3 Semiotic: A Science of Signs
2The problem of linguistic meaning in the elements of language, the signs that express our thoughts, is as old as ancient Greece. There, the Stoic philosophers (200 BC-3rd c. AD) investigated the semantics of language. Their writings evolved into the doctrine of signification or semiotike, a word whose root, ‘‘sema,’’ means ‘‘sign’’ (Sebeok 1986: 255). It was not until the seventeenth-century that this doctrine of signs was given the scholarly attention it deserved. Antoine Amauld (1612-1694), following the traditions put forth by the Stoic philosophers, noted that non-verbal signs used as a means of communication are iconic in character: they include objects, maps, and portraits (Clarke 1990: 4). In 1632, the Iberian philosopher John Poinsot/span>s Treatise On Signs established a link between the term ‘‘sign’’ and natural phenomena. Poinsot argued that semiotic conveyed an action between signs found in nature and signs found in human experience or levels of human consciousness, such as sensation, perception, and ‘‘intellection’’ (Deely: 1990:113).
3 The Realist philosopher, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), argued that the icon, or the sign/span>s connection with what it signified, was established by nature and discovered by experience (Clarke 1990: 51). Philosophy, Reid thought, could be reduced to general rules. All that was known of mechanics, astronomy, and optics was established, according to Reid, by nature and disclosed by either experience or observation and the ideas that were deduced from them. He proposed to make philosophy a science by observing data, and then deducing general rules that would aid in a final conclusion. Natural causes were to be termed natural signs, and the effects these signs created were to be known as the signified (Ibid: 52).
4 The signs of natural language were iconic representations, so called because they resembled the objects they stood for. An example of an iconic sign, according to Reid, would be ‘‘sensations’’ or ‘‘sensory images’’ that he classified as natural signs. It was through ‘‘a natural kind of magic’’ that a relationship between the object and the cause of its existence was established. The relationship between the sensation and the object under investigation was established by some prior experience in which certain ideas had been associated. As a result, the objects resemble certain sensations that they created in the interpreter/span>s mind (Ibid: 47--48). According to Reid, this class of signs, known as icons, included evidential signs that had a connection with the object signified by means of rules that are established by nature and disclosed by experience. The sensation produced by an object had to be established by previous experience in which ideas were associated {Ibid: 47).
5 Another Realist philosopher, John Locke (1632 -1704), reintroduced the term /span>semiotikein his 1671 Essay Concerning Humane Understanding,
67in which he questioned the nature of human understanding and declared semiotike as a doctrine of signs that combined the sciences of logic, physics, and ethics (Sebeok 1986: 255).
8It was not until the nineteenth century that Locke and Poinsot/span>s ideas of the sign were taken up by the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who adopted their notion of the semeiotike as a doctrine of signs. He termed the doctrine semeiotic or semiotic (Ibid: 256). Peirce defined semiotic as ‘‘…the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis.’’ Peirce/span>s semiotic is based upon the idea of semiosis, that is, the action of a sign (Peirce 1960/5: 335).
9Charles Peirce was the founder of Pragmatism,1 and was trained as a chemist. He spent most of his life as a successful and esteemed scientist (Corrington 1993: 4). Pragmatism, according to Peirce, offered a method of conveying ideas in a clear and concise manner. To accomplish this, Peirce sought to define the very nature of meaning (Peirce 1960/5: 248).
10The Pragmatist (or Pragmaticist) theory of meaning is a doctrine that inquires into the meaning of a sign created by a sequence of its interpre- tants occurring in the process of semiosis and consisting of abstractions produced by the ‘‘quasi-mind’’ 2 of a ‘‘quasi-interpreter’’ 3 of the sign. This logical interaction between the sign, its object, and the interpretant can be expressed as follows within the sign-triad: the sign S, or representamen, corresponds to the object O, and the interpretant I. The interpretant I of the sign S is in itself a sign, with representamen-S-O, and so on into other triadic relations. Peirce thought that the effects produced by a sign upon the abstract mind of the quasi-interpreter brought about semiosis.4 The sign/span>s meaning was treated as a dynamic process connected with mental activity. His semiosis includes all kinds of signs and sign users, with particular emphasis given to human beings and all types of meaning (Sebeok 1994: 505).
11 The American behaviorist Charles Morris (b. 1901) believes that meaning is determined by the reference to the action among signs (Morris 1970: 16). Morris, using Peirce/span>s concept of the sign and its relationship with the object and interpretant, renamed this triadic interaction among Peirce/span>s icon, index, and symbol: semantics, pragmatics and syntactics5 (Kutschinski-Schuster 1990: j2). Semantics is the theory of meaning in which the following condition exists: someone interprets an object or idea as representing something. A physical object, to which a meaning has been assigned, becomes a sign (Sebeok 1994: 857). Pragmatics is the manner in which the sign is used. Syntactics can be defined as how signs are formally structured in order to convey meaning (Ibid: 856).
29 Morris/span>s concept interpretation of the stimulus-response theory of meaning had its beginnings in the neurophysiological research conducted by Ivan Pavlov (1951) and his followers. In the stimulus-response theory of meaning, a conditioned stimulus acts a signal, while the unconditioned stimulus is the meaning of the sign (Sebeok 1994: 504).
30 Semiotic and Design Criticism
31 The late 1930s brought about a reactionary criticism of the functionalist approach to architecture (Kruft 1994: 439). This criticism was exemplified in the German philosopher Ernst Bloch/span>s (1885-1977) work Das Prinzip Hoffnung (1938-1947), written during his exile in the United States (Ibid: 440). Design critics and theorists took up the apparent flaws of this rationalist view of functional and geometric architecture in the late 1960s (Klassen 1990: 6).
32 The unadorned shapes of modern architecture did not communicate any meaning to people. According to Klassen, ‘‘The new architecture was silent: the new buildings engaged in no dialogue with each other; and neither did they communicate with man’’ (Ibid: 6). Semiotics, as it was proposed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the pragmatic philosopher Charles Peirce, seemed to offer the architecture theorists and critics a method of making their environment meaningful again.
33 The first of these architecture critics and theorists was Christian Norberg-Schulz, whose Intentions of Architecture (1965) approached the interpretation of architectural forms through a scientific and logical framework. Norberg-Schulz used the Peircean behaviorist, Charles Morris, in Iris analysis of architecture. A few years later, Charles Jencks, co-editor with George Baird of Meaning in Architecture (1970), wrote an article that analyzed architecture from a Saussurean perspective. Lionel March, editor of the book The Architecture of Form (1976), was one of the first architecture theorists and methodologists to incorporate Peirce/span>s concepts of deductive, abductive and inductive reasoning for the purpose of defining a logical design process. In 1979, the architect theorist Juan Bonta wrote Architecture and its Interpretation: although Klassen claims Bonta/span>s method is basically Saussurean,6 Bonta/span>s analysis of architecture owes a great deal to Peirce/span>s concept of semiosis. The following year, Signs, Symbols and Architecture (1980), edited by Geoffrey Broadbent, Richard Bunt and Charles Jencks, combined architecture theorists who were influenced by Peirce/span>s semiotic with the theorists who based their research on Saussure/span>s semiology. Umberto Eco was one of the authors in this compilation who represented the Peircean tradition. More recently, the architecture theorist Marco Frascari has used Peirce/span>s semiotic system in the analysis of diagrams in architecture. Frascari uses Peirce/span>s ideas of deductive and abductive reasoning in this analysis. The design critic and theorist, Clive Ashwin, also discusses drawings and diagrams and their relationship to Peirce/span>s semiotic theory. He uses Peirce/span>s semiotic to develop a theory of drawing. Ashwin believes that drawing is a sign system with important cultural implications that can be expressed in the etymology of various terms (1989: 199, 201).
35 Codes and Interpretation
36 Umberto Eco follows Peirce/span>s definition of semiosis, according to which there are infinite possibilities for interpretation processes (Eco 1984: 2). Interpretations, says Eco, serve as codes that connect the form with the form/span>s function, including how the designer of the designed object will align the function with the form that he or she chooses (Eco 1980: 21).
37 According to Eco, aesthetic texts and ideological statements constitute ‘‘impossible worlds.’’ Codes, he says, are structures of these impossible or ‘‘cultural worlds’’ (Eco 1976: 62). He defines a code as ‘‘…a system of signification, insofar as it couples present entities with absent units’’ (Ibid: 8). When there is an underlying rule in which something presented to the addressee/span>s perception stands for something else, signification is present (Ibid: 8). A code is a part of a system of signification and is an ’’ elementary structure of communication’’ (Ibid: 32).
38 The anthropologist John Deely defines a code in the following terms:
3940Code, in short belongs to the object experienced and idea to the organism experiencing. Both alike serve to ground, channel, and define or specify the relationships of dependency that comprise the objective world in its integral being subsumptive of the physical. (1990: 66)
41 A code helps to channel and direct relationships between various objects. This encoding creates within the decoder a certain /span>partial duplicationor a partial replication of the ideas that created the original encoding. The encoding imposes a common conception that is within and beyond the perceptually shared objectivity or similar perceptual viewpoint (Ibid: 66).
42 Code Invention
43 Code invention, says Eco, is the expression that is produced by the recognition of a previous experience, linking an expression with a content unit (1976: 245). Invention takes place in two ways, either moderate or radical. A ‘‘moderate invention’’ is a direct projection from a perceptual representation into an expression-continuum. This facilitates realization of an expression-form that will dictate the rules used to produce an equivalent content-unit (Ibid: 252).
44 Eco defines invention as:
4546…a mode of production whereby the producer of the sign-function chooses a new material continuum not yet segmented for that purpose and proposes a new way of organizing (of giving form to) it in order to map within the formal pertinent element of a content-type. (Ibid: 245)
47 In a ‘‘radical invention,’’ or ‘‘a proposal of new conventions,’’ the sender strays away from the perceptual model, then goes directly to the ‘‘unshaped perceptual continuum’’ where the person organizes his or her perception. Here, the realized expression occurs when the sender has a fixed result of the perceptual labor. After this expressive labor is defined or enacted upon, the person then arrives at a perceptual mode, or a ‘‘sememic representation’’ (Ibid: 254). This is exemplified during innovative periods in the history of painting or artifacts. Eco cites, for example, the Impressionistic movement in painting. The addressees or receivers of Impressionist works tended to reject the Impressionist/span>s stylistic form because they could not construe their subject matter, form or styles as being meaningful in any real way. Eco claims:
4849Take the case of the Impressionists, whose addressees absolutely refused to /span>recognizethe subjects represented and said that they /span>did not understand/span>, that the painting /span>did not mean anything/span>, that real life was not like that, etc. This refusal was due to the addresseeslack not only of a semantic model to which the mapped items might be referred, but also of a percept to guess at, since they had never perceived in this way. (Ibid: 254)
50 What occurs in this case is radical code-making, whereby a new set of conventions is proposed. Eco argues that the sender of the message, the Impressionist painters in this instance, aimed for semiosis and failed for that particular time period. However, Eco fails to realize that it was not the subject matter itself but the manner in which this content was represented that confused the addressees of the Impressionist period. The Impressionistic style was later culturally accepted. The movement needed a chairperson, an interpreter. According to Eco, semiosis succeeded only years after the new convention was introduced (Ibid: 254).
51 Eco contradicts his own notion of ‘‘radical invention’’ by claiming the following:
5253In fact, no one ever really witnesses cases of total radical invention, nor indeed of total moderate invention, since texts are mazelike structures combining inventions, replicas, stylizations, ostentions and so on. (Ibid: 254--56).
54 Semiosis relies upon previously established codes. In this sense, codes may be invented only by relying on old ones (Ibid: 256).
55 ‘‘Radical invention,’’ therefore, can never exist insofar as it relies upon previous codes or conventions already established within the community. It is consequently by virtue of convention that Eco believes that society must recognize ‘‘prophets’’ in their culture in order for them to exist. Otherwise, the prophets become outcasts of society (Ibid: 255).
56 In inventing new codes, the creator, or the prophet as Eco claims, will propose new and imprecise sign-functions. Eco gives the example of a painting by Raphael, which he argues is beyond duplication ‘‘…because he invented his rules as he painted, proposing new and imprecise signfunctions and thereby performing an act of code-making’’ (Ibid: 181). Eco, however, does not mention that functional objects may also represent a sign function of code-making. In verbal language, Eco believes, one is capable of distinguishing the various signal-units, so that even a text that at first seems complex is capable of being duplicated by using them. In a painting, for instance, the signal units are not very distinguishable and are considered to be ‘‘dense’’ or ‘‘continuous,’’ and thus hard to duplicate (Ibid: 181). In such cases, it can be difficult to isolate certain ‘‘productive rules,’’ or the rules and conventions that have governed the creation (Ibid: 181).
57 The Grammar of Architecture
58 The reading of codes in architecture and products forms a certain grammar, respective of the building or the product being analyzed semiotical- ly. In his article ‘‘Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture,’’ Eco analyzes architectural forms into semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic units in order to create a theory of architectural meaning. The building can function as a text composed of the elements of language.
59 In the same article, Eco lists the varieties of the architectural code that constitute a building/span>s grammar. First, there are technical codes, known as pragmatic codes, which deal with architectural engineering. The architectural form is reduced to the elements of columns, wiring, insulation, beams, and other elements where there is not communicative /span>content(Eco 1980: 38). There are, however, cases where the structural or technical function or the technique itself becomes endowed with meaning through the values of a certain community. This becomes known as the structural logic or the reasoning and justification behind the techniques employed (Ibid: 38--9).
60 Second, there are syntactic codes. These codes are typological codes that are essentially spatial. The circular plan, Greek cross plan, open plan, labyrinth, and high-rise are all examples of syntactic codes. Syntactic codes also explain how the placement of architectural elements are conveyed through cultural conventions (Ibid: 38).
61 Third, there are semantic codes. These codes consist of units of architecture, and entail the relations that occur between architectural syn- tagms and their connotative as well as denotative meanings. These meanings may denote the main functions of architecture, such as the roof, stairway and window, or may have connotative secondary functions, such as the tympanum, triumphal arch, or the neo-gothic arch. They may also connote certain ideologies afferent to such spaces as ‘‘the parlour,’’ or ‘‘living room,’’ or they may have typological meaning according to their functional and sociological categories such as ‘‘villa,’’ ‘‘school,’’ or ‘‘palace’’ (Ibid: 39). Eco claims that these codes are based upon the model of verbal language in which a variety of messages may be generated (Ibid: 39).
6263The architectural theorist Marco Frascari also suggests that architecture can function as a text. He claims:
64Buildings are cultural texts that are generated by assembling fragments, excerpts, citations, passages, and quotations. Every building is then both assimilation and a transformation of other buildings. Every architectural piece echoes other pieces into infinity, weaving the fabric of the text of culture itself. The buildings elements are the joints of the construction of human culture; they are compelling demonstrations of how we inhabit the world. We assemble the tropes or building elements in trophies. The Greek word trope means a turn, or a twist, hence the twisting of words; it is also connected with trophy because trophies were built on the battlefield on the site where the tide of the battle turned in favor of the winner. Trophies were built using the spoils of the slain enemy; they were set up to appease their souls and prevent the gods/span> punishment of the victors. The enemy casualties /span>were thus /span>turned,troped, from murders in sacrifices. (1991: 22--3)
65To Frascari, architecture is made up of tropes of sacrifice. The mental associations that these carry were first represented in the architecture of the classical Orders where the knowledge had a base in images and figures. A trope, according to Frascari, ‘‘…is a playful interpretation that relates forms that otherwise would never be associated. A trope is always based on rhetorical figures of signification’’ (Ibid: 14--15). Meaning is achieved by translating the formal characteristics using a cross reference of images that help to create architecture that is an ‘‘eloquent and intelligible’’ 7 environment for humans (Ibid: 15).
66 Architecture should be viewed as ‘‘…an intellectual representation resulting from the traces of semiotic practices, i.e., the manipulation of signs in accordance with /span>cultural reasons/span>’’ . Architecture, therefore, can convey cultural meanings that are created by both physical and mental substances that are displayed in our constructed environment (Ibid: 3).
71 Product Semantics
72 In the last quarter of the twentieth-century, industrial design theorists and critics have called for a new and more appropriate system of coding in design, one that discards the Modernists/span> uniformity of expression of objects in favor of a variety of expressions of objects (McCoy 1990: e3).
73 The Modernists claimed the ‘‘universality’’ of unadorned, reduced forms that conveyed moral and political values of ‘‘truth’’ , ‘‘virtue’’ and the promise of technology. Technology was molded into a system of minimalist forms that depicted function (Krohn and McCoy 1989: 114).
74 In the early 1980s, industrial design theorists and critics began to emphasize the role of culture in design. Industrial designers who use product semantics tend toward establishing visual linkages between the technological object and other aspects of human life by metaphor, analogy, simile, myth and allegory (McCoy 1990: e4).
75 Along with these ideas, some industrial designers have incorporated ideas from cognitive theory and communication theory. Such theories were used to analyze the socio-economic environment in which the object was created (Krippendorff 1990: al3).
76 The industrial design theorists of product semantics, by incorporating the use of semiotic theory, realized that people use language to name objects and speak about their qualities (Vakeva 1990: g5). Language does not only describe or make reference to objects, nor does it just instruct or persuade; it also functions as an aspect of a person/span>s social reality (Krippendorff 1990: al5). According to product semantic theorists, language becomes relevant for analyzing products from various cultures (Vakeva 1990: g6).
77 Industrial design theorists have mostly referred to the semantics of the product, although they have also undertaken the syntactic and pragmatic analysis of a product. The syntactic and pragmatic analysis of a prod-
78 this knowledge begins with the examination of actual buildings and of the properties of materials supplied by nature for building them. It ends (in so far as it ever ends-because circumstances change revision must be constant) in providing a coherent manner of organizing the material within which the enduring content of the building is embodied.’’ See Jan van Pelt and Westfall, 1991: 254.
7980uct examines the product/span>s visual appearance as well as other qualities (Vihma 1990: f7).
81The theorists began to focus upon the meaning of the object/span>s environment (Vakeva 1990: g5). The analysis of the object/span>s meaning, therefore, took into account its social-cultural and historical context (Oehlke 1990: e8).
82Peirce/span>s semiotic theory seems to offer a method for exploring the content and the context of meaning of the industrial object (1990: Vihma f5). The following paragraphs will discuss Peirce/span>s science of semiotic.