Global Semiotics vs. Human Semiology: Understanding communication in the 21st century

Abstract

This paper adopts as its point of reference an integrational semiology as developed by Oxford Professor of linguistics Roy Harris. It contrasts two contemporary approaches to communication as proposed by global semiotics and Saussurean semiology. Against the former, integrational linguists argue that there is no ‘science’ of communication (i.e., there is no way to isolate communication as a ‘thing’ and only then decide what is rightly called communication), and against the latter that there are no impersonal languages determining for its speakers what counts as communication and what does not. The paper introduces the Harrisian semiological notion of radical indeterminacy and suggests that a linguistics of the 21st century should be ‘lay-oriented’ and should recognize that individuals possess unique communicational histories.