SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

xiv I Introduction
Introduction I xv
positions (speech and system, signification and value, synchrony and diachrony,
paradigmatic and syntagmatic) suggests the negative divisiveness of "difference,"
while Peirce's repeated use of trichotomous concepts (sign, object, and interprétant)
points toward the positive richness of "mediation." Thus, Saussure has come
to represent the status quo, immaterial abstraction, totalizing rules, and false
equality, while Peirce stands as the champion of self-critical reflexivity, worldly
engagement, and dialogic alterity (Boon 1990:65; Daniel 1989:96; Rochberg-
Halton 1985:41z).
From the fact that I open this book with an extended discussion of Peirce,
however, it should not be concluded that I am an advocate of a "strong" Peircean
theory of cultural semiotics. In fact, as the critical comments about "downshifting"
and "transparency" in the opening two chapters should make clear, I think
that Peirce's own philosophical approach is not well equipped to study the diversity
of cultural sign systems, since it is primarily geared toward the understanding
of scientific rationality and since its model of progressive consensus bears little
resemblance to the cultural phenomena anthropologists encounter in the field,
where "truth" is the premise rather than the conclusion of discourse. Rather, my
attention to Peirce here is justified because his semiotic writings clarify a series
of analytical distinctions in sign operation and structure that can be used as a
starting point for cultural analysis. But just as the calculus, the indispensable
mathematical tool for modern scientific research, makes no claims in itself about
the laws which govern the physical universe, so Peirce's semiotic trichotomies
enable the student of cultural codes to "calculate" many critical dimensions of
"signs in society" only when applied to actual cultural phenomena. Moreover, I
am not convinced of the necessity of bringing to our cultural analysis the entire
panoply of Peirce's semiotic distinctions, especially the bewildering complexity
of sign typology revealed in the late manuscripts. Trichotomous distinctions
among interprétants, for example, may serve some logical or philosophical purpose,
but I do not think that cultural analysis is yet prepared to fruitfully utilize
them. I am, one could say, a "minimal Peircean."
Readers are, of course, welcome to enter into this book wherever their interests
point them, but those who do follow the order of chapters will, I hope, discover
that the overall organization constitutes a diagram of its semiotic
argument: starting with analytical fundamentals in Part I, moving to ethnographic
explications of text and context in Part II, then to the possibility of comparative
typology of complex semiotic processes in Part III, and concluding with
the broader issues of the pragmatics of social theory in Part IV.
Part I contains two complementary studies of Peirce's semiotic theory: Chapter
I (Peirce Divested for Nonintimates) is designed to introduce readers to
Peirce's fundamental concepts by showing how they form a coherent, interlocking
pattern, while Chapter z (Peirce's Concept of Semiotic Mediation) traces the
historical trajectory of the development of Peirce's ideas, especially his concept
of "mediation." These two chapters suggest five specific areas where Peirce provides
helpful analytical vocabulary and methodological orientations. First,
Peirce's semiotic theory does not privilege spoken language as the "be all and
end all" of sign phenomena, since it provides a generalized model in which linguistic
and nonlinguistic signs can be included. This contrasts sharply with the
fetishism of language which characterizes much semiotic and structuralist thinking
in the Sausurrean vein (Markus 1984:113). Second, Peirce's insistence on the
full reality of generals or Thirds provides the ethnographer with a means of
avoiding a naive empiricism or physicalism that systematically reduces cultural
phenomena to recordable instances of social action. Third, Peirce rejected all
forms of Cartesian introspection and argued that thinking, whether carried out
within the mind or through the manipulation of artificial signs, requires some
level of expressive form to convey information about the object. This notion of
the "necessity of expression" moves anthropological theorizing about culture beyond
attention to disembodied meanings to the exploration of the ways expressive
vehicles constitute a collective "sensibility" (Geertz 1983). Fourth, his
recognition that the indexical dimension of semiosis does not necessarily imply
that contextually anchored signs are without type-level correlates opens the way
for ethnographers to attempt cultural description of the pragmatics of social life.
And fifth, Peirce's pathbreaking discovery of the "third trichotomy" (rheme, dicent,
argument), involving how signs stipulate the way they are to be interpreted,
suggests rich avenues for research into the complex semiotic processes of naturalization,
conventionalization, metaphorization, and regimentation, where sign
phenomena are inflected with power relations.
The ethnographic studies of Belau in Part II are inspired by the twin Peircean
concerns for the structural patterning or "textuality" of signs and the temporal
(both diachronic and processual) nature of semiosis. Chapter 3 (Transactional
Symbolism in Belauan Mortuary Rites) is an analysis of the historical changes in
the indexical and symbolic values of exchange valuables at funerals. It shows that
various kinds of objects acquire specific meanings because of the kind of social
"paths" followed by the people manipulating them and because of the presupposed
modality of exchange relationship these objects realize, whether balanced
reciprocity, asymmetrical payments, or transgenerational inheritance. A
diachronic perspective, tracing the coding of exchange valuables from the earliest
nineteenth-century references to the ethnographic present, reveals that the modern
substitution of cash for certain traditional exchange objects makes it difficult
for Belauans to conceptualize funerals as a consanguineal "family affair." Chapter
4 (The Political Function of Reported Speech) analyzes an instance of political
oratory which tries to generate performative effectiveness by bringing into the
context of the speech event highly valued rhetorical forms (such as proverbs) and
by organizing them to make ongoing speech an icon or diagram of its political
purpose. In this particular case, though, certain cultural assumptions about