Dear Brahim, 

you seem to have a pretty wide notion of structuralism. Otherwise you would think of Peirce as the founder of an influential non-structuralist tradition. However, I can imagine some reasons why you do not. But the symbol theory of Ernst Cassirer's definitely is as far from structuralist thinking as you can get. How he manages to depart from a non-difference-theoretical position without arriving at a metaphysical ontology can not be explained in a few sentences. I think the most powerful concept in his work regarding semiotic analysis would be his "symbolic pregnancy".

With kind regards, 

Franz

Dear Franz,

Thank you for this elegant feedback. I just want to point out a simple fact that I consider fundamental.. Structuralism is by nature anti-metaphysical. After the literal destruction of the notion of Knowledge or absolute truth  that may reside in the world of forms ( see Plato) or in the world of the divine ( see most christian theologians) knowledge becomes from within with enlightenment ( see the cogito of Descartes, the concept of sensibility in Kant). With Freud ,the self or the conscious ego are questioned and the unconscious becomes more prominent. Theses people (Kant, Freud, Hegel Nietzsche ..) may be rightfully considered proto-structuralists. With De Saussure, the truth is no longer in the individual or in the hands of an omniscient god , it is rather in the hands of a language in which we are literally thrown into as Heidegger once said meaning the Da Zein. Actually, though considered post-structuralist, I find Foucault's suggestion that the end of men and the rise of the discourse will be the next step. In other words, though he did not say it directly, Foucault  indirectly acknowledged that structuralism has not yet achieved its potential completion.

It goes without saying that structuralism has its own limitations ( see Derrida and Roland Barthes for example) but one always has to remember that without the precepts of structuralism ( the studying of the hidden system that governs the reality of a phenomenon) some critics of structuralism would not have been able to create any significant work( see Foucault and Barthes especially)

Hi Brahim,

you're spirited talk about several things at once, because you had requested for a semiotic or semiotic analysis. You have to define 3 lines of structuralism as you understand and conceive it and then you can see if it is possible to analyze symbols or an image without leaning or using the concept of structuralism.

can you write an essay without paying attention to Chomsky's SP and SS ?

the concepts are different but a deep analysis of the perception of each you found the "structuralimse" because they start from De Saussure.

Regards

Samira

cher samira,

Peut etre que vous vous exprimez mieux en francais car je trouve que votre  anglais est un peu timide. je serais tres ravi do savoir ton opinion on langue francaise ,arabe, espagnole ,italienne ...

Merci pour votre reponse

The question Your raising is not an easy one. I always use the so-called 'basic semiotic" notions, or the ones that we name semiotics proper. Frequently, my papers are being refused.

Now, i shall attempt to answer: basing semiotics upon structuralism which has been grounded initially on such notions as Saussure and his peers have done, marked one of the revolutions of the science of signs. Unfortunately, many disagree with me that it is still a science of signs. But, that is my point of view.

The real discrepancy to me, is the semiology/semiotics opposition. The second one is a science of meaning cognitively deduced ( the paraphrasing is mine). In conclusion the second one has to interpret.

I have written my own 'Semiotics of precision and precision", which I don't know whether they shall publish or not, where I have attempted to re-group semiotic theories. Let us see.

My answer is yes: if we try to interpret, sometimes the un-interpretable. This is the case when the signification process diverges from actual communication processes. Signs, are rarely used here.

However, no: if one treats exact processes, such as I have named  as a semiotics of precision. It should regard the linguistic turn, pictorial turn and finally the semiotic turn. I don't like all these concepts. To me semiotics is not a cognitive science on meaning, it is instead a science of signs designed to produce meaning. The semantic results are what we produce, but they are finalized units, i.e. we don't re-work them.

Hope I have attempted to answer.

P.S. Your question should be a topic of a wider theoretical explication In a Seminar hopefully. Thanks.

Dear Bujar'

Thank you for this beautiful feedback. I totally agree with you when you say by the end of your response:

"To me semiotics is not a cognitive science on meaning, it is instead a science of signs designed to produce meaning. The semantic results are what we produce, but they are finalized units, i.e. we don't re-work them."

The units you mention are cardinal in any semiotic analysis-I do agree with you.

If Peirce could invent Semiotics without knowing of structuralism then surely like him we can do semiotics without relying on structuralism.  

If you see Chomsky and Silverstein as comparably dependent on structuralism I don't understand what you mean by structuralism. Chomsky to me is simply a structuralist who accepts all the Saussurean tenets, the langue/parole distinction (i-language, e-language) and the arbitrariness of the sign, etc.. I don't think Chomsky has ever really dissociated himself from Structuralism - he just differs from Saussure in considering the project of linguistic to understand not just the structure of language, but the structure of the mind. Silverstein on the other hand rejects all the Saussurean tenets and works from a non-structuralist Peircean semiotic framework, in which there are no such binary distinctions. It is true that he sometimes draws on concepts from prague school structural-functionalism, but he uses those concepts in a way that is distinct from Saussurean structuralism. So either you mean something else when you say structuralism than Saussurean structuralism or there is something else I don't understand in the assumptions of your question.

Another question, which I consider more interesting, is if it is possible to study language without some of the tenets of structuralism - language as a sign system has more structural properties than do non-linguistic signs, and it is difficult to study the structure of language (grammar) without some of the Saussurean concepts (the arbitrary sign-meaning relation, the idea of meaning through structural opposition, the abstract system vs. concrete application dichotomy etc.) I think a lot of attempts at building a non-structuralist grammar by using Peircean concepts fail because they simply rephrase Saussure in Peircean terms using the fact that Peirce's "conventional symbol" has most of the properties of Saussures arbitrary binary sign. This is a Morris'ean approach which I consider basically a misunderstanding of Peirce.

In my view an approach to language is non-structuralist when it:

- considers meaning to be largely contextual rather than dependent on denotation.

- considers language structure to be epiphenomenal to discourse.

- considers the process of interpretation to be integral to the way listeners/speakers use and create language.

Some approaches to grammar that do adhere to these precepts and largely does away with Saussurean approaches (except as occasional heuristic devices) are many radically functionalist grammars such as Croft's Radical Construction Grammar and Hopper's Emergent Grammar. They don't require stable sign relations, and use a completely context driven model for the emergence of language's structural properties.

So yes, definitely we can do semiotics and study meaning and signs without  using any of Saussure's axioms and concepts. We can even do linguistics without committing ourselves to Saussure's problematic concepts, although using them as heuristics makes many aspects of the study of language easier.

Dear Magnus,

Thank you for this interesting feedback and sorry for being late to respond.

First you said at the beginning of your answer the following: "If Peirce could invent Semiotics without knowing of structuralism then surely like him we can do semiotics without relying on structuralism."

My answer is very simple-one does not need to know about structuralism to be a structuralist. In a way Saussure said that one plus one equals two while Pierce expressed the same fact but in a more complicated way saying , for instance, that the square root of one squared plus the square root of one squared makes two. Does this mean they both do not use the same intrinsic tools-think about it.

You said in paragraph two the following: "

Another question, which I consider more interesting, is if it is possible to study language without some of the tenets of structuralism - language as a sign system has more structural properties than do non-linguistic signs,..'

let me remind of a simple truth: All humans actions are semiotic by nature and this explains the close relationship between semiotics and anthropology. Any human behavior is semiotic by nature and even the most meaningless actions have a semiotic meaning because the absence of meaning is meaning after all. Language is just a semiotic semiotic system of representation like all other systems of representation ( See Barthes ' 'Elements of Semiology''or example)

You said about Silverstein the following: " Silverstein on the other hand rejects all the Saussurean tenets and works from a non-structuralist Peircean semiotic framework, in which there are no such binary distinctions. It is true that he sometimes draws on concepts from prague school structural-functionalism, but he uses those concepts in a way that is distinct from Saussurean structuralism. So either you mean something else when you say structuralism than Saussurean structuralism or there is something else I don't understand in the assumptions of your question."

let me remind you again of two simple facts. First Silverstein was the student of jackobson. Second, see his notions of three types of indexicality and consider also his surgical dissection of the linguistic sign( 2003)then tell me if he is not struturalist.

Then you said later in your essay that  you consider that " meaning to be largely contextual rather than dependent on denotation."

This of course echoes Hymes Haliday and the great Ruquaya Hasan who is never mentioned each time Halliday is. They simply criticized the weakness of Saussure 's interpretation of structuralism. But in a way they were structuralists in their own way. Let me put it in this way-the moment we strive to find the underlying system of any phenomenon we become structuralists by definition. 

Lastly, I want to remind every reader that De Saussure is great because he was the first person who methodically applied the principles of structuralism . But his application is after all an interpretation and by no means should be considered as the sole interpreter of a long tradition of structuralism that in fact started with enlightenment

Tnank You Brahim.

The problem is refusing to publish my papers because I say that structuralism is a starting point which introduce semiotics into linguistics. Claiming that semiotics is a cognitive science of meaning, a definition, as I said to which I will never agree ( that is why they don't publish my contributions), does not mean  refusing all the shapes of signs and the sign itself as a  semiotic concept. My problem is only  equalizing it with semantics. Otherwise, there are  various kinds of conceptualizing meaning, as many scholars say.

For instance, recently i work hard with Greimas and Fontanille, on the issue of the applicability of the semiotics of passions. Does it mean that  they did not begin A as structuralist? Etc. However, it was a revolution in semiotics, exactly because of the introduction ot the subject and subjectivizing components into semiotics. thus, as I have claimed somewhere, expanding semiotics' domain.

In conclusion, to my opinion, either a structuralist or a non-structuralist, a newly fashioned semiotics, it is still semiotics. The innovation is epistemology or the philosophical background ( excluding Peirce, who belonged to that sphere, and still very applicable due to other related contexts). That is exactly what I insist on in my work: make it a whole general theory of semiotics. Although, this is as much good as it is  dangerous for establishing a firm ground of its inter-disciplinarity as am academic issue, and discipline.As I said, many many theoretical elaborations are necessary.

Please note that I am named an old-fashioned researcher, because of structuralism and my PhD on Umberto Eco's works, I keep maintaining that orientation, saying that now semiotics has become "moveable" and "transformable".

After all, that is not a bad news. Thanks for the importance of this really significant, I would say, turning point in semiotics.

Best,

Bujar.

Well, it seems to me that your definition of  what "structuralism" is is very different from how most people define it.  And it explains why Chomsky and Silverstein claim not to be structuralists - because Silverstein at least is not under what I would consider the standard definition of the term, namely Saussurean structuralism. (Certainly I disagree that there is anything structuralist about Silverstein's sign concept). But if you consider structuralism to predate Saussure by several centuries then clearly you have a different definition. 

What does structuralism mean to you exactly? What would be a non-structuralist approach to semiotics? Knowing how you define your terms would make it easier to have a meaningful conversation about it.

Well, this discussion looks like interesting. That is why I say there should occur a unification of the semiotic procedures and functions. To my  modest opinion, both discussions presented here are very academic and constructive. It seems like semiotics needs such discussions, and new theories, based on SEMIOTICS PROPER. Again, I was "accused" of using them too much, so please don't take my opinion for granted.

I have treated Autism semiotically, inspired by my son,  ( 5 years old, still non verbal). Why? because I start with Saussure and next semiotic theories. ( like it was rightfully said with the mentioned oppositions, etc), moving then to perceptive and cognitive processes. I think it is now time to formulate or to establish well, what is theoretical semiotic and what is an applied one.

Thank You both for the fruitful discussions.

Bujar.

Dear Magnus

This what I mean by structuralism:

Many people consider structuralism as a school of thought and consequently do not hesitate to declare it started waning since 1966 date of the lecture given by Derrida at Berkley and in which he cogently criticized Levi Strauss and his anthropological structuralism. The purpose of this short introduction is to show that structuralism is a method of thinking and analysis that has influenced not only humanities but also scientific thinking as we recognize nowadays. This clarification will have twofold consequences. First, it will show the importance of De Saussure, father of structuralism according to Giles Deleuze (2002, 170) as a thinker and a linguist. Second, it will shed light on how one cannot study semiotics or semiology without going through De Saussure. My semiotic analysis of Jihad will not exclusively rely on structuralism since many post-structuralists who started as pure structuralists such as Derrida, Lacan and Barthes have demonstrated its weaknesses and short comings but will be eclectic with a special focus on the insights of Michel Foucault.

Structuralism is cogently defined by Professor Louis Markos in one of his lectures published on you tube as the endeavor that “ rejects all ontological and epistemological sources of meaning in favor of an anti-metaphysical approach that posits that all humanistic pursuits are the product of deep structures that predate human consciousness”. This definition contains four cardinal key terms: Ontological, anti-metaphysical, epistemological and human consciousness.

Ontology is simply the study of being. For thinkers such as Nietzsche (see his the Genealogy of Morality) and Marx (see his Capital for example) art, morality religion and even knowledge in its broadest sense are not the product of an intrinsic human endeavor but rather the product of dialectical material forces and consequently the ontology of such pursuits lies in the automatic or evident quest for the super being in the case of Nietzsche or the eternal clash between classes in the case of Marx and before him Hegel. An ontological study for these proto- structuralists is simply an analysis of the clash between a given’ x’ thesis and a ‘y’ antithesis that will automatically engender a synthesis or a progress towards a given dot product.

Epistemologyand anti metaphysical thinking may be described as the study of knowledge or truth from the world within and not from the world outside. Before enlightenment , philosophers such as Plato or Theologians such saint Augustine believed that all knowledge proceed downward from some divine presence in the case of Saint Augustine or a pure and perfect world of forms such as Plato. What may be called proto-structuralists such as Hume William Blake and mainly Kant broke up with Platonic metaphysical forms and replaced it with the belief in the equally transcendent qualities of the subjective mind. In other words, Kant thought in the following way: maybe there were no eternal truths or forms in the heavens but this does not mean that the subjective consciousness is not pure if we separate it from what he called sensibility or our limited physical perception of the world.

Lastly, it may be safe to observe that Self consciousness was hastily destroyed by Freud. Throughout his works, a major revolutionary idea may be gleaned out: The Cartesian cogito or self (the conscious mind) is no longer the centre of meaning but rather the unconscious mind determines who we are.

At this junction it is worth noting that all these proto-structuralists  ideas remained scattered or part a chaotic ensemble of seemingly irreconcilable concepts until the posthumous publication of” Cours  de Linguistique Generales”in 1913.  In his seminal book, De Saussure clearly defined what is meant by structuralism and what is the nature of a systemic study of  the language as a carrier of our intrinsic human values and thoughts.

Though his book is mainly focused on language ,semiology and the nature of the sign as we will see later , four precepts can be gleaned that define what later will called structuralism.

First, Structuralism focuses on the unconscious rather than the conscious, the hidden rather than the apparent. From this perspective, structuralism can only be deterministic like any scientific endeavor.

Second, Structures (linguistic, cultural, political etc…) are not found  in things or elements that have intrinsic elements by themselves but rather the product of relations between other structures that form the totality of meaning within a structural system. In other words, structural meaning rises out of the differences between its constituent parts. Philosopher Simon Blackburn (2008) hit the head of the nail when he defined structuralism as "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract culture".

Third, Structures are complete, logical and all encompassing. Every element can be plotted within the vertical and horizontal Cartesian coordinate system (or within the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes if we use de Saussurian terms)

Lastly, Structures are found in all areas of thought or study. This explains why we cannot do semiotics in its various forms (cognitive, interpretative or even symbolic) without starting from structural semiotics. As a matter fact, we can stick to structural semiotics and do a good job (see Strauss or Propp) but our work will be lame if we ignore structuralism (see the works of Ecco or even Jung)

I'm not sure I understand the way some of these terms are being used but if it helps... This paper tries to use Propp in a way that speaks to the question.

Article Governance, tax and folk tales

Dear Kevin,

Thanks for the interesting paper.

Propp like Strauss employed the tenets of structuralism in their semiotic studies. Srauss used the notion of the' Mytheme 'as a discreet unit of analysis whereas Propp used the notion of' 'Tale' to signify his unit of analysis. But even what we call post structuralists made a large use of structuralism in their studies( see Foucault. Barthes and even Derrida).The point is that you can criticize structuralism and most of the time you may be right but you cannot do away with it. It will be like doing Physics without math or medicine without autopsy.

Structuralism is not the goal of semiotics, just is one path to understand the rise of meaning. Always has been another paths. cfr. Umberto Eco,“Signos, peces y botones. Apuntes sobre semiótica, filosofía y ciencias humanas” en De los espejos y otros ensayos. Lumen. Buenos Aires, 1985.

But the question may be.... is the question itself: which came first, the chicken (language) or the egg (mind)?

Clearly, Saussure, Hjemslev, Chomsky or Greimas emphasize the chiken. And the "american" cognitive linguistics rediscover Husserl´s approach to language: intentionality (body, consciousness) organized the grammar.

Here examples of the recent discussion

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3APHEN.0000041835.41703.49

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236156727_El_signo_peirceano_y_su_impacto_en_la_semitica_contempornea

http://avalon.utadeo.edu.co/servicios/ebooks/ensayos_semioticosII/files/assets/basic-html/toc.html

Chapter El signo peirceano y su impacto en la semiótica contemporánea

Dear Franz,

three points,

Ecco's interpretative semiotics can be considered as part of social semiotics that as matter of fact was  defined by Ferdinand Saussure, as "the science of the life of signs in society". In other words, in order to make interpretation you have to define what is going to be interpreted otherwise you may be a poet or a painter but not a semiotician.

Second, please reread the question and all the answers from the different colleagues and tell me where you find the chicken egg metaphor you mentioned. I m not interested in the genealogy of structuralism though I had to refer to it because i was asked by a friend what I mean by a structuralism.

lastly,

let us suppose I' m interested in the egg and chicken metaphor and I' m arguing stupidly what comes first. Let me remind you  of a simple fact. The metaphor you mentioned can only apply to what scientists call singularities or phenomena we do not know for sure when and how it started such as  the origins of language, or the nature of the blackhole in theoretical physics.

However, we cannot ask  which comes first the steam power  or electric power. It like asking why 1=1 gives two. We all know when structuralism started. Though we may speak about forms of proto-structuralism everybody agrees that Saussure represents what Bachelard calls an epistemological rupture in the sense that knowledge can be attained is no longer from without (God, the world of forms such as in plato..) but from within such as language or nature in the newtonian sense.

Dear colleagues:

Just as eggs existed millions of years before the first chicken, minds existed millions of years before verbal language emerged. We think in terms of perceptual experience on a deeper level than linguistic thought. Consider your dreams: are they like streams of words, or are they more like patterns of multisensorial impressions? For some early insights into one aspect of this problem, see Rudolf Arnheim's classic book Visual thinking.

Perhaps in the 21st century the combined contributions of fields like neuroscience, cognitive psychology, neuroaesthetics, and transdisciplinary phenomenology will permit us to develop more potent theoretical tools for the study of the human mind, thought, and the systems of signs we create.

Well, sorry. It seems I wasn´t clear. My apologies. 

Umberto Eco said last year, by skype, in a cognitive semiotic reunion; best wishes to the youngers semioticians working in cognitive and embodiment foundations of meaning. Instead the cognitive issues, Eco, to his age, like to read and to write about medieval poetry. Far I have knowledge, between the 1960 and 1990 their efforts to unite Peirce and Saussure, result in a interpreation of Peirce from Hjemslev, in Kant and the Platypus. That way is problematic, according some of schollars quote in a previous note.

On the other side, about the "origins of language" (and rationality), there are some hypothesis. 

http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2602.pdf

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262515207_sch_0001.pdf

http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/music1052008/readings/Mithen_etal_response06.pdf

http://www.exre.org/assets/files/nida/ThinkingWithoutLanguage2010.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/997119/From_the_origin_of_language_to_the_diversification_of_languages

Dear Brahim,

If that is your definition of structuralism then you are simply redefining the word to be so broad as to be useless, and then criticizing Chomsky and Silverstein for claiming not to be structuralists - even though they do not use your definition of the word (nor do to my knowledge anyone else). In fact your definition seems to me to be meaningless - an example of what Foucault, referring to Derrida's argumentation technique, called 'obscurantisme terroriste' - or what we in English might call "moving the goalposts".

You say that "structures are found in all areas of thought and study", which is of course true, but your subsequent move to say that "therefore all study of signs is structuralism" simply produces a tautology. If everything is structure and structuralism is merely the study of structures then all sciences are equally structuralist, and consequently none are structuralist. Of course this is because you fail to note that the suffix -ism exactly is used to denote a school of thought centered on X, and not just something vaguely related to X. Not all studies of structure are structuralist, just like not all paintings that make an impression on the viewer are impressionist.

Furthermore, only one of your four definitional traits of what structuralism is, actually applies to Peircean semiotics.

In Saussure's and Levi Strauss' structuralisms (and in Chomsky's) the unconscious is understood as an a priori force that gives meaning to reality because of its own innate dispositions. Signs and semiotic behavior is secondary to psychology. Not so in Peirce's. For Peirce, consciousness emerges through semiotic behavior, through interpretation and representation, not the other way round.

Peirce (and Silverstein) of course would also disagree with the notion that structures are all encompassing and plottable within a system of binary axes. On the contrary a Peircean semiotics is dynamic and emergent and no binary system of coordinates can be considered complete or account for all possible positions. Peirce is of course eminently a logician, but his logics is not the linear binary logics of the Saussurean systematicity.

Your second point, that all meaning is relational is of course something with which Peirce and Silverstein (and everyone else) would agree to. Relationality is an inherent feature of meaning without which meaning is impossible. But relationality is not the same as structurality. Not all relations are structures in a Saussurean sense, or in any of the other senses you use to define that word.

This leads to the final conclusion that no, structures are not ubiquituous or necessary for understanding meaning (but relations are), and consequently structuralism is not a starting point for any semiotic endeavor. Indeed Peirce's non-structural semiotics is a much better starting point for the study of those aspects of meaning that are produced outside of the confines of linguistic structures.

So yes I maintain that Silverstein is not a structuralist in any meaningful sense of that word and that structuralism is but one of many approaches to semiotics, and one that has been shown to be limited in its potential to explain actual semiotic events and behaviors in humans and other species.

Dear Magnus,

Thank you for this elegant and well-thought feedback.

If you think that structuralism comes from the structure as we commonly know in Grammar then bon appetit and you are right in all what you said. But Saussure was not interested in structure-he was rather interested in the system of relations between signs that are based on difference. In this way, to my mind, he went further than we most of the time think he was. 

However,let me approach your suggestion from anther stance. Think about all the semioticians you know and you will find them belonging to two categories. The first category represents those who started from structuralism and then went deeper .The examples abound ( Foucuault, Barthes , Derrida, Silverstain....) 

The second group started from another tradition ( mainly Pierce and Bachtin) and became structuralists in their late works ( think about Lackoff for example)

The point is that we can't escape from structuralism not because it is a school of thought but rather it is a method of thinking that best epitomize the scientific method in science. The importance of Saussure and Pierce does not stem from their contribution to linguistics as a field but rather  because they were the first who applied the scientific method to humanities.

Pierce is less Known than Saussure though now is gaining  popularity for two reasons. He could not dissociate himself from the classical tradition of the sign system. See the works of medieval christian scholars who classified the sign triadically and then subdivided these three categories into more than ten subcategories.

Second, Though he was one of the greatest mathematicians of this century he was also a philosopher and consequently his works on the sign and semiotics did not  appear purely semiotic but rather a compilation of both logic, philosophy and the science of the sign.

Dear all,

I have gone over all the responses to this question and learned quite a bit.

Still, I haven’t seen a reply I entirely approve of and so am going to offer one of my own.

I would say that, YES, methods of ‘semiotic analysis’ (broadly construed) not dependent on ‘structuralist precepts’ (broadly construed) ARE possible.

To make the case, I am going to place the entire tradition of semiotics since Saussure and Peirce “en abyme” relative to a wider perspective and very fundamental considerations.

I start with a reminder of the two key pieces of information Derrida learnt by reading Heidegger and Nietzsche.

The first is that our propensity to use ‘structuralist precepts’ in semiotic analysis is due to ontological and epistemic biases intrinsic to our ‘logocentric’ language.

This means that it is impossible for us to ‘rationally’ signify, specify, distinguish, analyse or theorize about anything without the help of a language whose signifying power is totally dependent on Eleatic-Platonic-Aristotelian determinations of Being, Meaning, Truth, etc.

Necessarily, this precondition for synthesising meaning of any kind is the basis of all ‘second order meta-discourses’ – like the one we engage in when we conduct ‘semiotic analyses’.

The second bit of information Reb Derrissa picked up from Heidegger is even more disturbing.

It purports that this logocentric manner of organising meaning is the condition of possibility of any attempt to NOT be trapped in a logocentric space of meaning.

In other words, we are ‘always already’ logocentric in our attempts to ‘overcome’ and ‘overthrow’ the ‘hegemonic signfying regime’ we inherited from the Eleatics and Plato.

This is so because the conceptual and discursive means we ‘cannot not’ use to engineer a way out of this ‘hegemonic signifying regime’ are given to us by that very regime so that, through their use, we cannot break free of it.

How this is relevant to the quest for a semiotic analysis NOT dependent on essentially ‘structuralist precepts’ speaks for itself.

At least this would be the case if we accept Derrida’s view that (a) we dispose of no theory of the sign which isn’t congenitally and intransgressibly logocentric and (b) that the precepts of structuralism are what insures that semiotics is grounded in and coordinated to logocentrism.

But if this suggests we need to stop practicing semiotics if we don’t want to respect structuralist precepts, why do I nonetheless say that methods of semiotic analysis NOT dependent on structuralist precepts are viable?

To the extent that it would be impractical in this forum to offer a full answer to that question, I limit myself to a hint.

But first a word about the conditions of possibility for developing and deploying a viable, non-structuralist method for conducting semiotic analysis.

First we have to recognise that we cannot ‘overcome’ dependence on structuralist precepts in semiotic analysis with avowed attempts to elude or to challenge them.

This engages one in a ‘negative dialectical relationship’ to what we want to overcome that binds us to the very space of meaning we want to transgress.

How, then, is it possible to practice semiotic analyses outside the discursive and scientific space created by the descriptive-analytic-critical resources provided by structuralism without being in a ‘negative dialectical’ relationship to that space?

By substituting a relationship to it based on a negation of what it affirms with one based on an affirmation of what it had to negate to emerge as a hegemonic signifying regime.

In other words, we need to compel it to oppose us because we ground our theory of the sign and its applications on the determination of Being, Meaning and Truth that the Eleatism and Platonism had to oppose and vanquish to emerge as ‘hegemonic signifying regimes’.

When and because one does that, one is not in a negative dialectical relationship to a scientific and discursive space that depends on the precepts of structuralism.

To the contrary, the discursive space that depends on the precepts of structuralism is in a negative relationship to us.

But what determination of Being, Meaning and Truth did the Eleatics and Plato have to oppose and vanquish to impose their ‘hegemonic signifying regime’?

A determination of what signifieds ‘truly are’ and a concomitant theory of the sign and its uses that were privileged by Hymnodes and Rhapsodes in the Hellas of yore.

There was nothing ‘logocentric’ or ‘conceptual’ or ‘structuralist’ about their theory of what signifieds ‘truly are’ and consequently nothing logocentric about the signifiers that were ‘apophantic’ resources of those signifieds.

Why?

Because for them signifieds were pure sounds and consequently nothing was better as a signifier than melodic and rhythmic arrangements of sound.

Nothing ‘structuralist’ about that!

So, if we emulate and reactualize this ‘pre-metaphysical’, ‘pre-Eleatic’, pre-Platonic’, ‘pre-structuralist’ theory of the sign, we have a viable way to conduct semiotic analysis without structuralist precepts.

Semiotics can broadly be defined as a branch of communication theory which analyzes the various modes of representation and systems of signs employed by human beings to transmit thoughts, feelings, ideas and ideologies. It is used in analyzing a wide range of disciplines like anthropology, sociology, art, literature and mass media. Used either as a means of representing a phenomenon or interpreting it, a semiotic analysis is of great value in postmodern situations where interactions with manufactured reality constantly challenge our sense of normalcy.

Modern semiotic studies stemmed from two major branches:

One was the European tradition developing from ideas presented by the Swiss-French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the other emerging from ideas forwarded by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Saussure tried to explain in Course in General Linguistics (1916) that all elements of language should be seen as components of a larger system of language in use. The formal discipline of “semiology” emerged out of this. Pierce, on the other hand, was interested in analyzing the manner in which humans extract meaning from different categories of signs. Both Saussure and Pierce can be seen as trying to understand the complicated relationship between physical signs, the objects they referred to, and their human interpreter.

The “classical” tradition of semiotics has "encapsulated" in its fold great structuralist scholars from the second half of the twentieth century like Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Umberto Eco, A. J. Greimas, Juri Lotman, Thomas A. Sebeokt etc. Almost all of them were clearly indebted to the ideas put forward by Saussure and Peirce in formulating their thought. Today semiotics can be said to have entered its post-structuralist phase – with the writings of the likes of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and many others – and is considered one of the favored method and philosophy of the postmodern era. It is difficult to estimate the path that semiotics will take in the future but it will probably not be erroneous to claim that it will continue to wield significant influence on human perception in a rapidly changing world.

Structuralism, per se, can be seen as a way of assessing and analyzing the world, or the literary text, predominantly based on the perception and description of structures. At a very basic level, structuralism rests on the view that no element in any system has any significance by itself and its full significance can only be perceived when it is integrated into the structure of which it is a part. Structuralists also believe that no human activity is either “natural” or “essential” but constructed and hence the system in which this activity is performed is crucial in formulating its meaning. If one goes by this formulation, any activity ranging from the actions within a narrative to action in real life occurs within a system of differences and hence has meaning only within that system. Meaning, therefore, emanates neither from nature or the divine but from the structure of the system itself. This is quite similar to the nuances of semiology which proposes that diverse human action and productions convey “shared” meanings to people belonging to a particular culture, and hence can be studied as signs which function in different kinds of signifying systems. Structuralism and linguistics above all are very similar critical tools that aim to study literary or social sign systems while Semiotics studies anything that can be represented as a Sign.

Saussure's sign is dyadic while Pierce's is triadic.

I am talking about the dissection of whatever you want to study: Iconicity , semantics or just the skeleton of the language being studied . Could we ignore the tools provided by structuralism while dealing with these various Branches of semiotics? 

To my mind absolutely No because structuralism is the scientific study of language by definition after all. In other words the legacy of Jacobson and De Saussure is like the legacy of Newton in mathematics..

In visual studies, there are strands of theoretization that do not go back to structuralism. Especially after the idea was rejected that films are structured like a language (that was a whole debate in the 1970s). The cinematic concept of Pierre Paolo Passolini comes to my mind, possibly some (feminist and queer) gaze theories, and eventually the whole branch of affect studies (Laura Marks would be an important reference).

The original question was posted more than six years ago, but it is apparently still interesting. Even though I am flattened by some of the scholarly contributions above, I think they all missed an important point.

Semiotics is best conceived as belonging to the philosophy of language (with a broad definition of "language"), as it was indicated by a related book by Eco. It therefore inquires, amongst other things, for what a sign can stand and in what general ways it can do so.

On the other hand, structuralism, whatever its definition may be, has emerged from the study of language in a narrow sense and comprises some principles that are at work within this kind of semiotic system. Structuralism is nothing but applied semiotics in the area of linguistics and by no means a necessary ingredient of semiotic inquiries in general. This is, in my view, underlined by the fact that the similarities between structural linguistics and structuralism in other areas are rather superficial.

So if we compare semiotics with, for example, art theory, then structuralism may be compared with the description of the way in which renaissance painters used perspective to express the spatial arrangements in a scene.

Could we pursue art theory without using perspective? The question is as wrong as the one about semiotics and structuralism.

Francois: Structuralism is necessary; however the question remains as to which linguistic level should drive the system--phonology, syntax, semantics, or pragmatics. Here are two PowerPoints. In the first one, Syntax drives the system, but semantics is an important component. In the second one, pragmatics drives the system. In the Third system (script-model grammar), semantics is again driving the system.