SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

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5 Tropical Semiotics Levels of Semiosis THE FIELD OF cultural semiotics, in its many manifestations, has increasingly addressed the methodological issue of how to analyze formally complex semiotic constructions, such as mythic narratives, ritual processes, and aesthetic objects, without reverting to the sterility of structuralism. Just because these kinds of cultural products appear to have a high degree of "textuality" is no reason to assume that texts can be analyzed without reference to the connection between the shape of their discursive forms and the conditions of their contextual enactment. For example, it is apparent from the cross-cultural study of ritual that there is often a relationship between the discourse—internal textuality of formulaic language (considered in terms of its formal complexity, internal segmentation, and prescriptive fixity) and the "performative" power released in its contextually anchored realizations. It is as a contribution to this area of semiotic research, what Silverstein (1976, 1981b, 1993) has labeled "metapragmatics," that the theory of "symbolic obviation" can be evaluated. Symbolic obviation is a semiotic concept developed by Roy Wagner in several books, including Habu: The Innovation of Meaning in Daribi Religion (1972), Lethal Speech: Daribi Myth as Symbolic Obviation (1978), The Invention of Culture (1981), Asiwinarong: Ethos, Image, and Social Power among the Usen Barok of New Ireland (1986), and Symbols That Stand for Themselves (1986). More recently, it has been given an important empirical application by James F. Weiner in The Heart of the Pearl Shell: The Mythological Dimension of Foi Sociality (1988), a superb ethnographic study of a Papua New Guinea people. The purpose of this chapter is to explicate the method of symbolic obviation, to point out a number of problems with its development in the writings of Wagner and Weiner, and to suggest a broader set of semiotic issues that are engaged by these studies. Wagner and Weiner share the basic premise that semiotic phenomena should be divided into a least two hierarchical levels. The first level of meaningfulness (what they frequently call "semantic," "literal," or "structural") involves the distinction between one element functioning as a sign or "signifier" and a second element functioning as a referent, object, or "signified." At this first level, these functionally differentiated elements can be related (and can be interpreted as re- 101
ioi I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes Tropical Semiotics I 103 Wagner notes that literal symbolization tends to involve a maximal degree of separation between semiotic representation and its context of occurrence (that is, a tendency toward decontextualization), while figurative symbolization "assimilates" to the context (1977^391). It is helpful to compare the operation of single, isolated signs and multiple, interlocking signs at both the semantic and the tropic levels. It was Saussure's (1959:127—34) great discovery that, at the first level, signs relatively unconstrained by iconic or indexical motivation (what he labels "signs" and what Peirce labels "symbols") are free to generate complex linkages along two dimensions, the co-occurence of signs in the same construction (the "syntagmatic" chain) and the association of signs which can replace each other in a given environment (the "paradigmatic" chain). Individual phonic signs without motivation are created entirely by the "reciprocal delimitation" of their differential yet absolutely correlative planes; a linguistic "unit" is a conventional fusion of phonic and conceptual differences by the relational operation of language. But linguistic signs, viewed as the inextricable bond of signifier and signified, belong to higherorder regularities also determined by conventional rules of "syntagmatic solidarities" (word formation, morphological complexity, concatenation) and paradigmatic "opposition" (the reciprocal "summoning up" of concepts). Saussure went so far—too far, no doubt—as to argue that, in the realm of linguistic signs at least, signs viewed from the perspective of their position in syntagmatic and paradigmatic chains generate semiotic "value" which entirely replaces the isolated signification of individual signs—signification itself (denotational "naming," for example [Saussure 1954:68—69]) becoming an illusion perpetrated by the syslated) in several ways on the basis of the motivating ground or reason for the relationship. According to Peirce's well-known trichotomy, signs at this level can be iconic, that is, grounded in formal resemblance; indexical, that is, grounded in spatiotemporal contiguity; and symbolic, that is, grounded in arbitrary, conventional agreement (see Chapter i). Symbols, though created only by the imputed ground between sign and object, are subject to speakers' "assumption of invariant referential value" (Wagner 1983:3) across contexts. The second level of meaningfulness, labeled tropic or metaphorical by Wagner, consists of the relationships among complete signs (regardless of the kind of internal motivation) which are contextually innovative changes introduced upon semantic units. As Ricoeur (1974^99) explains: But the semantics of the word demonstrates very clearly that words have actual meanings only in a sentence and that lexical entities—words in the dictionary—have only potential meanings and for the sake of their potential uses in sentences. As concerns the metaphor itself, semantics demonstrates with the same strength that the metaphorical meaning of a word is nothing which may be found in a dictionary (in that sense we may continue to oppose the metaphorical sense to the literal sense, if we call literal sense whatever sense may occur among the partial meanings enumerated in the dictionary, and not a socalled original, or fundamental, or primitive, or proper meaning). If the metaphorical sense is more than the actualization of one of the potential meanings of a polysémie word (and all our words in common discourse are polysémie), it is necessary that this metaphorical use is only contextual; by that I mean a sense which emerges as the result of a certain contextual action. We are led in that way to oppose contextual changes of meaning to lexical changes, which concern the diachronistic aspect of language as code, system, or langue. Metaphor is such a contextual change of meaning. In contrast to semantic units at the first level, tropic symbolizations engage a "moral content," that is, relate a particular metaphor to the broader "values and precepts of society" (Weiner 1988:124). A clear example of semiosis at the first level would be the linguistic form kara'o signifying the "oil of the Campnosperma brevipetiolata tree" (Weiner 1988:63); semiosis at the second level would be the Foi cultural association of this kara'o oil with "male wealth" and the exchange of this symbolically rich material object for wives in affinal exchange rituals. The meaning of the exchange using this oil cannot be understood if all we know is the "literal" signification of the word kara'o. The full meaning involves ramifying cultural categorizations (wealth vs. nonwealth, male vs. female, oil wealth vs. pearl shell wealth) and metaphorical associations (the interior cavity of the kara'o tree and a woman's uterus [Weiner 1988:229]). No amount of knowledge about the Foi linguistic system at the first semiotic level would enable the analyst to grasp the intention of a young Foi man who, seeking a marriageable young woman, re- quests, "Do you know a white cockatoo feather you could give me?" (Weiner 1988:126). An important contrast, then, between the complementary elements brought together in semantic signification and the paired terms of a metaphor is that, in the latter, the terms are simultaneously different and similar: "women are marsupials" (Weiner 1988:124) and yet no man would marry a marsupial, except in myth. This is called the "reflexive" quality of metaphors, since these symbolic figures tend to merge the "vehicle" or signifying term and the "tenor" or signified term within a relatively self-contained expression, what Wagner terms "symbols that stand for themselves" (Wagner i986b:6; Weiner 1988:124). The interchange between signification and metaphorization, wherein each draws upon the other, produces a situation in which meaning is a function of change as well as of formal signification and in which the creative aspect of change is metaphoric innovation. Any meaning that impinges upon, or "opposes," a central cultural tenet or proposition must take the form of an innovation upon it, a metaphoric expression involving the tenet itself, and in fact metaphorizing it. (Wagner 1972:168)
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A D V A N C E S IN S E M I O T I C
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Contents Acknowledgments Introducti
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x I Acknowledgments Acknowledgments
Page 7 and 8: xiv I Introduction Introduction I x
Page 9 and 10: PART I Foundations of Peircean Semi
Page 11 and 12: 4 I Foundations ofPeircean Semiotic
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