Social Semiotics: Paths towards Integrating Social and Semiotic Knowledge

This article outlines major trends in the development of social semiotics during the last four decades of its existence. The starting point was the interface between functional analysis of the semiotic system of language and the structural interpretation of language as a social system. Their convergence provided the basis for further developing an interdisciplinary domain of social semiotics. Michael Halliday’s book “Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning” (1978) gave an initial impetus to exploring the interface of semiotic and social. Ten years later his approach was reinterpreted by Bob Hodge and Gunther Kress in “Social Semiotics” (1988). They suggested that both the social and semiotic nature of language had a broader significance and extends to the entire domain of human activity and existence. Thus, social semiotic (in singular) of language was enhanced into all-embracing social semiotics (in plural). This article further examines linguistic as socio-semiotic, semiotic as social, semiotic as multimodal, socio-semiotic as functional, interpretative as socio-semiotic. The article outlines two frontiers of social semiotics, that of its subject matter and that of its methodological dimension. Finally, the article focuses on current challenges faced by social semiotics, particularly those relevant to sociology.

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Don Quixote and the social system: Interpreting Ronald Laing’s concept of ontological insecurity from Alfred Schütz’ and Talcott Parsons’ theories of social action

Journal of Classical Sociology ◽

10.1177/1468795x19844340 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

pp. 191-207

Author(s):

Christopher Schlembach

Keyword(s):

Social Action ◽

Social System ◽

Theoretical Perspective ◽

Modern Society ◽

Don Quixote ◽

Alfred Schutz ◽

Talcott Parsons ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Social ◽

Alfred Schütz

Alfred Schütz and Talcott Parsons, two towering authorities of Weberian social thought are rarely interpreted in the same theoretical perspective (with the exception of Harold Garfinkel). This article intends to show that Schütz’s later writings about the constitution of social reality in the pluralized and differentiated modern society and Parsons’s concept of the social system converge with reference to their common problem of understanding interaction. In this article, I use Ronald Laing’s psychiatric thought of the early 1960s as a starting point to discuss some of the points of intersection between Schütz and Parsons. Laing argued that psychosis is not a phenomenon of the individual mind. Rather it must be understood in terms of an interaction system that is constituted by doctor and patient. The patient cannot maintain ego borders strong enough to establish a role-based social relationship and feels ontologically insecure. It is necessary to understand the patient in his existential position which constitutes his self as a kind of role. Schütz and Parsons reflected on similar interaction systems. Schütz analyzed the little social system that is established between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; Parsons addressed the social system between doctor and patient. It is argued that Schütz and Parsons analyzed the conditions under which a social system can be established, but they also look at its breakdown leading to the situation as described by Laing.

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Konsep Rasionalitas Islami dan Implikasinya terhadap Pengembangan Studi Ekonomi Islam

Islamic Review : Jurnal Riset dan Kajian Keislaman ◽

10.35878/islamicreview.v10i2.307 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 137-162

Author(s):

Ahmad Dimyati

Keyword(s):

Social System ◽

Economic Behavior ◽

Ibn Khaldun ◽

Spiritual Dimension ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Social ◽

Original Concept

The study of Islamic rationality is the starting point for the theorizing of Islamic economics. Based on this concept, this article aims to elaborate rationality based on the concepts of classical Islamic thinkers, such as al-Gazali, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Miskawaih and al-Mawardi. Through a search of their writings, the author intends to reconstruct the original concept of rationality from Islam. Then with the approach used by economic critics, the concept of rationality was expanded. The results of this study indicate that the rigidity of the concept of rationality in the Neoclassical school is undeniable. The behavior of actors in the economy is not only repetitive actions that can be quantified but must be extended as part of the social system. Especially in the concept of Islamic rationality, economic behavior is also closely related to the position of humans as servants of Allah so that they have a spiritual dimension.

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Space, Modernity, and Emptiness: Some American Examples

Church History ◽

10.1017/s0009640713001741 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 83 (1) ◽

pp. 163-174

Author(s):

John Corrigan

Keyword(s):

Collective Identity ◽

Social System ◽

Social Conflict ◽

Social Systems ◽

Social Groups ◽

Church History ◽

Georg Simmel ◽

Niklas Luhmann ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Social

One of the ways in which Christian groups responded to the challenges of modernity was by positioning themselves differently in space. In the interest of better understanding that process, let us think for a moment about the social system, the social space to be precise, within which groups exist. As one starting point for that, it is useful to acknowledge that social groups define themselves in relation to others. Specifically, groups define themselves by saying what they are not as much as by saying what they are. If we are to believe the German social systems theorist Niklas Luhmann, a leading advocate of the notion of social system, difference is prior to identity. That is to say—and this is the core of Luhmann's “difference” theory—one distinguishes a table from other objects before one indicates what it is (Luhmann adds, paradoxically, that distinction presupposes itself). His grand theory has shortcomings, but his point is that social groups create and maintain collective identity by defining themselves in relation to other groups, and especially by saying what they are not. They push off from other groups in defining themselves. We could extend that approach by stating that groups sometimes behave as if they lack a clear collective self-understanding; that is, they lack a fully formed core identity that they can marshall in a positive fashion against a field of other groups. They accordingly define themselves in relation to other groups, define themselves via negativa, by differentiating—in some cases to a great degree—from other groups. Identity is built through such negative definition. The twentieth-century American theorist of social conflict Lewis Coser described that mode of thinking in The Functions of Social Conflict, an extended mediation on the social conflict theories of Georg Simmel, and sociologist of religion Martin Reisebrodt has observed more recently how Christianity invents itself principally by distinguishing itself from other religious practices and beliefs. The process is evident among Christian groups in modernity as it was in early modern Europe. When we focus on how it has manifested spatially, we see the modern in American church history as a broad spectrum of occurrences demonstrating complexity, multivalence, competition, and differentiation.

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A sociosemiotic perspective on language development

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0041977x0009488x ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 98-118 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

M. A. K. Halliday

Keyword(s):

Language Development ◽

Social System ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Level System ◽

Semiotic System ◽

Semantic System ◽

Meaning Potential ◽

General Terms ◽

The Social

This paper is an attempt to interpret the child's learning of his mother tongue as a sociosemiotic process. What is intended here by ‘sociosemiotic’ will be largely left to emerge from the discussion; but in the most general terms it is meant to imply a synthesis of three modes of interpretation, that of language in the context of the social system, that of language as an aspect of a more general semiotic, and that of the social system itself as a semiotic system—modes of interpretation that are associated with Malinowski and Firth, with Jakobson, and with Lévi-Strauss, among others. The social system, in other words, is a system of meaning relations; and these are realized in many ways of which one, perhaps the principal one as far as the maintenance and transmission of the system is concerned, is through their encoding in language. The meaning potential of a language, its semantic system, is therefore seen as realizing a higher level system of relations, that of the social semiotic, in just the same way as it is itself realized in the lexicogrammatical and phonological systems.

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Multimodal Modeling: Bridging Biosemiotics and Social Semiotics

Biosemiotics ◽

10.1007/s12304-021-09463-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alin Olteanu

Keyword(s):

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Cognitive Linguistics ◽

Cultural Relativism ◽

Sense Perception ◽

Social Semiotics ◽

Theoretical Synthesis ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Social ◽

Semantic Notion ◽

Cognitive Semantic

AbstractThis paper explores a semiotic notion of body as starting point for bridging biosemiotic with social semiotic theory. The cornerstone of the argument is that the social semiotic criticism of the classic view of meaning as double articulation can support the criticism of language-centrism that lies at the foundation of biosemiotics. Besides the pragmatic epistemological advantages implicit in a theoretical synthesis, I argue that this brings a semiotic contribution to philosophy of mind broadly. Also, it contributes to overcoming the polemic in linguistics between, loosely put, cognitive universalism and cultural relativism. This possibility is revealed by the recent convergence of various semiotic theories towards a criticism of the classic notion of meaning as double articulation. In biosemiotics, the interest to explicate meaning as multiply articulated stems from the construal of Umwelt as relying on the variety of sense perception channels and semiotic systems that a species has at its disposal. Recently, social semiotics developed an unexplored interest for embodiment by starting from the other end, namely the consideration of the modal heterogeneity of meaning. To bridge these notions, I employ the cognitive semantic notion of embodiment and Mittelberg’s cognitive semiotic notion of exbodiment. In light of these, I explore the possible intricacies between the biosemiotic notion of primary modeling system and concepts referring to preconceptual structures for knowledge organization stemming from cognitive linguistics. Further, Mittelberg’s concept of exbodiment allows for a construal of meaning articulation as mediation between the exbodying and embodying directions of mind.

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