Just a side note -- while I don't, in any way, want to diminish
Augustine's role in the development of semiotics, he was hardly the
first to link a theory of signs to theories about language. The
realism/nominalism debate had been around for quite some time, and in a
sense, Augustine was constructing a Christian contextualization of the
(neo-)Platonist position -- that there's a universe of "true form" that
signs *in principle* could refer to entities in, that the actual sound
used for the sign can be arbitrary, and that humans don't perceive "true
form" directly and can therefore mess things up royally.
If I'm remembering the historiographic material I've read correctly
(sorry, as an academic, I'm required by law to hedge at least once per
email, or at least, that's what I've been given to understand), pretty
much all medieval approaches to semiotics used Augustine as a starting
point until Aquinas, though, so he's certainly central to the field.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of diane skinner
Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 3:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Semiotics
The field of semiotics is fascinating. These studies have become such
an
intricate part of so many disciplines since St Augustine in On
Christian Doctrine (ca. 395 ) linked the theory of signs to a theory
of language for the practice of unraveling and interpreting the
figurative language in the Scriptures. Augustine' s principles, the
basic elements of signification, were transmitted
to the modern linguist Ferdinand De Saussure, who coined the term
"semiology."
Roland Barthes explored the semiology of fashion, advertising, and
travel. Claude Levi-Strauss studied myths and kinship systems within
different cultures as a system of signs to be interpreted. Jacques
Lacan used Saussure to reformulate Freud in linguistic terms. And
figurative signs "commuted" (to use Jacques Derrida's term) things
into signs in a process that may be, for modern theorists,
interminable--this process of commutation, however, undermines the
stable referentiality that Augustine sought.
Ah, full circle--can the world and words really be commensurate?
Diane
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