SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

io8 I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes
In this passage, Wagner skips between talking about the semiotic character of
language ("the semantic mode," clearly convention-P) and about a particular cultural
interpretation of typical or habitual genre rules (clearly convention-N) "believed
to be innate or immanent in man"—which they most obviously are not in
the least.
The critical point to observe in this relative distinction is that it is based on
a cultural "interpretive distinction" (Wagner 1981:51), that is, an indigenous
theory of semiosis employed in contexts of social action. Both Wagner and Weiner
consider the possibility that, in some societies, the taken-for-grantedness of
conventions-N results in their being regarded as not produced by individual intention
or cultural artifice (i.e., as wor convention-P) but rather as "innate,"
"given," or "self-evident" in the cosmos, the environment, or human nature
(Wagner 1977b). The rhetorical thrust of this argument seems to be to relativize
the classical opposition between thesei and physei, that is, between phenomena
in the realm of human responsibility or cultural artifice and phenomena that are
viewed as products of the natural order. For example, while from the neutral
stance of comparative cultural semiotics a codified legal system can be assumed
to be the historical product of cultural intention, for people subjected to it this
same legal system, especially if its totalizing moral authority is acutely felt, is
likely to be interpreted as a force of nature, a product of divine will, or a deduction
from principles of human nature. This, in turn, opens up the possibility that
there could be a systematic inversion in the "characteristic mode of symbolic construction"
(Wagner 1978:29) between tribal societies like the Daribi and the Foi
of New Guinea and Western industrialized societies:
The core of any and every set of cultural conventions is a simple distinction as
to what kind of contexts, the nonconventionalized ones or those of convention
itself, are to be deliberately articulated in the course of human action, and what
kind of contexts are to be counterinvented as "motivation" under the conventional
mask of "the given" or "the innate." Of course, for any given set of
conventions, be it that of a tribe, community, "culture," or social class, there
are only two possibilities: a people who deliberately differentiate as the form
of their action will invariably counterinvent a motivating collectivity as "innate,"
and a people who deliberately collectivize will counterinvent a motivating
differentiation in this way. As contrasting modes of thought, perception,
and action, there is all the difference in the world between these two. (Wagner
1981:51)
In New Guinea, tropic symbolizations are understood to belong to the realm of
human artifice and responsibility, while conventional-N regularities of society
("rules, laws, traditions") are seen as part of the "innate" flow of the order of
nature (Wagner 1978:27). This point is needlessly blurred when Weiner asserts
that, for the Foi, "differentiation is convention" (1988:10); what he means, I
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guess, is that Foi innovative, tropic symbolizations are acknowledged to be humanly
produced, whereas norms of collective conduct appear to be part of the
natural order of things, that is, as being a set of "innate conventional distinctions"
(1988:139).
In the West, in contrast, forms of collectivizing symbolization are considered
the product of cultural construction opposed to the innate, given tendencies of
individual personalities, and differentiating symbolization is relegated to the
world of aesthetic ("artists, writers, musicians"), subcultural ("black Americans"),
and fictional countercultures ("Hollywood scriptwriters") (Weiner
1988:10):
In such a [Western] milieu, rules are the focus of conscious human articulation,
since they are designed to regulate and systematize an inherently chaotic and
differentiated cosmos. Our view of social artifice basically derives from such
early social philosophers as Locke: society is the systematic application of constraints
upon the inherent willfulness of the self-contained individual. The
meaning of all social and cultural forms—including myth—is thus above all
else referrable to their function in maintaining societal order. Convention in
this worldview thus emerges as a result of progressive acts of collectivizing
symbolization, focusing on the artifically imposed similarities among elements
and statuses to arrive at the occupational, educational, and geographical specializations
(to name a few) that comprise our social categories and the system
of laws, written and unwritten, that govern their relationship to each other. In
such a system, the differences that are also a part of the metaphor of social
identity are seen as innate or inherent; and indeed, the morality of convention
lies in the fact that it is seen to accommodate and control such difference. (Weiner
1988:7-8)
This typological contrast implies a corresponding difference in cultural theories
of the self, that is, the "point to which conception, action, and response are
attributed" (Wagner 19773:147). If in the West the self, whether as "ego" or
"personality," is considered to be entirely personal, for tribal peoples the self is
the product of social mediations involving other people and objects of exchange.
Conversely, social conventions such as language and morality are differentially
evaluated. In tribal societies they are thought to be "discovered" within the person,
who is believed to be a "homuncular simulacrum of a cultural 'humanity' "
(Wagner 19773:147), whereas in the West the individual's t3sk is to become socialized
into conventional norms existing outside the person.
My own reaction to this global typology of cultures is that it should not be
taken too seriously, since the characterization of Western cultures at least seems
grossly mistaken and since the semiotic process of the "naturalization" convention
can be identified in both tribal and industrialized societies (Silverstein
1987b: 5; see Chapter 8). Certainly many scholars have documented for Western