Semiotics and Literature

The central/focal point of semiotics is “sign” which is a configuration of conventionalized response. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), cited in Sebeok (2001), defines sign as consisting of three dimensions: the physical part of the sign itself, the referent and its evocation of a meaning (4), while Umberto Eco (1977) calls sign “everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else” - everything that on the grounds of a previous established social convention can be taken as something else (7). In Danielle Roemer‟s (1982) view, “the term „sign‟ refers to a semiotic relationship ... [this she adds, is] the correlation of an element from an expression plane with an element from a content plane” (174). This relationship, she furthers, is developed when we associate the element of expression with the content that is conventionally interpreted within the culture that the expression holds. Therefore most semiotic meanings of issues are derived from the culturally assigned “content to what we perceived as the semiotic unit” relating to it (Roemer, 1982: 174). Eco (1977) expatiates further that “semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as sign” and this sign could be words, images, sounds, gestures and objects (7).

Roemer‟s (1982) and Eco‟s (1977) opinions recognise that there is an existing social order – convention – which has interpreted itself to mean something before now which has therefore been established and accepted.

The concept of semiotics (signs and the thing they refer to), enhances the construction of reality. The whole idea behind sign as a means of communication is that there must be interpretation to assume meaning – decoding the message to make meaning. This representational activity (which Saussure calls Signification) is the referent that understanding has accentuated in any discourse or text. It is culturally determined by the correlation between the signifier and the signified. Peckham (1988) avers that “a theory of signs must be subsumed by a theory of meaning” (185). To him therefore, “a sign ... is any perceptual configuration to which there is a response” (186).

Without a response to the information sent out by an encoder, it becomes obvious that either communication has not actually taken place or there is what Festus Adesanoye calls “a gross misrepresentation or misinterpretation of the facts”¹¹. Eco (1977) asserts that “semiotics studies all cultural processes as processes of communication” (8). This is

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to say that the codes are culture specific and because it is conventionally accepted, it thus becomes arbitrary. Saussure thus corroborates Peirce‟s “symbolic” kind of meaning making.

Peirce‟s logical standpoint is reflected in his adding a third side to Saussure‟s two-sided component of semiology (signifier and signified), “the reality denoted by the object” as relative to meaning. He adds that semiotics is “the doctrine of essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis”. Meanings and the things they stand for (referents) do not share any direct link, but are arbitrarily conceived to be so.

According to Rebecca Stone (2000), Peirce‟s model of „Triangular Relation‟

quoted from Danesi (1994:6) can be used to illustrate his notion of the relationship between the sign, the interpretant and the object.

F ig .1 Diagram of Significations.

Put differently, Daniel Chandler (2002) says that:

contemporary semiotics study signs, not in isolation but as part of a semiotic sign system (such as a medium or genre). They study how meanings are made and how reality is represented. Semiotics is concerned with meaning making and representations in many forms, perhaps most obviously in the form of „texts‟ and

„media‟.... A text is an assemblage of signs (such as

„words‟, images, sounds and or gestures) constructed (and interpreted) with reference to the conventions associated with a genre and in a particular medium of communication (2-3).

SIGNS/REPRESENTATION

Something used to stand for something

INTERPRETANT

The individual‟s comprehension of, and reaction to, the sign/referent association

OBJECT/REFERENT

What is referred to by the sign

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The interpretations derived from “signs” therefore constitute the crux of semiotic literary criticism. The “texts” can exist in any medium; verbal and non verbal or both and can also be analysed as a text of situation or culture.

According to Thomas Sebeok (2001), a text bears no meaning unless the receiver of the text knows the code(s) in which it was constructed and unless the text refers to, occurs in, or entails some specific context. Similarly, Ibibio libation texts (incantations) most often have no meaning on their own except when there is understanding between the performer and the audience of the communication. The context is the environment - physical, psychological, and social - in which a sign or text is used or occurs. Human intellectual and social life is based on the production, use, and exchange of signs and representations. Some cultures in Guiraud‟s views, display inverse relation between knowledge and affectivity; this he calls the realistic functioning of signs (Guiraud, 1975: 19). Sebeok (2001) further avows that:

[...] when we gesture, talk, write, read, watch a TV program, listen to music, look at a painting, etc, we are engaged in sign-based representational behaviour [which] endowed the human species with the ability to cope effectively with the crucial aspects of existence [such as] knowing, behaving purposefully, planning, socializing, and communicating (8).

It is believed that the heterogeneous nature of humanity the world over has made the use of signs and representational activities culture specific. This then makes “the signs people use on a daily basis to constitute a mediating template in the worldview they come to have” (Sebeok, 2001: 8). Corroborating this, Bertens (2008) adds that signs

“have no meaning in themselves but ... take their meaning from their function within a given structure – from their relation with other signs”. Semiotics thus embodies concepts like texts, contexts, significance, extra-texts and inter-texts, etc. While a text is any mechanism that comprises a number of conventionally defined signs which aid the establishment of meaning, context is the particular instance to which the texts apply.

The possession of these concepts constitutes the relevance of the present study to this theory.

Following the work of French cultural theorist, Roland Barthes, semiotics became a major approach to cultural studies in 1960. His works helped to launch the awareness of this approach in the Anglophone works of literature. Its anthropological

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facet is blazed by Claude Levi-Strauss while the psychoanalytical aspect of semiotics is fanned by Jacques Lacan (1901-81).

While Peirce identifies three major relative forms to semiotics, later semioticians added the aesthetic mode which is the basic feature of literature and art generally. The aesthetic mode combines both the iconic and analogical attributes within the text in creating meaning. The aesthetic signifier sees art as subjective and therefore has inherent affective potentials. In this sense, “the aesthetic sign is free from all conventions and its meaning adheres to representation”- the referent that it links in the process of the communication (Guiraud, 1975: 67). Guiraud adds that:

the arts are representative of nature and of society, real or imaginary, visible or invisible, objective or subjective. The arts utilize the media and their corresponding codes; but starting with that primary signification they create signified structures which themselves are signifying (69).

Semiotics is the hallmark of literary aesthetic, which is foregrounded in the ability to interpret representations and expressions.

Both Saussure and Peirce built their foundation of semiotics on the principles of the English empiricism philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), but all subsequent works on semiotics are developed on the frameworks begun by Saussure and Peirce. Other users of Semiotic theory include Charles Williams Morris (1901-1979) who introduced behaviourist semiotics, Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Algirdas Greimas (1917-1992), Yori Lotman (1922-1993), Christian Metz (1931-1993), Umberto Eco (1932-) and Julia Kristeva (1941-). Other linguists are Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965), Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-90), Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), Thomas Sebeok (1920-2001), Daniel Chandler, among others (Chandler, 2002: 6).

Our social strata subconsciously imprint conventions upon the citizenry without much effort. The everyday usage and contact with signs accord them a position of

“naturalness” which makes their appearances unquestionable. Media signs by these modes become persuasive as well as referential. Felix Gbenoba (2006) says that “by the

„denaturalizing‟ signs, therefore, semiotics demystifies ideology” (25).

Semiotics does not limit itself to only written or oral texts alone. Bouisacc in Ogundeji (1988) classifies texts as:

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[...] any permanent set of ordered elements, either sentences, objects, actions or combination of any of these of which the co-presence (or collation) is considered by an encoder and/or a decoder as being related in some capacity one to another through the mediation of a logico-semantic system (13).

In the context of this research on the Ibibio libation performance, the above quotation could not have been better placed as “logico-semantic system” in Bouisacc‟s opinion is the same as Ibibio “conventions, rules or codes”. The performance of libation, which is conventionally adhered to in the Ibibio religious system, has become the “rules” that must not be altered by any performer since the deities and ancestors (invisible recipient/audience who are believed to be aural though dead) are involved here. This research adopts Peirce‟s concepts of sign (semiosis) which implies that indexical sign determines its meaning by being in relation to the object of referent; while symbolic sign relays meaning that is conventionally accepted by the speech participants. In the observation of libation performances, both the indexical and symbolic components of his explications clearly apply and lend credence in the performances of these texts as well as give understanding to their religious implication.