CHAPTER TWO

 

SEMIOTICS

 

SEMIOTICS

Semiotics, or semiology is the study of symbols, signs,  processes, and signification used in communication,  It includes the study of how meaning is constructed within the sign by encoding which is then transmitted and  understood by decoding of the sign. This is essentially basic science of how we communicate truth as percived by one person to another and also how God communicates with man, things which are otherwise incomprehensible.  It covers the areas of  linguistics, literary science, musicology, art history, archeology, history, sociology, political science, religious studies, chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics and technology.  Though semiotics as a science started recently it has been used by all religions in order to communicate values, morals and theologies.  The experience of generations are solidified, transmitted and modified by new generations through the symbols, icons and images whether transitory of permanent.   These symbols are used in order to communicate with each other and leave their stories for the new generation. 

John Locke (1632-1704) is the first person to give the study the name of Semiotics,  In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) Locke defined that "semiotike doctrine of signs" should be one of the three major branches of science along with natural philosophy and practical ethics

This process of a symbol carrying a meaning depends on the use of codes. The symbols themselves may be in any or all of the sense perceptible media. This is true in the material realm as well as in the higher realms of human existence which we discussed earlier.  However fallen man  is constrained within the lowest levels of existence and so most of the divine revelations are encoded in these levels.  The most effective means of encoding will contain all the five senses.  However a full decoding will require the use of higher senses within the mental, spiritual and any other domain in which the being exist.

This was understood early by the early fathers following the temple worship of Judaism.   The whole temple,  its construction, its furniture and the various sacrificial systems and procedures were forged in heaven for that purpose and shown to Moses on the Mount Sinai. 
Exo 25:40  And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.
Exo 26:30  And you shall erect the tabernacle according to the plan for it which has been shown you on the mountain.
Exo 27:8  You shall make it hollow, with boards; as it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made.
Heb 8:5  They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary; for when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, "See that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain."

We should expect the same modeling in our Church from the construction and architecture of the Church building to the minute part of the rituals and proceedings of the church as well as its theological edifice.

We have been talking so far of sense objects.  However in the conglomeration of existence where the society act as an organism, social semiotics also play a major role.  Thus Leviticus 23 was the instruction for seven festivals as a teaching tool.  We will see that every phase of the church and its activities will thus constitute an effective semiotics for communication of the message of salvation and redemption.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) understood  that human thought proceeds by the use of signs.  Among them the spoken words are the primary symbols of mental experience, (On Interpretation, 350 B.C.). This concept is central in the idea of Logos (The Word). Heraclitus (535-475 BC) probably was the first to establish the term in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the cosmos.  So when Apostle John wrote his gospel to the Greek he identified Jesus with the Logos.  It is this truth transmitted by St.Thomas to India which produce the concept of Aum as the ultimate Brahman.  Aum appeared in the St.Thomas Christian circles as early as the first century and became part of the Hinduism later than the third century.  So the first perceptible appearance of Unknowable God (who resides in darkness) was as Word in the form of Trinity. 

Apparently some people have missed the idea of the unity of God in the revealed trinity form with the God who cannot be seen, heard or understood.  We can understand God only through the dimensions of our own existence, when God can be described or understood, which implies use of symbols in a multidimensional form. 

Symbols are central in all religious rituals because God has to be described in manifold ways to be even intelligible.   This was understood by early Christians.  Rituals and Sacraments are an attempt in this direction.  Augustine of Hippas (354-430 A.D.), declared that "All instruction is either about things or about signs; but things are learned by means of signs," (On Christian Doctrine, I:2).

Augustine of Hippas
(354-430 A.D.),
"All instruction is either about things or about signs;
but things are learned by means of signs,"
(On Christian Doctrine, I:2).

According to Augustinian sign theory, signs are simply “things used to signify something” These signs impact recipients’ senses and impart relevant mental associations or concepts/

To coin a symbol (word) to refer to a thing, the community must agree on a simple meaning (a denotative meaning) within their culture (language). But that symbol can transmit that meaning only within the cultural understanding (language's grammatical structures) and codes.. Thus the Codes also represent the values of the culture, and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life.  The Primary images or symbols are evidently based on the five senses.

     
“every thought is a sign”

      (Charles Sanders Peirce, 1857)

 

 Cultures are formed through communication . With communication we mean all forms of means of communication,  the most familiar form being Language.  In order that we may communicate effectively these are to be something that interrelate with people.  You can have a personal language, but it will not communicate with the external world. To communicate with each other we need a common understanding of what the symbols used stand for.  Every culture develops a language and forms a "speech community”.  An individual can participate in multiple "speech communities" each with its own language.  An example will be a political community and a religious community where one person may be part of both. Because languages produce a culture, we have localized cultures based essentially on languages.  Conglomeration of language groups form ethnic groups, nations etc.   (See  The Language families of the world:  Dr. C. George Boeree Shippensburg University and Merritt Ruhlen's: A Guide to the World's Languages (Stanford University Press, 1987)

(A good introduction to semiotics can be found in Daniel Chandler :Semiotics for Beginners .  Many of the figures here are from that book)

Semiotics as a serious science was started by  the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce.  Their approaches were slightly different.

Saussure asserts that there is no inherent or necessary relationship between that which carries the meaning (the signifier, usually a word or symbol) and the actual meaning which is carried (the signified). For example, the word "car" is not actually a car - the meaning of car could be carried by any random string of letters. It just so happens that, in English, that meaning is carried by the letters c-a-r.

Peirce distinguished between three types of signs: icon, index and symbol. Whether a sign belongs in one category or another is dependent upon the nature of its relationship between the sign itself (which he called the referent) and the actual meaning. An icon is a meaning which is based upon similarity or appearance (for example, similarity in shape).  These terminologies were common long before Peirce among the early fathers who gave tremendous importance to the iconography, written word and the spoken word.

According to Pierce, icons are "the only means of directly communicating an idea." An index is a meaning based upon some cause and effect relationship (for example, a weathervane carries certain meaning because of the wind): "Because the indexical sign is understood to be connected to the real object, it is capable of making that object conceptually present."  Symbol communicates meaning purely through arbitrary conventions. This is the way natural language carries meaning

     

Without  Signs Nothing is conceivable 
Sless, 1986

Icons

Icons are signs whose signifier bears a close resemblance to the thing they refer to. Thus a photograph of me can be said to be highly iconic because it looks like me. A road sign showing the silhouette of a car and a motorbike is highly iconic because the silhouettes look like a motorbike and a car. A very few words (so-called onomatopoeic words) are iconic, too, such as whisper, cuckoo, splash, crash.

Symbols

Most words, though, are symbolic signs. We have agreed that they shall mean what they mean and there is no natural relationship between them and their meanings, between the signifier and the signified. In movies we would expect to find iconic signs - the signifiers looking like what they refer to. We find symbolic signs as well, though: for example when the picture goes wobbly before a flashback. Certainly the 'real world' doesn't go wobbly when we remember a scene from the past, so this device is an arbitrary device which means 'flashback' because we have agreed that that's what it means. The road sign with the motorbike and car has, as we have just seen, iconic elements, but it also has symbolic elements: a white background with a red circle around it. These signify 'something is forbidden' simply because we have agreed that that is what they mean.

Indexes In a sense, indexes lie between icons and symbols. An index is a sign whose signifier we have learnt to associate with a particular signified. For example, if we see someone walking down the street with a rolling gait, we may associate the rolling gate with the concept of 'sailor'. We may see smoke as an index of 'fire'. A thermometer is an index of 'temperature'. Peirce gives the examples of a weathercock, a barometer and a sundial.

Semiotics for Beginners http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem03.html

 

...'reality' is always encoded, or rather the only way we can perceive and make sense of reality is by the codes of our culture. There may be an objective, empiricist reality out there, but there is no universal, objective way of perceiving and making sense of it. What passes for reality in any culture is the product of the culture's codes, so 'reality' is always already encoded, it is never 'raw'.

Fiske (1987 )

Dyadic model of   Saussure

Simple two-part model of the sign: a signifier (sign vehicle; material perceptible content like sound or visual information) and the signified (a conceptual and abstract content)

 

for example

 

The correlation goes on to different levels.  As a simple example here is the Multilevel interpretation of smoke alarm

http://tagg.org/xpdfs/semiotug.pdf

Here the alarm noise comes to mean “Danger, Get out!”

 

sign

“A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces or modifies....That for which it stands is called its object, that which it conveys, its meaning; and
the idea which it gives rise, its interpretant....[the sign creates in the mind] an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I
call the interpretant of the first sign. This sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea
which I have sometimes called the ground of that representation."

C. S. Peirce, quoted in Umberto Eco (1979) The Role of the Reader 7.2. A semiotic model:

http://www.olinda.com/VC/lectures/Semiotics/semiotics.htm

Denotation and Connotation

The relationship between the sign and the communicated meaning is indicated by denotation and connotation. 

Denotation: It describes the commonsense meaning of the sign, usually understood as a proper or literal meaning. The literal definition of and expression. (word, image, sign)

Connotation: It is the meaning derived by an individual receiver. The suggestive or associative sense of an expression (word, image, sign) that extends beyond its literal definition.

The greatest difficulty for international language of signs is that the same denoted sign can have many different connotations. Within a culture, denotations often match connotations. But when messages are attempted across cultures -whether based on age, economics, gender, ethnic background, location -- aberrant decoding often results. For example, in many cultures eye contact between two individuals talking to each other is a sign of interest. In other culture, it may indicate disrespect, insult,...Humans always see and hear through the filter of who they are within a community. (Lester, 1995)

Triadic Model of Peirce

Peirce used a different set of terms to describe sign functions, which for him were a conceptual process, continually unfolding and unending (what he termed "unlimited semiosis," the chain of meaning-making by new signs interpreting a prior sign or set of signs).

We use certain "signs" among ourselves that do not point to anything in our actual surroundings. Instead of announcers of things, they are reminders ... they take the place of things that we have perceived in the past, or even things that we can merely imagine by combining memories, things that might be in the past or future experience. They serve to let us develop a characteristic attitude toward objects in absentia, which is called "thinking of" or "referring to" what is not here. --Suzzane Langer   

• the sign and the concept are connected by the person's perception,
• the concept and the object are connected by the person's experience,

·            the sign and the object are connected by the conventions, or the culture, of the social group within which the person lives.

In the case of an abstract concept it will have to first translated in terms of the real world objects and then they becomes signs through words, icons, actions and sounds.  This then translates into the receiver as he perceives it

So if the person has no experience of the object the sign will convey no meaning.  In order to give a meaning the community needs to jump start a sort of object of experience.  Then we may be able to expand this experience by further signs.

These connections are important to the study of how meaning arises with the many signs that fill the human environment.   Communication creates relationships between what is perceived or known by one person and what is perceived or known by another; it also relies on pre-existing relationships. The receiver and originator of a message must work from some common understanding of what sorts of patterns are used to communicate and how these patterns are related to other events. Communication has to do with community both in the sense that it relies on having something in common in the first place and in the sense that it can influence what the communicants subsequently have in common. ( David Ritchie)

 

A Semantic Web Approach to Digital Rights Management by  Roberto García Consideres  as Semiotics having three dimensions that cover specific aspects of signs:

1.         Syntax: it deals with relations among tokens and the production of new ones.

2.         Semantics: it studies how agents interpret tokens and relate them to the things they stand for.

3.         Pragmatics: it analyses the repercussions of token interpretations for the agent in the environment. It includes a purpose, represented as goals or desires, which ultimate criterion is to aid system in survival.

Knowledge viewed from Systems Theory perspective

The rectangles in this model represents various dimensions of cosmic existence of the intellect and their interactions within those realms.

 

Communication through symbols and encoding and decoding in Science and Nature.

.  In science we try to  translate one system of encoding (that of nature) in to another system (that of numbers). Thus

“A scientific law is an analogy, or system of analogies (allegory), which asserts that the relations between things are similar to the relations between numbers(...) Science is an allegory that asserts that the relations between the parts of reality are similar to the relations between the terms of discourse. The natural universe is the things and their relations that enter into the allegories of science.” (Buchanan, S. (1962). Poetry and Mathematics. New York.)

As a result St. Paul says: Rom 1:19-20  “for from the world's creation the invisible things of him are perceived, being apprehended by the mind through the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity,”  

This is also reflected in St.Augustine’s phrase,  magnus liber naturae rerum, 'the great book of nature' wherein one can read the eternal power and divinity of the Almighty God.

Natural Theology of William Paley (Natural Theology  By William Paley, James Paxton) illustrates the concept of the book of nature as the sign of divinity in the Creation. The book of nature was often conceived as the visible sign of an otherwise invisible and transcendent God

 

 These give us an inkling of the vast seriousness of the semiotic nature of cosmos in all various dimensions and of the semiotic nature and significance of sacrament which can determine our life now and in the ages to come.  Sacraments are therefore the science of things which are not directly experienced by senses translated through the senses to reverberate into other realms of human existence.

 

Going another step forward we will now show that communication through encoding and then they are used by the organism only after decoding in the organic systems.

 

 

http://www.rdillman.com/HFCL/TUTOR/ComProcess/ComProc2.html#SWMOD

“Communication is a general phenomenon which does not require the presence of human beings.

Communicating within subatomic level

Of course, as human beings ourselves, we are naturally most interested in human communication,  ….But for a moment, take time to consider the wider implication - that communication is the glue that holds everything together. Here are a few examples.

1. A school of fish swims lazily through the water beneath the sea. Suddenly, the entire school turns as one and flits off in a new direction.

Surely it is some form of communication that permits the school to move with such precision. But which? Visual - each fish watching the one in front? Through a sense of sound? Or of smell? Jeremy Campbell comments on the biological role of communication

...communication is not confined to radios, telephones, and television channels. It occurs in nature, wherever life exists. The genes are a system for sending chemical messages to the protein factories of the cell, instructing them to make a living organism. The human being is the most complex communications network on earth. - Campbell 1982, 67

Thus, communication is not merely speech among humans. It includes the many different kinds of messages that connect organisms of all kinds. And more than that,

communication plays a role in the chemical and electrical systems that constitute the organisms.

2. Electrons orbit the nuclei of three atoms, one an oxygen atom and two of hydrogen. The result is a molecule of "water."

 

This might be a situation in chemistry, perhaps, or physics, but what could it have to do with communication? In response let us offer the words of Nobel Prize-winning Chemist Ilya Prigogine as he discusses the behavior of certain chemical "clocks" that change color with astounding regularity.

Such a degree of order stemming from the activity of billions of molecules seems incredible, and indeed, if chemical clocks had not been observed, no one would believe that such a process is possible. To change color all at once, molecules must have a way to "communicate." The system has to act as a whole. We will return repeatedly to this key word, communicate, which is of obvious importance in so many fields, from chemistry to neurophysiology. - Prigogine and Strengers 1984, 148

Communication, then, is not merely a characteristic of humans, or indeed of living organisms. It is present at the deepest levels of our material universe.

When we made this statement, "communication does not require the presence of human beings," we asserted that even if there were no people anywhere, the earth would still be here along with its plants and animals and communication would still exist.

[The genome] is able to select chemical structures from its environment and use energy to build these into more complex structures, which eventually constitute the living organism that it "knows how" to make. The exact process of "morphogenesis" by which, say, the egg becomes a chicken, ... is still a mystery, but clearly there is a communication here between some kind of structures in the genome and its environment that transfer information from the genome into the structures that it builds. ... [M]ere cell division would never produce a cell of another kind unless the genome has the capacity to communicate

Scientists report that some kinds of trees exude certain chemicals when they are under stress. Nearby trees may react to these chemicals and thus "prepare" themselves for potential danger. At the time these reports were announced, some media presented the story in terms of tree communication.”

 

The whole creation exists on this type of beings united together into one organism.  That unity depends on communication.  The whole creation therefore exists as an objective reality independent of the existence of humans because communication exists without life as we understand it.     

Biosemiotics

“Biosemiotics have roots both in biology and semiotics which is a theory of signs. Jacob von Uexküll (1940) can be considered the founder of biosemiotics, although he did not use this term. He proposed the notion of ‘Umwelt’ which is the world seen through the eyes of an animal. Each animal associates external objects with some meaning which is specific to its habits. For example, an ant considers plant stems as a path to its food area in the flower, but a cow considers them as food. Sebeok (1972) adopted semiotic methods and terminology to describe signification in animals and called his theory ‘zoosemiotics’. Later signification was described in plants, and the term ‘phytosemiotics’ appeared (Krampen 1981). Sign processes penetrates the entire body of an organism. The DNA molecule codes the sequence of amino acids in proteins, which in turn may be signals for various kinds of actions at a cell or organism level. Cells communicate with each other using signal molecules (hormones, mediators)“ (Sharov, A. A. 1998.From cybernetics to semiotics in biology. Semiotica 120: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg)

DNA can be thought of as a self description of each organism from which the organism itself can be reproduced. Evidently if the organism can read the code, it should also contain the interpreter within itself.  This is actually realized in the cloning process which is now popular.  However the ability to interpret involves some form of intelligence inherent in the organism even if there is no evident intelligence attributed to the organism.  Each molecular system appears thus as “smaller minds” (Minsky 1986) and the whole organism with all its individual “small minds”  contributes to the final reaction to the input signal. That is consciouness.  Wow!  Is all the cosmos filled with consciousness?  Does that show the immanence of God?  Creation declares the glory of God. 

 “After a close look, our mind also appears to be a collection of ‘smaller minds’. Minsky (1986) views human mind as a society of small subunits which perform isolated tasks. Some of them are responsible for recording and analyzing external signals, some of them are responsible for memory, and so on. All these mind elements control the same body, and thus, they have to come to an agreement before the action is taken. The agreement can be achieved by something like voting. A similar idea was developed by Gazzaniga (1985).” (Sharov)

“The German biologist Jakob von Uexküll, developed the concept of umweltsforschung. The term umwelt refers to the phenomenal worlds of organisms - the world around animals as they themselves perceive and interpret them. "Every action" wrote Uexküll "that consists of perception and operation imprints its meaning on the meaningless object and thereby makes it into a subject-related meaning-carrier in the respective umwelt"  “The subject of biosemiotics, a new inter-discipline branch of science, is investigation of the biological nature of signs and semiotic base of biology. Information is considered as a micro-state of a system affecting the choice of system trajectories at bifurcation points. Sense of information has two components: meaning and value. Meaning is a set of bans and limitations set by information on the trajectories of system development and behavior, and value is measured by the contribution of information to the safety of self-maintenance and self-reproduction of the system. Meaning and value are considered at the material and ideal level. Sense evolution is characterized by its extension over time and space, and by complication of its structure. This process went gradually from pre-biological systems till the man

Forti's illustration of the analogy between 'language' and 'living beings'

 

 

FROM LANGUAGE TO NATURE - the semiotic metaphor in biology.

Claus Emmeche and Jesper Hoffmeyer

 

Communicating within Oraganism and reproduction
Genes, Chromosomes, RNA, DNA

We are familiar with the Genes, Chromosomes and DNA as carriers of information even to the very details of  our bodies.    The information carried by DNA is held in the sequence of pieces of DNA called genes. Transmission of genetic information in genes is achieved via complementary base pairing. For example, in transcription, when a cell uses the information in a gene, the DNA sequence is copied into a complementary RNA sequence through the attraction between the DNA and the correct RNA nucleotides. Usually, this RNA copy is then used to make a matching protein sequence in a process called translation which depends on the same interaction between RNA nucleotides.

Alternatively, a cell may simply copy its genetic information in a process called DNA replication. DNA contains the genetic information that allows all modern living things to function, grow and reproduce. So we can see how important semiotics is even in the process of creation and recreation of life.  This is exactly what the sacraments are trying to do in real life, but in a different plane.

“DNA can be viewed as a program written in a higher-level language which is subsequently translated (or interpreted) into the "machine language" of the cell (proteins). On the other hand, DNA is itself a passive molecule which undergoes manipulation at the hands of various kinds of enzymes; in this sense, a DNA molecule is exactly like a long piece of data, as well. Thirdly, DNA contains the templates off of which the tRNA "flashcards" are rubbed, which means that DNA also contains the definition of its own higher-level language.” .( Hofstadter, Douglas R.(1979). Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. London: The Harvester Press.)

DNA replication. The double helix is unwound by a helicase and topoisomerase. Next, one DNA polymerase produces the leading strand copy. Another DNA polymerase binds to the lagging strand. This enzyme makes discontinuous segments (called Okazaki fragments) before DNA ligase joins them together.

 

Informations can combine together produce a modified information as follows:

Recombination involves the breakage and rejoining of two chromosomes (M and F) to produce two re-arranged chromosomes (C1 and C2).

 

“We may state that among all the information-carrying systems, the genetic code and the verbal code are the only ones based upon the use of discrete components which, by themselves, are devoid of inherent meaning but serve to constitute the minimal senseful units, i.e. entities endowed with their own, intrinsic meaning in a given code.” (Jakobson 1973)

In the Darwinian evolution, organisms were seen as an inevitable consequence of evolution to be totally explained by the mechanism of natural selection.  If some feature of the organism (for example a fin) was more useful it retained it and then improved on it.The obvious question is,  “Do organisms and parts of organisms develop their characteristic forms, just because such forms were the most functional (the most successful)?”  The organism cannot in itself modify the form after testing it (Humans may be able to do that mechanistically by adding a limb or a mechanical heart.).  Evidently there is something more to that since the decoding of the form into functional value requires an interpreter which the organism evidently does not have on its own as a substance.  To assume non-organic to organic to organism is still more ridiculous unless we attribute a decoding brain to matter. In other words, a  one dimensional material world is a myth, if we are to explain what we see in material world.  A more reasonable assumption will be that the whole cosmos is an extension of other dimensions, of which science has little understanding.  Eastern Churches has always claimed that the cosmos is just part of the Supreme being and that He is immanent in every dimension.  The statement that “Nature is a book” is more real than it appears.

 .
These simple facts of encoded messages in organic systems takes us to another level of understanding of semiotics of cosmos.  Evidently sacraments are truly referred to as mysteries, simply because the information that is transferred is not simply pertaining to this dimension and restricted within reproduction but transformation as we see in the next section.

 

The function of Senses and intellect

The five senses are the gates through which we perceive the external gross physical body.  This reaches the brain which opens the mind in analyzing and interpreting.  The spiritual science foundation puts it in the figure given below.

We are still making models here since we cannot otherwise present it.  This is what all science does.  Science is nothing but an attempt to encode reality so that it can be transferred to others and/or made use of to change the cosmos in which we live. 

(http://www.spiritualresearchfoundation.org/
spiritualresearch/spiritualscience/lawofkarma/spiritualscienceofkarma.php)

                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new Neuro Linguistic Programming Model of this two dimensional aspect of man is represented in the above figure.  Here the input from the senses is filtered by earlier experiences and then remapped which produces the conscious external behavior.

 But this is still a limited model because factors beyond the mind enter in the equation through our spiritual world existence.  Yoga gives a fivefold sheath where one beyond the intellect is called Blissful Sheath which is better described as spiritual realm since it cannot be explained purely in terms of the mind, thinking and intellect.

This beyond intellect level is seen in the following representation of NLP Model

                                         

The values and belief systems of ours effectively modifies the information by deleting, distorting and generalizing them to give a new internal representation.  Then it is translated into external behavior.  This generally is the method of transformation. 

Shannon and Weaver's "linear model"of 1949
Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver produced a general model of communication:

 

 

Shannon and Weaver identify three levels of problems in communication .

Level A: (Technical problems)
• How accurately can the symbols of communication be transmittes?
Level B: (semantic problems)
• How precisely do the transmitted symbols convey the desired meaning?
Level C : (effectiveness problems)
• How effectively does the received meaning affect conduct in the desired way?

Thus evidently communication of concepts and messages which has more dimensions than the material will be difficult because of these various noises that can marr or change during transmission.  Thus this being the  only possible method  it has to be encoded and repeated so that the transmission is effective to accomplish the desired change in conduct and persons.

Hence all religions employ the external physical sensations to recreate and reform the personality of people. This is essentially the function of the Worship and of all rites and rituals.

 

Apart from the essential religious icons and symbols and rituals there is a wider Social semiotics involved in the Church as a community.

 

“Social semiotics is the study of human social meaning-making practices of all types. These include linguistic, actional, pictorial, somatic, and other semiotic modalities, and their codeployment. The basic premise is that meanings are made, and the task of social semiotics is to develop the analytical constructs and theoretical framework for showing how this occurs. Meanings are jointly made by the participants to some social activity-structure. They are made by construing semiotic relations among patterned meaning relations, social practices, and the physical-material processes which social practices organize and entrain in social semiosis. In social semiotics, the basic logic is that of contextualization (Thibault, 1991). No semiotic form, material entity or event, text, or action has meaning in and of itself. The meanings these have are made in and through the social meaning-making practices which construct semiotic relations among forms, material processes and entities, and social actions. A given community or subcommunity has regular and repeatable patterns of meaning-making. These are the patterns which are typical of that community. They help to define and constitute the community, as well as to distinguish it from other communities. The epistemology of social semiotics is founded on the theory of dynamic open systems which has revolutionized recent theory and practice in the physical and life sciences. It also has a radically social constructionist orientation, which it shares with a number of other recent developments in the human and social sciences. For these two reasons, social semiotics is well placed to play a key role in the emerging New Dialogue between the humanities and social sciences and the physical and life sciences.” 

Volume 4 (3) of The Semiotic Review of Books. Editorial: Social Semiotics by Paul J. Thibault

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research in social psychology has demonstrated that people often act out the roles in which they are placed (Katz & Kahn, 1978). Various types of symbols elicit this behavior  Thus symbol serves as a link between feeling, interpretation, and action in organizations.

In general we come to the conclusion as given by the introduction part of the following desertation which gives a good summary of what we have been discussing so far.

SANCTUS AND THE BOOK OF REVELATION

Some Anthropological and Theological Insights on the Communal and Historical Dimension of Christian Liturgy

(published in L. Padovese [ed.], Atti del VII Simposio di Efeso su S. Giovani Apostolo, Roma 1999, pp.143-156)  

One of the most imaginative insights of modern cultural anthropologists is their conviction that ritual, and the liturgical life in general, is a form of communication, a "performative" kind of speech. According to this understanding, rituals are instrumental in creating the essential categories of human thought. They communicate the fundamental beliefs and values of a community, outlining in this way its "world view" and its "ethos". Mary Douglas has demonstrated that rituals do not only transmit culture, but they also "create a reality which would be nothing without them. It is not too much to say that ritual is more to society than words are to thought. For it is very possible to know something and then find words for it. But it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts".[ Even the texts, as A. Destro and M. Pesce have pointed out, “are not just writing, literature, or communication, but above and beyond all this, especially in the religious field, part and instrument of a performance”.] This conclusion is in fact in accord with the affirmation of modern theologians, who like the late Fr. George Florovsky rightly declare that "christianity is a liturgical tradition. The Church is first of all a worshipping community.  Worship comes first, doctrine and discipline second. The lex orandi  has a  privileged priority in the life of the christian Church. The lex credendi  depends on the devotional experience and vision of the Church, more precisely on the authentic (i.e. liturgical) identity of the Church."

In this line of thought, liturgy does not only externalize, but also modifies experience. This double orientation is expressed in the certain general functions the liturgy has for a group. Some of them contribute to the expression, maintenance and transmission of the values and feelings of a given social and/or religious system, some others serve as guardians of these values and feelings,  protecting them from doubts and rejections, while others contribute to the intesification of solidarity between the participants, thus creating a sense of communion.

Keeping in mind all these, i.e. that rituals and liturgy in general create a reality, a "world view" and the "ethos" of a community, it may be proved very fruitful to try to think of the Liturgy of the Church in terms of the insights cultural anthropology has offered, among others, to scholars of religion. …..