Nirmal Selvamony

man is a sign (Pierce) [Culler 25]

Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss linguist regarded as the father of modern linguistics, defined language (hereafter, L) as 'a system of signs that expresses ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signal, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems' (16). Giving currency to the idea that language is semiological in nature, he laid the foundation for structuralism.

To Saussure, semiology is a branch of psychology because its constituents, namely, signs are mental pheneomena, not objects in the external world. It is the science that studies signs -- what constitutes signs and what laws govern them. Because these signs are social entities, semiology falls under social psychology dealing with the mental phenomena connected with social groups. Social psychology itself subsumes under general psychology that addresses not necessarily individual or collective social psychology.

A significant branch of semiology is linguistics, the study of L. In Saussure's thought L consists of two dimensions -- langue (language) and langage (human speech). Though both are social products, speech (langage) is the execution of L by an individual, whereas langue is not. Langue is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only within a collectivity. Speech is heterogeneous and therefore wild, but langue is homogeneous and so tameable to Saussure’s scientific method of study (9).

L is conventional, and therefore not innate in any human individual but acquired in a social context. Though not innate, it is a psycho-physical entity. In this respect it can be spoken of as being seated in the brain of the individual and also in the collective mind of the community. The linguistic signs consisting of sound-images can be reduced to writing and to this extent human L is concrete. It may be pointed out that Saussure's system avers the social and individual aspects of L and, in that, more comprehensive than the theories of several later linguists like Chomsky who disregard the social dimension of L (Birch 134).

Saussure places linguistics in a comprehensive framework by identifying it as a branch of semiology. While Saussure recognizes the social nature of L situating it in the minds of both the individual and the collective, he does not acknowledge the contribution of the human person to the making of L. How can one claim that L is wholly acquired if it already exists in the minds of the individual and the community? Since society is inconceivable without L, and humans can’t exist except in a society, they will necessarily express themselves somehow. To do this there must be some inner resource in every human being. Saussure calls this L faculty but does not tell us whether this faculty is also acquired or innate.

Again, L is concrete, yes. But it is not wholly concrete. Not merely because we can write down L, but because L consists of speech sounds, a kind of verbal energy circulated within a nexus of personae. In many instances these personae are hidden/assumed rather than manifest.

As for the homogeneity of L, we can find both homogeneity and heterogeneity; the former with regard to the recurrence of certain entities like the speaker and listener, and the latter with regard to the nature of these personae and their relationship.

Saussure’s exclusion of the real object gave rise to the notion of 'unlimited semiosis' of Eco and Derrida — that one sign can only refer to another, and not to the world or referents. The consequent notion, namely, 'arbitrariness' is challenged by Benveniste. Saussure’s 'argument is falsified by an unconscious and surreptitious recourse to a third term that was not included in the initial definition. This third term is the thing itself, the reality' (725). Benveniste holds that the connection between the signifier and the signified is not arbitrary, but necessary (726), because both the sound-image and the concept occur together and are identical in the consciousness (726).

The linguistic sign unfolds in time both diachronically and synchronically. Such dynamism is due to the nature of L. Because it is a human act that marks time synchronically and diachronically at the same time. Synchrony is what we get to 'frame' of language at any given moment, and diachrony is what we experience but cannot 'frame'. The former is like a still picture we take of a dynamically moving object. Saussure’s diachrony and synchrony apply to speech rather than to his 'langue'/language.

C.S. Pierce, eighteen years older than Saussure, coined the word 'semiotics' and formulated his theory of signs in the 1860s. Philosophy, to Pierce, consisted of three branches — phenomenology, normative science, and metaphysics (Knight 69). The theory of signs was central to his philosophy, especially to his phenomenology and normative science. To him phenomenology consisted in 'the discernment of what is given in experience, and …experience …reveals three distinct modes of being' (Knight 66):

quality (first) - a smell (not in relation to ego or body or consciousness)

fact (second) - push against a door (sensation as against body or ego), and

relation (third) - driver ('firstness') driving ('thirdness') car ('secondness').

A sign enjoys a relational mode of being, relating object, interpretant and sign. Logic, a part of normative science, is impossible without symbol, which is a kind of sign. In fact, Pierce’s variety of pragmatism itself is concerned with the analysis and meaning of signs (Knight 106). When consciousness is thinking an object, such psychical activity is threefold and the unification of consciousness again demands thirdness.

To Pierce, 'a sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity.' (Berger 1; 191; Scholes 147; Derrida 50; Arnauld and Nicole 39). To be precise, it is 'not only something that stands for something else (the object)' (Martin 1005), it is also something, which is interpreted. It is a type of entity whose mode of being is what Pierce calls thirdness.

The three modes of being of all phenomena are firstness, secondness and thirdness. Firstness is 'the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else' (Knight 74). Pierce gives the examples of an odour, and/or an ache. Secondness is 'the mode of being that which is such as it is with respect to a second but regardless of any third' (Knight 74). Pierce's examples are psychological states of shock, surprise, action and perception. Thirdness is 'the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and a third in relation to each other' (Knight 74). Thirdness is the basic mode of all being; secondness and firstness are derivatives. As signs are relational entities, human language is relational and has to be understood in terms of the category of thirdness.

Discussing the categories of Aristotle's (substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and passion), Kant's (quantity, quality, relation and modality, each having three subcategories), and Schiller's, Fisch writes, "If, further, we expect the categories to manifest themselves in language as well as in thought, it may strike us that in the language we speak there is nothing more prominent than the three persons of the verb and the corresponding pronouns…If we then try finding our categories in, or deriving them from the personal pronouns, our first trials are likely to take them in the order I, THOU, IT; and that is what Pierce does in his earliest surviving table, as in a theme comparing Michelangelo and Raphael, both written in 1857" (xxviii). Pierce has also toyed with the Coleridgean eqivalents, egotism (I), illeism (It),and tuism (Thou) (Fisch xxix). "Though by 1867 Pierce has abandoned I, IT, and THOU as names for his categories, it is only because he has found better technical terms for what he has meant by those more colloquial ones". (Fisch xxx).

Milton Singer shows how Piercean semiotic has implications for a philosophical anthropology, for inquiring into human identity. Such anthropology he calls semiotic anthropology. He defines it as 'a theory of the self as a system of symbols and meanings' explored in the writings of Kenneth Burke, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner and many others (486). Singer highlights Pierce’s insights into semiotic anthropology. To Pierce man is a sign. This does not mean that all signs are human in nature. Man is a sign because his life is but a sequence of thoughts, which in turn, are a species of sign, and therefore, he is such.

So, personal identity is not to be found in the individual organism, but in the 'outreaching identity' (495) that connects the feelings, thoughts and actions of one individual with those of others through the processes of semiotic communication. The self is thus both a product and an agent of semiotic communication and therefore social and public (Singer 489). Pierce’s idea of outreaching identity and several persons/personae of a human individual should be seen as the basis for constructing a semiotic or a theory of language based on personhood.

Milton Singer was constructing a semiotic anthropology out of Pierce’s ideas, a theory of self as a system of signs. Now we might go back to Pierce’s basic philosophy grounded in semiotics itself and see how his semiotics is not simply objective like Saussure’s, but hominized or humanized. Singer points out how Pierce’s theory of semiotics is more comprehensive than Saussure’s.

Pierce's observation that we appear as signs when we think, points to the possibility of the human becoming a sign. If so, the sign is not a mere object, but a hominized entity. Since linguistic signs can become available to us only through our thoughts, these signs are available to us only as hominized or anthropomorphized signs. Now, anthropomorphized signs cannot be mere tokens or counters or conventions, which are all objective entities, not hominized entities. By virtue of participating in the personhood of a human, a linguistic sign becomes a persona, unlike the objective smoke which objectively indexes fire, or a picture which objectively iconizes the object it represents.

Saussure’s idea of L as sign system is inadequate, for, it does not see L as a human act, but as product, as an object. His linguistic sign excludes the world and the human agents, namely, the speaker and the listener, and for this reason, partial.

Pierce, on the other hand, has a more comprehensive theory of semiotic. In saying that man becomes sign by virtue of his thought, he paves the way not only for semiotic anthropology as Milton Singer argues, but also for an anthropological semiotic. There are resources in Piercean thought to redefine language as a system of personae.

Pierce's ideas help us maintain that the three personae mentioned earlier (Selvamony 32-36) constitute a personaic oikos within which every human utterance has its being. This does not mean that the utterance and the oikos are comparable to the content and the container. On the contrary, the utterance defines the oikos; the web of the three personae. If a person manifests the oikos one way, his/her utterance manifests it another way. This means, that in order to make utterances we need to project the three personae, which will determine the meaning of the utterance. Such projection can be obvious or not so obvious. If so, the entire utterance or parts of it are personaic, not semiotic.

Selvamony, Nirmal. 'MOL\I : The Personaic Nature of Language'', tinai 1. Nirmaldasan and Nirmal Selvamony.