SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

I04 I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes
tematicity of the linguistic system. Not only is reference projected upon the world
from systems of semiotic value, but that world takes on the orderliness generated
from its semiotic model; in Wagner's terminology, when "words, pictures, diagrams,
models" combine together they present a "consistent, collective ordering
of things" (1977^392).
Collectivizing and Differentiating Symbolization
At the tropic level, semiotic processes parallel to the paradigmatic and syntagmatic
chains emerge when metaphorical signs are studied as cultural complexes.
Whereas the systematicity of signifying systems becomes rigidified to the
degree that their component signs are purely conventional, the flow of metaphors
in culture guarantees the dynamism of their innovations. This is because tropes
have the power to bring into articulation in certain contexts terms which have
not been previously linked (Fernandez 1986:37) and because the resulting metaphoric
equivalences constitute new, "nonconventional" layers of cultural meaning
(Wagner 1972:6, 1981:43). Tropes, as Schwimmer (1983:124) points out in
a more general discussion of images and metaphors in New Guinea, rely on the
heritage of conventional symbols and meanings "but creative use of this set involves
drawing on it in unexpected contexts and in response to inner prompting."
An innovative trope manifests a fragmenting or "differentiating" symbolization
in that, by refusing to adhere to the established order of cultural
meanings, it "operates upon other signifiers to draw them into a new relation"
(Wagner 1972:6):
Since tropic usage sets one symbol (or denominate entity) into some relatively
nonconventional relation to another such symbol (or entity), replacing the
"nonarbitrariness" of conventional usage with some more specific motivation,
it is obvious that a notion of simple (literal) reference no longer applies. The
nonconventional relation introduces a new symbolization simultaneously with
a "new" referent, and the symbolization and its referent are identical. We
might say that a metaphor or other tropic usage assimilates symbol and referent
into one expression, that a metaphor is a symbol that stands for itself—it is
self-contained. Thus the symbolic effect of a tropic usage opposes or counteracts
that of conventional usage in two ways: it assimilates that which it "symbolizes"
within a distinct, unitary expression (collapsing the distinction
between symbol and symbolized), and it differentiates that expression from
other expressions (rather than articulating it with them). (Wagner 1978:25)
The opposition between fixed, ordered, and presupposed semiotic structures
and innovative, open-ended, and creative semiotic structures which, at first, characterizes
the distinction between the formal semantics of language and the play
of tropic symbols can also be seen in the operation of tropes themselves. That is,
metaphors generated in one context that are then repeated across contexts be-
Tropical Semiotics I J05
come regularized and thus "decay" (Wagner 1972:6) into what appears to be a
"conventionalized" lexical formality. (I place this word within quotation marks
to call attention to its figurative usage in this context, a problem that will be
considered below.) These automatized, habitual symbolic expressions, what Wagner
calls "collectivizing symbolization," in turn, tend to congeal into generalized
interlocking patterns such as social ideologies (Wagner 1972:170), technical
rules, mathematic equations, rationalized juridical interpretations (Bourdieu
1987), and norms of personal demeanor (Wagner 1978:22, 1981:42). Collectivizing
symbolization, being "obsessed with the artifice of order" and attempting
to transparently mirror the natural world through some format of representational
rigor, necessarily renders the presence of serious cultural polysemy as mere
"connotation" (Wagner 1972:23).
Collectivizing and differentiating modes of symbolization can be contrasted,
further, by the ways signs refer to contextual phenomena: while the former presuppose
a separation between symbol and referent, the latter work to erase this
distinction in favor of metaphorical self-referentiality by identifying disparate experiences
as similar or homologous. At the collectivizing pole, "symbols themselves
are thus contrasted with their referents, they form an ideal "set" or "family"
among themselves, one that must necessarily separate and distinguish itself
from the phenomenal world" (Wagner 1972:22). At the differentiating pole, "the
tension and contrast between symbol and symbolized collapse, and we may speak
of such a construction as a "symbol" that stands for itself. The unique experiences,
people, objects, and places of everyday life all correspond, in those features
that render them distinct, to this mode of symbolization—as "'symbols,' they
stand for themselves" (Wagner 1981:43). And, again parallel to the referential
projection precipitated by the linguistic system, these centered, organized, or integrated
patterns promote the objectification or reification of the objects they
denote.
Unfortunately, in explicating Wagner's semiotic model Weiner (1988:6) introduces
a degree of confusion by modifying the definition of the central concepts:
The crucial characteristic of a trope is that it is a relationship between two
elements that are simultaneously similar and dissimilar. The symbolic operation
that focuses on the similarity between elements in a tropic ("trope-ic") equation
can be termed collectivizing symbolization, in Wagner's scheme, while the
converse operation that takes the differences as the focus of intent can be labeled
as differentiating symbolization.
Part of the difficulty, I think, is that Weiner is relying on a different set of connotations
of the terms "collective" and "differentiating"; by "collective" he
wants to suggest the moral force of the Durkheimian social collectivity, as in his
discussion of "collectively defined status" (Weiner 1988:10)—whereas Wagner's