Reading signs and being in the world: a dual perspective on semiotics
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2026-1-2
- Pages
- 13-35
Abstract
The article demonstrates, through a series of examples, that reflection on signs relates to two distinct mental operations: the exchange of sign messages between subjects (communication), and the interpretation of signs and sign systems that lack a subjective sender and originate either in natural objects or in the impersonal domain of “culture”. This duality of the object of analysis gives rise to persistent terminological difficulties, which surface in Aristotle’s treatment of the relationship between sign and symbol, in Charles S. Peirce and Roman Jakobson’s definitions and exemplifications of the sign-index, and in Roland Barthes’s theory of connotation. These two dimensions of sign activity receive a macrosemiotic interpretation in Yuri Lotman’s concept of the “system” and, more particularly, in his theory of the semiosphere: a distinctive participant in sign processes that combines subjectivity with a universal character. Against this background, the understanding of the two types of semiosis can be seen to evolve historically: from philosophical reflection on individual signs (Aristotle, Peirce) to linguistic and semiotic investigations of holistic systems (Barthes, Lotman). The capacity for such an expansion of perspective, together with an awareness of the heterogeneity of human sign activity, ultimately underpinned the emergence of scientific semiotics in the XX century.