12 SEMIOTICS

The term 'semiotic' was coined in the late nineteenth century by

the American pragmatist philosopher, C. S. Peirce (1839-1914), to
denote 'the formal doctrine of signs', and Ferdinand de Saussure in
his Cours de Linguistique Generate ( 1915) argued that linguistics was
only part of a general science of signs, which he called semiology.
The terms are more or less interchangeable. The basis of semiotics
is the sign, that is, any configuration to which there is a
conventionalised re.sponse. Not only are languages and com-
munication systems such as morse code constituted by signs
but, radical semioticians would argue, the world itself as it relates
to the human mind consists entirely of signs since there can be no
unmediated relationship with reality. Semiotics investigates the
various systems of signs that create the shared meanings that
constitute any culture. Language being the fundamental sign
system for human beings, non-verbal signs such as gestures, forms
of dress, numerous conventionalised social practices like eating, can
be seen as akin to language in that they are constituted by signs
which take on meaning and communicate by virtue of the relations
between signs.
The application of semiotics to the study of literature has led to
several different theoretical approaches. Four of these are included
here. Jonathan Culler, a critic whose strongest sympathies are with
structuralism, has attempted to continue structuralist criticism in
the post-structuralist era by reformulating it in semiotic terms. He
argues that a semiotics of literature should concern itself with the
signifying practices and interpretative conventions that make it
possible for literary texts to communicate with readers. Literary
criticism should concern itself not with literary meaning as such
but with how that meaning is produced. There is obvious continuity
between this concept of semiotics and structuralism's concern with
poetics. One of the most interesting developments in recent literary
theory has been the emergence in the Soviet Union of critics and
theorists who have restored links with Russian Formalism, formalist
criticism having been forbidden during the Stalinist period. Yury
M. Lotman of the Tartu school of semiotics is generally seen as the
most important Soviet theorist. His concept of semiotics develops
particularly the work of Bakhtin and the Prague structuralists. He
argues that literary texts have to be seen as doubly coded. They are

K. M. Newton (ed.), Twentieth-Century Literary Theory

© Macmillan Publishers Limited 1988
172 POST-STRUCTURALISM AND AFTER

part of natural language and can be decoded accordingly, but as

soon as a text is categorised as literary numerous supplementary
codes come into operation. Julia Kristeva is one of the most
important post-structuralist theorists. She argues that semiotics
should not concern itself with sign systems as such but with the
signifying process which both creates and undermines systems of
signs. Morse Peckham is in an American pragmatist tradition of
semiotics that would include - in addition to Peirce- G. H. Mead
and Charles Morris. Though he adopts the radical position that the
meaning of a sign is any response to it whatsoever, he nevertheless
holds that the only tenable form of literary interpretation is
historical and philological in basis.

FURTHER READING

Umberto Eco, The Role iif the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics iif Texts
(Bloomington, Indiana, 1979).
Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art
(Oxford, 1980).
--,Revolution in Poetic Language (New York, 1984).
Yury M. Lotman, The Anarysis of the Poetic Text, trans. D. B. Johnson (Ann
Arbor, Mich., 1976).
L. M. O'Toole and Ann Shukman (eds), Russian Poetics in Translation
(Colchester), Vols. 2, 3, 6, 8.
Morse Peckham, Romanticism and Ideology: Essays and Addresses, 1971-80
(Greenwood, Fl., 1985).
Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington, Indiana, 1978).
Robert Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation (New Haven, Conn., 1982).
Ann Shukman, Literature and Semiotics: A Stu4J of the Writings of Yu. M.
Lotman (Amsterdam, 1977).

Jonathan Culler: 'Semiotics as a Theory of

Reading'

The fact that people engaged in the study of literature are willing
to read works of criticism tells us something important about the
nature of our discipline. . . . Our assumptions that significant
things will be said in critical writings may be an expectation more

Reprinted from The Pursuit iif Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction

(London, 1981), pp.47-51.