| Signs: language in semiotics investigates the place of language science within the general theory of signs, semiotics. Starting with classical antiquity (Plato and Aristotle), the thesis examines the development of the concept of the linguistic sign in semiotic thought up to the present (Eco) and contrasts the two sciences. The linguistic sign is revealed here as not being the representative model for a general sign theory.; The attributes of the sign are identified in the following: (1){A0}the sign is the coded unity of a content and an expression, (2){A0}the sign-meaning has only a conventially constituted relation to its vehicle, (3){A0}the purpose of a sign is to connote something outside itself, (4){A0}the referent, if there is any, has no natural relation whatsoever to the meaning of the sign, (5){A0}the meaning of the sign is established in language games, (6){A0}a sign always functions only in a system of signs. Meaning is implicative and is always more than the mere denotative dictionary definition (content).; The categorical divisions of reality into such fundamental dichotomies as subject v. object and doer v. deed are analyzed as the redefinition of language categories as philosophical categories. Far from seeing language as a secondary system of nomenclature merely denoting prelinguistic ideas of a transcendent mind and of a priori external objects, language is proven here to be the very possibility of the emergence of both the world and of the very self experiencing that world, the subject. Finally, to provide a practical example of all previous argumentation, the manipulation of sign systems for political purposes is considered. |
