Semiotics through the lens of history

Abstract

Two main trends emerge in the study of signs during the second half of the twentieth century: the first conceptualizes semiotics as a science with a theoretical basis in the tradition that connects Saussure to Greimas, passing through Hjelmslev and Propp; the other trend opts for a more philosophical stance, favoring notions such as “sign”, “meaning”, “inference”, “sense”, tapping into century-long tradition.

This contribution contends that the study of semioticity is not only conducted through categorised knowledge: the problem or general theory of the sign is deeply entrenched with its history and viceversa; this leads to claiming that historiography itself proceeds semiotically and is therefore a semio-historiography. The history of semiotics is not separate from a history of philosophical thought and ideas about signs. Rather, we could speak of “turning points” in the constructive dimension of Bachelard’s “philosophy of no” which generates variables that research has neglected either in the first instance or in subsequent developments. At a different theoretical level this “no” includes what it denies, it initiates a translation process of instances that find a response in another paradigm.