are not regarded as intentional; Russell denies that there are objects of thought to which propositional mental states are directed. (Niklas 1986b: 61)

A mentalistic triad: (1) belief; (2) desiring; (3) understanding.

Vance, Eugene 1986a. Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus), Bishop of Hippo (354-430). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 62-64.

Augustine's most accessible and influential semiotic treatise is On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana), and in bk. 2, ch. 1, he defines the word sign (signum) thus: "A sign is a thing which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the senses." Although Augustine uses the term sign to mean what nowadays some would call the "signifier," it is clear that in Augustine's thought, as in Saussure's, the sign is constituted both as a material object and as a mental effect, for Augustine adds later that although every sign is a thing, not every thing is a sign. (Vance 1986a: 62)

This "mental effect" is the passion of the soul elsewhere.

Augustine was aware of the different ways in which signs relate to what they signify. This relationship can be "natural," as in the case of smoke that signifies fire, or it can be conventional (ad placitum), that is to say, "instituted" by the common consent of the social group. Such is the case with most vocal signs. Given the arbitrariness of the relationship between words and their meanings, Augustine shows little interest in phonetics, and does not speculate about the possibility of isomorphism between phonetic and semantic features of language. (Vance 1986a: 62)

Abelard further divides per impositionem into inventio and institutio (cf. Eco 1986a: 3, above).

Augustine is concerned, however, with the classification of signs by semantic function. A linguistic sign is "literal" when a word (e.g., ox) designates the thing itself (ox) for which that sign has been "instituted." A sign is "figurative" when a word (ox) designates a thing (ox) which in turn signifies something else (evangelist). (Vance 1986a: 62)

A simple illustration of figurativeness.

Augustine's classification of signs remained central to the philosophy of language in the later Middle Ages, though scholastic thinkers such as Peter of Spain and John Duns Scotus would shift their interest to the syntactical dimension of meaning. How, it was asked, do meanings of words qualify and limit each other when words function as consignificant terms in a proposition? Also in the later Middle Ages, the speculative grammarians (or "modists") would explore the relationship between grammatical and semantic categories. (Vance 1986a: 63)

John Duns Scotus is familiar through Peirce, but Peter of Spain is as of yet an unfamiliar figure.

Augustine's major theological work, On the Trinity (De Trinitate), is also his most profound attempt to define the functions and limits of linguistic signs. Here, Augustine's semiotics becomes distinctly triadic, in the sense that he speculates actively on the relationship between signifier, referent, and concept, or between what Peirce called sign, object, and interpretant. (Vance 1986a: 64)

Hot damn, that's the stuff I like. Though, considering that I've barely made it past the pre-Socratics, it would take a long while before I got to him chronologically.

As in most areas of his thought, Augustine is eclectic in his semiotics, drawing heavily on Neoplatonists such as St. Paul and Plotinus and less heavily on the Stoics and Aristotelians. Just as Augustine drew on sources to which he was sometimes inimical, so too Augustine's influence would persist in environments not wholly hospitable to certain aspects of his thought, especially those of the Aristotelians, who felt the necessity to infuse Christian spirituality with more rationalism. (Vance 1986a: 64)

Something we have in common, then.

von Savigny, Eike 1986a. Austin, John Langshaw (1911-1960). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 64-65.

Since Austin took the illocutionary force to be determined by convention, his theory has had to be supplemented, on the side of behavior, by a detailed account of which forms of conventional behavior are connected with given illocutionary forces. (Austin's own systematic work on illocutionary forces did not exceed an attempt at classification.) (von Savigny 1986a: 65)

This may explain why his concept of "phatic act" is such a dud, and is only ever lifelessly enumerated among his classifications.

Even-Zohar, Itamar 1986a. Automatization. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 66-67.

A process and/or state whereby signs are (wholly or partially) dereferentialized (de-iconized), as a consequence of which they become devoid of specific relation to "the actual world." They thus function as "automatic stock" for given situations, that is, motorized and not controlled by free selection decisions. A large portion of communication, either verbal or nonverbal (including proxemics and kinesics), is indispensably automatized. (Even-Zohar 1986a: 66)

This is my jam! Phaticity is all about the automatization of some forms of communication (e.g. greetings).

As a process, it is an inherent tendency in cultural sign systems (and probably in biological ones too), for, as there seem to be limits to man's capacity to handle and/or store information, sign systems strive to limit the rate of overload. This applies to both low-level and high-level features of sign systems. On the low level, since decoding is assumed to be based on sound oppositions, the sounds of language "per se" are automatized. (Even-Zohar 1986a: 66)

A very common theme related to automatization. I should really take a second look at those late 19th century philosophical papers that are explicitly about automatization/automatism. In the case of phaticity, it saves time, space, and energy to utter a conventional opening phrase rather than invent something original every time you meet a successive acquaintance.

The automatization idea was first suggested (as a theoretical hypothesis) by Šklovskij (1916), although then conceived by him as a symptom of deteriorated discourse rather than as an inherent feature of it. (Even-Zohar 1986a: 67)

"Automatism and Spontaneity" (Montgomery 1893), "Automatism in Morality" (Hibben 1895), "Animal Automatism and Consciousness" (Harington 1897), "Automatism, Determinism, and Freedom" (Morgan 1897), "Social Automatism and the Imitation Theory" (Bosanquet 1899), "Automatism" (Foltz 1912).

It is art, however, suggested Šklovskij, that can revitalize discourse by deautomatization. Deautomatization (at first labeled 'estrangement' [ostranenie] by Šklovskij), hypothesized as the "differentia specifica" of art, was then considered the only way to overcome stereotypicity and loss of "real contact with the world." (Even-Zohar 1986a: 67)

I'm personally not at all sure about achieving "real contact with the world" through deautomatization. One could argue that stereotypes have become stereotypes because they offer a connection with the world that is more verisimilar than random experimentation. Though, this has very little to do with Šklovskij's theory, which I do like.

Soon, however, both Šklovskij and other students of poetics (notably Tynjanov) realized that automatization could not possibly be described as an ahistorical phenomenon. Once put into the historical dimension (both synchronically and diachronically), it turned out to be a precondition for change, not only of art vs. non-art, but also in art itself. Thus, the automatization-deautomatization opposition, adopted by historical poetics (and later historical cultural semiotics/culturology in general), was considered the major law for systemic shift (and, for a short while, the only one suggested). Automatization was thus transformed from a principle of aesthetics to a principle of semiosis. This development was later blurred, however, in Prague structuralism (especially by Mukařovský), by the reintroduction of aesthetic categories into poetics. (Even-Zohar 1986a: 67)

The stuff of Lotman's center/periphery dynamics. The infrequent case of someone saying something negative towards Mukařovský.

However, the psychological assumptions partly involved with (the earlier version of) automatization, the seeming lack of "formal evidence" ("in the signs themselves") for it, and the greater interests in deautomatization (for which, besides, evidence was believed to be providable through "objective sound analysis") have all made the automatization hypothesis a neglected idea (see Posner 1976). As a result, the crucial role it may have in semiosis as both constraint and condition, its links with such procedures as depletion, de-iconicity/de-iconization, and function shifts (see Even-Zohar 1983) have hardly been dealt with in the literature. (Even-Zohar 1986a: 67)

The assumptions originated, if I'm not mistaken, from William James' The Principles of Psychology and Herbert Spencer's The Philosophy of Style.

• Posner, R. 1976. Poetic communication versus literary language: The linguistic fallacy in poetics. Poetics and Theory of Literature 1: 1-10. [De Gruyter]
• Even-Zohar, Itamar 1983. Kodewandel und Sinnentleerung. Zeitschrift fuer Semiotik 5: 220-227. [online, pdf]

Deely, John N.; Russell, Anthony F. 1986a. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 68-70.

No comprehensive and unified vision of the life of the mind previous to Bacon had been given such an orientation, and there is no question that it outlines in a general way the modern world as it has come into existence since Bacon's day, and as the modern world contrasts with the world of ancient Greek and Latin civilization. Such a prophetic vision is already a semiotic phenomenon of the first importance, sufficient to guarantee Bacon's place in the history of ideas, however radical its revisions may be as semiotic inquiries continue. (Deely & Russell 1986a: 68)

By this token we should write everyone and anyone with a grand vision into the history of semiotics. Charles Fourier, for example.

[...] requires scholarly conclusions that play hard with Bacon's memory in this particular, as Pierre Duhem (1913: 129) has sharply noted:

Attributions of the title 'creator of the method fo the physical sciences' has given rise to many squabbles; some have wished to give it to Galileo, others to Descartes, still others to Francis Bacon, who died without ever having understood anything about this method. Frankly, the method of the physical sciences was defined by Plato and the Pythagoreans of his day with a clarity and precision that have not been surpassed; it was applied for the first time by Eudoxus when he tried to save the apparent movement of the stars by combining the rotation of homocentric spheres.

In stressing new possibilities, it is clear that Bacon also anticipated the worst aspects of modern tendencies to denigrate and misunderstand permanent intellectual achievements of the older traditions. (Deely & Russell 1986a: 69)

Those who study the Pythagoreans would disagree: "When we look beyond the facade of analysis and explication of the harmony of the spheres, what we find is neither empirical nor mathematical science, but eschatology." (Burkert 1972: 357)

Much of philosophy previous to Bacon developed as if the human sensory and conceptual apparatus is a direct and absolute access to the way things are in themselves. Bacon was among the first to criticize effectively such assumptions, by pointing out in his famous doctrine of the idols of the mind (1620: Part I, Secs. 41ff.) that much of what passes for our knowledge of nature is so much baggage from our individual, social, and natural histories. Thus Bacon divided the contents of our mind, i.e., our thoughts and ideas, into icons, which are true representations or models of nature itself, and idols, which are false representations of reality fabricated of subjectivity and wrongly followed. The term idolum was a fairly common term of the Renaissance for mental content; it was Bacon who gave the English transliteration its negative connotation of false or misleading notions, by identifying "Idols of the Tribe" (as the distortions of reality that result from the peculiar biological constitution of the human species), "Idols of the Cave" (as the additional distortions that arise from the "peculiar and singular disposition" of the individual), "Idols of the Market Place" (as distortions rooted in the socialized perceptions characterizing various ethnic groups and carried by the ambiguities and false references of diverse linguistic customs), and "Idols of the Theater" (as the false learning and empty speculations of the philosophers uncritically spread among men). (Deely & Russell 1986a: 69)

Now this is something. Source of Peirce's icon category? In any case there's fairly interesting literature about Bacon's four idols of the mind in the history of science.

Pinborg, Jan 1986a. Bacon, Roger (ca. 1220-1292). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 70-71.

Among Medieval schoolmen the English Franciscan Roger Bacon is conspicuous fro his endeavours to embed his logical and epistemological theories into a broader semiotic context. His frame of reference was Augustine's theory of signs, which was probably known to him at first only indirectly through the use made of it in Medieval discussions of the sacraments. Roger Bacon's main works dealing with semiotics are the De Signis from 1267 and the Compendium Studii Theologiae from ca. 1290. (Pinborg 1986a: 70)

Noice! On Signs was translated into English in 2013.

Initially Bacon stresses that the relation of signification is composed of a relation between the sign and the person to whom it is a sign and a relation between the sign and the object signified. This emphasis on the pragmatic aspect of the sign is rare in the Middle Ages and causes some significant developments in semantic theory. (Pinborg 1986a: 70)

Again, very promising stuff.

Signs, according to Bacon, are divided into natural and given signs. Natural signs are signs by their own nature: because they are what they are it is immediately understood by everybody what they signify. Given signs are only signs when they are used intentionally by a mind in order to convey something to somebody. Signs are further subdivided in the following manner:

1. Natural signs:
   1. Signifying something which they infer, necessarily or with probability. Examples: dawn → sunrise, smoke → fire, and things having a causal relationship (including in astrology the planets as natural signs of what God has planned).
   2. Signifying something which they resemble or with which they conform. Examples: statues and pictures, further sensory images by which we know sensible objects, and concepts.
2. Given signs:
   1. Given voluntarily with the intention of conveying something. This group includes all signalsystems: goods exhibited in shops, signs outside shops or inns, the sign languages of monks, and, above all, the human languages.
   2. Given involuntarily, expressing mental, but species-specific, reactions of animals and human beings. This group includes all animal sounds, and human exclamations and sighs; interjections take a mediate place between 1 and 2.

(Pinborg 1986a: 70)

What the hell? A1 = indexes; A2 = icons; B1 = symbols; B2 = paralanguage? Now I'm really curious.

Bacon then uses this framework to develop a highly personal semantic theory. The primary relation of a word to the object signified is of the type B1. It is constituted by an act of imposition and lasts only so long as the word is a sign of this object (or feature) to somebody and so long as the significatum remains in existence. Through a new imposition the word can be made to signify another object. Everyone can and does perform such new impositions, not necessarily by performing an explicit act of imposition but sometimes just by using the word differently. Through the number of possible changes is unlimited, new impositions generally follow certain patterns, so that the new imposition makes the word stand for something related to the previous significatum or something that was signified naturally by the word under its former imposition. Changes in the meaning or use of words are thus interpreted as different relations of signification dependent on the speaker, not on any inherent feature of the sign. (Pinborg 1986a: 71)

The most realistic theory of a sign I've yet met. Reminiscent of Karcevskij: "the orderly slippage of actual words [...] this constantly shifting ambiguity [is] the life of language" (Steiner 1986a: 26, above).

Raskin, Victor 1986a. Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua (b. 1905, Vienna; d. Sep. 15, 1975, Jerusalem). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 71-72.

In the early 1950s Bar-Hillel became the first full-time paid researcher in the field of machine translation. After analyzing a series of problems that machine translation had to face, such as idioms and general intertranslatability of natural languages, he was among the first researchers to come to the conclusion that fully automatic high quality translation was not a feasible proposition at the time. Then, and later, Bar-Hillel considered a man-machine partnership in which the human partner would play the role of post-editor as the only sensible goal to aim for. This position also influenced his subsequent and related research on the mechanization of information retrieval. (Raskin 1986a: 71)

That is the work of a modern translator: (a) Google Translate; (b) spell-check.

Rey-Debove, Josette 1986a. Barthes, Roland (1915-1980). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 72-74.

As a student at the Sorbonne, he discovered the mediocrity of literary criticism. Because he was puzzled by the traditional notion of "literature," he was led to write in 1947 an analysis of Albert Camus' "blank writing" (écriture blanche), later published as La degré zéro de l'écriture (1953), in which he asserts that no thought exists without language and that "writing (l'écriture) is the ethics of form." (Rey-Debove 1986a: 72)

"Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula." is the only Saussure quote I know.

Barthes was convinced that there is no such thing as nature or truth, two notions arbitrarily constructed by societal sign systems - i.e., the prevailing ideology or doxa (Mythologies, 1957) - which can be equated with the sum of tautologies or Umberto Eco's semiotic judgments (Eco 1976c). (Rey-Debove 1986a: 72)

Truly a predecessor of modern conspiracy theorists, whose singular intellectual move is denying the existence of something - there is no virus, media made it up!

Guided at first by André Martinet and A. J. Greimas, Barthes received from conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Emile Benveniste a confirmation of the idea that culture is the same as language and that language is the only approach to culture. (Rey-Debove 1986a: 72)

This entry is just a neat run-down of all the reasons why I don't take Barthes and his ilk seriously.

Ayim, Maryann 1986b. Bateson, Gregory (1904-1980). In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics. Tome 1, A-M. Berlin; New York; Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 74-76.

In 1948 he entered the world of psychiatry; while working in Ruesch's clinic, he wrote, with Ruesch, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (1951), in which he began applying Russell's theory of logical types as the basic model for the study of communication and its pathology. In connection with this line of research he obtained, in 1952, a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study the paradoxes of abstraction in human communication. (Ayim 1986a: 74)

This I did not know.

The theory of multiple messages levels is strictly tied to the concept of metacommunication. To Bateson, metacommunication means the exchange of cues and propositions about codification, but above all the exchange of messages about relationships between the communicators (1951). By observing the behavior of dolphins (1966), Bateson drew the conclusion that communicative exchanges between mammals are exclusively centered on social relationship. In communication between human beings the exchanges about relationship are always blended with those about content, and the latter tend to hide the importance of the former. The idea of messages about relationships - fundamental in communication theory - parallels the notion of illocutionary force (a term unknown to Bateson). (Ayim 1986a: 75)

Good stuff. Exactly what Malinowski's phatic communion is about.