Eero Tarasti (b. 1948), Finnish semiotician and musicologist, Professor at the University of Helsinki, editor of Acta Semiotica Fennica, Director of the International Semiotics Institute of Imatra, President of the IASS (2004 onwards) and, as well as the author of hundreds of articles, (like his fellow semioticians Bouissac and Eco) a novelist (e.g. Le Secret de Professeur Amfortas, 2000). Initially heavily influenced by Lévi-Strauss during a period in which he produced fertile works on myth (e.g. Myth and Music, 1979), Tarasti joined the seminar of Greimas in Paris which led to his most influential works in semiotics and musicology (e.g. Signs of Music: A Guide to Musical Semiotics, 2002). Later, he developed his own theory of existential semiotics, showcased in the 2001 book of the same name. (PC)
In the theory of register, tenor refers to the set of role relationships among participants in a speech situation. In a classroom, for example, the field or the social practices which inform the linguistic interaction will be the general ethos or process of education. The tenor will be the power relations between the teacher who might be active in imparting information and the student who might rely on the teacher for this purpose. These role relationships will take place through the mode: typical forms of pedagogic communication including lectures, seminars, brainstorming, and so on. (PC)
See also HALLIDAY.
As a result of the increased recognition of the importance of semiotics and linguistics to so many disciplines in the later part of the twentieth century, the term ‘text’ has become widely used. It is a neutral way of acknowledging that different kinds of semiotic phenomena are connected by virtue of their sign-based character. This includes texts such as films, speeches, novels, short stories, advertisements, drama, paintings, virtual reality environments, instruction manuals, opera, historical writing, statuary, conversation, and so on.
In the sphere of biosemiotics, the presence of entities classifiable as texts has not always been clear until quite recently. However, such facts as the proliferating knowledge of the properties of the DNA strand have encouraged some to consider biological processes and their results as akin to texts (Pollack 1994).
In the theory of discourse and discourse analysis text continues to have specific meanings. Sometimes text is considered as synonymous with that notion of discourse which simply means many signs joined together; in Saussure’s terms, for example, a lengthy instance of parole. In these linguistic cases, text is usually conceived as more extensive than a sentence. Sometimes, in a way similar to treatments of discourse, text is conceptualized only as a collection of signs which displays definite rules or structures.
In Halliday’s social semiotics text refers to ‘actualized meaning potential’. It ‘represents choice. A text is “what is meant”, selected from the total set of options that constitute what can be meant’ (1978: 109). In this version, text is a potential for meaning which suffuses collections of signs as a result of the enabling and constraining forces of situation and the general culture in which those signs appear. (PC)
Barthes, R. (1977) ‘From work to text’, in Image–Music–Text, ed. and trans. S. Heath, Glasgow: Fontana.
The textual function deals with the organization of language as message. It refers to text-internal relations, between and across sentences and paragraphs; to the relations of text to its context; and to the overall shape of the text as an effect of its social function. (GRK)
See also HALLIDAY, IDEATIONAL, INTERPERSONAL and SYSTEMIC FUNC-TIONAL GRAMMAR.
For Vološinov the theme of an utterance is contrasted to its meaning. An utterance such as ‘What is the time?’ has a general meaning which is applicable to all social situations. It is like the strict dictionary definition which might be thrown up by an investigation of the construction of the question. In this example, the definition or meaning of ‘What is the time?’ might be ‘an inquiry into temporal passage’. The theme, on the other hand, changes from moment to moment and from situation to situation. ‘What is the time?’ has a different theme for a) the person with a tyrannical boss who is late for work and asks the question of a passer-by; b) his/her fellow employees who ask each other the question because they are appalled by the way that time drags in the workplace; and c) the profit-obsessed bosses who survey what they consider to be the poor production rate of their workforce and ask the question in disgust.
Theme is hence the significance of a whole utterance in relation to a specific historical situation. As such, it is traversed by a social accent. (PC)
See also DIALOGUE, ILLOCUTION, LOCUTION and PRAGMATICS.
Vološinov, V. N. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, New York: Seminar Press.
Thirdness is a category introduced by Charles S. Peirce, the other two being firstness and secondness. Firstness (in-itselfness, originality), secondness (over-againstness, obsistence) and thirdness (in-betweenness, transuasion) are universal categories. Together with the other two categories, thirdness guides and stimulates inquiry and therefore has a heuristic value. The inferential relation between premises and conclusion is based on mediation, that is, on thirdness. And since for Peirce all mental operations are sign operations, not only are his categories universal categories of the mind but also of the sign. And, furthermore, given that all of reality, in other words being itself, is perfused with signs, they are also ontological categories. A sign, says Peirce, exemplifies the category of thirdness; it embodies a triadic relation among itself, its object and the interpretant. A sign always plays the role of third party, for it mediates between the interpretant and its object.
Any sign may be taken as something in itself, or in relation to something else (its object), or as a go-between (mediating between its object and interpretant). On the basis of this threefold consideration, Peirce establishes the following correspondences between his trichotomy of the categories which includes thirdness (but all his trichotomies contain thirdness insofar as they are trichotomies) and three other important trichotomies in his semiotic system: firstness: qualisign, icon, rheme; secondness: sinsign, index, dicisign (or dicent sign); thirdness: legisign, symbol, argument (cf. CP 2.243).
Thirdness regulates continuity which, according to Peirce, subsists in the dialectic relation among symbolicity, indexicality and iconicity. The symbol is never pure but contains varying degrees of indexicality and iconicity; similarly, as much as a sign may be characterized as an index or icon, it will always maintain the characteristics of symbolicity, that is, a sign to subsist as such requires the mediation of an interpretant and recourse to a convention. Symbolicity is the dimension of sign most sharing in thirdness, characterized by mediation (or in-betweenness), while iconicity is characterized by firstness or immediacy (or in-itselfness), and indexicality by secondness (or over-againstness).
Peirce foresees the possibility of tracing signs in nature, intrinsically, i.e. independently from the action of an external agent. From this viewpoint, the universe is perfused with signs antecedently to the action of an interpretive will. Genuine mediation – irreducible thirdness – is an inherent part of the reality we encounter in experience, which imposes itself on our attention as sign reality and reveals itself in interpretive processes. Thirdness characterizes the relation (of mediation) among signs throughout the whole universe. From this viewpoint, Peirce identifies a close relation between thirdness and ‘synechism’, his term for the doctrine of continuity (cf. CP 7.565, 7.570, 7.571), which while excluding all forms of separateness does not deny the discrete unit, secondness. Therefore, while recognizing the discrete unit, the principle of continuity does not allow for irreducible distinctions between the mental and the physical, between self and other (cf. CP 6.268). Such distinctions may be considered as specific units articulated in existential and phenomenological semiosic streams.
Gérard Deledalle (1990) establishes a series of correspondences between the categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness, on the one hand, and transcendentalism, methodological pragmatism and metaphysical pragmatism, on the other. (SP)
Peirce, C. S. (1955) ‘The principles of phenomenology’, in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. J. Buchler, New York: Dover.
Peirce, C. S. (1958) ‘Letter to Lady Welby, 12 October 1904’, in Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings, ed. P. Wiener, New York: Dover.
Petrilli, S. (1999) ‘About and beyond Peirce’, Semiotica, 124(3/4): 299–376.
THOMISM see AQUINAS
The concepts trajector/landmark have been developed by Ronald Langacker within his cognitive grammar. They designate a fundamental asymmetry in the sense that the trajector is the element of a cognitive representation which is foregrounded or otherwise profiled, whereas the landmark is the other element against which the trajector is highlighted. Their relation is thus cognate to the figure/ground asymmetry known from Gestalt theory.
The trajector/landmark concepts can for example be used to capture linguistic specification of distribution of attention and intentional focus in relational predications that refer to the same referent scene. In The lamp over the table, ‘lamp’ is a subject trajector, while table is the landmark. The inverse is the case in The table under the lamp. (PB)
‘Strictu sensu’, translation is the transposition of a text from one historical language to another. However, in a semiotic perspective such authors as Victoria Welby, Charles S. Peirce and Roman Jakobson recognize the importance of translation in semiosis and in semiotic processes at large. Translation, understood as a process where one sign entity is considered as equivalent to another which it replaces, presupposes:
1 translating; a series of operations whereby one semiotic entity is replaced by another; and
2 translatability; inter-replaceability, or interchangeability among semiotic entities.
We must underline that (1) and (2) are prerogatives of semiosis and of the sign. Translation, therefore, is a phenomenon of sign reality and as such it is the object of study of semiotics (cf. Petrilli 1992, 1998e, f, 1999c, d; Ponzio 1981b, 1997: 158–163). With Jakobson we may distinguish between three types of translation: interlingual translation (between two semiotic entities from two different verbal languages); intralingual translation (between two semiotic entities within the same verbal language); and intersemiosic translation (between two semiotic entities from two different sign systems, whether one of them is verbal or not). The absence of a fourth type, intrasemiosic translation (that is, internal to one and the same nonverbal sign system), is justified by the lack of a metalinguistic capacity in nonverbal sign systems. (SP)
See also WHORF.
Merrell, F. (1999–2000) ‘Neither matrix nor redux, but reflux: Translation from within semiosis’, Athanor, X(2): 83–101.
A statement or body of knowledge that accords with or conforms to the facts. Although truth is often loosely ascribed to the facts themselves, or what is the case, it really pertains to representations of a certain kind: propositions. Propositions are usually expressed in sentences, which in Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotic are dicent symbols, but Peirce allows that a painted portrait with the subject’s name written at the bottom is a proposition, in effect representing that so-and-so looks like this. We can also think of an article or even an entire book as ‘a proposition’ in an extended sense, and thus as ‘a truth’ if the world is satisfactorily represented. In a way, all propositions represent the world, or some part of it – their object – to be ‘like this’, namely as described in the predicate. So a truth is a proposition that represents its object, however complex and whether real or fictional, in the right way, namely as it really is. Thus we can say that truths accord with reality. In Peirce’s view, a proposition is true if it represents its object in the way inquiry would settle on if carried on long enough. We can say that truths correspond to the facts, but for a Peircean pragmatist such correspondence means only that the set of experiential expectations associated with a truth, if they have grown out of an indefinitely long inquiry into the facts of the matter, will be met. It must be remembered that propositions are signs and that significance always depends on the interrelations of signs with their objects and interpreters. There can be no truth that is not of something for someone.
According to Peirce, truth as that which conforms to the facts is not the highest kind of truth; a higher kind is conformed to by the facts. Such truths would be laws of nature. (NH)