Page 35 - Critical and Cultural Theory

LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION
Each piece only acquires meaning in relation to all the other pieces
and their moves, just as each sign only acquires meaning in
relation to all the other signs in a language. This is shown by the
operations through which sentences are constructed: selection and
combination. In forming sentences, we select a certain number of
words from the whole vocabulary potentially available in a
language and then combine them into a meaningful sequence.
Selection and combination constitute the two axes of language.
Selection is associated with the paradigmatic axis ('paradigm'
refers to the selection of words) and combination with the syntag-
matic axis ('syntagm' refers to the combination of words). The
actual words that are present in a sentence always refer, implicitly,
to all the absent words that could have been used instead. They
are only meaningful in virtue of their relationship with the broad
system of language from which they have been picked.
Beside Saussure, the other founding father of modern semiotics
is Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Peirce identifies three types
of signs: the icon, a sign based on a resemblance between signifier
and signified (such as a portrait); the index, a sign in which signif-
ier and signified are causally related (e.g. smoke means fire); the
sign proper, the sign in which (as argued by Saussure) the relation-
ship between signifier and signified is utterly arbitrary. According
to Peirce, a sign is only capable of conveying a meaning by virtue
of an interpreter who is in a position to recognize it as a sign and
to connect it to some relevant aspect of the world. At the same
time, anything can be taken as a sign as long as there is an inter-
preter inclined to perceive it as such. The interpreter her/himself is
a sign. S/he is able to interpret signs insofar as s/he has been
equipped by a culture with the means of doing so - namely codes
and conventions decreeing what may be considered meaningful.
These define the interpreter no less than they enable her/him to
define what s/he perceives.
In conceiving of language as a system, semiotics has encouraged
the emergence of critical approaches that view individual texts as
manifestations of a broader narrative system. Saussure's aversion
to the historical study of language has sustained forms of criticism
that steer away from the historical assessment of texts. At the
same time, Saussure's emphasis on the arbitrary character of the
sign and his rejection of the notion of language as a reflection of
reality have contributed to a radical questioning of the ethos of

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