"for if semiotics does NOT in fact describe what we already do when we make
meaning, but is simply a set of conventions that, like grammar in one of its
declensions,  can be used to instruct the uninitiated in the proceudres of the
game, then why the hell do we need it . . ."
Writes Mike Frank
 
Sadly SCS is in a week and a day and my paper is still in my head, so I
will not be able to give this the time it needs.  As my last post (for now)
on the subject let me just say that we need semiotics to know what we are
doing, but not to do what we are doing in film, language, etc.  If one
looks at the history of semiotics or semiology starting with Peirce we will
find that it always sought to explain a practice that existed before
semiotics.  Speaking comes before linguistics.  Semiotics does not govern
practices it models them by formalizing what was not necessarily formal.
Such formalizations are important in encounters with "others" (those
outside our semiotic system) and in reflecting on our representational
practices.  Sometimes semiotics is used in making a text, but not always.
When we do apply the rules semiotics to textual production we have no rules
for how to apply them, so in practice the meta-system of semiotics always
dissolves into the system of representation that it is supposed to govern.
Ultimately this is true of semiotics as reflection and teaching tool as
well, but that is a theme that I wont be able to take up until after the
conference.
 
lgs
 
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