SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

io6 I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes Tropical Semiotics I 107
usage plays on the connotation of collation or collection of symbols—and by
"differentiating" he wants to imply a series of contrasts or complementaries in
social role relations, that is, "social differentiation" (Weiner 1988:9)—whereas
Wagner's usage relies more on the sense of "making different" or fragmenting
some standarized semantic relations. Wagner himself sometimes speaks of collectivizing
symbols as deriving from the "collectivity" (19863:175) and even reverses
the definitions at several points, such 3S in his discussion of "collectivizing
acts .. . that recharge the symbols of their ordinary differentiating existence"
(1981:118). Despite this definitional confusion, the key point is clear: the opposition
between convention and innovation parallels the distinction between collectivizing
symbolization and differentiating symbolization; indeed, innovation is
the "sign" of differentiation (Wagner 1981:43; Weiner 1988:143).
Convention and Innateness
At this point it becomes essential to begin disambiguating several contradictory
senses of the term "convention" that appear in the Wagner and Weiner
texts. Two usages have already been noted. In the strict Peircean sense, "conventional"
labels a semiotic ground linking sign and object such that the sign would
not stand for the object it does without some further sign, its "interprétant,"
representing it to be so related. Thus, a conventional sign (a Peircean "symbol")
is maximally unmotivated, since it requires neither kind of "natural" linkage,
namely, iconicity or indexicality. The important point to keep in mind about Peircean
conventional signs is that they are inherently semiotic, since apart from the
triadic process of semiosis the sign and the object would not even exist as functionally
related entities (see Chapter 1). I will represent this sense of convention
as convention-P (for Peirce). Clearly, conventions-P can belong to the first level
of semiosis, for example, many linguistic signs. As Wagner (1986b:8) notes:
The conventions—rules, syntax, lexicon—of language stand in a reciprocal
relation to that which can be, and is, said in the language. As we speak by
working transformations upon those conventions, figuring our meanings
through them, so the set of conventions can be seen as the metaphor of all that
could be said in this way.
Tropes such as metaphors and other figurative expressions are not, strictly speaking,
conventional-P because, in establishing the mutual transformation of vehicle
and tenor, their motivation lies in rich layers of cultural association, "analogic
construction" (Wagner 1986^30), and "recursive implication" (Wagner
i986b:i26) rather than in grammatical regularities. But note that even the most
highly innovative metaphor relies for its striking effect on conventional-P signs,
namely, the linguistic components (Wagner 1978:25).
The second sense of convention that we have encountered refers to the habitual,
typical, taken-for-granted, literal, or normative quality of cultural symbolization—what
I will call convention-N (for normative). Conventions-N include
not only nonfigurative semantic meaning but also, and more importantly, the
"dead" or "standard" (Weiner 1986:125) tropes whose innovative fragmentation
has given way to tired or "counterinnovative" (Wagner 1981:44) repetition.
1 Wagner is referring to convention-N when he describes the dialectical relation
between conventional and differentiating symbolism (1981:44). And it is
in this sense that he speaks of "linguistic conventions of Daribi narrative form"
(Wagner 1978:38) or "the conventional opening of a Daribi story" (Wagner
1978:45), and when Weiner talks about "conventional social roles" (1988:130)
or of women and marsupials as "two conventionally contrasted elements"
(1988:124). And it is in this sense of convention-N that Wagner can say that,
just as tropic usages metaphorize literal meanings (conventions-P), "so conventional[-N]
nonarbitrariness often threatens to displace the tropic variety"
(1978:25). The seemingly contradictory formulation of the seemingly contradictory
phrase "conventional nonarbitrariness" (recall that arbitrariness is a characteristic
of conventions-P) refers to the standardization or habituation of social
rules. As it turns out, both tropes and conventions-N are "motivated," although
in different ways: tropes are motivated because, as signs at the second level of
semiosis, they creatively assert fresh associations; conventions-N are motivated
because they code the self-evident force of cultural traditions.
Since both Wagner and Weiner (1988:138—39) regularly conflate convention-P
and convention-N, it is often difficult to figure out—other than figuratively—what
a given sentence means. In particular, their arguments frequently
slip between the hierarchical opposition of semantic and metaphorical signs (the
former being conventional-P) and the contextual opposition between standardized
cultural images (convention-N) and innovative, differentiating tropes, as, for
example, when Weiner (1988:12) writes: "Meaning, as I argue, results when the
elements of conventional [-P] syntagmatic orders are inserted into nonconventional
[-N] contexts. The resulting figurative or metaphorical expressions define
at once both the particularizing nature of metaphor and its dependence upon
conventional[-P] semantic or syntagmatic references for its innovative impact."
Certain passages in Wagner (1978:54) seem actually calculated to obscure the
distinction between convention-P and convention-N:
Unlike our [Western] literature, [Daribi] myth belongs to an ideological regime
in which the conventional aspect of symbolization (the semantic mode) is believed
to be innate or immanent in man. This means that the conventions that
pertain to the narrative medium are perceived as "given," a kind of implicit
moral appropriateness appearing spontaneously within an activity whose appropriateness
is itself self-evident.