Sign - denten-courses/metaphor-media GitHub Wiki
SYNTHESIS
The sign is perhaps the most fundamental element of any language; the sign denotes the concept. In most cases, the sign is a word, either written or spoken. The word 'leaf' is the sign for the concept of leaves. A sign, however, does not have to be a word. For example, a wave is a gestural sign that denotes a greeting. A sign does not have to locate objects, or anything particular at all. Locke points out that signs can denote negative cognitive space, such as ‘ignorance’ or ‘emptiness’. For these reasons, signs can be said to denote concepts. The most fundamental relation between sign and signified is connection.
Different signs that denote the same concept are evidence of different senses of the same concept, or different ways of locating them with thought. For example, Plato might be denoted by ‘the student of Socrates’ or ‘the author of Republic’.
Condillac describes three kinds of signs: accidental, natural, and instituted. Accidental signs are derived via some kind of connection to other signs, and rely on transference. Natural signs are signs such as screaming in fear or laughing; these actions become signs because they are usually observed in conjunction with strong emotion. This constant connection establishes the sign. Instituted signs are signs that we have chosen to have a specific meaning, and whose connection to its concept is arbitrary. An example on an instituted connection might be a salute, which denotes respect.
The first signs must have been natural signs. Vico posits that the first sign was likely a line, which was used to divide property. First, note the connection between the origin of civilization and the origin of language. Second, note that a line can be drawn on a two-dimensional surface or represented with a gesture. Because this sign is so easy to represent in multiple media, it’s likely this sign was an easy first one to understand.
Signs are public, they belong to all speakers of a given language. If this were not the case, then the connection between the sign and signifier is broken from the perspective of the listener, and the word (or gesture or something else) would have to be considered meaningless, since it no longer denotes a concept. Even if a sign is functional, it does not have meaning itself, because it cannot convey a complete thought by itself. All signs do is indicate which concepts should be combined to form a thought, and the rest is done by the rational agent.
QUOTES
Signification is description of something by indicating the signs that accompany it.
Erasmus, De Copia pg. 332
the first language in the first mute times of the nations must have begun with signs, whether gestures or physical objects, which had natural relations to the ideas [to be expressed].
Vico, the New Science pg. 114
I distinguish three kinds of signs. (I) Accidental signs, or the objects that some particular circumstances have connected with some of our ideas so that those ideas may be revived by them. (2) Natural signs, or the cries that nature has established for the sentiments of joy, fear, pain, etc. (3) Instituted signs, or those that we have ourselves chosen and that have only an arbitrary relation to our ideas.
Condillac, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge pg. 36.
In the beginning both made it a habit to recognize, by those signs, the sentiments which the other felt at the moment; later they used those signs to communicate the sentiments they had experienced.
Condillac, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge pg. 115.
But when a word, by a process of long habituation,had become the most natural sign of an idea, it was no longer easy to make something take its place
Condillac, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge pg. 154.
But units pure and simple are too vague and general symbols for us. Our sense bring us back to symbols more suited to our comprehension and the conformation of our organs. We have arranged that these signs should be common property and serve, as it were, for the staple in the exchange of our ideas.
Diderot, Letter on the Blind pg. 89
when many use the same words, to signifie (by their connexion and order,) one to another, whatthey conceive, or think of each matter ; and also what they desire, feare, or have any other passion for. And for this use they are called Signes.
Hobbes, Leviathan pg. 14
Besides articulate sounds therefore, it was farther necessary, that he should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the thoughts of men's minds be conveyed from one to another. But neither was this sufficient to make words so useful as they ought to be. It is not enough for the perfection of language that sounds can be made signs of ideas, unless those signs can be so made use of, as to comprehend several particular things for the multiplication of words would have perplexed their use, had every particular thing need of a distinct name to be signified by
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding pg. 396
The latter (the intuitive), that is, may be divided into the schematical and the symbolical modes of representation. Both are hypotyposes, i.e. presentations (exhibitiones); not mere characterisations, or designations of concepts by accompanying sensible signs which contain nothing belonging to the intuition of the Object, and only serve as a means for reproducing the concepts, according to the law of association of the Imagination, and consequently in a subjective point of view.
Kant, the Critique of Judgement pg. 249
'signs, as mere expressions for concepts.'
All intuitions, which we supply to concepts a priori, are therefore either schemata or symbols, of which the former contain direct, the latter indirect, presentations of the concept. The former do this demonstratively ; the latter by means of an analogy (for which we avail ourselves even of empirical intuitions) in which the Judgement exercises a double function; first applying the concept to the object of a sensible intuition, and then applying the mere rule of the reflection made upon that intuition to a quite different object of which the first is only the symbol. pg 249
Kant, the Critique of Judgement pg. 249
They postulated two uses of speech: the scientific use in which words symbolised a reference which could be verified in relation to external reality; and the evocative or emotive use in which words simply became signs for emotions or attitudes, their referential power being secondary.
Tambiah, The Magical Power of Words pg. 175-208.
In these contexts one- typically a word- takes over the duties of parts which can then be omitted from the recurrence. There is thus an abridgement of the context only shown in the behavior of living things, and most extensively and drastically shown by man. When this abridgement happens, what the sign or word - the item with these delegated powers - means is the missing parts of the context.
I.A Richards, Philosophy of Rhetoric pg 34
EXAMPLES
if, for example, someone, meaning 'anger,' were to speak of 'a seething of the mind or bile which brings pallor to the face, a glare to the eyes, and a trembling to the limbs'; or to say 'those who scratch their head with one finger' to mean effeminate and unmanly persons, or 'he wipes his nose on his arm', meaning 'a salt-fish dealer.'
Erasmus, De Copia pg. 332
That they expressed themselves by means of gestures or physical objects which had natural relations with the ideas; for example, three ears of grain, or acting as if swinging a scythe three times, to signify three years.
Vico, the New Science pg. 125-126
For example, he who came upon a place where he had become frightened, imitated the cries and motions that were the signs of fear to warn the other not to expose himself to the same danger.
Condillac pg. 115
Just as a pressure is the only sign we have to the touch, so a cry would have been the only sign to the hearing.
Diderot, A Letter on the Blind pg. 90
Besides these names which stand for ideas, there be other words which men make use of, not to signify any idea, but the want or absence of some ideas simple or complex, or all ideas together; such as are nihil in Latin, and in English, ignorance and barrenness.
Locke pg. 397
Thus a monarchical state is represented by a living body, if it is governed by national laws, and by a mere machine (like a hand-mill) if governed by an individual absolute will; but in both cases only symbolically.
Kant, Critique of Judgement pg. 249
Works Cited
Erasmus. Literary and Educational Writings I. Toronto, Ontario, CA: University of Toronto Press, 1978.
Vico, Giambattista. The New Science. Translated by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. 3rd ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1948.
De Condillac, Étienne Bonnot. Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge. Translated by Hans Aarsleff. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Diderot. Early Philosophical Works. Translated by Margaret Jourdain. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1916.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Boston, MA: Cummings & Hillard and J.T. Buckingham, 1813.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1904.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Translated by J.H. Bernard. London, UK: MacMillan and Co, 1914.
Richards, I.A. (1965). The Philosophy of Rhetoric. London: Oxford University Press.
Tambiah, S. (1968). The Magical Power of Words. Man, 3(2), new series, 175-208.