A CONTEXT FOR NARRATIVE UNIVERSALS or: Semiology as Pars Semiotica

• Published in: American journal of semiotics Vol. 4; no. 3; pp. 53 - 68
• Main Author: Deely, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Davis, CA Semiotic Society of America 01.01.1986; Schenkman Pub. Co
• Subjects: Culture; Idealism; Language Universals; Linguistics; Narrative Structure; Peirce; Philosophical logics. Philosophy of language; Philosophy; Saussure; Science; Semiotics; Signs; Traditions; Williams, Brooke
• ISSN: 0277-7126; 2153-2990
• DOI: 10.5840/ajs198643/420

What I would like to do in this essay, inspired particularly by the June 3 ISISSS presentation of Thomas Sebeok, is to reflect upon the subject of narrative universale in the context of semiotic inquiry in a rather different way and indirectly, as it were, for the set purpose of suggesting a way of broadening the consideration of narrative structure beyond the perspective of 'codes of literature' to include in some sense natural phenomena as well as purely cultural and literary texts, in order to see if the notion of 'universal' as semiotically conceived might not recapture something of the classical philosophical understanding which saw cultural phenomena - including literature - as in some sense an extension of and linked with a larger world of nature which cultural beings no doubt may take for granted and even ignore in their round of life, but which remains nonetheless the inevitable context in which they move and have their being, and which provides for them in the first place the materials or, as we may say, the raw possibilities of cultural creations - including literary texts -in the first place. Instead of interpreting the terms, the modern students of Latin thought simply transliterated them, and where the old scholastic treatises were filled with contrasts and consequences of the opposition of ens reale to ens rationis, the neoscholastic tracts spoke constantly of the difference between 'real being' and 'being of reason,' but with a certain obtuseness: they nowhere took effective notice of the fact that the so-called 'beings of reason' have a kind of reality in their own right, and that there is something curious about a distinction so drawn that one of its terms includes the other-something that requires further explanation; they little noticed that, from the standpoint of human experience, the greater part of what we call culture, as also social roles, are constituted precisely by so-called 'beings of reason'; and finally, they remained mainly mute about the fact that, from this same standpoint, 'reality' - what we experience directly in everyday life - is a mixture irreducible to so-called ens reale. [...]as it was Sebeok's latest reflections on "the two traditions" (made no doubt from his "perduring perception of semiotics in its multiform relationships to the Art of Medicine; more broadly to the Life Science; and more scopiously by far, to the Science of Nature"-1984a: 10) that occasioned this essay, let me work toward its conclusion by citing his earlier definition of terms on this same theme (1977:181ff.): The chronology of semiotic inquiry so far, viewed panoramically, exhibits an oscillation between two seemingly antithetical tendencies: in the major tradition (which I am tempted to christen a Catholic heritage), semiosis takes its place as a normal occurrence of nature, of which, to be sure, language-that paramount known mode of terrestrial communication which is Lamarckian in style, that is, embodies a learning process that becomes part of the evolutionary legacy of the ensuing generations-forms an important if relatively recent component. . [...]references to the volume are by page number, followed by a slash and the appropriate line number of the specific section of text referred to-e.g., 287/3-26.) "'Semiotics' and Its Congeners," reprinted in Sebeok 1976a: 47-58, to which reprint page reference is made here. 1976 "Final Report: Narrative" for the National Endowment for the Humanities on the Pilot Program in Semiotics in the Humanities at Indiana University's Bloomington campus, 1 August 1975-31 July 1976 (report dated June 1, 1976), distributed by the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies at IU Bloomington, 14 pages; subsequently published as "Appendix III.