SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
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xvi I Introduction<br />
Introduction I xvii<br />
chiefly rhetoric which the audience brings to the event serve to defuse the<br />
speech's political effectiveness. Contextualized performance, as this example<br />
shows, entails risks, for the richness of metapragmatic signals in the speech becomes<br />
a liability in a culture caught between a traditional norm of chiefly "whispering"<br />
and a modern trend toward the explicit display of oratorical prowess.<br />
The chapters in Part III focus on the question: to what degree can complex<br />
semiotic processes be used as the basis for cross-cultural typologizing? In other<br />
words, are there certain semiotic processes that distinguish kinds of social orders,<br />
in much the same way that some social researchers use the notion of modes of<br />
production to typologize the world's cultures (Jameson 1982:173)? Chapter 5<br />
(Tropical Semiotics) investigates the process of metaphorization, that is, the construction<br />
of innovative tropes grounded in but creatively transforming literal or<br />
normative meanings. A reanalysis of tropes found in the myths and exchanges of<br />
the Foi people in Papua New Guinea provides the setting to evaluate one particular<br />
theoretical model, the theory of "symbolic obviation" developed by Roy<br />
Wagner and applied to the Foi by James Weiner. Whereas Wagner and Weiner<br />
insist that the cultures of New Guinea differ systematically from Western culture<br />
in the way that literal and tropic meanings are related, I challenge this global<br />
typologization with the claim that these processes can be found on both sides of<br />
the "great divide." This generally negative conclusion about the explanatory<br />
power of semiotic typology is supported in Chapter 6 (The Semiotic Regimentation<br />
of Social Life) by the three case studies of semiotic "regimentation," that<br />
is, the way one level of semiotic structure organizes, controls, or defines another<br />
level. I argue here that three kinds of regimentation—textual, institutional, and<br />
ideological—do not correspond to types of societies but rather are cross-culturally<br />
widespread in phenomena as varied as ritual, tourism, and advertising.<br />
chosen for study, comparative interpretation and naturalization of convention,<br />
reveal an unavoidable tension between the actor's point of view and the analyst's<br />
point of view. But since both decontextualization and naturalization are familiar<br />
cultural phenomena, the conclusion can be drawn that theoretical discourse is<br />
itself a cultural phenomenon subject to textual forms, pragmatic rules, and complex<br />
semiotic processes. This conclusion should not, however, be taken as a rejection<br />
of the possibility of comparative research but as a reminder that scholarly<br />
discourse can never escape its social groundedness.<br />
Like a good Peircean diagrammatic sign, the organization of this volume is<br />
intended to represent its overall semiotic argument, beginning with the explication<br />
of its analytical foundations, followed by the study of the tension between<br />
text and context, then moving to the issue of comparative typology of complex<br />
semiotic processes, and concluding with the pragmatics of theoretical discourse.<br />
I have intentionally avoided programmatic discussion of the "semiotics of culture,"<br />
not only because such position papers abound (Z. Bauman 1968; Boon<br />
1982; Eco 1975; Herzfeld 1986; Mertz 1985; Posner 1988, 1989; Schwimmer<br />
1977; Singer 1984; Winner 1988) but also because I believe that better theorizing<br />
must await additional semiotically informed ethnographic research. To the<br />
degree that these essays are effective in persuading others of the virtues of practicing<br />
a semiotic approach to cultural analysis, the volume will become, for its<br />
readers, an enacted indexical icon.<br />
Finally, Part IV goes one step farther to examine the relationship between<br />
cultural processes and the theoretical discourse about them. The paradoxical<br />
claim advanced in these two concluding chapters is that theoretical discourse,<br />
whether in the comparative philosophies of religion discussed in Chapter 7<br />
(Comparison, Pragmatics, and Interpretation) or in the social theories analyzed<br />
in Chapter 8 (Naturalization of Convention), shares many of the same semiotic<br />
structures and constraints as the cultural data under study. These chapters, following<br />
both Peirce's insight into the metasemiotic character of all semiosis and<br />
Silverstein's more detailed explication of the metapragmatic function, show that<br />
members of a society are constantly interpreting their social interaction and his-<br />
; torical experience by constructing interpretive models or accounts that represent,<br />
in a limited way, the practices and conventions of the culture. Of course, philosophers<br />
and social theorists are extreme cases, since their work attempts to<br />
decontextualize the very grounds of their discourse—the philosophers by asserting<br />
the absoluteness of their truth claims and the social theorists by naturalizing<br />
the source of cultural conventions in extra-semiotic realms. The two examples