Lecture 6

SEMIOTICS OF LITERATURE: 

SEMIOTICS OF LITERATURE Harri Veivo University of Helsinki Winter 2007

Lecture 6: Indexicality and deixis: 

Lecture 6: Indexicality and deixis 0. Commentary on written exercises 1. Indexicality: basics 1.1. Peirce on indexicality 1.2. Benveniste on subjectivity 2. Deixis in narratives 2.1. Deictic centers 2.2. Deictic shifts

Peirce on indexicality: 

Peirce on indexicality For Peirce, indexicality is one of the three modes in sign functioning (in addition to iconicity and symbolicity) Designates and ”existential” relation between the sign and its object Causal relationship: smoke as sign for fire Relation of continuity: sail as sign for ship Pointing: fingers, arrows etc. In idexicality, the sign draws attention to the object (designator) and the object determines the meaning of the sign (reagent) Basic examples of indexical signs in language are demonstrative pronouns (this, that) and adverbs of time and location (today, yesterday, here): signification established in relation to context of enunciation Indexicality taken in its large signification refers to the intertwinement of signs with the world, the connection between sign systems, texts and the experiential life-world Pertains for the context of production as well as for the context of reception Important to remember: indexicality, iconicity and symbolicity work together – not sign classes, but modes of sign functioning Other notions in use: shifters, deixis, deictic signs

Benveniste on subjectivity: 

Benveniste on subjectivity Émile Benveniste: Chapters “The Nature of Pronouns” and “Subjectivity in Language” in Problems in General Linguistics. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971, pp. 217-230. Benveniste’s argument: “Ego is the one who says ego”: the pronoun “I” is semantically unsaturated and acquires meaning only when enunciated Language provides a structure where “I”, the one who speaks, is related to “you”, the one who is addressed in speaking: “I” is an “I” always for a “you” “I” and “you” are included in the communication situation The third person, “he” or “she”, is excluded from the communication situation This structure is for Benveniste the ground for subjectivity in general: it is by appropriating all the resources provided by language – by speaking as “ego” to someone – that one becomes a subject in culture Extreme conclusion: language fundamentally determines subjectivity? Dialogism (Bakhtin, Vološinov): the addressee (the receiver) is already effective before words are uttered – thus subjectivity and communication are fundamentally dialogical, always directed to and shaped by the other

Deixis in narratives: 

Deixis in narratives In face to face spoken language, the utterer and the addressee have a shared context Indexical signs are interpreted in relation to a shared perceptible or known background In written discourse, the utterer (the writer) and the addressee (the reader) don’t share the context in a similar way Indexical signs are interpreted in relation to the text and with cultural (encyclopedic) knowledge The “source” of cultural knowledge is the reader’s context: his or her experience, emotions and culturally mediated knowledge included In this sense, deixis (the “pointing”) in literary texts is a process that relies on reader’s active participation and ties the text with the reader’s lifeworld Deixis opens “a creative space” that ties the reading subject to the (textual and experiential) world(s) to be interpreted (Nathalie Roelens) “Reading fiction means to experience an interspace between the external and the internal, between reference to a public world of shared experience and a private world of significations charged with desire.” (Dines Johansen)

Deictic centers: 

Deictic centers Deictic center: the place (“origo”) in relation to which deictic elements in the text are organized Temporal position The point of reference for adverbial expressions of time (“today” - “last week”, “tomorrow”…) Note: difference between deictic expressions of time and “universal” ones (like “January 22, 1667”) Spatial position The point of reference also for adverbial expressions of space (“here”, “to the left”, “behind”…) and demonstrative pronouns (“this”, “that”) Focalisation The point in time and place from where the world represented is perceived Can be attached to a person in the world represented (character-narrator) or not (unmarked narration) – access to the world represented may be limited accordingly Note: deictic centers are not necessarily explicitly signalled and there may be several centers in one text (and even in one phrase)

Deictic shifts: 

Deictic shifts Deictic centers are linguistic constructions: not determined “externally”, but created, maintained and effaced with linguistic means Deictics shifts: moves between deictic centers Possibilities: 1) a move from the “real” world to the world of the text: the fundamental step, “immersion” 2) a move from a external narrator’s position to a character’s position – and vice versa 3) a move from one character’s position to another’s position Important device in several respects: irony, tragedy (King Oedipus), comic effects To distinguish: who speaks and who perceives A characters perception of the world can be represented by a narrator (or another character)

Examples of deictic centers: 

Examples of deictic centers “I stretch my eyes wide. To my left, the jam-packed harbour of Santa Lucia. Straight ahead, the Castel del Angelo […] To my right, Vesuvius above the suburbs. The slate-thin cloud, tilting on the summit, dissolves as I watch. There’s the ruined mouth of the crater, dipping on one side and brimming with black mist.” Andrew Motion: Salt Water (1997) “I” is the one who speaks (writes): in this case, all the information gathered in reading under the figure of the narrator (+ eventual knowledge of Andrew Motion) The deictic center: the spatial location in relation to which the indexical signs organize the scene represented “Left”, “straight ahead” and “right” are not constant, but always to somebody (emphasized here with “my”) Note: indexicality (deixis) functions in concordance with iconicity (word-order mapping order of perception)

Examples of deictic centers: 

Examples of deictic centers The Flight of the Rocket Wow! Did you see? – did you hear? – fast fast! – this spledour! – how small the world is! – oh how it hurt! – I am falling. Elmer Diktonius How many deictic centers? The specatators: seeing thematized, presupposes externality in relation to the rocket However: the narrator is falling, as if he or she had been in the rocket – this is reinforced by the line ”how small the world is” that poses the narrator as a spectator of the world (and not of the rocket) What causes hurting? Does the rocket hit the narrator, or does the rocket explode and thus provoke the falling of the narrator? Note also: iconicity between order of representation and order of action Beginning of text – beginning of action Bottom, down in the text – falling in the world represented

Examples of deictic centers: 

Examples of deictic centers Wind from the northwestern quarter is lifting him high above the dove-gray, crimson, umber, brown Connecticut Valley. Far beneath, chickens daintily pause and move unseen in the yard of the tumbledown farmstead, chipmunks blend with the heath. Now adrift on the airflow, unfurled, alone, all that he glimpses – the hill’s lofty, ragged ridges, the silver stream that threads quivering like a living bone of steel […] […] Through binoculars we foretoken him, a glittering dot, a pearl. We hear something ring out in the sky, like some family crockery being broken, […] Decitic centers: the hawk and the human observers on the ground Explicit markers: “above”, “beneath” Implicit: “unseen” Focalization and preception thematized: participate in the creation of deictic centers “stream.. like a living bone” “through binoculars we foretoken”, “a glittering dot, a pearl”