Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-jwnkl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-14T01:14:22.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Sign Theory and the Materiality of Discourse

from Part III - Discourse Materialities and Embodiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2020

By
Jack Sidnell
Edited by
Anna De Fina  and
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Anna De Fina
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

A consideration of the “materiality of discourse” necessarily implicates a reexamination of some fundamental contributions to sign theory. Here, I first review the theoretical writings of Saussure, Volosinov and Peirce, comparing their various approaches to the problem of the sign and to semiosis. Peirce’s insistence on the importance of “secondness” (i.e. sigsigns, indexes, dicents) suggests a way of thinking about discourse that does not involve positioning it, either as representational medium or as social effect, in isolation from the material contexts in which it is used (and of which it is, in fact, a part). Drawing on some contemporary work in linguistic anthropology, I aim to illustrate this approach through a discussion of a few particularly perspicuous, ethnographic examples.

Keywords

Semioticsmultimodalityethnographyindexicalityembodimentsocial interactionwritinginscriptionsignature
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies , pp. 282 - 305
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

This very useful introductory essay is partly concerned with the semiotic mediation of material qualities.

Goodwin’s magnum opus brings together his lifelong concern with gesture, materiality, language and embodiment in an argument about the cooperative character of human action.

This is an important attempt to apply the linguistic anthropological approach to the study of documents in their contexts of use.

In this classic, pioneering essay, the author explores ways of thinking about language across a range of contexts and challenges a simplistic application of Saussurean sign theory to the ethnographic study of language in context.

This is an important and influential intervention in which the author shows the utility of Peircean sign theory in a semiotic consideration of material objects.

In this short but brilliant comment on Hull’s ethnography, the author draws upon Derrida and some of the ethnographic details Hull reports on to articulate larger questions about the relationships among language, discourse and materiality.

This is a useful, recent and quite comprehensive survey of Peirce’s writings on signs.

Chumley, L. (2017). Qualia and Ontology: Language, Semiotics, and Materiality: An Introduction. Signs and Society, 5(S1): S1–S20.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2017). Co-operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, M. (2012). Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. (1989). When Talk Isn’t Cheap: Language and Political Economy. American Ethnologist 16(2): 248–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, W. (2003). Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things. Language and Communication 23(2/3): 409–25.Google Scholar
Nakassis, C. (2013). Materiality, Materialization. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(3): 399–406.Google Scholar
Short, T. L. (2007). Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

References

Agha, A. (2011). Commodity Registers. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21(1): 22–53.Google Scholar
Atkin, A. (2016). Peirce. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ball, C. (2014). On Dicentization. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24(2): 151–73.Google Scholar
Benveniste, E. ([1939]1971). The Nature of the Linguistic Sign. In Problems in General Linguistics, trans. by Meek, M. E.. Oxford, OH: University of Miami Press.Google Scholar
Chumley, L. (2017). Qualia and Ontology: Language, Semiotics, and Materiality: An Introduction. Signs and Society 5(S1): S1–S20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chumley, L. and Harkness, N. (2013). Introduction: Qualia. Anthropological Theory 13(1/2): 3–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cody, F. (2009). Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature. Cultural Anthropology 24(3): 347–80.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, M., Torreira, F. and Enfield, N. J. (2013). Is “Huh?” a Universal Word? Conversational Infrastructure and the Convergent Evolution of Linguistic Items. PLoS ONE 8(11): e78273.Google Scholar
Enfield, N. J. (2009). The Anatomy of Meaning: Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gal, S. (2017). Qualia as Value and Knowledge: Histories of European Porcelain. Signs and Society 5(S1): S128–53.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2017). Co-operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1975). Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harkness, N. (2013). Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hull, M. (2003). The File: Agency, Authority, and Autography in an Islamabad Bureaucracy. Language and Communication 23: 287–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, M. (2012). Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. (1989). When Talk Isn’t Cheap: Language and Political Economy. American Ethnologist 16(2): 248–67.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1965). Quest for the Essence of Language. Diogenes 13(51): 21–37.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1970). Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb. In Selected Writings, Vol. 2: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton. 130–47.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1978). Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jappy, T. (2013). Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Jappy, T. (2017). Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation. New York: Continuum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, W. (1997). Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Keane, W. (2003). Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things. Language and Communication 23(2/3): 409–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, W. (2007). Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Keane, W. (2018). On Semiotic Ideology. Signs and Society 6(1): 64–87.Google Scholar
Kockelman, P. (2005). The Semiotic Stance. Semiotica 157(1–4): 233–304.Google Scholar
Kockelman, P. (2006). A Semiotic Ontology of the Commodity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16: 76–102.Google Scholar
Kockelman, P. (2017). Semiotic agency. In Enfield, N. J. and Kockelman, P. (eds.) Distributed Agency. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kohn, E. (2013). How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern, trans. by Porter, C.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, B. (1997). Talking Heads: Language, Metalanguage, and the Semiotics of Subjectivity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Manning, P. (2012). Semiotics of Drink and Drinking. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Mead, G. H. (1962). Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meillet, A. (1925). La Méthode Comparative En Linguistique Historique. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Nakassis, C. (2013). Materiality, Materialization. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(3): 399–406.Google Scholar
Nakassis, C. (2016). Doing Style: Youth and Mass Mediation in South India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Parmentier, R. (1994). Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. (1868). On the Natural Classification of Arguments. In Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (581st meeting, April 9, 1867) 7: 261–87.Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. (1958). Values in a Universe of Chance: Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce, ed. by Weiner, P. P.. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. (1992). The Essential Peirce, Vol. 1: Selected Philosophical Writings‚ 1867–1893. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. (1998). The Essential Peirce, Vol. 2: Selected Philosophical Writings, 1893–1913. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ransdell, J. (1976). Another Interpretation of Peirce’s Semiotic. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 12(2): 97–110.Google Scholar
Ransdell, J. (1977). Some Leading Ideas in Peirce’s Semiotic. Semiotica 19: 157–78.Google Scholar
Saussure, F. ([1916]1959). Course in General Linguistics, trans. by Baskin, W.. New York: Philosophical Library.Google Scholar
Savan, D. (1988). An Introduction to C.S. Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (2010). Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Short, T. L. (1998). Jakobson’s Problematic Appropriation of Peirce. In Shapiro, M. (ed.) The Peirce Seminar Papers, Vol. 3: Essays in Semiotic Analysis. New York: Peter Lang. 89–123.Google Scholar
Short, T. L. (2007). Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sidnell, J. and Enfield, N. J. (2012). Language Diversity and Social Action: A Third Locus of Linguistic Relativity. Current Anthropology 53: 302–33.Google Scholar
Volosinov, V.N. ([1929]1986). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. by Matejka, L. and Titunik, I. R.. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×