IASS is the acronym now most commonly used for the International Association for Semiotic Studies (a learned society alternatively identified as AIS, for Association Internationale de Semiotique). This organization, bilingual by constitutional provision, was created on 21–22 January 1969, by a group of like-minded individuals convened in Paris at the initiative of Emile Benveniste, of the College de France. Since its foundation, the Association proclaimed and has endeavoured to adhere to three principal aims: to promote semiotic researches in a scientific spirit; to advance global cooperation in this field; and to promote collaboration with local organizations worldwide.
The day-by-day governing body of the IASS is led by its officers, each of whom (excepting one, whose term is unlimited) may serve for up to two terms, usually of five years each. Emile Benveniste was elected as the first President in 1969, holding that office until his death in 1976. He was succeeded by Cesare Segre (Italy), Jerzy Pelc (Poland), Roland Posner (Germany) and Eero Tarasti (Finland). There are currently four Vice-Presidents: Adrián Gimate-Welsh (Mexico), Richard L. Lanigan (United States), Youzheng Li (China) and Jean-Claude Mbarga (Cameroon). (Earlier Vice-Presidents included Roman Jakobson and Yuri M. Lotman.) The first Secretary General was Julia Kristeva (France), succeeded upon her resignation by Umberto Eco (Italy); this position is currently held by José M. Paz Gago (Spain). The first Treasurer was Jacques Geninasca (Switzerland), succeeded by Gloria Withalm (Austria), a position now occupied by John Deely (United States) and Susan Petrilli (Italy). A ninth officer is Marcel Danesi (Canada), Editor-in-Chief of Semiotica.
The officers report to, and are in turn elected once every five years or so by, the members of the General Assembly with an Executive Committee, chosen from among (currently) thirty-eight different countries.
One of the Association’s principal responsibilities has been the organization of periodic International Congresses, usually at five-year intervals: the First Congress, convened by Umberto Eco in Milan, was held in 1974, followed by others in Vienna (1979), Palermo (1984), Barcelona/ Perpignan (1989), Berkeley (1994), Guadalajara (1997), Dresden (1999), Lyon (2004), Helsinki (2007) and La Coruña (2009).
The other paramount IASS activity is the co-sponsorship with Mouton (formerly of The Hague, now Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin) of the ‘flagship’ publication of the IASS, Semiotica, established in 1969, now published in 2000 pages annually. By the end of 2009, this journal will have appeared in 175 volumes; an 800-page Index of Vols 1–100 was published in 1994, supplemented by a Finder List up to date through mid-1999. (TAS and PC)
One of three types of signs identified by Charles S. Peirce, the other two being index and symbol. The icon is characterized by a relation of similarity between the sign and its object. However, similarity alone will not suffice to determine an iconic sign. Twins look similar but are not signs of each other. My reflection in the mirror looks like me but is not an iconic sign. For iconic signs to obtain the effect of convention or habit, social practices or special functions must be added to similarity. Iconic similarity is a special kind of similarity: it is an abstraction on the basis of a convention, for it privileges given traits of similarity and not others. Similarity between one banknote and another worth $50 is no doubt a sign that the first banknote too is worth $50. But if similarity is complete to the point that the serial numbers of both banknotes are identical, we have a false banknote that cannot carry out a legitimate function as an iconic sign on the money market. All the same, as Peirce states, the icon is the most independent sign from both convention and causality/contiguity: ‘An icon is a sign which would possess the character which renders it significant, even though its object had no existence; such as a lead-pencil streak as representing a geometrical line’ (CP 2.304). (SP)
A term in systemic functional grammar, which assumes that any semiotic system must have the facility to communicate about states of affairs and events in the world. The ideational function indicates the salient participants, and the processes which relate them, usually seen as the ‘content’ of a sentence. (GRK)
See also INTERPERSONAL and TEXTUAL.
In the terminological framework introduced by Austin (1962) to cope with the multi-functionality of all utterances (locution–illocution–perlocution), illocution refers to a type of act performed in saying something: asking or answering a question, giving a command or a warning, making a promise or a statement, and the like. The basic question is: in what way is a locution uttered on a given occasion of use? The answer to that question is an assessment of the function of what is said or its illocutionary force. Though the illocution is basically a functional category, it is not unrelated to aspects of form. Often there are clear markers of illocutionary force indicating devices such as performative verbs used in explicit performatives (e.g. I promise to come tomorrow), or the interrogative form marking a question or a negation (e.g. ‘not’ turning a promise into the refusal I do not promise to come tomorrow). In later versions of speech act theory (Searle 1976 onwards), the notion illocutionary point is introduced as one of the parameters along which classes of illocutionary acts can be distinguished: the point of an assertive is to represent a state of affairs; the point of a directive is to make the hearer do something; the point of a commissive is that the speaker commits him/herself to doing something; the point of an expressive is to express a psychological state; and the point of a declaration is to bring something about in the world. (JV)
Austin, J. L. (1962) How To Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2nd rev. edn, 1975, ed. J. O. Urmson and M. Sbisà, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.)
In cognitive linguistics image schemas are entrenched preconceptual skeleton representations. They emerge from our bodily interaction with the world and capture the structural make-up and the outline of recurrent experiential patterns.
As semantic gestalts they play an essential role in conceptualization in that they structure human experience and therefore serve as links between perception and language. Since they apply across different domains, they are key to the understanding of meaning extension and metaphorical mapping. Thus She is in love, She is in Paris and She is in the coffin all specify a CONTAINMENT schema; whereas She achieved her goal and She reached her destination both activate the SOURCE– PATH–GOAL schema. (PB)
One of three types of sign identified by Charles S. Peirce, the other two being icon and symbol. The index is a sign that signifies its object by a relation of contiguity, causality or by some other physical connection. However, this relation also depends on a habit or convention. For example, the relation between hearing a knock at the door and someone on the other side of the door who wants to enter. Here convention plays its part in relating the knocking and the knocker, but contiguity/causality predominates to the point that we are surprised if we open the door and no-one is there. Types of index include:
1 symptoms, medical, psychological, of natural phenomena (actual contiguity + actual causality);
2 clues, natural phenomena, attitudes and inclinations (presumed contiguity +non-actual causality);
3 traces, physical or mental (non-actual contiguity + presumed causality).
‘An index,’ says Peirce, ‘is a sign which would, at once, lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant’ (CP 2.304). (SP)
Induction is an inferential process with abduction and deduction. In induction, the relation between premises and conclusion is determined by habit. In terms of Charles S. Peirce’s typology of signs it is of the symbolic order. Both in abduction and induction, one is only inclined towards admitting that the conclusion be true, given that the premises can be accepted without the obligation of accepting the conclusion. Consequently, in induction, prediction, expectation and orientation towards the future weigh more on the argument than memory and the past. Contrary to deductive argument, induction offers the possibility of broadening belief by virtue of its opening towards the future, importance attached to the interpretant, and relation of the conclusion to the premises, which is not of mechanical dependence. All the same, inductive argument is simply repetitive and quantitative, given that its sphere of validity remains that of the fact, that is, of the totality of facts on the basis of which alone it can infer the future. According to Aristotle, induction (in Greek epagogé) is the method that leads from the particular to the universal (Topicorum libri VIII, I, 12, 105 a 11). Moreover he ascribes the discovery of this type of inference to Socrates (Metaphysica, XIII, 4, 1078 b 28). According to Aristotle, induction only demonstrates the mere fact and consequently has an insufficient demonstrative value. In post-Aristotelian philosophy, the Epicureans considered induction as the only method of valid inference, while the Stoics denied its argumentative value (Philodemus, De signis, III, 35). The Epicureans supported their position arguing that, until the conclusion is invalidated, inductive generalization is true. According to Peirce (CP 2.729) the pragmatic value of induction consists in its capacity for self-correction. In fact, the conclusion is not imposed by the premises and therefore is susceptible to modification. (SP)
Peirce, C. S. (1998) ‘Deduction, induction and hypothesis’, in Chance, Love and Logic: Philosophical Essays, ed. M. Cohen, Lincoln, NE: Bison Books.
INNENWELT see UMWELT
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION see COMMUNICATION, HALL and SOCIOSEMIOTICS
The interpersonal function deals with the organization and shape of (the clause in) language as a means of expressing the social relations between those engaged in communication. It is concerned with expression of both power and solidarity in social relations. (GRK)
See also IDEATIONAL and TEXTUAL.
The interpretant is a concept introduced by Charles S. Peirce’s semiotics. According to Peirce, semiosis is a triadic process whose components include sign (or representamen), object and interpretant.
A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object.
(CP 2.274)
Therefore, the sign stands for something, its object, by which it is ‘mediately determined’ (CP 8.343), ‘not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea’ (CP 2.228). However, a sign can only do this if it determines the interpretant which is ‘mediately determined by that object’ (CP 8.343). ‘A sign mediates between the interpretant sign and its object’ insofar as the first is determined by its object under a certain respect or idea, or ground, and determines the interpretant ‘in such a way as to bring the interpretant into a relation to the object, corresponding to its own relation to the object’ (CP 8.332).
The interpretant of a sign is another sign which the first creates in the interpreter. This is ‘an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign’ (CP 2.228). Therefore the interpretant sign cannot be identical to the interpreted sign, it cannot be a repetition, precisely because it is mediated, interpretive and therefore always something new. With respect to the first sign, the interpretant is a response, and as such it inaugurates a new sign process, a new semiosis. In this sense it is a more developed sign. As a sign the interpretant determines another sign which acts, in turn, as an interpretant: therefore, the interpretant opens to new semioses, it develops the sign process, it is a new sign occurrence. Indeed, we may state that every time there is a sign occurrence, including the ‘First Sign’, we have a ‘Third’, something mediated, a response, an interpretive novelty, an interpretant. Consequently, a sign is constitutively an interpretant (cf. Petrilli 1998c: I.1). The fact that the interpretant (Third) is in turn a sign (First), and that the sign (First) is in turn an interpretant (is already a Third), places the sign in an open network of interpretants: this is the Peircean principle of infinite semiosis or endless series of interpretants (cf. CP 1.339).
Therefore the meaning of a sign is a response, an interpretant that calls for another response, another interpretant. This implies the dialogical nature of the sign and semiosis. A sign has its meaning in another sign which responds to it and which in turn is a sign if there is another sign to respond and interpret it, and so forth ad infinitum. In Augusto Ponzio’s terminology (1985, 1990b) the ‘First Sign’ in the triadic relation of semiosis, the object that receives meaning, is the interpreted, and what confers meaning is the interpretant, which may be of two main types. The interpretant which enables recognition of the sign is an interpretant of identification, it is connected to the signal, code and sign system. The specific interpretant of a sign, that which interprets sense or actual meaning, is the interpretant of answering comprehension. This second type of interpretant does not limit itself to identifying the interpreted, but rather expresses its properly pragmatic meaning, installing with it a relation of involvement and participation: the interpretant responds to the interpreted and takes a stand towards it.
This dual conception of the interpretant is in line with Peirce’s semiotics, which is inseparable from his pragmatism. In a letter of 1904 to Victoria Welby, Peirce wrote that, if we take a sign in a very broad sense, its interpretant is not necessarily a sign, since it might be an action or experience, or even just a feeling (cf. CP 8.332). Here sign is understood in a strict sense given that the interpretant as a response that signifies, that renders something significant and which therefore becomes a sign, cannot, in turn, be anything other than a sign occurrence, a semiosic act, even if an action or feeling. In any case, we are dealing with what we are calling an ‘interpretant of answering comprehension’, and therefore a sign. In line with his triadomania, instead, Peirce on classifying interpretants distinguishes among feelings, exertions and signs (CP 4.536). And in one of his manuscripts (MS 318), a part of which is published in CP 5.464–496 (cf. Short 1998), he also distinguishes among the emotional, the energetic and the logical interpretant. The latter together with the triad consisting of the ‘immediate’, ‘dynamical’ and ‘final interpretant’ are perhaps the two most famous triads among the many described by Peirce to classify the various aspects of the interpretant.
The relation between the sign and interpretant has consequences of a semiotic order for the typology of signs and of a logical order for the typology of inference and argument. Whether we have an icon, index or symbol depends on the way this relation is organized. And given that the relation between premises and conclusion is understood in terms of the relation among sign and interpretant, the triad abduction, induction and deduction also depends on it. (SP)
See also DIALOGUE, FIRSTNESS, SECONDNESS, THIRDNESS and UNLIMITED SEMIOSIS.
Merrell, F. (1993) ‘Is meaning possible within indefinite semiosis?’, American Journal of Semiotics,10(3/4): 167–196.
Peirce, C. S. (1955) ‘Logic as semiotic: The theory of signs’, in J. Buchler (ed.), Philosophical Writings of Peirce, New York: Dover.
Peirce, C. S. (1992) ‘Some consequences of four incapacities’, in N. Houser and C. Kloesel (eds), The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol. 1, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 83–105.