Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication: A Semiotic Perspective [1st ed.] 978-3-030-17882-6;978-3-030-17883-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii
Multiculturalist Discourse and Theory (Alin Olteanu)....Pages 1-32
Cultural Relativism and Politics of Recognition (Alin Olteanu)....Pages 33-54
Semiotics and Multiculturalism (Alin Olteanu)....Pages 55-68
Language, Culture and Pluralism (Alin Olteanu)....Pages 69-85
Biosemiotic Multiculturalism (Alin Olteanu)....Pages 87-114
An Embodied Approach to Intercultural Communication (Alin Olteanu)....Pages 115-140

Citation preview

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 9

Alin Olteanu

Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication A Semiotic Perspective

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress Volume 9

Series Editor Dario Martinelli, Faculty of Creative Industries, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius, Lithuania

The series originates from the need to create a more proactive platform in the form of monographs and edited volumes in thematic collections, to discuss the current crisis of the humanities and its possible solutions, in a spirit that should be both critical and self-critical. “Numanities” (New Humanities) aim to unify the various approaches and potentials of the humanities in the context, dynamics and problems of current societies, and in the attempt to overcome the crisis. The series is intended to target an academic audience interested in the following areas: – Traditional fields of humanities whose research paths are focused on issues of current concern; – New fields of humanities emerged to meet the demands of societal changes; – Multi/Inter/Cross/Transdisciplinary dialogues between humanities and social and/or natural sciences; – Humanities “in disguise”, that is, those fields (currently belonging to other spheres), that remain rooted in a humanistic vision of the world; – Forms of investigations and reflections, in which the humanities monitor and critically assess their scientific status and social condition; – Forms of research animated by creative and innovative humanities-based approaches; – Applied humanities.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14105

Alin Olteanu

Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication A Semiotic Perspective

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Alin Olteanu International Semiotics Institute Kaunas University of Technology Kaunas, Lithuania

ISSN 2510-442X ISSN 2510-4438 (electronic) Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ISBN 978-3-030-17882-6 ISBN 978-3-030-17883-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17883-3 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To all refugees.

Preface

This monograph was written during a two-year postdoctoral research period at Kaunas University of Technology, from 2016 to 2018. This was possible, first of all, because of the International Semiotics Institute, hosted at this university at the time. I shall allow myself a reformulation of this context that conveys to the reader a personal perspective. This monograph on multiculturalism was written in Eastern Europe, more specifically, in former Soviet-occupied territory. The project started in the year of the Brexit referendum in the UK, of the election of Donald Trump as the President of the USA, and the general rising of antidemocratic populism in the European Union and, in general, around the world. During the writing of this monograph, some developing members of the European Union, such as Poland, Hungary and Romania, seem to have lost their national justice institutions to oligarchic political regimes. Italy arrived at yet another political crisis, seemingly solved through the coalition of the two openly racist political parties, as together leading in vote numbers. Particularly, this rise of antidemocratic tendencies is connected with the global refugee and humanitarian crisis, which, in a false rhetoric of populist politicians, is deemed as the cause for the social problems of the Western, developed world. As democracy is in global decline and nationalist and, implicitly, isolationist discourses are fueling hatred toward one’s neighbors, some fortunate (underpaid and overworked) academics still have a safe space, with a desk and a library, to write and speak their minds honestly. This monograph points fingers at these academics and timidly cries out, irresponsible hypocrites! Its main purpose is that of criticizing the mainstream academic theories of multiculturalism, as particularly relevant to democracy, globalization, digitalization and intercultural communication that, as seen on the territory, failed to deliver a program for democracy and conviviality. The reason identified for this failure is not so much the failure to implement research into actual policy, as often discussed, but, mostly, the academic argumentation itself. More precisely, this reason is the comfortable and slothful lingering in academic discourse of an ideological theory of culture, first signaled by Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2010, 2012). Yet another, connected reason, is the slothfulness of humanities research in general, the very crisis of the humanities, and the vii

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reluctance of this academic area to keep up the pace with, first of all, social and natural sciences, and, also, with the digitalization of human societies. This second reason constitutes the red thread of the book series to which this volume belongs (see Martinelli 2016). In this second regard particularly, the author is obliged to point his accusing fingers at himself and at his book, as well. There is much work to be done toward the reformation of the humanities as appropriate for these revolutionary times. Both on the academic and on the political scenes, the situation is simultaneously desperate and opportune, as Dario Martinelli considers as well that the impasse of the humanities is a very valuable opportunity (2016). In an interview in 2012, Umberto Eco stated: The university exchange programme Erasmus is barely mentioned in the business sections of newspapers, yet Erasmus has created the first generation of young Europeans. I call it a sexual revolution: a young Catalan man meets a Flemish girl—they fall in love, they get married and they become European, as do their children. The Erasmus idea should be compulsory—not just for students, but also for taxi drivers, plumbers and other workers. By this, I mean they need to spend time in other countries within the European Union; they should integrate. (Eco in Riotta 2012a, b)

I agree with Umberto Eco’s argument. Eco argued for the seemingly trivial, hippie idea of “making love not war” through an anecdote. He explained how a Catalan and a Flemish exchange student fall in love and establish a family, thus leaving behind ideologies of separatism in favor of a non-ideological ethnic and cultural identity blindness. This led Eco to call European study exchange programs a “sexual revolution.” Eco’s example contains three elements: sex, learning, and the refutation of violence. Eco’s anecdote excellently sums up the present monograph’s argument. This monograph was written in times of war and merciless atrocities that the author, like many academics located in (what are called) developed countries, has never seen directly. The academic crisis of the humanities is simultaneous with a humanitarian and refugee crisis. This crisis is easily described in numbers. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2018), in this moment in time, there are 65.6 million forcibly displaced people, out of which 22.5 million are refugees. Only 189,300 of them have been resettled. Out of these, only 17% are in Europe. The fact that 10 million people are stateless should urge us to fundamentally change our concepts of state and citizenship. I consider that the humanitarian crisis is related to the crisis of the humanities: It is not uncommon to assume a connection between the diminished liberal curriculum and the decline of democracy. As such, I salute Paul Cobley’s (in Bankov and Cobley 2017: 4–5) criticism of Nussbaum’s (2010) defense of the humanities: While the humanities do not produce immediate profit, such as engineering or management does, they are not entirely without profit. Humanities research should well seek to improve the quality of humans living in the here and now. In a local concern, while the Republic of Lithuania has room to host academics to research multiculturalism—no small thing—it hardly has any room for refugees, despite what policy research suggests. According to Aleknevičienė (2013),

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individuals who have been granted asylum in Lithuania feel as though they are inferior, useless and unwanted outsiders (their human rights are limited, being imprisoned, that is, being bound psychologically and geographically). The UNHCR data points out to Lithuania’s strategy of unlawfully detaining and imprisoning asylum seekers, including unaccompanied minors. Arguably, Lithuanian authorities use this strategy to keep refugees away from Lithuanian society as much as possible until when, eventually, they are expelled. According to the nonprofit research center the Global Detention Project (GDP) (2018), in 2014 alone, 1930 persons who sought asylum in Lithuania were expelled. Given this hostile attitude toward asylum seekers, it is impossible for this vulnerable community to develop social capital or to integrate and discover their place within Lithuanian society. Lithuanian authorities achieved their purpose of spreading the rumor among refugees that Lithuania is hostile toward them. As a result, refugees are avoiding Lithuania. Unfortunately, while the case of Lithuania is particularly alarming, it is not the only such situation. The theoretical arguments that this monograph builds up revolve around conceptualizations of culture. In short, starting with the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly after the Second World War, culture has been used as a justification for separatism and even violence. This is where the mentioned ideological bias in cultural theories becomes visible. While I agree with Eco’s above-mentioned “sexual revolution,” with all due respect to this most impressive philosopher and semiotician of the twentieth century, I do not agree with him anymore “that it is culture, not war, that cements our [European] identity” (Eco in Riotta 2012a, b). In my opinion, war is most effective for cementing identity, be it European or otherwise. Populist politicians are aware of this fact and use it persuasively. Actually, populist rhetoric often starts from the other end: It emphasizes a supposed importance of identity, cultural or otherwise, for the purpose of generating conflict and separatism. To have an identity means to be different from others. To have a cultural identity means to be the same as some, by opposition to others. To Eco’s claim I answer that, for a peaceful and democratic European Union (or any other political formation), we need to stop caring about cultural identity. Cultural identity is by no means a prerequisite for enforcing human and citizen rights. Neither is it necessary for communication and collaboration. I have all the right reasons, even for the sake of nothing else but my own prosperity, to collaborate peacefully. Peaceful collaboration, development and scientific research can be the outcomes of pragmatic (philosophical) reasoning, independent of cultural identity. The present monograph argues, particularly in view of certain semiotic theories, but not only, that culture does not play the central role that, in general, the humanities have attributed to it, in identity formation and, more importantly, in human organization and behavior. Umberto Eco’s claim about culture and identity supposes (1) that a political formation (the EU) is only justified and functional on the ground of an existing, corresponding cultural identity, (2) that culture cannot have war, or violence, as a characteristic and implicitly (3) that monoculturalism is less conflictual than multiculturalism. This view on culture is an ideological

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remnant of (early) twentieth century refutations of racism. It was used as an argument to achieve the invaluable goal of refuting racism, but, nevertheless, it justified isolationism on account of supposed cultural identity and values. The advocated semiotic theory of multiculturalism is developed in six chapters. The first chapter offers an overview of mainstream multiculturalism theories and their development in view of an ideological concept of culture that implies the possibility of monocultural and monolingual communities, a rigid notion of cultural identity and the resulting theory of politics of recognition. The second chapter discusses the role that semiotic theories based on notions of opposition and difference have in for cultural theory and for the concept of cultural identity. The theoretical inconsistencies of cultural relativism and its dangerous implications for policy and politics are discussed. In the third chapter, an argument in favor of mereological semiotics, comprehensive of the crucial roles of iconicity but also of indexicality, is elaborated. Particularly, this chapter advocates for the necessity of biocentrism, achieved in biosemiotics, of any cultural theory. The fourth chapter consists in a discussion on versions of pragmatism and their consequences for multiculturalism. Pluralism has been a debated topic in early pragmatism. Some of the pragmatic accounts of pluralism result in arguments in favor of isolationism as a means to preserve diversity. Biosemiotics inherited Charles Peirce’s version of semiotic pragmatism, inclusive of his specific concept of continuity and its implications for the construal of diversity and pluralism that do not endorse isolationism. The fifth chapter develops a biosemiotic approach to multiculturalism, as an alternative to existing anthropocentric and language-centered cultural relativist theories. The theory is founded on Cobley’s (2016) biosemiotic approach to culture. The sixth chapter joins together the elaborated arguments with semiotic theories of multimodal communication with the purpose of setting the ground for a new theory of intercultural communication. The emerging theory is deemed aware of embodiment phenomenology and its consequences for knowledge and communication, particularly as expressed in biosemiotics. Kaunas, Lithuania

Alin Olteanu

References Aleknevičienė, Jolanta. 2013. (Iš)gyvenimas Lietuvoje: prieglobsčio ieškančiu ir prieglobsti gavusiu užsieniečiu patirtis [Life (or survival) in Lithuania: experiences of foreigners seeking asylum and those that have been granted asylum]. Etniškumo Studijos [Ethnicity Studies] 1: 86–106. Bankov, Kristian, and Paul Cobley (eds.). 2017. Semiotics and its masters. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Cobley, Paul. 2016. Cultural implications of biosemiotics. Dordrecht: Springer.

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Eriksen, Jens-Martin, and Frederik Stjernfelt. 2010. Culturalism—From idea to unconscious presupposition. Sociologija II (4): 359–376. Eriksen, Jens-Martin, and Frederik Stjernfelt. 2012. The democratic contradictions of multiculturalism. New York: Telos Press. Global Detention Project. 2018. https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/. Accessed 24 June 2018. Martinelli, Dario. 2016. Arts and humanities in progress: A manifesto of numanities. Cham: Springer. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2010. Not for Profit—Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Riotta, Gianni. 2012a. Eco: scommeto sui giovaninati dalla rivoluzione Erasmus. La Stampa. January 26. Riotta, Gianni. 2012b. Interview: Umberto Eco: ‘It’s Culture, Not War That Cements European Identity’. The Guardian. January 26. The United Nations Refugee Agency. 2018. Statistical Yearbooks. http://www.un-hcr.org/. Accessed 31 May 2018.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank wholeheartedly many friends and academics who helped and inspired me to write this monograph, during a two-year postdoctoral research project, offered by Kaunas University of Technology. First, my heartfelt thanks go to Dario Martinelli, a mentor and a dear friend, who supervised this research project, which resulted in this monograph. Second, special thanks go to other friends who directly helped the writing process, namely Frederik Stjernfelt, with whom I spent a month at University of Aalborg, which was possible due to a COST Action Short Scientific Mission grant (CA15130), and Timo Maran, Kalevi Kull and Lauri Linask, with whom I spent a week at the University of Tartu, due to an Erasmus+ teaching grant. Special thanks also to a number of people whose friendship and work plentifully inspired this book, namely Andrew Stables (who has given me invaluable support throughout my academic career), Paul Cobley, Florian Rabitz, Winfried Nöth, John Tredinnick-Rowe, Sébastien Pesce, Eetu Pikkarainen, Rasa Erentaitė, Arianna Ciula, Øvynd Eide, Cristina Marras, Lars Elleström, Dumitru Borţun, Sebastian Feil, Cary Campbell, Kristian Bankov, Audronė Daubarienė, Natasa Lackovic, Yuliya Martinavichene, Paulius Jevsejevas and Ovidiu Babeş. I feel truly in debt to many people whose support, in some cases over years, in other cases in certain localized moments when needed most, has been extremely helpful. Among the many who helped, I would like to particularly thank and mention Peer Bundgaard, Rabih El Chammay, Oana Andreică, Pietro Restaneo, Aušra Berkmanienė, Ainius Lašas, Saulė Petronienė, Aistė Balžekienė, Audronė Telešienė, Eglė Butkevičene, Mariana Neţ, Morten Tønnessen, Luis Emilio Bruni, Merja Bauters, Živilė Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė, Elena Kocai, Myrdene Andersen, Bianca Cheregi, Werner Schäfke, Claus Emmeche, Henrik Nielsen, David Budtz Pedersen, Agostino Pinna-Pintor, Vladimir Gheorghe, Rimantas Vosylis and Inna Semetsky. Many thanks go to the students whom I encountered while writing this book and who inspired me much more than I could inspire them—Emel Çelik, Basheer Mohamed Sasvan, Leta Bielinytė, Miglė Pranckevičiutė, and many others studying

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at Kaunas University of Technology, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and, particularly, at the University of Tartu’s Department of Semiotics. I could not possibly thank enough my wife, Nancy Najm, not only for carefully proofreading the manuscript, but also for patiently enduring all that she had to put up with. Thanks to Fr Yves Dubois, Fr Seraphim Johnson, Fr Nicholas Sakharov, James and Anya Johnson and to all those whom, even if not geographically close, have been most supportive. Many thanks go also to my parents, Minela and Mircea Olteanu, for all their support.

Praise for Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication

“This is a superbly committed, polemical volume which demonstrates the courage to consider the global crisis and to point the finger at its perpetrators: not the usual suspects, such as the media, the power elite or an undifferentiated other, but something closer to home—human conceptions. In the face of STEM and the crass, profit-driven attack on cultural life, and without resorting to unthinking multiculturalism and the liberal defence of human values, Olteanu presents a contemporary semiotic account of the relevant problems, exposing not so much the role of ideology in the humanitarian crisis but the centrality of human cognition and its most recent exercises in glottocentrism. This volume needs to be read by educational policy-makers, liberal academics and students, especially, as well as semioticians and the educated inquisitive reader.” —Paul Cobley, Professor in Language and Media, Middlesex University

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1 Multiculturalist Discourse and Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Multiculturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 The Cultural Separatism of Multiculturalism: Where Does Liverpool Street End and Hackney Begin? . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 The Clash Between Empirical Research and Theoretical Conservatism: The Acculturation Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 A Biosemiotic Notion of Plurality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Criticism of Culturalism-Based Multiculturalism . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Cultural Relativism and Politics of Recognition . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Différance and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Text or Model Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Anti-cosmopolitan Argument in Structural Semiotics References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Semiotics and Multiculturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Cultural Relativism and the Roots of Culturalism in the Linguistic Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 An Example of Glottocentric Culturalism: The Case of Lithuania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Monocultural Pluralism of Culturalism . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Language, Culture and Pluralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Pragmatic Concepts of Pluralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Peirce’s Semiotic Pragmaticism and Triadism as Pluralism 4.3 Language and Culture Parallelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Biosemiotic Multiculturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Peirce and Biosemiotics: Culture in View of Modelling 5.2 The Symbolic Species Debate and Its Consequences for Multiculturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Peircean Categories and Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 An Embodied Approach to Intercultural Communication 6.1 Semiotic Body, Semiotic Text and Semiotic Culture . . . 6.2 Dualism and Monomodality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Double Articulation: Linguistic Cartesianism . . . . . . . . 6.4 Double Articulation in Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Text as Multimodal Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Ecosemiotics as a Digital Media Theory . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 A Biosemiotic Account of Typography . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8 Writing as Scaffolding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Multiculturalist Discourse and Theory

Abstract This chapter offers an overview of multiculturalism theories and explains the main lines of criticism that this monograph develops. Most approaches to multiculturalism and intercultural communication are inherent of an ideological theory of culture, termed culturalism. This doctrine uncritically presumes that culture overwrites individual freedom and collective capabilities for social organization, portraying human individuals and societies as captives of their culture and language seen as one holistic, historically inherited superstructure. This concept of culture is identified as originating, first, in early American anthropology, and also in American pragmatism, and as entrenched during the 20th century by the assumptions of the linguistic turn. The main arguments that recommend biosemiotics for an unbiased theory of culture and multiculturalism, namely its biocentrism and detachment from the linguistic turn, are explained.

1.1 Multiculturalism Multiculturalism is conceived as a political theory, mainly stemming from political discourse (see Werbner 2012; Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 103), which refers to possible ways of answering to the challenges of cultural and religious diversity. As the concept stems from the political and social sphere, it encountered quite some scrutiny and criticism in the academe (see Werbner 2012; Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2010, 2012; Stjernfelt 2010; Guiora 2014). In the way in which it is currently used in various discourses, “the term “multiculturalism” is often confusing and imprecise.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 1) While it is used as a descriptive and normative term, it does not explicate “a substantive description of social coexistence, its various experiences, nor even which cultures constitute the supposed multitude, nor how these should co-exist.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 1) A first instinct might be to consider that for cultural analysis in and of a globalizing (or globalized) world, a concept and awareness of multiculturalism is necessary. Nevertheless, in its current acceptance, the concept of multiculturalism makes sense by supposing that cultural and religious diversities are bound to generate conflictual tension. In addition, it construes diversity as a discrete set of unitary elements, where © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Olteanu, Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17883-3_1

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cultures “exist as easily identifiable units out there.” (Stjernfelt 2010: 169) This understanding of multiculturalism stems from the broad and heterogeneous framework of cultural criticism that relativist anthropology and the language-centered philosophy of the 20th century allowed. The very term of multiculturalism supposes that a plurality of cultures consists of clusters of cultures neighboring each other. It thus underpins a similar misconception with the term inter-national, which assumes that globalism consists of transfers across and among (inter-) nations. The same misconception is suggested by the term intercultural, in discussions on intercultural communication, a discipline of its own, at the intersection of communication and cultural studies (e.g. Gudykunst 2003; Kiesling and Paulston 2005; Kotthoff and Spencer-Oatey 2007; Hofstede et al. 2010). Particularly relevant for intercultural communication, but not only, is another misconstrued concept, namely that of multilingualism. Like in the case of multiculturalism implying monoculturalism as a possibility, multilingualism is traditionally conceived as the pluralization of a state of monolingualism (see Lähteenmäki et al. 2011: 2). Lähteenmäki, Varis and Leppänen point out that this theory has recently been challenged as unsatisfactory (2011). To avoid the presuppositions of prefixes such as inter- and multi-, the term cosmopolitanism can be suggested to describe globalizing cultural phenomena. Interestingly, however, Papastephanou recently noted that “awareness of globally meaningful realities does not guarantee thoughts and actions that deserve the characterization ‘cosmopolitan’” (Papastephanou 2016: 2). Cosmopolitan, as Papastephanou discusses, is thus another such term that requires further theoretical scrutiny. The first problem with the assumption that a process can occur among and across nations is that it supposes an objective reality of nations and their borders. The second problem is that it assumes that exchanges among nations can only be artificial and limited. Multiculturalism implies the same for cultures: it supposes that cultures can be clearly defined from one another. Thus, the concept of multiculturalism is problematic because (1) it supposes the existence of clearly contoured societies and cultures (and nations on some accounts) which (2) mostly coincide with political states. In this sense, a multicultural society, or an international community, at best, is a society where a number of distinct cultures co-exist peacefully within the same setting. In this view, however, cultures are construed as distinct and closed systems that can co-exist peacefully and which can perform “exchanges” with one another. The existence of clear boundaries between cultures is implied. If cultures (and languages) would not be conceived as strictly distinguishable, any discussion on multiculturalism (and multilingualism) would be superfluous, as a monocultural (and monolingual) state of affairs would not be possible. By considering multiculturalism as the co-habitation (or pluralization) of (mono-) cultures, the main characteristic of culture is missed, namely that cultures do not have distinguishable borders in space or time. In contrast to this construal of multiculturalism, I argue that a culture does not have an external borderline that can be touched or crossed and which, consequently, would react (positively, negatively or otherwise) when touched from the outside, as a biological organism would react. Mainstream multiculturalist theory (e.g. Taylor et al. 1994; Kymlicka 1995, 2001; Máiz and Requejo 2004) does not consider the undemocratic and non-liberal conse-

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quences that emphasizing borderlines between communities has. This tendency in multiculturalism comes from a language-centered theory of culture, which regards human cognition and organization as bounded by language. The expansion of the linguistic sign notion (i.e. de Saussure 1959 [1916]) and of text (e.g. Barthes 1972 [1957]) from linguistics to cultural theory has permeated cultural criticism with linguistic relativism. This implies a notion of culture simultaneously understood as code and, to various degrees, as alive, in a vitalist sense. To understand a culture, on this account, means to have a hermeneutical access to its code. The only way to acquire such hermeneutics, thus, is to live, or, so to say, to be a part of the specific living culture. Language-culture relativism implies that a culture cannot simply be understood by a differently cultured newcomer. First, the newcomer has to understand the linguistic code. However, one cannot simply acquire a new linguistic vocabulary as this vocabulary itself is culture-dependent, having developed within and along cultural patterns. In this view, merely translating from one language to another does not offer a real insight into the translated language, or into its corresponding culture. To properly understand a new language-culture one has to live, as it were, the life of the respective language-culture. Also, what this implies is that the newcomer should forget a good amount of her already acquired and, at times, inherited culture, as the semantic categories of the new language would unavoidably cognitively rewire her. Thus, a very clear border is perceived between two language-cultures. This parallels the view in traditional linguistics (i.e. de Saussure 1959 [1916]) that meaning structures (signs and sign systems) are defined by their bordering with other meaning structures. The present monograph challenges this theory of culture, identifying some of its main inconsistencies and its undemocratic practical implications and it proposes, alternatively, an understanding of cultural modelling rooted in natural modelling, both non-linguistic and linguistic, non-verbal and verbal. Such a theory does not stress the borders and differences between cultures but on their similarities, considering the whole of the (human) socio-cultural environment as intrinsically heterogeneous and pluralistic. In this regard, a supposed borderline between two cultures is no more defining than a perceivable difference of habit or ritual or practice within one culture. Multiculturalism is not observed where two or more cultures meet. Rather, multiculturalism is present in any dialogue where cultural elements are involved. Also, culture is thus understood as continuous with nature. This imposes a mereological understanding of culture(s), as composed and defined by the integration of its (their) composing parts. Mereology is here understood as in Edmund Husserl’s original sense, as developed in the Logical Investigations (1976a [1900], 1976b [1900]; see also Stjernfelt 2007: 161), namely the supposition that phenomenological analysis is an analysis of relations between parts and wholes and as further on adopted in schematic semiotics by Stjernfelt (2007, 2014), on the grounds of the similarity that such a method has with Peirce’s semiotics. This is to say that cultural elements, dynamics or patterns are not determined by the culture as a whole and are not accessible only by those who are members of the culture to which constituting parts belong. Rather, constituting parts of what supposedly is a cultural community form the culture and can also be used and adopted in a regime of semi-autonomy. Two differently cultured and differently speaking communities can adopt and share

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cultural elements from each other. For instance, ethnic Hungarians, ethnic Romanians and other ethnicities, populating the same territory (broadly, Transylvania and Pannonia), produce and consume an alcoholic brandy named pálinka in Hungarian (p˘alinc˘a in Romanian). Language-culture relativism, in its whole-dependent understanding of cultural patterns, has a hard time admitting that these differently speaking peoples, with some different traditions, are indeed drinking the same drink. It would instead imply that the different linguistic mapping of reality mirrored in different cognitive wirings makes the brandy taste differently to a Hungarian than to a Romanian or to a differently cultured local, not to mention to a tourist. The problem does not stand in admitting that things in general, such as food and drink in particular, feel different to differently habituated individuals, but that the different experiences of the same physical entity are altogether incommensurable from one cultural context to another. The problem stands in refusing to admit that inter-cultural dialogue is no more complex (or any easier) than inter-individual dialogue. To explain one’s own qualitative experience of drinking pálinka is as fascinating within as it is across culture. An explanation, the communication of modelled life experience, will never communicate, as it were, the experience itself, but neither should it. That the model does not coincide with the modelled object does not mean that communicating and understanding each other’s models is impossible. We can communicate the qualitative and subjective dimension of our experiences nevertheless. To communicate and to understand each other never consists in replicating one’s knowledge in an identical form to another. Consensus does not mean identical knowledge but similar knowledge between subjects. All the same, to know that I disagree on a certain matter with another requires a degree of similarity between mine and the other’s knowledge. In a mereological view, similarity is what makes dialogue possible (Stjernfelt 2007: 78, CP 2.279), which is why multiculturalism can find inspiration in the semiotic approach to learning (see Olteanu 2015: 49; Stables 2012: viii). A core argument in this approach to culture is found in biosemiotics, considered as a theory of modelling that can account for the continuity of nature and culture and the inner heterogeneity and pluralism of meaning and, consequently, culture. One of the lessons learned from the disasters of 19th and 20th century’s nationalist political systems is that minority groups have to be protected by the same political system that is vouched for by the majority. This has led to the philosophy and politics of identity, which demand that each group is clearly recognized as distinct, in a formally political way. In view of this, the otherwise good intention of protecting vulnerable minority groups has often led to separatism and extremism. The cultivation of an exaggerated sense of distinctiveness can result in minority groups’ detachment from civil society. This is a result of political organization in a holistic and unitary view of society and culture. Rather, politics and policy-making should be carried out in view of the integrating and semi-autonomous parts of society, such as, the various co-existing groups building up the society as a whole. The sense of distinctiveness of a minority group, as perceived both within the group and from the outside, obstructs the minority from fully participating in the social organization of greater society. In this case, the question that arises is, since a group is so different in respect to the

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whole, is it a part of the whole at all and, if it is not, does it make any sense for it to try to contribute to the organization of the whole? To be uniquely distinctive, that is to say, altogether different, within a hosting society means, actually, to be captive. In such a situation, a standing-out cultural group will seek to organize itself, independently of the greater hosting society. Guiora explains that, while the formal political protection of minority groups is a critical principle of democracy, given certain pitfalls in multiculturalist theory inherited from 19th century nationalism via classic anthropology, the treatment of minorities as distinct leads to these groups formally organizing themselves as societies alternative to the state (2014: 36–37). Such forms of organization “pose a significant danger to liberal society because, as Modood (2007) explains, they foster or shelter radicalism.” (Guiora 2014: 37) Such clusters of organizations, alternative to the state, are dangerous both for liberal democracy at a state level, as they upset the rule of law, and for their own members. They obstruct the state from defending the rights of individual members of the minority group by the claim that the state does not understand their own cultural norms. The minority group can invoke the argument that only it, as a whole, has an understanding of its own culture and, as such, only it has the formal answers and legal procedures adequate to be applied to its members. An extreme but nonetheless existing situation (in places such as, among others, Malaysia and Lebanon), the territorial co-existence of different legal standards for supposedly differently cultured individuals is discriminating and undemocratic (see Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 13–16, 30–39). Therefore, in such situations, minority group members who are seen as culturally deviant within their own respective groups are particularly vulnerable and often oppressed by the community to which they supposedly belong. Thus, the inconsistencies of multiculturalist theory, which this monograph tackles, can be pinned-down as reflected by the question that Guiora (2014) addresses as well, namely of how much can a democratic society tolerate the intolerance of its composing communities? That is to say, when does a society become oppressive and undemocratic on account of its pretense to all-encompassing tolerance? Guiora notes that Although multicultural manifestations including distinct language, attire, music, and food are celebrated, other manifestations are, frankly, less deserving of laudatory embrace or even tolerance. The tension is both complex and stark: if multiculturalism is not embraced, the liberal state may be accused of illiberalism. (Guiora 2014: 37)

Linguistic-cultural relativism does not offer any solution. If in the globalizing, culturally heterogeneous, postmodern world there are “no easy fixes”, Stables argues in a semiotic approach to sustainability and education, it does not mean that there are no fixes at all (Stables 2006: 383; see also below Sect. 1.4). Research and corresponding policies can meliorate such a society and lead to progress, understood as better quality of life for more humans and non-human animals. This position contradicts the relativism or even skepticism of much 20th century epistemology, championed, such as, by Kuhn (1970), Jean-François Lyotard (1984 [1979]) and Derrida (1978 [1967]), to name a few.

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The present monograph argues that the problem originates in the celebration of differences. Difference on its own, understood otherwise than in complementarity to similarity, does not account for diversity, but, instead, it accounts for opposition. In the same way, similarity understood otherwise than in complementarity to difference, loses its meaning and is confounded with identity. Stjernfelt’s (2007) study on diagrams is one landmark apology for schematic semiotics, as a realist logic, starting from the hypothesis, which Stjernfelt finds in Charles Peirce, that signification originates in similarity. As suggested above, this comes together with a mereological understanding of phenomenality. In this view, diversity originates in similarity as well. Stjernfelt’s reading of Peirce’s schematic (read mereological) semiotics caused much controversy in academic semiotics where, in accordance with classic anthropology and with the linguistic turn, difference has been traditionally considered the starting point for meaning, natural evolution and diversity, dialogue, culture and, in general, for any pluralist phenomenon. Stjernfelt’s reading of Peirce reveals that the focus on difference is characteristic for relativist epistemology in general, while the focus on similarity is characteristic of realist epistemology. This also upset another traditional assumption, common to representation theories in general, which Stjernfelt particularly finds in Goodman (1976), namely that similarity is a culture-dependent organizing principle: Similarity should be independent of the degree of realism of a representation for reasons of cultural relativism: realism is a function of culturally specific systems and hence similarity is an effect of such systems and not the opposite way around. This crude argument overlooks that the fact that similarity is ‘culture-dependent’ does not make it a mere effect of cultural norms. Cultural norms require similarity in their description because culture consists in people acting similarly in some respects; one could say that one culture differs from another because it emphasizes other similarities. In that respect, the similarities perceived are of course ‘culture-dependent’, but this is merely because the very notion of culture involves systems of similarities. The very concept of a norm presupposes similarity to the extent that it requires that similar cases be judged similarly. So to say that ‘similarity is relative, variable, culture-dependent’, merely amounts to saying that any particular judgment of similarity is dependent on the classes of similarities envisaged, which is a mere truism, more apt, in fact, to dissolve the concept of culture than the concept of similarity. (Stjernfelt 2007: 54)

Stjernfelt’s criticism is pointed at conceptions of similarity in relative independence to difference. Taking these into account, similarity does not suppose a phenomenal difference, thus being either confused with (partial) identity or construed as conventional, cultural framing. This monograph argues for a schematic semiotic approach to culture and multiculturalism, which avoids the (multi)cultural relativism endorsed by difference-centered epistemologies. A main source for such a semiotic approach is Charles Peirce’s semiotics, also one of the main sources for biosemiotics, that is, the biological theory of meaning. Peirce’s semiotics is mereological (or schematic) on account of a notion of similarity understood in complementarity with difference (or dissimilarity): The forms of the words similarity and dissimilarity suggest that one is the negative of the other, which is absurd, since everything is both similar and dissimilar to everything else. Two characters, being of the nature of ideas, are, in a measure, the same. Their mere existence

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constitutes a unity of the two, or, in other words, pairs them. Things are similar and dissimilar so far as their characters are so. (CP 1.567)

Eriksen and Stjernfelt, in their criticism of multiculturalist theory, identify the stress on cultural difference in classic American anthropology, particularly in Ruth Benedict (1934), and notice that, seen otherwise than in complementarity with similarity, this concept caused a bias in cultural studies in general: [the anthropologist] may easily overlook resemblances between cultures, if from the very beginning he only intends to find differences. The specificity of cultures may be exaggerated in description, and cross-cultural loans, communication, hybridization and influences between cultures may become invisible, just like cultural, biological, or other universals may be. (Erisken and Stjernfelt 2012: 132)

1.2 The Cultural Separatism of Multiculturalism: Where Does Liverpool Street End and Hackney Begin? More than merely a sum of cultures, plurality is a prerequisite for cultural genesis. Mainstream multiculturalist theory appears to ignore that cultures are intrinsically pluralistic. As much as a system of cultures is heterogeneous and entropic, so too is each of its constituting cultures, intrinsically. In an entropic system composed of entropic elements, it is quite impossible to distinguish clearly when one element ends and another begins. For instance, the Borough of Hackney in London (UK) is known for its eclecticism and rather alternative culture. Just next to Hackney, the area around Liverpool Street Station is regarded as culturally different, belonging to the corporate establishment. In Hackney clothing designs tend to range between a reminiscence of hippie culture to the most avant-garde hipster culture designs and to thawbs and burqas, while Liverpool Street is dominated by a modern white-collar dress code, consisting of white shirts, smart dress and ties. A cultural difference can be noticed between these two neighboring parts of London. The interesting question, however, is: where does Hackney end and Liverpool Street begin? The transition is gradual, of course: in between there is Shoreditch, a place where these two cultures both meet and are filtered by a buffer of tourists. Needless to say, these two cultures, heterogeneous themselves, are not territorially separated. Neither are the ideas, practices, values, beliefs, or, in one word, lifestyles of these two communities separated by cultural differences. Actually, these cultures are situated at the periphery of each other and cannot be perceived other than in relation to each other. They are perceived relatively to each other not because they are contrasted, but because they share in the same cultural meaning phenomena. They fuse within each other. Working in Liverpool Street does not contradict eating, having a coffee or a walk, or even living in Hackney. Such are the cultural dynamics that this monograph addresses in developing the semiotic approach(es) to multiculturalism. One of the main arguments stands in the criticism of the notion of cultural identity as propagated in mainstream multicultural theory. What illustrates this main point regarding identity in the context of the Hackney-Liverpool Street example, is that an individual’s identity is not

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determined by her living in the cultural atmosphere of the Borough of Hackney or of that of Liverpool Street. Culture is not inherited by individuals and groups in such a way that it determines a fixed individual identity. Ultimately, Liverpool Street and Hackney would not be the way they are without each other because they inevitably relate to each other’s social, cultural and economic dynamics and there is no place in particular, territorial, social or cultural where Liverpool Street ends and Hackney begins. This example can be extended to neighboring cities, neighboring countries and, in general, to any perceived cultural border and interactions occurring therein. The construal of cultures as distinguishable is supported by the assumption often found in linguistics, philosophy of language and some semiotic theories that sign systems, such as languages and cultures, can emerge, exist, and develop solitarily, as closed systems. Instead, I argue that the co-existence of cultures is a prerequisite for cultural expression, as a culture cannot exist in isolation. Cultural borders are vague, if they can be inferred at all, as cultures are diffused among each other. It is not only the case of a global or international world that cultures blend into a multiculture. Culture did not emerge as a single, homogenous and linear system, but the very emergence of culture is a pluralistic phenomenon and, as such, culture is, to begin with, a heterogeneous phenomenon. Culture itself, the same as life, is pluralistic. This does not mean that culture is a living organism, in the biological sense. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that life in the biological sense is a prerequisite for culture. As obvious as this claim might appear, mainstream theories of culture often ignore it by assuming that cultural organization entirely overwrites biology. This is a characteristic of a post-Cartesian, modern idealist construal of culture, where culture is regarded as disembodied. Inevitably, multicultural theories developed in view of the classic anthropological theories of culture. As such first attempts go back to the beginning of the 20th century, to scholars such as Boas 1938 [1911], they inherited, to some extent, Cartesian mind/body dualism via German romanticism and, generally, the nationalist theories of culture of the 19th century. The establishment of the science of anthropology, and its implicit multiculturalist theses, has been critical of nationalism and, to start with, dismissed racism from the academic study of culture. Nevertheless, modernist and romanticist underpinnings have always been present in mainstream 20th century cultural studies. The Boasian legacy eagerly and uncritically adopted the ideas of the linguistic turn, as it deemed the mirroring of linguistic and cultural patterns a sound explanation for cultural differences and, moreover, for advocating the preservation of cultural patterns even to the point of separatism. Accepting cultural difference was easily argued for in a relativist perspective on culture. If, as linguistic turn philosophy (e.g. Rorty 1967) argued, we know the world as constructed by semantic categories, then, in the classic anthropological view it easily stems that culture is precisely that semantic construction. Thus, a human person’s world is determined by the culture within which she learns the culture’s corresponding language. Furthermore, this linguistic relativism was eagerly adopted as an endorsement of cultural relativism because it also offers an easy way out of the ontological essentialism of Enlightenment: to be human is to have the potentiality of learning a language and, thus, of acquiring a cultural identity by virtue of the physiological feature that allows phonetic articu-

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lation. This, however, only replaces idealist essentialism with a linguistic brand of essentialism. Such arguments broke the barriers of the “civilized,” Western modern world, leading to accepting other cultures within the construal of humanity. However, these same arguments block proper intercultural dialogue on account of the pretence of preserving cultural identity and some notions of plurality and diversity as the sum of distinct cultures. In what is considered the realist, pragmatic school of semiotics, the analytic philosophy of the linguistic turn has been criticized as one more version of post-Cartesianism (e.g. Deely 2001; Cobley 2016).

1.3 The Clash Between Empirical Research and Theoretical Conservatism: The Acculturation Model Developed along the lines of cultural relativism, contemporary mainstream theories of multiculturalism (e.g. Taylor et al. 1994; Kymlicka 1995, 2001; Máiz and Requejo 2004) share the assumption that the perfect acculturation of an individual into what for her is a new culture is not possible. This view, starting from the assumption that to be a member of a cultural group one is in a perfect state of cultural integration with the rest of the group, implies that cultural belonging results in individuals’ clear and precise sense of identity. Social and psychological sciences have assumed this supposition from the humanities, particularly from mainstream anthropology and sociolinguistics. In conjunction with a psychological understanding of personality and personal development, social and psychological approaches to acculturation have eagerly assimilated the multiculturalist notion of identity (e.g. Berry 1997; see also Arnett 2014; Eichas et al. 2015; Erikson 1968). Such studies depart from assuming that cultural belonging is a central and crucial part of identity, which, in turn, is crucial for psychological development (for a detailed analysis of the state of the art in this area see Erentait˙e et al. 2018). Particularly, starting with Erikson (1968), psychology and sociology generally assumed that identity is one of the main aims of lifelong personal development. In view of this assumption, one cannot properly flourish in a context where her identity is not clearly defined and where her identity in society’s view does not correspond with her own self-identity. From here stems an idea that identity is non-negotiable: society and groups within society have to accept who and what one claims to be. This implies an atomistic view of individuals as isolatable within society. In the hardest version of this assumption, where one’s identity cannot be questioned by another individual or a differently identifying group, the individual develops her identity entirely on her own. Identity is, in this way, distinct from any personal or social relations. Aiming to enhance diversity, the exaggerated emphasis on identity’s role in development rather separates differently self-identifying social clusters from each other. While there is also recent scholarship acknowledging identity as a rather fluid and continuous process, and not merely as (more or less) predefined cultural inheritance (see Bosma and Kunnen 2008), this joining of the notions of (cultural) identity in psychology and in multiculturalist theory fuelled an exaggerated emphasis

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on its role for learning and development. Recently, Erentait˙e et al. (2018) pointed out to the need of a finer understanding of identity in social and psychological approaches to acculturation. Such research should be supported by a thorough criticism of the classical American anthropology underpinnings of the psychological acceptance of culture. A construal of identity rather align with such criticism is seen in Märtsin (2014), who advances a semiotic notion of “identity as a sign in the sense that it is a meaningful expression of one’s being in the world. It is a meaning that has a certain form […] and denotes to myself and to others what it means to be me” (xi). Socio-empirical investigations along these lines reveal a certain tension between the untested cultural presumptions of anthropology and behavior, as illustrated in data. This can be exemplified by the hypothesis of the bicultural integration paradigm in psychology (Berry 1980, 1997) that “many cultural practices entail enduring constraints based on beliefs or values, on temporal or logical consistency, or on community regulations. Full bicultural integration is not possible.” (Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh 2001: 42) The bicultural integration paradigm identifies four measurable attitudes towards acculturation, in a two-culture context, where a heritage culture is shared by a population within a larger population of a dominant culture. These four attitudes are termed Integration, Separation, Assimilation and Marginalization (or Deculturalization) (see Berry et al. 1989: 187; Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh 2001: 41–21, 46). While empirical research in this framework revealed important insights for the phenomenon of acculturation and for what could be a concept of multiculturalism, the identification of these attitudes rests on the uncritical presumption that cultures are clearly defined and distinguishable social worlds. In this view, at any given moment, an individual is positioned in a certain culture that defines all of her attitudes towards and interactions with other cultures. This common theory of culture does not assume the possibility of culture as an inherently pluralistic open system. The situation where two cultures co-exist side by side is rather more abstract than real. Instead, two or more cultures co-exist in a mingled way. It would be impossible to distinguish clearly between two co-existing cultures, though their co-existence can be inferred pragmatically. For instance, it is impossible and irrelevant to distinguish which citizens in Transylvania are Hungarian-cultured and which are Romaniancultured, but the simultaneous presence of both such cultures is safe to assume, on account of the presence of both Hungarian-like and Romanian-like elements in cuisine, architecture, language, social organization and so on. The Romanian language, for instance, is spoken in a slightly different manner in Transylvania than in other parts of Romania, with the particular feature that in Transylvania, spoken Romanian and Hungarian mix their vocabularies (Brubaker et al. 2006: 259). The mainstream theories of multiculturalism, as visible in the bicultural integration paradigm, assume that a Transylvanian is either Hungarian-cultured or Romanian-cultured. The present monograph dismisses the possibility of such a closed system as a distinctive Romanian or a distinctive Hungarian culture in favor of a construal of culture as inherently pluralistic. In this view, a human person or group does not necessarily encounter psychological obstacles in enjoying the best contextually fitting features of co-existing cultures, in a pragmatic fashion. As such, it is impossible, or at least irrelevant, to tell which house displays Hungarian architecture and which one displays Roma-

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nian architecture in a Transylvanian village but, rather, what is culturally interesting, is the co-presence of a plurality of cultural sources for architectural features and the possibility of identifying and describing the merging of these features. While Romanian and Hungarian cultures meet and mix in Transylvania, there is no place where there is a purely Romanian or a purely Hungarian culture. No such culture ever existed (see also Cobley and Stjernfelt 2015: 303). Moreover, the pragmatic syncretism of cultures does not erase persons’ identities but, on the contrary, it can offer individual persons and groups a richer means to express themselves and goals to pursue, amounting to a better quality of life. The criticized view on multiculturalism as dialogue of distinct cultures endorses a notion of cultural identity which strictly determines personal identity, leaving little, if any, space for personal freedom, learning, creativity or, in general, personality. This theory of culture stemming from classic anthropology generated an intellectual resistance towards acculturation because, if culture determines the individual, a change of culture carries the risk of destroying an individual’s personality. This is clearly seen in the widespread argument against the cultural “melting pot” idea, as championed by Kallen (1996 [1915]). According to Kallen, less represented cultures, such as those of migrant populations, must be preserved at all cost, because their absorption into an existing host culture of the majority would uproot the smaller population from its identity, ultimately obstructing its possibility of a democratic engagement to civil society. This argument is ideologically founded, and proves to somewhat endorse separatism rather than conviviality and, consequently contradicts democratic principles of social organization by keeping differently cultured populations socially separated and unengaged (Erisken and Stjernfelt 2012). The separatist argument is present in psychological attempts at measuring acculturation as, for instance, Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh consider that the bi-cultural integration paradigm: […] presumes that Integration is an achievable outcome, but for many aspects of culture, it is simply not possible. For example, in the domain of religion, one cannot be both a Christian and a Moslem, since the theology of each of these religions requires exclusivity, as do their respective communities of believers. Other kinds of cultural practices cannot be integrated because they require absolute adherence over extended time. For example, one cannot practice both pre-marital virginity and premarital sexual indulgence. Other cultural practices require universal compliance. For example, no one has an acculturative choice to drive on whichever side of the road they prefer. Bicultural integration is not an option for behaviors that have been regulated by national or local news. (2001: 42–43)

In this view, a human person can never fully participate to the socio-cultural life and organization of more than one cultural group. The first theoretical problem that arises stands in the consequential atomization of cultures. Identifying one’s original group of belonging is impossible. For instance, according to this view, if a hypothetical Italian migrated to the USA, she will never fully enjoy American culture and society because of her Italian background. Therefore, the best this person can do is to find a community of Italians in the USA where she can blend in. Another question is raised at this point because there is hardly anything such as “Italian culture” (or “American culture”, for that matter): there is a diversity comprising many cultures within the borders of the modern Italian state. Socio-cultural organization in Milan,

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Rome and Palermo (just to give some random examples) is very different. Thus, essentially, the problems that the immigrant from Palermo will face in New York are the same as she might face in Rome. Furthermore, as this hypothetical immigrant from Palermo might have a parent from the Sicilian countryside and has lived in a certain neighborhood in Palermo, she would face the same problems in a different neighborhood from Palermo or when interacting with fellow citizens of Palermo who have both parents originating from Palermo. This problem is implied by the combination of regarding (1) culture as mirroring language and (2) language as consisting in rigid codes. Also, the examples provided by Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh suppose some problematic cross-ontological parallelisms which imply (1) that the same phenomenon of Integration that applies to culture applies also to religion and legal codes and, also, (2) that full Integration would imply the bending of the metaphysical and physical laws of the Universe. The second point is fallacious because, to comment on Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh’s example, it is physically impossible for someone to have premarital sex and be a virgin on her/his wedding day. This is a spatiotemporal condition, not a matter of cultural exclusivity. The first point is also inconsistent, firstly because it supposes extending the argument across domains but also because cultures and even religions are not necessarily as exclusive as supposed. To begin with, one could be the adept of a religion while sharing the behavioral dispositions and life-styles of a variety of political ideologies, cultures and social strata. Furthermore, the stress on exclusivity also reveals a construal of culture as rigid code. This is all the more problematic for religion (or ideology) which, if lived as rigid code, results in fundamentalist attitudes. Certainly, as Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh mention, one cannot be both Christian and Muslim at the same time. However, historical and present examples show that these two religions, as well as many others, much more than simply co-existing peacefully, can learn from each other. In the immediate aftermath of the tragic 9/11 (2001) terrorist attacks, in October 18–20, 2001, a conference on Christian and Muslim dialogue led to the publication of a collection of texts on the subject (Cutsinger 2004), which clearly and convincingly points out to the shared history of these two religions. The research carried out in this volume suggests that the aim of a partial Integration, given religious mutual exclusivity, is fallacious. Instead, the authors argue for an “inner commonality” (Cutsinger in Cutsinger 2004: vii) of the two religions. Cutsinger explains this by pointing out to how historically Christians have acquired a deeper Christian spirituality by learning from Muslims and vice versa: Despite the long and well-known history of conflict between Christians and Muslims, one finds that their mystical traditions, especially in the Christian East and in Sufism, have for centuries shared many of the same spiritual methods and goals, and in certain exceptional cases Sufi shaykhs and their Christian counterparts have even accepted disciples in the others’ tradition. The anonymous Russian classic The Way of a Pilgrim is quite explicit in teaching that in the absence of a starets or spiritual father, the Christian seeker may receive spiritual instruction “even from a Saracen”, and evidence of the reverse relationship can be found in the spiritual friendship of the Sufi Ibrahim ibn Adham and the Orthodox monk Symeon. One also recalls that the oldest continuously existing Christian monastery in the world, St Catherine’s on Mt Sinai, contains a mosque within its precincts, constructed by the monks for the local Bedouins. These and other commonalities and historical contacts

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suggest the possibility for a deeper and more inward kind of conversation between Christians and Muslims than has been customary in our day. (Cutsinger in Cutsinger 2004: viii, my italics)

Such examples of the conviviality between Christians and Muslims account for the advantages of their mutual learning without any betrayal of one’s own religious doctrine. On the contrary, these illustrate each religious community’s richer understanding of its own spiritual doctrine through dialogue with the other. This is achieved not by emphasizing the contrasts with other communities but by learning from them (i.e. following advice from a “spiritual father” (“starets”) of a different confession). This holds even for religious worship, a most complex domain, subtler than other aspects of culture. Where acculturation is concerned, regardless of religious dogma, constructive dialogue is even simpler. This view on religious non-exclusivity is possible if religions are not understood as rigid, normative codes, which is the same argument as the one regarding (multi)cultural pluralism. A close look at one’s own religion, as well as at those of others, is necessary for discovering just how religions, at least those vouched for by a long history, are not mutually exclusive: Religions, however, are not just systems of exoteric beliefs and behaviors deployed on a plane, to be accepted (or rejected) by the reason and will. Each of the great traditions also has a third “dimension”, a spiritual heart, in which the deeper meaning of those beliefs and practices comes alive, and where the spiritual pilgrim may discover, beyond the level of seemingly contradictory forms, an inner commonality with those who follow other paths. (Cutsinger in Cutsinger 2004: vii)

Nevertheless, Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh’s study (2001) is illustrative of a breakthrough in psychological and social research on acculturation, as by a well refined empirical methodology, they expose the common, flawed underpinning assumptions of such previous research (see 2001: 47, 52–54). They reveal what the main target of the present monograph’s criticism is as well, namely that multicultural theory is flawed by endorsing, ironically, separatism. This is supported, they suggest, by the (top-down) view that cultural policies can determine the life of individuals to a very high extent: Instead of decisions causing attitudes causing behaviors causing outcome situations, it seems plausible that situations cause behaviors cause attitudes cause decisions (Ichheiser 1949). For example, a hypothetical immigrant to the USA gets a job in an ethnic grocery in an ethnic neighborhood, which results in reduced opportunity to learn English, which is rationalized as dislike of English and of US society generally, which leads to decisions to avoid intercultural contact and to maintain ethnic identity. Such might explain how policies of multiculturalism can lead to separatism and to cultural intolerance. (Kagitcibasi 1997; Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh 2001: 42)

Also, they observe that a fourfold analytical framework implies mutual exclusivity in situations where attitudes might not be mutually exclusive. Thus, they develop a critic to the fourfold system of bicultural integration analysis because it “results in ipsative measures because the four acculturation attitudes are mutually exclusive” (45). Most importantly, like Eriksen and Stjernfelt remark about early American anthropology (e.g. Boas 1938; Benedict 1934) and its inheritance in many domains of

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cultural and language research, Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh notice that good intentions have historically obstructed research on acculturation and multiculturalism, resulting in dangerous conclusions, contradictory to the intended apology for cultural pluralism and dialogue: The fourfold paradigm is designed to argue for cultural inclusiveness and tolerance, exactly contrary to the racist psychology of earlier decades. Nevertheless, the intent to bend psychological science to make political arguments has been shown by history to be dangerous, despite good intentions. Considering that acculturation contexts are capable of generating horrific violence, acculturation research should be exceptionally rigorous in its theories and methods, exceptionally careful in its use of language, and exceptionally receptive and responsive to criticisms. (Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh 2001: 54)

While Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh observe this flaw particularly as a matter of psychometric methodology, it is also noticeable qualitatively, in the underpinning cultural theory: acculturation can be studied in a finite matrix of (four) attitudes by assuming a universe of strictly two cultures which are distinct, namely a source (usually the culturally inherited) and a target (usually the host) culture. As mentioned, the problem stands in assuming the clear distinction and purity of strictly two cultures. Such contemporary views, as both criticized but also partially assumed in Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh’s (2001) study are inherent of rather old presuppositions stemming from a long-enduring humanistic tradition, epistemologically valuable, but outdated. It is the present monograph’s aim to scrutinize and reveal these presuppositions, as inherited (even) in contemporary social research. For instance, such a presupposition which is present in Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh is that cultures and acculturation can be investigated from a neutral point of view, by suspending the researchers’ own cultural assumptions. This methodological idea of anthropology, Eriksen and Stjernfelt argue, is based on the cultural relativist norm that “all cultures have a right to tolerance.” (2012: 131) This norm, further on, is based on the fallacy called the cultural relativist thesis, as per Schmidt’s critic (1955: 786), that as Eriksen and Stjernfelt formulate, “There is no cross-cultural norm which may judge between the different standards of different cultures.” (130) This thesis was assumed in early American anthropology (e.g. Benedict 1934) on top of the cultural relativist fact that “Different cultural systems of value and thought exist.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 130) This fact, Eriksen and Stjernfelt agree, is “empirically indubitable and furnishes the reality to which […] cultural relativism forms a scientific theory.” (2012: 130) However, they further argue, the cultural relativist thesis does not logically result from the fact. This unfounded leap from the fact to the thesis is supported by and, in turn, further entrenched the general assumptions of the linguistic turn. The main such assumption that supports the leap from cultural relativist fact to cultural relativist thesis is, as Marcel Danesi formulates it, “that grammatical structure mirrors social structure.” (Danesi in Cobley 2010b: 144) The philosophy of language and linguistic theories of the linguistic turn found a good ally in the cultural relativism common in the anthropology of the time. These two circularly supported each other by throwing the demand for empirical evidence of cultural relativist claims on to each other’s theoretical assumptions. The hypothesis of language mirroring society and, implicitly, culture, has been disseminated in numerous methodological frameworks,

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including the established semiotic approaches to culture, such as social semiotics (or sociosemiotics) and some accounts of cultural and media semiotics (see Randviir and Cobley in Cobley 2010; Danesi in Cobley 2010b). An entity such as a pure culture or language, which allows for the study of acculturation as a process occurring in-between two (or more) clearly defined and distinct cultures, is an uncritical assumption that multiculturalist theory inherited from 19th century German romanticism. It is underpinned by the dangerous hypothesis of vitalism, namely that culture is a biological organism. Unlike a biological organism, a culture does not feel and does not react when touched, because a culture is not wrapped-up in a sensitive membrane, such as animals are wrapped-up in skin (on the concept of skin in biosemiotics see Hoffmeyer 2008b). Cultures are pluralistic, not because they are organic, but because it is biological organisms that have cultures. In the present monograph, I draw on some contemporary semiotic frameworks, such as biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, cognitive semiotics and certain semiotic approaches to education, which support the thesis that signification is continuous throughout biological evolution and cultural habituations. Most of these theories developed out of Charles Peirce’s pragmatic semiotics. The idea that signification is continuous throughout life and culture has been ignored by modern philosophy, given its mind/body dualism. Peirce’s pragmatic semiotics has become more popular in some academic circles recently, after having been misunderstood in some essential regards for most of the 20th century (see Stjernfelt 2007: 66–67, 2014: 4).

1.4 A Biosemiotic Notion of Plurality American anthropology, continental structuralism and philosophy of language developed their theories of culture in the aftermath of the Second World War, all sharing cultural relativism as a common denominator. This coincides with the first attempts to develop a communication theory as information theory, which, at least in its incipient phases, was naïvely ignorant of the interpretability of information (e.g. Shannon and Weaver 1964). Consequently, in what regards approaches to communication and culture, an information-based theory came to be regarded as the only alternative to linguistic relativism (see Eco 1976 [1979]: 20–21; Fiske 1990: 40). Peirce’s semiotics offers a different perspective on culture, involving a realist, not relativist epistemology around an open concept of signification and not a rigid notion of information. At the time of these developments, Peirce’s philosophical system was generally regarded as a theory of representation with an aim similar to that of Ferdinand de Saussure’s sémiologie (e.g. Ogden and Richards 1923; Eco 1976 [1979]) or as a primitive form of pragmatism as a theory of knowledge (e.g. Koopman 2009). Recent scholarship, particularly in semiotics, reveals essentially different readings of Peirce, which qualify his pragmatic semiotics as a realist phenomenology of meaning (among others, see Sebeok 1991: 10, 2001: 70–72; Stjernfelt 2007: 144–147, 2014; Cobley 2016: 27). For the purpose of the present monograph’s argument, the theoretical emphasis does not necessarily need to fall on Peirce. Peirce is not the only hero of realism in

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the atmosphere of postmodern extreme relativism, which appears to have reached an impasse in understanding human organization. This current crisis of the humanities (Nussbaum 2010; Martinelli 2016; Cobley in Bankov and Cobley 2017: 3–23) can and should be addressed through a comprehensive critique of modern research in the humanities and its (lack of) dialogue with other sciences. Merely the identification of one scholar of an alternative orientation does not suffice to address the larger problem. Nevertheless, Peirce’s philosophy presents one such alternative (see Deely 1982, 2001, 2009), together with other scholars whose philosophical systems have not been thoroughly considered in the mainstream of cultural criticism, such as, among others, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1995; see Stjernfelt 2007) and, arguably, Levinas (e.g. 2003 [1961]; see Olteanu 2015: 254–255, 270). As well as this, merely the Peircean corpus (broad and comprehensive as that might be) would not directly offer the present monograph the critical arguments for developing the pragmatic semiotic alternative perspective on multiculturalism that it claims. As suggested, it is rather in more recent developments, which explored possibilities latent in Peirce as well as in other authors, that the present inquiry finds a framework for an approach to (what is now called) multiculturalism. One of the reasons which recommend Peirce as one of the sources for a new critical approach to multiculturalism is that pluralism is a typical concern for American pragmatism. Certainly, a more-than-a-century-old philosophy itself, Peirce’s pragmatism cannot be simply transposed into the present situation of multiculturalism in digitalization and globalization. Nevertheless, some contemporary readings of Peirce (particularly Cobley 2010a, 2016; see also Hoffmeyer 1996: 16–24; Deacon 1997, 2012; Favareau 2010: vii–viii, 115–148) make use of his semiotic pragmatism to develop an up-to-date theory of culture, or at least imply and suggest such a theory, in view of current developments in the natural sciences. This drawback on Peirce is explained by the avoidance of Peircean semiotics in 20th century language-centered philosophy and logic. A Peircean theory of culture has never been the project of analytic philosophy or (post)structuralism. As such, Peirce’s semiotics as a theory of representation, is unexplored in view of cultural criticism and multiculturalism. Being acknowledged as one of the most prominent founders of pragmatism, Peirce himself insisted on a notion of plurality, (e.g. CP 1.563, 2.85), which thus appears to be a thematic characteristic of the genus of pragmatism. The fact that plurality was a central interest for Peirce is obvious in his relational logic (see CP 3.466). However, Peirce’s notion of plurality differs in some respect to that propagated later on, along the lines of mainstream American pragmatism (e.g. Kallen 1956, 1996 [1915]). The rather metaphysical Peircean concept of pluralism was picked up by James (2008 [1909]) and Dewey (e.g. 1937) precisely for the purpose of addressing culture. The currently acknowledged construal of cultural pluralism was established by Kallen (1996 [1915]), following James, whose account takes the same lines of argumentation as the relativist notion of mutliculturalism criticized here. Peirce’s relational, and implicitly pluralistic, logic can be used to endorse the view that culture in general, not only a multi-cultural gathering, is a plurality. As such, while still different, the notion of plurality advocated for here is more similar to that of Dewey (see Menand 2001: 400 in Bernstein 2015) than the more popular version of Kallen (1956). Kallen

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(1956, 1996 [1915]) considered that plurality, as required for a democratic organization of society, is contradicted by the fusing together of immigrant cultures into American society because, in this process, immigrants lose their heritage culture. The idea that losing heritage culture leaves an individual depersonalized and incapable of engaged citizenship, is obviously grounded in culturalist theory (see above). Kallen (1996 [1915]) criticized the popular “melting pot” idea, namely that a diversity of immigrants can and ought to become American by mixing altogether in the American society. The idea had been around in American society for a long time, probably at least since around the 17th century, and the precise term was established once with the success of Israel Zangwill’s play “The Melting Pot”, first staged in 1908 (see Shumsky 1975). On the one hand, the idea of the melting pot could suggest an overly naïve notion of acculturation, and, contradictory to the intention of accommodating newly arrived foreigners, it could invent and glorify an American nation as a new promised land, more welcoming and tolerant than any other culture and nation (see Shumsky 1975: 29). On the other hand, Kallen and, after him, much research starting with the 1950s (see Bisin and Verdier 2000), too eagerly argued against cultural assimilation on account of the relativist argument for cultural identity. What both of these extremes—the melting pot and relativism—miss, is that culture itself is heterogeneous and intrinsically diverse. The melting pot thesis endorses a homogenous American culture, formed of all incoming cultural “ingredients”. Kallen’s criticism endorses separatism as the solution against homogenization. Alternatively, the biosemiotic approach to culture considers semiosic phenomena fluid across cultures. A cultural trait that proves pragmatically useful is easily disseminated among cultures, unless a group practices an explicit programme of separatism. To begin with, a culture is not “pure” or homogenous. Peirce’s concept of continuity, around which he developed the doctrine of continuity, termed synechism (CP 7.570), underpins such an understanding of culture, as seen in recent biosemiotic post-Peircean scholarship (Cobley 2016). Peirce’s principle of synechism proved foundational for biosemiotics (see Favareau 2010: 706–707) which thus qualifies as an appropriate framework for cultural analysis (see Cobley 2016: 3). Paul Cobley recently explained the basic lines of research for a biosemiotic approach to culture (2010a, 2016). This study follows the directions pointed out by Cobley, albeit for discussing multiculturalism. While multiculturalism is a problematic term, to eliminate it from academic language altogether would neither necessarily be useful nor possible in this moment. It would be fair to say that it would not be a pragmatic decision, given the pragmatic vein of scholarship in which the present argument is developed. As the term has been in circulation for a few decades, it has acquired some consensus, though it remains imprecise. While often flawed and used to endorse human rights violations, multiculturalist discourse nevertheless contains the seeds of a good intention, of achieving a tolerant and pluralist view social attitude. Some, but not all, accounts of multiculturalism aim to enforce human rights and freedom. These accounts are termed “soft multiculturalism” by Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2012: 1–2), in contrast to the “hard” version, which justifies human rights violations on ground of the supposed autonomy of cultures. As such, in a pragmatic spirit, the present monograph offers

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a critical investigation of the concept, in the effort of seeking out “a better, more substantive understanding of multiculturalism, both in its descriptive and normative definitions.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 1–2) Some contemporary directions of research in semiotics, particularly those adopted in the framework of biosemiotics (e.g. Cobley and Stjernfelt 2015; Cobley 2017), can critically reveal these flaws in multiculturalist discourse and theory and thus construe a new, more critical and more fluid multiculturalism. I draw on such theories to develop an approach to multiculturalism expressed in terms of meaning dynamics. What is at stake is not only a concept or theory of multiculturalism, but also a view on culture in general. Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2010, 2012) advocated for redefining the notion of multiculturalism in directions that I aim to further explain, and found theoretically in semiotic pragmatism. Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2010, 2012) take issue with the relativistic theory of culture in view of which multiculturalism was developed. I adopt their critique of multiculturalism and further explore it, in light of recent semiotic approaches to culture, particularly the biosemiotic framework as employed in cultural analysis (Cobley 2010a, 2016). It is an interesting observation that while Frederik Stjernfelt is an active researcher in Peircean biosemiotics as well (e.g. Stjernfelt 2007, 2014), his work on multiculturalism does not involve biosemiotic theory or any other post-Peircean developments, or at least not directly. While most of the acknowledged frameworks of cultural criticism have been undergoing meticulous refinement at least for the past century, an approach to culture of Peircean inspiration is still a project in an incipient phase. This explains why not even the few scholars who are interested in both Peircean semiotics and multiculturalism do not typically bring Peircean semiotics into debates on multiculturalism yet. The post-Peircean biosemiotic framework (see Kull, Deacon, Emmeche, Hoffmeyer, Stjernfelt in Kull and Emmeche 2011), which I adopt to develop a new critical approach to multiculturalism, insists on the specific view that life and learning are coextensive (Kull 2005), a view which, independently, was developed also in semiotic educational theories (see Stables 2012; Stables and Semetsky 2015; Olteanu 2015; Stables et al. 2018). The starting point of the theory is that life prevails in any situation. Life is understood in a unified biological and existential sense: every living organism has an intrinsic, unquantifiable existential value. As biosemiotics was developed, via Thomas Sebeok, in a Peircean vein, Peirce’s semiotics not only constitutes a background for the present theory, but it is employed to develop the theory’s central argument. The interest that semiotics arouses in life sciences and education theory is due to the intrinsic plurality of signification phenomena. In a Peircean argumentation, biosemiotics finds semiosis, the cooperation of signs, to be the rationale of life (CP 6.322). Kull claims that “life itself” is local plurality (in Bundgaard and Stjernfelt 2009: 119; see also Kull 2007). Elsewhere, he explains that: Semiosis is what makes anything plural. Semiosis creates objects, and makes each object plural. Each is sign, which means each is simultaneously something else, each is many. To mean is to be plural. (Kull 2009: 82)

This has deep implications for culture and multiculturalism. Taken all the way, it implies that cultures are not independent and separable phenomena. Culture itself is

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pluralistic and the borders of a culture are vague. Every culture is diffused in what are labeled as other cultures. Not only the meeting of cultures, but any semiosic phenomenon implies plurality and generates diversity. The meeting of cultures is not necessarily more semiotically complex than the dynamics of a culture, if a culture could be singled out at all. In truth, a culture cannot be singled out. Cobley and Stjernfelt make this implication of biosemiotics clear, stating that “the mutual involvement of cultures with each other precludes any idea that some of them may survive unchanged, in splendid relativist isolation, in pristine, original shape, because no such shape ever existed.” (2015: 303) This hypothesis is not new, but it receives a new, thorough explanation in biosemiotics. Said (e.g. 1994: 15), for instance, is one of those who argued that cultures are never monolithic or autonomous. The biosemiotic view on culture supports this position without assuming the discursive (linguistic) modelling of culture that can lead postcolonial criticism to a polarizing discussion on whether there can be universal features in cultures (such as grand narratives, e.g. Lévi-Strauss 1977) or whether cultural features are always particular (as seen in much cultural relativism). Universalism, according to Cobley (2014: 38), results in reductivism and (given the current geopolitical state of affairs, Western) ethnocentrism. The particularist view of culture, a form of reductivism as well, results in isolationism backed-up by hard relativism. Cobley follows Bhabha (1990) in arguing that “cultures cannot be self-contained and hermetically sealed from one another, nor can they be united by universalist claims.” (2014: 38) It is in support of this view that biosemiotics, the present book argues, brings new and convincing arguments. A theory of culture is needed that, instead of overemphasising the role of difference and opposition in cultural modelling or of dismissing differences altogether in favour of a Western ideological universalism, can “recognize hybridity, that unavoidable mingling of cultures which are presumed to be separate.” (Cobley 2014: 38) Cobley and Stjernfelt (2015) explain this view on culture in a discussion on the notion of semiotic scaffolding. Hoffmeyer (2008, 2015) found inspiration in the socioconstructivist notion of scaffolding (Bruner 1957, 1966, 1999 [1960]), meant initially to address learning in a narrow educational sense, and expanded the concept to the use of semiotics. In the mid-20th century, Bruner caused a significant progress in pedagogy by explaining (cognitive) development as facilitated by a teacher’s scaffolding inputs for learners. While he made the distinction, he also paralleled problemsolving and language acquisition. This parallelism is also rooted in a qualitative distinction of learning in adults and children: I come to the opinion partly through matters related below, but just as much from my own research on the nature of “adult tuition” in both early problem solving and in language acquisition. With respect to the former, there is a vast amount of skilled activity required of a “teacher” to get a learner to discover on his own - scaffolding the task in a way that assures that only those parts of the task within the child’s reach are left unresolved, and knowing what elements of a solution the child will recognize though he cannot yet perform them. (Bruner 1999 [1960]: xiv)

The detailed conceptualization of learning as a scaffolding process, by Bruner and others, was a further development of Vygotsky’s idea that schooling should aim at

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helping the pupil to bridge “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky 1978: 86). He termed this distance zone of proximal development (see 1978: 85). In Hoffmeyer’s biosemiotic re-conceptualization of the concept, “semiotic scaffolding is what makes history matter to an organism (or a cultural system).” (2015: 154) The uptake of the scaffolding concept in semiotics proves the mutual interest in and common construal of learning that, independently, the semiotic approaches to life and to education share. The advantage of a semiotic perspective on knowledge as proceeding in scaffoldings is that it aligns natural evolution and cultural learning, dropping the long-standing anthropocentrism of modern educational theories. This discussion also links the problematization of plurality (or diversity) with that of sustainability (see Cobley and Stjernfelt 2015: 301), which is also independently addressed by Stables (2006). As mentioned, Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2012) explain that the nonetheless extensive literature on multiculturalism does not offer solutions for how should cultures co-exist sustainably. Setting out the fundaments of semiotic educational theory (on some accounts referred to as edusemiotics, see Danesi in Semetsky 2010: vii), Stables pointed out that the advantage that semiotics brings for education studies consists in the “sound understanding of living as semiosis” (2012: 1). This hypothesis, the so-called “Sebeok hypothesis”, was previously and independently adopted in biosemiotics. It is only recently, though, that its implications for culture (Cobely 2010a, 2016) and education (e.g. Stables 2012; Stables and Semetsky 2015) have been explored. Both of these inquiries reveal consequences for environmental sustainability that semiotic biocentrism brings (see also Levesque 2016). What is at stake, of course, is a joint, coextensive perspective on life and learning, where learning is a symptom of life, because “life itself changes and grows through semiosis” (Stables and Semetsky 2015: 1). As Stables made explicit in one of the first contributions to the semiotic framework for education, “If all living is semiotic engagement, then learning is semiotic engagement.” (2006: 375) It is noteworthy that the edusemiotic framework did not simply inherit the Sebeok hypothesis from biosemiotics, but it articulated the same idea independently, albeit with an educational concern. The context and purpose of this consists in the awareness in educational research that for a sustainable educational philosophy, contributing to sustainable contemporary societies, sustainable globalization and digitalization, a non-dualist approach to education is required. Educational policy and curricula must be designed in acknowledgement that life and meaning are coextensive. Of course, it only took a short while for scholarship to spot this common ground and for biosemiotics to become explicitly adopted in several semiotic approaches to education as the general, overarching theory (e.g. Olteanu 2015; Olteanu in Stables et al. 2018; Campbell 2018). It is even more interesting to note that in still an early stage of this recent semiotic approach to education, the advantages of the Sebeok hypothesis for education and culture in general have been already spelled out. Stables explained that the alignment of life, meaning and, as such, learning, on the same continuum is an escape from modern dualism, which

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leads to a fresh perspective on the sustainability of current societies, given the new dynamics of global multiculturalism: […] I want to try to escape this dualism of the rational mind and the mechanical world by considering some of the consequences of the view that living is semiotic engagement for, in turn, learning theory, teaching and the curriculum, educational, and social research, and, finally, policy-making for the development of pluralist, postmodern liberal societies, including the question of whether they can be ‘sustainable’. (Stables 2012: 375)

Thus, semiotics developed a holistic understanding of life, comprising life in both biological and existential senses. Life and learning are inseparable. The fact that education theory discovered a wider horizon within the semiotic framework is relevant for a theory of multiculturalism for three reasons. First, it paved the way for a holistic approach to learning which is insightful for the semiotic understanding of life in general. Second, it illustrates how biosemiotics affects our understanding of cultural phenomena (a topic already explored in Cobley 2010a, 2016). Third, it carries the biosemiotic principle of pluralism from the biological to the cultural realm. This third hypothesis constitutes the starting point for a semiotic theory of multiculturalism, by claiming from the start that learning and, thus, life, are possible only in pluralistic environments. I argue that an enhancement of the pluralistic degree of a system is an enhancement of possibilities for learning. This notion of pluralism, I shall explain, differs from the established notion as used by Kallen (1956) in his idea of cultural pluralism, which was mostly inspired by James (2008 [1909]). Semiotics was often used to approach culture and cultural dialogue. Many such approaches, by now classics, have been developed in view of structuralism (e.g. Barthes 1972 [1957], 1977), poststructuralism (e.g. Derrida 1978 [1967]; Foucault 1988 [1961]; Deleuze and Guattari 1987 [1980]) and social semiotics (Halliday 1978; Hodge and Kress 1988; see also Kress and van Leuween 1996, 2001). However, these approaches miss taking into consideration the recent awareness that biosemiotics entails, namely, that nature and culture are coextensive (see Sebeok 1986: 60–61). As mentioned, biosemiotics developed upon Peircean semiotics, which was not the main path followed by these previous approaches to culture. Recently, Paul Cobley pointed out the implications that biosemiotics has for understanding of culture (2010a, 2016). He considers that the starting point for such an understanding of life is free of the individual/collectivity divide (2010a). He argues that endosemiosis, the transmission of sign processes inside an organism (see von Uexküll et al. 1993), accounts for a dismissal of the modern individualistic notion of the organism. If a human organism is the ongoing result of (endo)semiosic collaboration then its borders with its environment and with other (human) organisms are not fixed and clear, but sensitive and changing. The endosemiosis of organisms is the proof that plurality is intrinsic to life. On this account, a study of human culture must admit and start from the central role played by such a notion of plurality. The previous semiotic (or semiological) approaches to culture did not manage to take into account the continuity of living nature and culture, being mostly epistemic prisoners of the 20th century glottocentric (subduing knowledge and cultural phenomena to linguistic articulation) and therefore solipsistic philosophical trends.

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In the tradition of humanities, the issue of sustainability is regarded as related to learning, thus often addressed in discussions on education, particularly on liberal education. Whether a society is sustainable or not depends most of all on how it construes learning, and how its members are empowered to learn. As such, it is widely accepted that a sustainable democracy is supported by (liberal) education (e.g. Dewey 1997 [1938]), an argument which John Dewey also related to matters of cultural acceptance (e.g. Dewey 1937). The educational philosophy of Western democracies, promoted by Dewey and arguably further on developed in the analytic tradition by philosophers such as Richard Peters and Paul Hirst (see Hirst and Peters 1970; Dearden et al. 1972; Hirst 1974) is challenged by the conditions of global cosmopolitanism of a postmodern world, especially in the context of the extreme relativist epistemologies of the post-war period. According to Stables, the semiotic approach to education can answer in a positive manner such challenges: If there are ‘no easy fixes’ are there any fixes at all? Is a view of living and learning as semiotic engagement really a reactionary excuse for inertia on the grounds that we cannot improve society at all? This is not my view. (Stables 2006: 383)

Globalization, the coming together of cultures and populations in a worldwide network, occurs within the process of digitalization, societies’ expansion onto digital environments, which imposes new sets of yet underexplored literacies (see Lankshear and Knobel 2008; Gaines 2010). A new historical context, digitalization presents challenges and opportunities which, despite much ink spilled, academic research has explored only very little of. For instance, digitalization simultaneously generated the premises for the emergence and spreading of fake news and a post-truth epistemology, as society has not acquired a digital literacy yet, but it also offers the context for a richer democratic dialogue, by the newly discovered digital public spaces for civil engagement. If democracy is supported by an educated public, then a democratic digital society requires digital literacy. As such, multiculturalism, global sustainability, and matters of learning and literacy have to be discussed together, in a unified approach, which is a possibility revealed by the semiotic framework for education. Recent social (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Kress 2010) and media semiotic theories (Danesi 2002, 2008; Gaines 2010) have opened some pathways for such investigation, but, I argue, remain entrenched, to various degrees, in linguistic relativism. These theories can contribute to a critical approach to culture and multiculturalism. By observing in what respects these theories still inherit dualist assumptions and what ideological stances on culture they still endorse, they can be readjusted to the broader (bio)semiotic theory of modelling which, in turn, will thus be expanded (see Chap. 5, below) to approach matters of digital culture and global human societies. The form of relativism still present in sociosemiotics, inherited from sociolinguistics (see Randviir and Cobley in Cobely 2010b: 119) contains (at least) three interconnected epistemological implications which I identify as problematic: (1) The focus on discourse as linguistic apparatus for culture is sterile for scientific modelling. The language-centered philosophy of the 20th century has brought humanities research to a sterile point where abstract symbolic language

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is replaced by abstract symbolic language without clear purposefulness or practicality (Stjernfelt 2007: 52). (2) These theories tend to ignore developments in natural sciences and manifest a certain resistance to their empirical methods (see Martinelli 2016). Particularly, this attitude has cut off humanities research from progress in fields such as sociobiology (e.g. Wilson 1980 [1975]; Alcock 2001) and ecology (e.g. Næss 2001). Kull (2011) and Levesque (2016) point out directions in which semiotics can bridge the humanities and environmental research. (3) The dominating views in anthropology and sociolinguistics contradict with democratic principles and human rights (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2010, 2012). While these points are connected, the present monograph focuses mostly on the third as an implication of language-centered culture and representation theories. Thus, some arguments of what is generally accepted as the edusemiotic framework (e.g. Stables and Semetsky 2015) are considered to contribute to a semiotic approach to multiculturalism, because they are detached from the modern languagecentered view on learning and education in favor of a broader conceptualization of learning as modelling. In particular, starting with Enlightenment, the philosophy of education has been anchored in mind/body dualism, supposing not only ontological differences between humans and non-human animals and the rest of nature, but also particular cognitive capabilities of humans that are due to the physiological capability of linguistic articulation. In brief, modern educational philosophy has been driven by the assumption that language is a modelling system that overrides our embodied condition. Together with this assumption in linguistics, modern anthropology imposed a relativist theory of culture where (1) language and culture mirror each other, as culture is developed exclusively by means of linguistic categories, and (2) language-culture entirely determines the lifestyles and cognitive capacities of groups and individuals. This assumption, rooted in the philosophy of Enlightenment, particularly contractualism and German idealism, which we now recognize as fallacious, proved to generate unsustainable policies. The equivalence of living and learning implies an ecological claim. In semiotic terms, learning is sign growth (see also Olteanu 2015). Stjernfelt considers that evolution itself adapted to structures of signification (2011, 2014). In this sense, adaptation is learning. This statement is also shared, broadly, by the semiotic approach to education, as Gough and Stables explain that interpretation itself is adaptation (2012). This notion of learning avoids the dichotomy between cultural learning and adaptation. Sharov, Maran and Tønnessen remark that one “key feature of biosemiotics is […] that it considers the dynamics of semiosis at multiple time scales, and emphasizes the active role organisms have in reshaping sign relations.” (2015: 361) This feature of biosemiotics is generally revealing for semiosis and sheds light on learning in its cultural dimension as well. If learning is sign growth and life itself proceeds by semiosis, then living consists of learning, which, as previously mentioned, means that learning is a vital symptom—the very sign of life. Moreover, since learning itself is a phenomenon that adapts to recognizing more complex signification structures, it must contain an ecological dimension. This does not mean that culture is alive, in

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a biological sense. To claim such a thing would be a rather dangerous and unscientific assumption of 19th century romanticism, which still endures in contemporary cultural relativism. It only means that, since culture is practiced by living organisms, it inherits the pluralism of organisms, through the phenomena of learning and communication which constitutes its very dynamics. Given this general conception of life and learning, cultural diversity can further on be explained in the perspective of Charles Peirce’s phenomenological categories. Often the target of criticism (e.g. Koopman 2009; Burch 2010; Stables 2012: 8–9), his phenomenological categories constitute one of the cornerstones of Peirce’s semiotics (and philosophy, generally). Upon his ideas of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, Peirce developed what can arguably be regarded as a cosmology of signs or, using Stjernfelt’s expression, a “physiology of arguments” (2007: 25), as the argument is the most developed sign type, towards which signification phenomena generally tend (see more in Chap. 4, Sect. 4.2). These three categories are conceived as inseparable from each other, individually or in pairs of two, as the three termini of a sign. The continuous unification of three elements has proper ontological status, unlike any of the individual constituting elements. In this view, the triadic relation, the sign, is the only proper phenomenon that participates in the weaving of a Universe of real possibilities. This means that the Universe, the wholeness of actual and possible existence, is a weave of signs. As such, the Universe is, literally, a text. However, this does not imply a glottocentric epistemology, whereby reality is constructed via our linguistic structures. Peirce never claimed that signs would require language. On the contrary, examples of signs in his writings range from cosmic to biological and to linguistic and cultural domains. The concept of text, as extrapolated in philosophy and semiotics from literary theory, while very insightful for processes of interpretation and representation, also caused some confusion for the relation between representation and reality (see more in Chap. 2, Sect. 2.2 and in Chap. 6).

1.5 Criticism of Culturalism-Based Multiculturalism The current construal of multiculturalism, as stemming from political discourse (see above), is endorsed by the idea that the lives of individuals and groups are strictly bound to a culture that they can hardly “escape” from. This idea of culture, which endorsed the political discourse on multiculturalism, was recently criticized by Stjernfelt (2010) and Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2010, 2012), who termed it culturalism. This ideological view on culture has common assumptions with nationalism and understands cultures as organic: they are lifeforms of their own within which individuals exist. On this account of culture, the individual’s freedom is determined by the strictly assumed border of a culture. Eriksen and Stjernfelt explain that what they mean by culturalism is “a theory of culture which assumes the central anthropological ideas: that culture precedes and determines the individuals belonging to it; that cultures have unlimited freedom to generate differences, uninhibited by any human nature; and that cultures form closed, organic units where all their differ-

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ent articulations, from gastronomy to theology, form an unbreakable whole which implies that these value systems are unique and in no way may be compared with or judged against other value systems.” (2010: 360) In this perspective, also, it is assumed that “the beliefs and behaviours of the individual are determined by the culture he or she belongs to, and that once “enculturated” it is impossible to adopt the position of cultures other than one’s own.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 7) This view is observed, for instance, in a classic reference and bestselling book on intercultural communication, where Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov define culture as a “software of the mind” (2010: 5, 21) that cannot be globalized (2010: 391). This theory of culture is mainly supported by the assumption that human life proceeds in discourse, in a linguistic sense. Admittedly, in the recent, post-linguistic turn case of Hofstede et al. (2010), the software of the mind is a category more subtle than language. Nevertheless, it is still inspired by discursive theories and the hypothesis that the behavior of is determined by a superimposing category. Paul Cobley also criticizes this perspective on culture, pointing out its assumption of knowledge as entirely discursive (2016: 18). Arguably, this discursive relativism is one of the main causes of the current crisis of humanities (see above). As such, attempts in humanities to approach and overcome this crisis, at the core of which the key to sustainable human organization lies, draw on the issue of representation. The question is how do humans think of (that is to say, represent) their environment? A more precise question is how does a society think of itself in relation to the natural environment? Also, an implied question is how do groups and individuals relate to one another, as distinct parts of the same environment? As the bottom line questions on human-environment relations point at representation, the discipline most concerned with representation, namely semiotics, has come to dominate the epistemology of humanities, even if often not explicitly mentioned. However, as Cobley explains, the dominant semiotic view for most of the 20th century has been that of the discursive theories, implicit of a relative theory of knowledge. The alternative underpinning philosophy for a theory of cultures which Cobley proposes is the biosemiotic school, mostly a development of Peircean semiotics (Cobley 2010a, 2016), which I here employ to address matters of multiculturalism. Cobley argues that the Peircean biosemiotic school offers a view on culture and society not as entirely construed within linguistic discourse, because, in this framework, discourse, linguistic or otherwise, as well as language and culture at large are analyzed “in the interrogation of modelling” (Cobley 2016: 28). Modelling, in this sense, is not a peculiar mode of learning or scientific inquiry, but the general phenomenon of sense making by which biological organisms come to inhabit an intelligible environment. Language is only one of the means that humans have for modelling. The role that language plays in learning and culture should not be underestimated either. Language is, without doubt, a powerful means for modelling. Nevertheless, the language-centered philosophy of the 20th century has imposed a linguistic imperialism upon knowledge. This language-centrism implies (1) anthropocentrism, as it qualifies human knowledge as ontologically superior to the knowledge and modelling capacities of other species, and (2) cultural relativism, as it strictly binds culture to language, implying that culture is a purely linguistically modelled system. The latter implication further

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on suggests that cultures do not have access one to another, being internally coherent but self-sufficient and isolated codes. In conjunction with the hypothesis of the linguistic turn that cognition is linguistically formulated, cultural relativism regards knowledge and behavior as strictly determined by culture. Culturalism was contoured in the wake of the world wars, when the West was confronted with admitting its intolerance and oppression towards non-Western societies. These being the circumstances at the beginning of the American school of anthropology, this school assumed in its methodology a preference for studying cultures which would appear alien or, so to say, exotic, to the Western modern, particularly American, mindset. This scientific program found that the weapon by which it would defend the stateless and non-Western communities from Western imperialism would be the crystallization of a sense of identity, ethnic or otherwise, in these communities (see Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2010: 360–361). Thus, it was the same postcolonial West, the historical oppressor, which, through its newfound ideology, decided that cultures and societies about which it knew only too little are entirely dignified by default, and, thus, cannot be judged against Western or other values. It might seem surprising that while cultural relativism supposes that cultures cannot properly understand each other’s forms of organization, it hastes to label each and any culture as dignified. Actually, the latter is a consequence of the former: if we cannot understand each other we must accept that the other’s practices are dignified in their own arbitrary axiology, otherwise we risk external intervention. The problem with this attitude is that, as Eriksen and Stjernfelt explain (2010, 2012), it is used to justify violations of human rights and acts which, in a rather common sense perspective, are easily acknowledged as anti-human. Such acts are justified on account of the presumption in culturalism and, in its niche version, multiculturalism, that systems of thought stem exclusively from culture. This theory of culture, insisted upon by post-World War American Anthropology (see American Anthropological Association 1947), particularly by Herskovits (1958), does not consider the possibility of other sources of knowledge besides culture, such as innate, embodied competencies and tendencies or individual observations and experiences and, consequently, cross-cultural circumstances and their economic, social and political dimensions. To critically exemplify the anti-human rights consequences of this view, I argue that a naïve and relativist form of multiculturalism should not be allowed to cultivate the pretense that contemporary societies should accept the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). In a cultural relativist perspective, the practice can be justified as relative to the culture practicing it, but this argument entirely ignores the embodied human condition and, in addition, individual freedom and the right to self-determination. In many areas of the African continent and the Middle East, FGM is claimed as a traditional and, thus, justified practice (see Committee on Bioethics 1998: 153). The American Association of Pediatrics considers that the practice presents life-threatening risks and thus entirely opposes it (Committee on Bioethics 1998). This judgement rightly disfavors justifying what might be claimed to be linguistically, historically constructed cultural practices in favor of the biological reality of the human body. The practice involves serious health risks. Furthermore, it is easy to make the case that the practice is misogynistic, as cultures endorsing

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it suppose that altering the female, and not the male, body is acceptable. That the practice is traumatizing, dangerous and that it deprives the person of experiencing sexual pleasure is not a cultural judgement: […] personal accounts by women who have had a ritual genital procedure recount anxiety before the event, terror at being seized and forcibly held during the event, great difficulty during childbirth, and lack of sexual pleasure during intercourse. (Committee on Bioethics 1998: 154)

First, simply by accepting the biological reality of the human body, as a body which entails culture, pain and health risks are not relative to a degree that could justify such a practice. Secondly, but no less important, the Committee on Bioethics here explains that data show that while the subjects of FGM come from cultures where FGM is supposedly traditional, they do not want it. The experience often involves violence and it is traumatic. One does not need to suppose a cultural position to recognize the obvious harmful violence and lack of empathy in FGM. Such practices that obviously violate human rights should not be justified under the false pretense of (multi)cultural acceptance. Even more, the claim that an intervention aimed at putting an end to FGM from outside of a FGM-practicing community is not justified is actually Western-supremacist and not the other way around. Such a claim uses culturalism to hide its essentially Western postcolonial supremacist assumptions, as it supposes that some communities cannot understand what is wrong with this or other oppressive practices. In the culturalist perspective, inherent of postcolonial Western anthropology, “it is deemed impossible to pass judgement on the practices of other cultures, and their institutions, practices, and conceptions may differ in any conceivable manner” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 7). Thus, the Western cultural relativist tolerates FGM in non-Western communities, but is happy to live in a Western culture where, she very well knows, FGM is labelled an atrocity. This stand justifies lack of empathy by a false pretense of cultural tolerance. Cultural relativist anthropology thus endorsed a rather unfounded, even inconsistent, position in regard to assuring human rights, namely: Standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive so that any attempt to formulate postulates that grow out of the beliefs or moral codes of one culture must to that extent detract from the applicability of any Declaration of Human Rights to mankind as a whole. (American Anthropological Association 1947: 542)

The same argument, I shall explain, is used to endorse isolationism generally, including in cases where isolationism has obvious inhumane consequences. Such a case is the pretense that instead of granting asylum to war refugees, refugees should be given the chance to be happy in their own homeland. In this case, another straw-man, myth-flavored argument appears, namely that of the homeland. The idea of a homeland, at least in this use, assumes the most dangerous and unscientific connection between territory and culture.

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Chapter 2

Cultural Relativism and Politics of Recognition

Abstract This chapter discusses the arguments from semiotic theories that cultural studies have tended to draw on. In the atmosphere of the linguistic turn, the prevailing trends of semiotics supported a linguistic-centered epistemology, producing the extension of the philological concept of text to the study of culture and society. Valuable in its own right, this epistemological expansion of literary criticism also carried certain assumptions about interpretation that, uncritically transferred to the study of culture, resulted in a rigid understanding of culture as holistic code. Another adoption from literary to cultural studies in structural semiotics was the centrality of notions, such as opposition and difference in meaning-making. These two assumptions together endorsed a relativist epistemology whereby all of human activity is seen relatively to an undisputable cultural structure. The argument stemming from biosemiotics for studying culture and knowledge as modelling, instead of culture as codified text, is explained and recommended as a realist epistemological alternative.

2.1 Différance and Identity The realization in early American anthropology that imperialist oppression is dangerous and endorses violations of human and civil rights is most valuable. Nevertheless, scholarship in favor of this attitude did not leave behind some early modern clauses of nationalism, but only bended them, transferring legitimacy from the concept of nation to that of culture. Thus, it led to some reductivist and anthropocentric over-generalizations about human culture. The tendency to over-generalize has been endorsed by the assumption in structuralism that meaning stems from difference. Thus, the cultural relativism cultivated by anthropology found an ally in (post)structuralism, which offered reassurance that cultural differentiation is material for theoretical generalization. The assumption that meaning stems from difference was first clearly expressed by de Saussure (1959 [1916]) and was accepted in the structuralism and poststructuralism tradition to follow, finding an apogee in Jacques Derrida’s idea of différance (1976 [1974], 1978 [1967], 1981). Most cultural studies, by inheriting this theory of meaning from structuralism, have implicitly assigned a central role to the concept of identity (see above, Sect. 1.1). As languages and cultures © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Olteanu, Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17883-3_2

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are analyzed in virtue of intrinsic and extrinsic differences, each culture appears to have its own identity, which also corresponds, usually, to one language or, in some cases, to a number of languages. This concept of cultural identity is connected to the emphasis in modern philosophy on the individual identity of human subjects. Despite the stress on individual freedom in much modern philosophy, in the context of culturalist anthropology, individual identity, no less important, is regarded as entirely determined by cultural identity. For this reason, cultural relativism argues the need of cultural autonomy to the point of separating social groups by criterion of cultural inheritance: in this view, the individual is deprived of identity and, therefore, of the possibility to enjoy human rights and prosper, if she is deprived of a distinctive cultural identity. As explained above, this cultural relativist thesis underpins the established framework for the study of acculturation in various areas, such as psychology (e.g. Berry 1980, 1997) and sociolinguistics (Schumann 1976; Regan et al. 2009). By contrast, biosemiotics can be used to approach culture in view of a diagrammatic logic, as inherited from Peirce, which posits similarity as the primary criterion of signification, not difference (see Stjernfelt 2007). In this view, cultures are understood as evolving scaffoldings of diagrammatic structures. One of the main implications of this view is that cultures are not entirely distinct, but share a common biological ground and, furthermore, other similarities, due either to common history or to the need to adapt to similar conditions through similar pragmatic choices, that account for the possibility of conviviality and, much more, of merging. The theory of meaning as difference originates in Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology. Through the editorial work of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, who put his lectures together in the Cours de linguistique générale (1916), de Saussure developed a linguistic theory based on a notion of sign which regards language as a system of signs (1959 [1916]: 10, 13, 16). Being particularly interested with linguistic signs, he defined the sign as a “two-sided psychological entity” (66) consisting of a concept and a sensorial form (“sound-image”). He established the celebrated terminology of signified (fr. signifié), for the conceptual side of the sign, and signifier (fr. significant) for the sensorial side (67). Studying language as a system of such signs led de Saussure to announce a new academic project, which he termed semiology (fr. sémiologie): A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology; I shall call it semiology (from Greek semeion ‘sign’). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. Since the science does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts. (16)

Thus, de Saussure remarked the potentiality of a study of relations of signification besides articulated language. Independently, this was arguably realized at the same time by Charles Peirce, though with some important differences to how de Saussure predicted. Nevertheless, the contradictions between how these two regarded signs and sign systems can be accounted on the different foci: Peirce was concerned with logic and de Saussure was concerned with language. Each of them recovered the root

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´ of the same concept of medieval philosophy, as evolved from the Greek σημη¨ιoν (s¯eme´¯ ïon). De Saussure’s announced semiology was followed-up and realized after the World Wars, in the schools that came to be termed structuralism and poststructuralism. These schools of thought, starting mainly with Barthes (1972 [1957]), have extrapolated and expanded the scope of the Saussurean sign from language to all areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, particularly forming the mainstream framework for discursive theory. An important implication of this philological process stands in the transmission of a psychologistic notion of the sign from language to culture and even ontology. For de Saussure language is inherently psychological: “Everything in language is basically psychological, including its material and mechanical manifestations” (de Saussure 1959 [1916]: 6). The process of using a rather focused concept as the tool of language to explain more general phenomena, cultural and not only, risked reductivism. As such, de Saussure’s psychologistic clause of linguistics was spread by structuralism to logic as well, resulting in a doctrine of psychologism which supposes “the idea that logic is the empirical study of how minds and brains behave while thinking” or “that the study of the content and structure of thought and signs forms part of the domain of psychology” (Stjernfelt 2014: 14). The main problem of psychologism, according to Stjernfelt is that “it immediately allows for relativism.” (2014: 14) The cultural relativism accounted for by 20th century American anthropology was endorsed by the same kind of theoretical generalization, noticed by Eriksen and Stjernfelt in Ruth Benedict’s (1934) transforming “a methodological rule in anthropology into an ontological postulate.” (Eriken and Stjernfelt 2012: 108). This is the case of Benedict paralleling metaphysical possibility with the empirical reality of human cultures, which led her to axiomatically conclude that cultures are “radically different” (see Erisken and Stjernfelt 108–109). In contrast, Peirce’s logic, like that of Husserl (1976a [1900], 1976b [1900]; see also Stjernfelt 2007: 161, 2014: 44) and Fregge is anti-psychologistic, in the sense that it accounts for reference as a phenomenal possibility which does not require access to mental imagery. That psychologism implies relativism is already visible in de Saussure. By defining the sign in this way, de Saussure also considered both individual signs and sign systems as arbitrary, as he stated that “language is a convention, and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon does not matter.” (10) This leads to assuming that we do not have any access to meaning or intentionality intended in a code which we do not master linguistically: “When we hear people speaking a language that we do not know, we perceive the sounds but remain outside the social fact because we do not understand them.” (13) Nevertheless, while announcing the more general project of semiology, de Saussure discussed only linguistic signs and sign systems. Even so, there is a tendency towards over-generalization in the Cours: “from the very outset we must put both feet on the ground of language and use language as the norm of all other manifestations of speech.” (9) It is thus contoured that de Saussure considered language to be a purely human modelling system, which completely overrides other systems “Language […] is a self-contained whole and a principle of classification.” (9) The distinction between

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language and speech contains the idea, verified by evolutionary anthropology (MacLarnon and Hewitt 1999; MacLarnon 2012) and explicated in biosemiotics (Sebeok 1991: 55–56; see more in Chap. 5), that a modelling system prior to phonetic articulation affords the emergence of speech. However, at the same time, the separation of language and speech in this dualist fashion, endorses cultural and linguistic relativism by subduing communicative possibilities to pre-existing linguistically modelled categories, thus critically differing from the biosemiotic account. In this statement it is clearly illustrated how psychologism implies relativism: that clause that language is self-contained, that is, hermetical and accessible only to its speakers, involves a classification of the world. That the principles of classification are linguistic implies anthropocentrism: “what is natural to mankind is not oral speech but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e. a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas.” (10) This means that human beings have a mental capacity for classification, independent of communication capacities, which cannot remodel pre-existing mental classifications. Moreover, in this regard, the relevance for the modelling (arguably in particular for social cognition) of the physiological capacity of phonetic articulation is exaggerated, in the detriment of other physiological features. This is so because only speech seems to manifest the linguistic system. Indeed, the relativist implications for language and culture of Boasian anthropology drew on de Saussure’s distinction that renders speech as rigidly determined by the linguistic suprastructure. For instance, Sapir justified psychologism by the same epistemological argument that justifies language structural holism: The social psychology into which the conventional cultural and psychological disciplines must eventually be resolved is related to these paradigmatic studies as an investigation into living speech is related to grammar. (Sapir 1934: 411)

From the perspective that on language and classification led Ferdinand de Saussure to famously state that: […] in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. Proof of this is that the value of a term may be modified without either its meaning or its sound being affected, solely because a neighboring term has been modified […]. (1959 [1916]: 120)

Thus, de Saussure here explained some of the main and inseparable assumptions of his theory of language. Some of these ideas which are particularly relevant to the cultural criticism which semiologie later inspired are: (1) that language is an articulation of form and content, (2) that meaning stems from difference, (3) that meaning is arbitrary, as any meaning can be assigned to any form and that (4) the language whole rigidly fixes all possible instances of use and, as language “is not a function of the speaker” (1959 [1916]: 14), instantiations of language use seldom, if at all, result in the language as such changing. The meaning of stemming from

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difference is essentially connected with his assumption that meaning is an articulation of form and content within a system and this leads to the assumption that the position of a linguistic sign within the system changes if its neighboring signs change. In this perspective, the individual sign has no degree of autonomy of its own, so to say, being entirely determined by the system. This idea was inherited later by Martinet (1962), who established the hypothesis of language as double articulation. Martinet referred to the production of oral speech as a double phonetic articulation and not of sign systems in general. However, this sufficed for a generalized theory of meaning where, again, human language is regarded as an over-whelming modelling system which overwrites the organism’s other modelling systems, stemming from embodiment features other than the capacity for speech production. Martinet inherited de Saussure’s distinction between language and writing, which qualifies strictly oral speech as properly linguistic or, at least, closest to that assumed strictly human capacity for linguistic classification. This hypothesis separates human beings from the rest of the animal realm and, in general, from the rest of nature. It is a linguistic turn voicing of modern mind/body dichotomy: it ultimately states that mind supposes language while body does not. From this perspective, a non-human animal remains, as seen in modernity in general, construed as a mindless body. While cognition and degrees of behavioral intelligence can be noticed in non-human animals, they are regarded as non-linguistic and therefore, mechanical, that is to say, purely behavioristic. The idea that humans enjoy a modelling system that separates them from the rest of nature means that humans have a unique way of learning. This supposedly uniquely human way of learning stands in linguistic classification as a very efficient communicational means. This assumption supports the educational idea of Enlightenment, as expressed in contractualism, that education is only a possibility for humans (e.g. Hobbes 1909 [1651]: §61–62; Locke 1889 [1693]: §37; Rousseau 1911 [1762]: 5–6). Ultimately, assuming that human language, and the classification principles which it entails, ontologically separates learning from natural evolution. Even more so, it leads to some narrow construals of learning and teaching, as purely cultural and strictly in the service of education. In addition, it presupposes psychologism by aligning linguistic categories, which for de Saussure are psychological and logical operations. If, as de Saussure claimed, language is psychological and learning capacities are linguistic, then logical operations also have to be psychological. The hypothesis that language consists in double articulation endorses glottocentrism, by the implication that physiological features that allow for the production of phonemes set humans apart from the rest of the animal world. As such, by endorsing modern, Enlightenment anthropocentrism, it stresses on the importance of the concepts of difference, foundational to begin with for its constitution, and identity. Cobley (2016) remarks that glottocentrism imputes a rigid concept of identity, individual and cultural, defined by differences between groups, and an individual/collectivity dichotomy. He points out that this perspective on humanity, culture and social organization originates in the French Revolution, that is, precisely in the fundaments of contractualist educational philosophy. By contrast, biosemiotics “upsets notions regarding the distinction between collectivity and individual that have contributed to common sense in the modern world and especially since the French Revolution (see

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Siedentop 2015). Arguments regarding the human subject have been part of the burgeoning literature on ‘identity studies’ in the last 25 years. In the modern literature in this area there is always a tension between what is referred to as ‘selfhood’ and what is understood as ‘subjectivity’ (cf. Atkins 2005: 1–2).” (Cobley 2016: 45) Hence, another more subtle dichotomy arises from the individual/collectivity dichotomy and from the construal of humans as autonomous individuals, namely that between selfhood and subjectivity. According to Cobley, the attempts at blurring this dichotomy are rather synthetic, even further on endorsing the individuality of human subjects and, with it, capitalist ideology: What has probably become axiomatic in much of the writing on identity, the subject and the self in modernity is that subjectivity and selfhood are synonymous mainly because they are no longer considered to be unitary or intrinsically constitute in character […]. (Cobley 2016: 45)

The double articulation hypothesis was inherited, though with some variations, in most of sociolinguistics and structural semiotics to follow (see Hjelmslev 1954; Jakobson 1990; Chandler 2002). I argue that this view of language endorsed the cultural relativism of anthropology to follow, which has dominated cultural studies since the mid-20th century. For instance, in her influential book which refutes early 20th century racial prejudices, Patterns of Culture (1934), Ruth Benedict, a student of Franz Boas, paralleled language evolution with cultural structures. Erisken and Stjernfelt notice that, as a means for illustrating the autonomy of cultures “Benedict selects language: the well-known linguistic fact that every language cuts up the phonetic continuum each in their own fashion is quickly generalized to all other social institutions. Every culture selects its own set of institutions (in a broad sense of the word), which appears arbitrary and irrelevant if seen from other cultures.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 107) Certainly, Benedict’s book was published some three decades before Martinet’s studies on phonetic articulation. Nevertheless, the same commonly accepted at the time assumption about language as a closed and autonomous system is used as a generalization for a theory of culture. Seen in this way, a culture can only be perceived as absurd or meaningless when perceived by a member of another culture. This is what Schmidt (1955) termed the cultural relativist thesis and it has been jointly and simultaneously entertained by (post)structuralist linguistics and philosophy, anthropology and philosophy of language. In this view, cross-cultural criticism would be like listening to an unknown language: it cannot be understood, because the listener does not know the code. An English native speaker listening to a speech in Japanese does not understand what Japanese speakers understand (provided, of course, that the speaker of English did not undertake the effort to study the Japanese language). The only thing that the English speaker understands is the difference, that is, merely the fact that she is hearing an unknown language. Certainly, in this view of language, even between two speakers of the same language, a dialogue makes sense because of difference. When mastering the code, differences (between words, phrases, intonations, etc.) result in classifications whereas when not mastering the code, differences appear as pure indexes (marks) without any content. The semiological and structuralist view

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on language takes this reasoning as proof for the absolute arbitrariness of languages: linguistic articulation only makes sense by use of symbols, which are complex and conventional signs. This idea also underpins Ernst Cassirer’s definition of the human being as a symbolic animal (1944), which inspired the centrality of anthropocentrism in 20th century anthropology, cultural studies and meaning theories. Further on, cultural relativism, founded on this linguistic claim, endorses the idea that it is the same for cultures. For example, the sociolinguistic acculturation model has its starting point in the distance that a learner of a secondary language perceives between her culture and the culture associated with the secondary language (Schumann 1976; see Regan et al. 2009: 10). This is where cultural relativism, such as in the case of Benedict, comes up with a rather weak resolution, namely that cultural differences and, all the more, divergences must be respected simply for the sake of the difference: No man can thoroughly participate in any culture unless he has been brought up and has lived according to its forms, but he can grant to other cultures the same significance to their participants which he recognizes in his own. (Benedict 1959: 37)

In this view, acculturation (or enculturation) is impossible. By being brought up in a certain culture, the individual is destined not to understand any other culture properly, other than perhaps by full immersion in the respective culture, together with an assumed effort of learning this new culture’s characteristics, beginning with its corresponding language. This idea is mutually supportive of the instructionalist hypothesis that there is a certain moment during infancy, mostly thought to be around the age of nine months, when a human has peculiarly strong cognitive capacities for language learning. Jean Piaget is known for entrenching this hypothesis: Apart from thinking by images or autistic symbols which cannot be directly communicated, the child up to an age, as yet undetermined but probably somewhere around age seven, is incapable of keeping to himself the thoughts which enter his mind. He says everything. He has no verbal continence. (Piaget 1959 [1926]: 23)

Certainly, what Piaget here terms “symbol” is a different concept than the symbol concept in meaning theories and anthropology. The symbol concept which is debated as either defining for the human species (Cassirer 1944), as underpinned by the principle and classes of linguistic modelling, or to be found more widely in nature as a logical operation (see Martinelli 2010:72; Barsalou 1999; Stjernfelt 2014: 35) is a different concept. Between Piaget’s symbol concept, most likely inherited from psychoanalysis (e.g. Freud 2005 [1899]) and that of meaning theories and anthropology, there is mostly a coincidence of homonymous terminology. These concepts are used to explain different phenomena, within the different spectra of interest of these disciplines. The point is that Piaget’s theory reveals the contractualist underpinnings of the educational theory at the time. He identified in a psychological regard what contractualism supposed, namely that enculturation takes the human individual out of animality and into humanity. On these lines of thought, educational theory has preserved and disseminated this assumption further on. For instance, this same hypothesis is present in the influential instructionalist educational theory of Davydov (2008). This theory accounted for a particularly instructional notion of learning,

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as narrowly circumscribed by educational contexts and for educational goals. The same hypothesis is present in Tomasello’s anthropological theories of human culture and communication (1999, 2008). Tomasello’s ideas on culture and communication involve a theory of symbols as well, rooted in the assumption that there is a humanspecific use of indexical signs, given humans’ particular cognitive capacity for joint attention. In short, the capacity for joint attention is the social cognitivist answer to questions regarding the connection between language acquisition and cognitive development. This shared assumption about language acquisition implies that by this early acquisition of a native language, the individual is also enculturated. Thus, in their account of intercultural communication Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov are led to assume that the mental software that culture is for the individual is mostly “acquired in early childhood” (2010: 4; see also 2010: 10). The argument is that the individual learns to think in the semantic categories of the respective language or sign system, more broadly, which overwrite any pre-existing modelling system. Through this process, it is supposed, the individual is almost irreversibly cognitively wired into a cultural system that reproduces itself (see Hofstede et al. 2010: 12). In a manner of speaking, this is how and when the individual is detached from her animality and becomes an acculturated, language-speaking and language-thinking human being. The biosemiotic framework (Sebeok 1990: 42–43; Stjernfelt 2014: 4), particularly visible in its zoosemiotic branch (Martinelli 2010: 72–73), opposes this anthropocentric theory of language and meaning. This same idea of language as an arbitrary phenomenon which models culture has been taken up in sociolinguistics. Thus, understandably, sociolinguistics identified variation to be one of its main research topics (see Tagliamonte 2006). Variation theory was developed in sociolinguistics about the same time as Martinet’s phonetic and phonological studies, starting with William Labov (e.g. 1964, 1966). Labov clearly expresses the starting point of this theory by remarking that “the moment we hear a difference between two speakers or two speeches, our interest is quickened. Does the difference recur? Is it generalized in any context or social group? Does it have social meaning? As we turn from the study of linguistic constants to linguistic variables, we acquire more realistic methods of comparing systems and measuring differences between structures. Moreover, as we develop quantitative methods, correlations between linguistic patterns and other cultural patterns begin to emerge.” (1966: 164) Labov’s sociolinguistics focuses on language variation and, therefore, finds meaningful data in differences. From a Saussurean point of view, given de Saussure’s distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech) and the rigidity of both of these concepts, a variation of speech would be most interesting for comparing languages. The identification of a variation could almost account for a code switch. The research questions that Labov addressed are pointed at differences. He was interested in what produces speech variations and, arguably not a bad guess altogether, he found sociocultural context to be the main explanation. It is the bewilderment that semiology manifests when faced with empirical evidence of linguistic variation that inspired both (1) the transition from linguistics

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studying linguistic phenomena intrinsically to sociolinguistics studying language in sociocultural contexts and (2) that from structuralism to poststructuralism, as a system more comprehensive of meaning dynamics and language evolution, in cases such as Derrida’s (e.g. 1978 [1967]). The emphasis on difference led Labov to insist on the relevance of quantitative methods in linguistics, as differences can be measured, arguably (see also Tagliamonte 2006: 3–4). This view follows the parallel between language, seen as a rigid code governed by rigid syntax and culture: sociocultural variation accounts for linguistic variation, which justifies sociolinguistic research. While developments such as sociolinguistics and poststructuralism have the merit of making steps towards a more comprehensive and closer to holistic study of language and of meaning phenomena in general, they also encapsulate linguistic dynamics within the broader dynamics of (one) culture. As such, language is regarded as the gateway to understanding its corresponding culture. The fact that there is a strong connection between language and culture is a 19th century romanticist assumption, always present in cultural relativism and brought to surface, as variation theory, to explain speech production variation. This assumption is rooted in the 19th century concept of nation. The language-culture parallel is the cornerstone assumption that underpins discourse analysis, the idea that culture and behavior can be understood through the analysis of linguistic production. To analyze variation, sociolinguistics supposes a mirroring of linguistic elements with social elements: […] variationist sociolinguistics is most aptly described as the branch of linguistics which studies the foremost characteristics of language in balance with each other – linguistic structure and social structure; grammatical meaning and social meaning – those properties of language which require reference to both external (social) and internal (systemic) factors in their explanation. (Tagliamonte 2006: 5)

While acknowledging the importance of sociocultural context and dynamics for language, sociolinguistic research tends to exaggerate the extent to which culture and language determine each other. The problem is that this qualifies language as the only modelling system for culture and, more generally, for knowledge in a broad sense. It also has a reversed implication: language, on account of which human modelling is distinct from (or in) modelling in the zoosphere occurs only in cultural contexts.

2.2 Text or Model Semiotics The very broad and heterogeneous paradigm for cultural studies developed from the semiological acceptance of language has produced cultural analyses based upon a certain notion of text. This idea of text was adopted from linguistics, as an interpretable and, thus, analyzable artefact and expanded to the broad study of culture. Given its history, this concept carries modern dualism with it: text is thought of as a weaving of meanings regardless of their material morphology, since the double formcontent articulation is arbitrary and any content can fit in any form. The notion of text disseminated in cultural studies at large is disembodied. Also, as I shall explain, it supposes that sign systems can be hermetically isolated.

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Alternatively, I argue in favor of an understanding of culture in view of the notion of universe of discourse, which Charles Peirce (see CP 2.373, 2.383) inherited from Augustus de Morgan (see CP 2.517) and Boole (1854: 42). The most important epistemological advantage that the concept of universe of discourse has to that of text, even though terminology might appear misleading, is that the former does not suppose human life to proceed, first and foremost, linguistically. As such, it also avoids the attribution of life, in an organic sense, to language or culture. Peirce made use of and developed this concept long before any development was made in what is presently called discursive theory or discourse analysis—endeavors which are rooted in structuralism. As a notion stemming from logic, a universe of discourse can be understood to encompass culturally mixed structures and dynamics, rather than being defined by cultural and linguistic borders. The universe of discourse, within which reference is indexically anchored, is the “collection of individuals or of possibilities, which cannot be adequately described, but can only be indicated as something familiar to both speaker and auditor.” (CP 2.536) A universe of discourse is not an isolatable system of signs or an isolatable platform for sign use, but simply the “circumstances of […] enunciation” that render propositions meaningful and, because of which, each related sign makes sense in the form of a proposition, even though the sign itself might not be propositional, because it can relate indexically to these circumstances. In contrast, text is generally thought of as an artefact, or set of artefacts, within a strictly defined culture. An important difference between these two concepts, in what regards cross-cultural communication particularly, is that a text is supposedly understood only with a culture in its entirety, while signs belonging to a universe of discourse can be interpreted even without a full understanding of the universe of discourse. The universe of discourse cannot even be “adequately described”, but is inferred in sign use. Due to signs relating to the same one or several universes of discourse, they can be interpreted in view of various inter-relations and inter-dependencies. Thus, the difference between these two approaches consists in the semiotic mereology supposed by the notion of universe of discourse, more precisely, that signs and sets of signs can be adequately interpreted in view of their relative dependencies, and that an understanding of certain whole chunks of sign systems is not necessary for the interpretation of particular sign structures. To draw lines as to where the sign system begins and ends would in any case be arbitrary. It is impossible to tell, and, more importantly, useless to inquire, where a language or a culture begins or ends. For this reason, in the Peircean perspective, aspects of a culture can be interpreted, understood and used contextually, that is, pragmatically, without a holistic knowledge of the culture to which these aspects belong. Any cultural elements (or patterns) most likely belong to several cultures at the same time. This mereological analysis that pragmatic semiotics endorses is akin to regarding semiosis as resulting in models. Within universes of discourse, organisms develop semiotic models by which their behavior is determined. In this view, it is the semiosic parts, serving as models, of the integrated whole or, rather of integrated wholes, that phenomenally determine social organization, not the whole determining the hermeneutic possibilities of the parts, which would be understood as texts.

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The distinction between model semiotics and text semiotics is similar to the distinction that Kull observes between what he calls –sciences and –sciences (2009). Particularly in view of cultural analysis, Cobley notices that biosemiotics, namely the study of life and culture in the interrogation of (semiotic) modelling, belongs to –sciences, namely being “a science of knowing rather than a science of laws.” (2016: 39) Thus, biosemiotics is concerned with culture in the regard in which culture relates to knowing, in a qualitative understanding. In the same time, it does not seek out universal laws in modelling. Therefore, the questions at stake are how is culture modelled and, further on, what is the role of culture in modelling? There have been, however, some text-oriented semiotic schools that acknowledged both an intrinsic plurality of meaning and interpretation and a hierarchically organized modelling, that interpretation arguably supposes, thus arguably allowing for a semiotic mereology of cultures. Such are the cases of, most prominently, Kristeva (1980 [1977]) and Lotman (1990, 1994, 2009 [1964]). A remarkable realization of Kristeva consisted in the introduction of the concept of intertextuality (1980 [1977]): 64–91; see also Alfaro 1996: 268). What has made Kristeva’s concept very salient for text analysis is not only its relevance for explicit text-to-text interaction, such as the meeting of two cultures in the situation when a person beholds and interprets a cultural artefact produced in an unknown culture for her. The interesting point that Kristeva makes is that texts themselves are plural constructions and, as such, they cannot be thought of otherwise than pervasive and interconnected: […] text is defined as a trans-linguistic apparatus that redistributes the order of language by relating communicative speech, which aims to inform directly, to different kinds of anterior or synchronic utterances. The text is therefore a productivity, and this means: first, that its relationship to the language in which it is situated is redistributive (destructive-constructive), and hence can be better approached through logical categories rather than linguistic ones; and second, that it is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality: in the space of a given text, several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another. (Kristeva 1980 [1977]: 36)

At least in a synchronic perspective, if textuality implicitly is intertextuality, a multicultural society is in no semiotic way different from one which could somehow be regarded as mono-cultural or non-multicultural. In fact, there is no culture which is not multicultural, because no text can be pure and isolated from other texts. Also, Kristeva’s apology for a primarily logic, and not linguistic, approach to texts has to be saluted by non-psychologic semiotics, such as (neo)Peircean biosemiotics. Nevertheless, the text still appears to belong to a (natural) language, hence determined by it, and the conception of redistributivity suggests both (1) the relativist stance that texts are empirically (or phenomenally) unverifiable, as they can be constructed and destructed indefinitely and (2) the double articulation hypothesis of language, supportive of culturalism. The discussion on Kristeva’s notions of text and intertextuality, not to mention her semiotics in general, cannot be exhausted here (nor is this the aim of this monograph). It is fair to state, though, that while typical stances of glottocentric poststructuralism are present in her concept of text, the notion also comprehends the intrinsic plurality of meaning phenomena. Moreover, it does so more conscientiously even than some more recent accounts which inherited the same notion of

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intertextuality for the purpose of text analysis, particularly in ideological regards, but which treat intertextuality as a characteristic which text and textual elements might or might not have (e.g. Fairclough 2003). Lotman also acknowledged, as illustrated by the celebrated expression of “the text within the text” (1994), that semiotic entities are not atomistic. Lotman’s notion of text is particularly interesting, given that he was the first to explicitly address modelling from a semiotic perspective (see Lotman 1994). Thus, he bridged the two versions of semiotics which I identify here, namely the more philologically inclined text semiotics and the more phenomenally inclined model semiotics. Since his early development of biosemiotics, Sebeok himself adopted the definition of semiotic modelling from Lotman (see Sebeok 1991: 49–50, see also below, Chap. 5, Sect. 5.1). To begin with, similarly to Kristeva in this regard, the sense of plurality in Lotman is rooted in his consideration that texts are interpreted within and among texts: To function, a consciousness requires another consciousness – the text within the text, the culture within the culture. (Lotman 1994: 378)

He remarked that heterogeneity in sign systems is due to novelty. Similarly, again, Kristeva discussed the text as synchronic, not diachronic. Texts are plural themselves, but heterogeneity is enhanced in a text-to-text interaction where the interacting texts are radically different to each other. While this suggests an emphasis of difference of a Saussurean kind, it is also common sense to consider that striking dissimilarity draws attention: The introduction of an untranslatable, alien semiosis excites the “mother” text: attention shifts from the message to the language as such and discovers the manifest nonhomogeneous codification of the mother text. (Lotman 1994: 379)

This already suggests, however, a construal of culture as a holistic, organic and therefore isolatable sign system. It appears that texts themselves do the interpretation and that there is no clear distinction between biological organisms that undergo semiosis and textual constructions, biological or not. From here stems also a sense of cultural holism wherein texts, as components of a culture, are entirely defined by the self-governable culture that, also, is not controlled by the organisms which actually populate and make that culture a reality. In this view, culture can be considered a cognizant and self-determining text of which its constituting parts are fragments that can only be understood in relation to the bigger text: Removed from semiotic equilibrium, a text becomes capable of self-development. The powerful external textual eruptions in a culture conceived of as a huge text not only lead the culture to adapt outside messages and to introduce them into its memory but also stimulate the culture’s self-development, with unpredictable results. (Lotman 1994: 379)

On the one hand, development occurs on account of a semiotic imbalance, which is due to cultural dialogue. On the other hand, the texts’ self-development, capacity to adapt, memory, and un-predictability have a vitalist resonance which endorse cultural holism, inseparable, in turn, from cultural relativism. Cultural holism implies cultural

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relativism because it does not allow for a mereology of cross-cultural dialogue. This is because, in this view, component parts of a culture are meaningless outside the culture itself. As reflected in Lotman’s choice of words, texts can be “untranslatable” (a central thought, particularly in Lotman’s late writings, relative to his concept of semiotic boundary, see Andrews 2003: 16). All of this led Lotman’s argumentation to a reflection on diversity as a catalyst for knowledge. This thesis can be accepted both in cultural relativism, generally connected with text semiotics and in model semiotics. The critical difference lies in what is exactly understood as diversity in each case. Cultural relativism supports culturalist ideology by its claim that diversity must be cultivated by maintaining distinct cultures present on the same territory, or at least in vicinity. Also, as the culturalist line of argumentation goes (i.e. Kallen 1996 [1915]; Benedict 1934), this must be maintained at all cost, even as Eriksen and Stjernfelt criticize culturalism (2010, 2012), at the cost of democracy. Arguably, the cause for suspicion towards Lotman’s argument consists in his examples mirroring psychological and cognitive development with cultural development. Such argumentation is typical of cultural relativism (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 133), and suggests vitalism by comparing cultural dynamics with the development of an organism: Let us consider two examples of this process. The well-being of a child’s intellectual apparatus in its initial state of development does not guarantee that the child’s consciousness will function normally. The child must meet others and be exposed to outside texts that stimulate its intellectual development. A related example is the “accelerated development” of a culture (Gachev). A well-established, archaic culture is capable of remaining in a state of cyclic enclosure and balanced immobility for an extraordinarily long time. The irruption of external texts into the sphere of such a culture activates the mechanisms of self-development. The greater the rupture and the more difficult it is to decipher the intruding texts by recourse to the codes of the mother text, the more dynamic will be the ultimate condition of the culture. (Lotman 1994: 379)

Accordingly, Lotman considers culture in its entirety a text composed of texts, or fragments of texts. It is difficult to infer whether and to what extent does Lotman’s cultural semiotics permit cross-cultural mereology. He endorsed the concept of text with the initial metaphor that gave the word, namely the likeness between a piece of writing and a piece of weaving: Culture in its entirety may be considered a text – a complexly structured text, divided into a hierarchy of intricately interconnected texts within texts. To the extent that the word text is etymologically linked to weaving, the term’s original sense has been restored. (Lotman 1994: 384)

While a critical discussion, whether this metaphor allows for mereology or supposes rigid holism (see more in Chap. 6, Sect. 6.1) is beyond the purpose of the present monograph. In general, text semiotic approaches anchor interpretation in a claimed human-specific competence for interpretation. While realizing the importance of a concept of model for theories of culture and representation, and thus pioneering semiotic modelling theory, Lotman nevertheless committed cognition to language by assuming that the first and most basic level of modelling is linguistic (see Eco in Lotman 1990: x). The foundational hypothesis for biosemiotics as a modelling theory

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consists in Sebeok’s observation that the much more widespread non-verbal means of communication of almost all living species reflect a non-linguistic more basic, primary modelling system (Sebeok 1991: 55; also in Cobley 2001: 14–27). The manner in which Sebeok formulates this in some places (1991: 49–50, 2001: 136) reveals it as an additional, critical contribution to Lotman’s cultural semiotics, which thus appears as a major step in the development of biosemiotics as a modelling theory capable of cultural criticism. Discriminating to what extent would Lotman’s cultural semiotics imply culturalism is a difficult task also because, having lived in the restrictive atmosphere of the USSR, different writings were popularized in the West than those that remained most influential in the Russian and Estonian, (post-)Soviet academe (see Andrews 2003, p. xiv). However, some of the aspects of Lotman’s understanding of culture which, according to Andrews (2003) can be traced throughout his works, are typical of culturalism. Namely, these are that “culture and natural language are indivisible” (Andrews 2003: 3), that “culture generates structure in order to construct its social basis”, and that a culture supposes a non-cultural space, from which it is separated by semiotic boundaries. (2003: 3–4)1 Also, it cannot be ignored that Western anthropology, while claiming to bestow any identifiable culture with an inner dignity that absolves it from any critical comparison, itself inherited some difficulties in embracing the claimed dedication for human rights and universal tolerance. With reference to the previous example of FGM, it can be argued that the reason for which debates about it still endure in the West is that the West has its own history of misogynism. Cultural relativism can be used to support not only the violations of human rights in non-Western societies, but in Western societies as well. Culturalism can justify any anti-human act on account of tradition and cultural heritage.

2.3 The Anti-cosmopolitan Argument in Structural Semiotics The idea that meaning (or any material that can be used for formal generalization) stems from difference supports the cultural relativism that justifies isolationism and non-interventionalism. Generally, it endorses a localized, non-global social organization. Eriksen and Stjernfelt argue that, seen in this relativist way, culture is a political ideology which informs political discourses on multiculturalism of both political left-wingers and right-wingers (2010, 2012: 237–239). While left- and right-oriented political discourses have different attitudes towards multiculturalism, namely, the first encourage cultural diversity but argue for isolating small, regional scale economies and the latter defend the isolation of “national” or “regional” cultures, both stand 1 While in Eriksen and Stjernfelt’s critique, culturalism appears as an invention of American anthro-

pology, noticeable particularly in American pragmatism, herein a Soviet version of culturalism is also revealed. It is, of course, similar with the American one. Such a Soviet culturalism should be investigated on its own.

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upon the same fallacy of regarding cultures, and more generally, sign systems, as autonomous and independent. Both of these attitudes, standing on the premise of culturalism, endorse isolationism and they conflict with principles of democracy and human rights. Right-wing discourse uses the mask of culturalism to endorse its narrowed version of culturalism, namely nationalism, which, as known, eagerly cuts off many individuals and groups from full participation to civil society by discriminating on ethnic criteria. The left-wing discourse uses culturalism to endorse the above mentioned version of multiculturalism as a conglomeration of cultural clusters which each have their own organic life and can be used to justify any defiance of human rights among its adepts. A recent and clear example of this is the Brexit referendum (see The Electoral Commission 2016) in the United Kingdom (UK), which took place in 2016, and its aftermath. The referendum, which took place in 2016 inquired whether British citizens wanted that the UK remains in or leaves the European Union (EU). The referendum resulted in 51.9% of votes in favor of leaving the EU and 48.1% of votes in favor of remaining. It is worth noting that in 2012, four years before the referendum, Eriksen and Stjernfelt anticipated that the UK was heading in the direction of an intolerant and segregating multiculturalism (2012: 5). The British government decided to take the course of action desired by the very slight majority of leave voters, an action that is justified in a parliamentary democracy. The results of the referendum marked a strong division between two public discourses in the UK (see Dorling 2016), corresponding to the two voting possibilities. The public who did not desire that the UK exits the EU had to find its own opinion leaders who would defend its interests. While such leaders where found, they either belonged to the non-political sphere (such as, for example, Gina Miller) or to marginally influential political parties, such as the Liberal Democrats party or the Scottish National Party. The other two historical, and presently much more influential, leading parties in the UK expressed a Brexit-favourable discourse. Perhaps it does not come as a surprise that the right-oriented Conservative Party, which formed the government, found within itself the resources to support the Brexit process. Of course, this required some internal changes. While it was the Conservative Party that supported having the referendum, guided by their then leader and Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, this party expressed a pro-EU rhetoric before the referendum. Thus, the referendum resulted in some internal changes for the party, including replacing David Cameron as Prime Minister with another party leader, Theresa May. Starting with that point, the Conservative Party embraced an isolationist discourse to support its policy of leaving the EU. The interesting phenomenon is that the British population in favor of EU membership did not find support for its cause in the left-oriented Labour Party. The Labour Party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expressed to be as well in favor of Brexit, though arguably not as openly, for electoral reasons. Even during the referendum campaign, Corbyn did not clearly voice that the Labour Party supports remaining in the EU (Goodwin and Heath 2016), while the Conservative Party had done so. The Labour Party’s leadership discourse followed some typical left-wing themes, such as the injustice of transnational trade agreements, to which its traditional blue collar working class

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audience would be sensitive (see Goodwin and Heath 2016: 331), thus resulting in backing an isolationist stand as well. This attitude is rooted, as well, in culturalism. In this case, the Labour Party recurred to the idea of a socialist cultural tradition, which its core electorate would support by default. The Labour Party’s isolationism is justified on account of supposed traditionally leftist values. Thus, while it is understandable that one might not adhere to these values, for the pretense of multiculturalism the Labour Party can avoid criticism because of its inherently dignified socialist culture. Criticizing its political discourse can be publicly criticized back as undemocratic intolerance towards socialism. This avoids actual democratic, critical debates in the public sphere. Both discourses, that of the right-oriented Conservative Party and that of the left-oriented Labour Party are isolationist because both of these parties assume culturalism. Furthermore, both of these parties found the Brexit referendum as a good opportunity to move their discourses closer to extremes: closer to traditional socialism in the Labour Party’s case and closer to nationalism in the Conservative Party’s case. The process of isolating the UK from the rest of the EU and from a globalizing world fed the emphasis of cultural differences at all levels, even internally, within the UK. For instance, soon after Theresa May took office as Prime Minister with the mission of delivering Brexit, she stated that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means.” (May 2016) What this implies in this context is that only by embracing a clearly defined British identity can an inhabitant of the UK (or of any state) have her citizen rights respected. Theresa May’s statement is an ideological assumption, not a theoretical hypothesis as she would like to claim. It is entrenched in culturalist ideology. This is clearly seen, for instance, in the bicultural integration paradigm, inherent of cultural relativism, which, as Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh explain, because it “restricts the universe of cultures to two, attitudes which are multicultural, cosmopolitan, international, global can only appear as the construct mislabeled as “Marginalization”.” (2001: 44) Thus, holding on to the presumption of a clearly defined, unitary local culture implies the “marginalization” of differently cultured foreigners who enter into a bicultural relation with the locals. Implicitly, like the foreigner, the locally originating cosmopolitan, who prefers global pluralism instead of separatism, is also marginalized. The cosmopolitan-minded appears either as a misinformed “citizen of nowhere,” as in Theresa May’s speech or as a “traitor”, as pro-European Brits are often labelled in some of the British media (see Waugh 2017; Hammond 2017) and by pro-Brexit activists, in the aftermath of the referendum. These examples illustrate how the ideological assumptions of academic culturalism cause separatism in the public sphere. Culturalism justifies separatism by the fallacious argument that cultural identity and the preservation of cultural inheritance is a prerequisite for individual identity and citizenship. As the political discourse of the Brexit referendum aftermath sought a clearly defined identity of the British citizen, as a starting point of a multiculturalist justification of Brexit, not one but many such identities, finding themselves in contradiction, were proposed. This led to the radicalization of each such possible identity and an increased segregationism, though not necessarily on racial criteria, within British

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society. The tendency of radicalization, in any ideological direction, thus reveals the common culturalist assumptions of apparently opposing ideologies. The problem revealed is that, to begin with, the agendas of these political parties are ideologically driven. The ideologization of culture leads the political left to a culturalism-based multiculturalism and the political right to nationalism. None of these apparently opposite political positions has a pragmatic goal of meliorating society and human life. Instead, they define what is a good human society in an ideological, predefined view, thus being “uncritical defenders of territorial nationalism or cultural-religious particularism, respectively.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 4). It supposes that the reality of political states is an a priori category. In the culturalist perspective, the particularist behavior of a group is empirical proof for cultural diversity, justifying difference as the tool of cultural criticism and analysis. The idea of meaning as originating in difference eventually justifying isolationism should come as no surprise. Inspired from linguistics (de Saussure 1959 [1916]) and supported by the linguistic turn, it has been the main methodological tool of cultural analysis. In particular, Jacques Derrida took de Saussure’s idea further, advocating for a concept of différance, around which cultural analysis revolves, as “the movement” which “produces different things, that which differentiates” and which, thus, is “the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as, to take only a few examples, sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture, etc.” (Derrida 1981: 9) The very idea of differences in linguistics, as well as Derrida’s différance, are assumed in an explicitly dualist mindset. The concept of différance is the starting point for what Derrida termed deconstruction and, thus, of cultural analysis, on this account. This led Derrida to his famous statement expressing that poststructuralism clings on to an idea of sign systems as closed systems, namely that “there is no outside-text [il n’y a pas de hors-texte].” (1976 [1974]: 158) The construal of sign systems as isolated or isolatable underpins political isolationism and non-interventionism. If sign systems can exist in isolation, there is no reason for intervening in an other-culture even for the purpose of stopping human rights violations because, it is assumed in this perspective, by being from outside-text one cannot have an understanding of the text. This assumption justifies isolationism and implies a need of individuals and groups for an identity. It implies that one cannot understand the human rights of a culture with which she does not identify. To have access to the hermeneutics of a closed sign system it means to share identity with all the others who have that access. Such is the claim in mainstream multicultural theory that humans can prosper only by having such identities politically recognized (e.g. Taylor et al. 1994). This is exemplified above, in Theresa May’s rejection of global citizenship. In this view, a democratic pursuit for universal human rights, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is only justified after the recognition of ethnic, cultural, religious or other identities: Recognizing and treating members of some groups as equals now seems to require public institutions to acknowledge rather than ignore cultural particularities, at least for those people whose self-understanding depends on the vitality of their culture. This requirement of political recognition of cultural particularity—extended to all individuals—is compatible

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2 Cultural Relativism and Politics of Recognition with a form of universalism that counts the culture and cultural context valued by individuals as among their basic interests. (Gutmann in Taylor et al. 1994: 5)

Contrary to Gutmann’s statement, representative for culturalism-founded multiculturalism, recognizing cultural particularities in a formal, political manner implies accepting that a certain qualitative otherness of some groups and individuals qualifies these to adhere to a distinct legislation. It undermines the principle of the rule of law. Respecting human rights should have priority, more so than respecting a cultural particularity. The misconception of culturalism consists in considering that the utmost respect and care for cultural patterns, down to the most peculiar matter of detail, result in respecting human rights. To achieve this, it advocates from shifting from the universal application of the rule of law to universalizing, instead, cultural peculiarities as basic human needs. This is an unverified hypothesis, not an axiom. Cultures, especially when taking ideological forms, can very well spread hatred and advocate for anti-humane atrocities. That self-understanding depends on a vitality of culture, a vitalist idea, implies that one cannot learn her way through to assimilating the hermeneutics of a new culture. Acculturation, or simply conviviality, in this perspective, is either not possible or occurs in a mysterious, indescribable way, as it implies becoming a different being altogether. Obviously, this notion of multiculturalism has culturalist underpinnings. The idea of cultural vitality, as Eriksen and Stjernfelt point out (2010, 2012, see above), is typical of the German romanticist idea of nation, which anthropology inherited, though translated into a concept of society regardless of ethnic criteria. To assume that a culture has a life of its own, in a biological sense, is highly problematic and dangerous. In this view, a society is defined by its culture, as that is where its particularism stands, which differentiates it from neighboring societies. The vitalist view is that, as Gutmann states, there is no self-understanding outside the politically recognized boundaries of culture. This is an implication of understanding culture through the prism of the conventionalist idea of text, as seen in Derrida. Even though not an adept of vitalism himself, Derrida’s idea of cultural analysis as deconstruction aligns relativism with vitalism. The Saussurean notion of linguistic sign and of language as a closed sign system when applied more broadly in cultural analysis, as translated into Derrida’s concepts of text and différance, can support cultural vitalism. Relativism and vitalism are thus aligned in what initially was a good intention. The reason for cultural relativism’s aware or unaware uptake of vitalism is that it needs to justify the dignity of any culture while accepting that it cannot understand a culture from outside: The upshot of such a culturalism, however, would seem to be immediate incompatibility, enmity, hostility and war between cultures. This is why it is strange but understandable that anthropological culturalism hastens to add the conclusion that all cultures possess equal dignity and thus merit the same degree of tolerance and respect. The noble intention in this idea is clear: to break with earlier theories of evolutionary scale of different human races. Fair as it may seem, however, this culturalist doctrine entails some dark sides overlooked. One corollary is that even the most cruel and antidemocratic practices must be accepted, once they acquire the noble status of being “cultural” rather than political. Thus, many of the tensions in actual multiculturalism originate in anthropological culturalism. (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 7)

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Another problematic aspect of culturalism is that it often leads to assuming that cultural exchange can occur without economic exchange, separating these two spheres of human life. As mentioned, what makes culturalism problematic is its ideological stance that different areas of activity, such as economy, are culturally determined, the causality being one-directionally top-down. This was clearly expressed by Benedict claiming that, in culture “The whole determines its parts, not only their relation, but their very nature.” (1934: 52, 1959: 57) In the case of the Brexit referendum, this was seen in the Labour Party’s reaction to the results as well as in some electoral behaviors: it was a sense of pessimism stemming from unfavorable economic transformation which “delivered” the vote for Brexit (Goodwin and Heath 2016: 331; see also Dorling 2016). This fear was translated electorally in a desire for isolation, that is to say, in endorsing culturalism as the key to a better economic situation. This construal of culture mirrors Ferdinand de Saussure’s concept of a sign system and the (post)structuralist concept of text. It implies that there is no proper individual freedom, the individual being thoroughly determined by the culture that she inhabits. As Eriksen and Stjernfelt remark, according to Benedict’s culturalism, the constituting parts of a culture or society have no self-determination or power to organize: There is no discussion here about wholes of different strength, type or degree of organization, but a quick and resolute claim for a holism which is so radical that the whole has the power not only to organise the mutual relations of its parts, but even their very being. (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 110)

This view, I shall explain, is contrasted to Peirce’s schematic semiotics, as most clearly explained in detail by Stjernfelt (2007) and Pietarinen (2006). Even though a leading researcher both in multiculturalism, where he remarks the holistic determinism of culturalism, and in Peircean semiotics, where he stands out for thoroughly explaining Peirce’s schematism (2007) and doctrine of propositions (2014), Stjernfelt has not yet employed Peirce’s semiotics to develop an alternative to the anthropological relativist view on culture. This endeavor is further pursued in this monograph (see Chap. 5). On account of culturalism’s isolationist stance, neighboring cultures can accept each other’s inner violations of human rights for the sake of multiculturalism. A recent example of this attitude of culturalism is noticed in the Catalan declaration of independence, which came as a result of the referendum on October 1st, 2017. This referendum, asking Catalonian citizens if they wanted Catalonia to become an independent republic, was declared illegal by the Spanish government. The following declaration of independence by the Catalonian Government was deemed unconstitutional and led to the dissolving of the Catalonian Government. It appears that if anyone outside Catalonia accuses the Catalonian Parliament of having declared independence unconstitutionally and, as such, contrary to the rule of law of a parliamentary democracy, it can be, in turn, accused of interfering. One of many such examples, as coming in a right-wing populist discourse, is British politician and Brexit supporter Nigel Farage’s idea propagated by the newspaper The Express that the “EU always interferes” (see Campbell 2017). As such, this form of multicultur-

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alism is a silent social contract, which allows non-interventionism and, potentially, the justification of human rights violations on ground of an assumed autonomous dignity of any culture. It is a “hard” form of multiculturalism, as Eriksen and Stjernfelt label it (2012: 2) which straightforwardly justifies violations of human rights on account of “the idea that single cultures have the right to self-government, including law” (2012: 103). In the case of Catalonia’s attempt of secession from Spain, which is actually a division, deepening a conflict and moving away from resolution and conviviality, confirms multiculturalism: the nation-culture clusters of the globe are multiplied. In particular, the sentiment for secession from Spain in Catalonia is not only culturalist, but also nationalist (see Micó and Carbonell 2017: 430). Thus, in this case, what is deemed a multiculturalist decision is used as a manifestation of nationalism. Both of these, multiculturalism-endorsing isolationism and nationalism, stem from culturalism. Both the political left and right can take advantage of the relativist epistemology that culturalism supposes, namely that there is no universal non- or pre-cultural axiology of values by which an act can be deemed moral or not, right or wrong, to impose a political ideology. In this view, any human action is meant to be morally judged within a culture’s own relative axiology. This is one of the main reasons revealing the need of developing the present semiotic approach to multiculturalism, free of holistic determinism and cultural relativism.

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Chapter 3

Semiotics and Multiculturalism

Abstract This chapter continues the arguments of Chap. 2, in greater detail. The consequences of an ideological, language-centered and relativist theory of culture are illustrated through examples. The chapter discusses policy-making based on culturalism, particularly for education and research. The cases discussed reveal the atomism (or monadism) of culturalism-based multiculturalism, which tends to hide the ideological dimension of isolationist arguments under the pretense of an academic cultural theory.

3.1 Cultural Relativism and the Roots of Culturalism in the Linguistic Turn From an epistemological perspective, during the 20th century, semiotics developed in two branches: (1) the glottocentric branch, regarding human culture and thought as intrinsically linguistic, and (2) the realist branch, regarding signification as continuous throughout nature and culture (see also Cobley 2010: 230, 2016: 2). The glottocentric branch, while having its roots in Ferdinand de Saussure’s sémiologie, found a strong confirmation in the linguistic turn, in the middle of the century. It has been rather characteristic for this branch of semiotics to approach culture and, therefore, occasionally, multiculturalism. This is the general framework for cultural analysis that Cobley criticizes as entirely focused on discourse and therefore, conventionalist: Because of the centrality of textuality to semiotics after Lotman and Barthes, a current of thought which gained considerable traction in the humanities and the social sciences in the latter part of the twentieth century became erroneously associated with semiotics. This was the ‘linguistic turn’, inaugurated by Richard Rorty’s 1967 influential collection, which coalesced various perspectives including those that later became prominent in Anglophone cultural studies. The idea that knowledge is ‘constructed in discourse’ with humans’ apprehension of the world amounting to a mere figment induced by figures in language, arose out of the ‘linguistic turn’ and (post)structuralism. As will be seen, the nominalism of the ‘linguistic turn’ is at odds with the Peircean realist perspective in biosemiotics. It also posits a definition of language based on ‘figures of speech’ and ‘chatter’ […] rather than the more sophisticated cognitive perspective in biosemiotics offered by language as modelling. (2016: 18) © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Olteanu, Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17883-3_3

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This is also the line of thought which led to the development of the sub-field of legal semiotics (see Wagner and Broekman in Wagner and Broekman 2010: v), which has a particular bearing on the construal of multiculturalism. Even if often not explicit of its semiotic inspiration, the broad framework of cultural studies inherited the main conceptual tools and assumptions of this semiotic branch (see Cobley in Cobley 2001:4). The approach developed in the present monograph is grounded in the realist branch of semiotics, in agreement with recent theories such as MerleauPonty’s phenomenology of the body (Merleau-Ponty 1995) and cognitive semantics (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1980). The cornerstone of such a semiotic framework for culture and multiculturalism, as Cobley (2010, 2016) also explains, starts from the premise that meaning phenomena (semioses) are continuous throughout the biological realm. This allows the acceptance, in a realist fashion, that communication and understanding are possible inter-culturally, and even between different biological species. It implies an environmental notion of communication and learning which avoids an ideological concept of culture, and the extreme relativism that the denial of ideology was supposed to imply, by philosophers such as Lyotard (1984 [1979]), arguing in inspiration of, for instance, Nietzsche (e.g. 1967 [1901]) and Heidegger (e.g. 2000 [1953]). Stables convincingly explains that such a comprehensive semiotic approach to education advocates that policy-making can be decided upon in a pragmatic and non-ideological reasoning, thus resulting in an objective melioration of life quality. From this perspective, he endorses a pragmatic liberalism, albeit not in an ideological understanding of liberalism but, rather, in the acceptance of a vast yet not unlimited individual subjectivity: Taking the elements together, therefore, the argument is developed that all life proceeds as response to signs and signals (though the specific signs to which humans respond are, generally, unique to humans). Such an account might be construed as post-humanist liberal pragmatism. It is post-humanist in that it extends respect for the phenomenal worlds of all people to at least a minimal respect for the phenomenal worlds of all sentient beings, as well as an appreciation of the dependence of the human on the non-human (and vice versa); animals, for example, are not the ‘mere animals’ of John McDowell’s Mind and World any more than the brutish automata conceived by Descartes. It is liberal not in the classical sense of believing that persons have autonomous rational souls but in the more guarded belief that no individual can have a God’s-eye view that justifies stipulating what is best for others, and thus that the fiction, or feeling, of freedom is an important fiction or feeling for social policy to recognize and maintain. It is pragmatic in that it fails to acknowledge a gap between what is and what is meant and thus recognizes the touchstone of all judgments to be their impacts on the phenomenal worlds of individuals; as things are their effects (after Peirce), it is the ‘then dimension’ in each sentient being’s perception that allows that being to survive and, through survival in ever-changing contexts, to adapt. (Stables 2012: xi–xii)

The glottocentric branch of semiotics is intimately connected with the cultural relativism that is implied by culturalism. According to Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2010, 2012), culturalism is linked to linguistic turn, and its roots can be traced to the main theses of 1940s American anthropological studies, as shared in academia and among the “educated” generally (see Mead in Benedict 1959: vii), by the disciples of Franz

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Boas, such as Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir and the disciple of the latter, Benjamin Lee Whorf (see Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2010: 369, 2012: 105–106). Boas (1938 [1911]), like all of his followers in anthropology, certainly had a good intention that led him to draw on romanticist ideas such as considering “the enormous variation of human mentality in time and space” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 104). This implies cautiousness in interpreting others’ mentalities for the purpose of “avoiding assimilating the alien position to one’s own” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 104), or what is now termed cultural appropriation. At the time, academic initiatives such as Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture (1934) had the purpose of dismissing the pretense of a scientific endorsement of racism and Western imperialism. Nevertheless, this school of anthropology did not entirely shake off the romantic notion of culture as an autonomous organism. Thus, it further disseminated the cultural relativism that underpins a view of multiculturalism as isolationism. As contemporary cultural relativism is rooted in the linguistic turn, it regards culture as a holistic and organic system, having the structure of a language. In this vein, language is also understood in the particular fashion of (post)structuralism and glottocentric philosophy, originating in de Saussure’s conception of a language as a homogenous system of signs (de Saussure 1959 [1916]: 15; see also above). Being homogenous, a system cannot accept, in partiality, elements from other systems. Neologisms or loanwords, or in general any words stemming from a linguistic etymology which is supposed to correspond to a distinct culture, would be at least meaningless or grammatically erroneous, if not properly damaging for a language and culture, in this strict concept of language. Naturally, cultural relativism grounded its construal of culture in the semiological notion of system. For instance, according to Eriksen and Stjernfelt, at least in Benedict (1934), it is explicitly claimed that “[c]ultures are holistic, organic entities, in which the meaning of each single feature can only be understood from the whole.” (2012: 135) Vitalism, albeit not in an insistent manner, is present in de Saussure’s very formulation of semiology, namely the “science that studies the life of signs within society” (1959 [1916]: 16). Semiology presupposes that the (1) vitality of linguistic signs (2) is transferred from language to society. As such, cultures can only but stand in clear contrast to each other. It is impossible to infer any structural similarity between cultures because, implicitly, there is no cross-cultural method of comparing elements from two distinct cultures. One can only be either entirely enculturated within a certain culture or not. According to cultural relativism, one cannot live in accordance with various cultural elements coming from various, different cultures. This is the assumption of culturalism-based multi- and inter-cultural studies. For instance, Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov (see also above, Chap. 1, Sect. 1.5) claim that the purpose of their work “is to help in dealing with differences in thinking, feeling, and acting of people around the globe. It will show that although the variety in people’s mind is enormous, there is a structure in this variety that can serve as a basis for mutual understanding.” (2010: 4) A drawback on Cartesianism can also be noticed in this assumption. The argument is that since the variety of human cultural production and creativity is so vast that it generates mutually incommensurable behaviors, worldviews and lifestyles, the possibility to communicate must be explained on account of an a priori structure. If

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we are to regard cultures as internally pluralistic and impossible to distinguish with clear precision, the possibility of communication, interculturally but also in general, is rather explained as an intrinsic character of culture(s). Furthermore, in Benedict’s view, as perpetrated by Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov’s classic (2010), one culture can seldom learn from another, as it cannot observe different cultural structures and dynamics other than in relation to itself as a whole. That is why, in this view, intercultural cooperation depends on unlearning one’s own (cultural) patterns rather than learning more about another (Hofstede et al. 2010: 4–5). It appears then that glottocentric cultural relativism regards diagrammatic reasoning across cultures as impossible. There can be no iconic relation between cultures. In addition, paralleling language and culture as holistic systems that reflect each other makes it impossible to distinguish between one another, as the semantic and grammatical categories of a language coincide with and, over time, shape the categories of a culture and, implicitly, the cognitive possibilities of its speakers: If “language” in the generalization often promoted by “the linguistic turn” thus may mean “cultural systems of value and thought in general”, then the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis becomes easy to reconcile with […] the idea that culture, as a whole, is learned like a language. […] [T]he idea that a language comes with a world view […] is highly problematic, if only for the simple reason that it is well known that several and even antagonistic world views may be articulated and struggle within one and the same language (and, a fortiori, culture). This idea leads to the widespread assumption that cultures as such imply a world view or an ideology which is shared by all its members.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 134)

This is the starting point of culturalism: all of the members of a society share the same ideology. This then justifies the idea that a political state should coincide with a culture, as all its members would share the same idea of what is good governance and would voluntarily collaborate. In this view, the foreigner or any alter-cultured, appears detrimental to the solid functioning of the state. Not only does the organic conception of culture endorse xenophobia, but it also ignores the inner pluralism, that is the heterogeneity and entropy, the possible contradictions and evolutionary forces within a culture. Regarding cultures as organic ultimately implies cultural “purification”: Politically, it immediately entails the danger that anthropology allies itself with the most traditionalist, most reactionary, even authoritarian forces which have an interest in keeping tradition “pure” and unchallenged, in enforcing the doctrines of culture and persuade or force ill-adjusted, deviant, or rebel members of the culture to submit. (Erisken and Stjernfelt 2012: 135)

Since this conclusion rests on the culture-language parallelism to begin with, the purification of culture is best assured by linguistic purification. Language “purification” is an accepted standard practice in some supposedly democratic states, such as, among others, the French Republic and the Republic of Lithuania. These two cases reveal exemplar clauses of culturalism endorsed by language-culture parallelism. France is known for having its controversial Académie Française working in this regard since 1635. According to its Statuts et règlements, the rationale of the

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Académie Française is to purify the French language according to certain norms of the academic French language: La principale fonction de l’Académie sera de travailler, avec tout le soin et toute la diligence possibles, à donner des règles certaines à notre langue et à la rendre pure, éloquente et capable de traiter les arts et les sciences.1 (Académie Française 1995 [1635, 1752, 1816], Status et règlements, article 24)

It is unclear what are the “certain rules” of the French language and why is its purity interdependent with its possibility for eloquence and capability of addressing art and science. This foundational text of the Académie was written in 1635 and remains this institution’s raison d’être, defying any progress that sciences might have revealed in the meantime. The sciences and the arts that the document discusses thus appear to be rather subjectively depending on the French language, and to its “certain rules”, than the latter showing any flexibility or disposition to keep up with the dynamics of human societies, arts or sciences. This is manifestly the main clause of culturalism.

3.2 An Example of Glottocentric Culturalism: The Case of Lithuania The same attitude is implemented, though usually in a lighter version than in France, in many supposed democracies. A hard version of such culturalism is officially and formally practiced, for instance, by the Republic of Lithuania. This can be seen in the activity of at least two of its government-supported institutions: firstly, the Lithuanian Language Institute (lt., Lietuvi˛u Kalbos Institutas, henceforth LKI) and, secondly, the Research Council of Lithuania (lt., Lietuvos Mokslo Taryba, henceforth LMT). According to LKI (Lietuvi˛u Kalbos Institutas 2018), “numerous linguists regard Lithuanian language as the purest surviving Indo-european language which is least changed by outside influences.” Leaving the tautology (that the purest is the least changed) of this statement aside, this is the central claim for Lithuanian culturalism as an ideology practiced by the Republic of Lithuania. While the Lithuanian language might well be the most conservative Indo-European language still in use, LKI does not offer any references as to whom might the “numerous linguists” be. This Institute admittedly admires the “19th century National Revival” which “restored the prestige of speaking the Baltic languages” (2018). It thus endorses language “purification”: Under the influence of Jonas Jablonskis the language was purified by replacing Slavic loanwords with neologisms and establishing the modern orthography. (2018)

The endeavor of impoverishing Lithuanian vocabulary for the sake of etymological purity is saluted by LKI, which currently carries on this process of purification. LKI practices a handbook example of culturalism. For instance, it uncritically takes 1 “The primary function of the Academy would be to work carefully and diligently on establishing specific rules to our language rendering it pure, eloquent and capable of expressing arts and sciences.”

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for granted the situation of having Lithuanian as “the sole official language in Lithuania while there are official areas where ethnic minorities may use their own languages (for instance as the medium of instruction in schools), the position of Lithuanian as a language for interethnic communication strengthened over the time since 1990.” (2018) Through this statement, LKI admits that it subscribes to a number of typically culturalist clauses: (1) A political state should correspond to a (majoritarian) ethnicity; (2) The ethnicity which defines the political state has one corresponding language (in this case, Lithuanian); (3) Other languages can only be tolerated by having them isolated and formally accepted in designated “official areas” only. This is the typical picture of the culturalist construal of multiculturalism: cultural plurality means the territorial co-existence of unmixed various cultural clusters, each objectively identifiable and distinguishable from the others; (4) The national language is imposed upon ethnic minority groups, as it is the language favored in interethnic communication. That minority groups should learn Lithuanian is not problematic. Rather, it is quite a pragmatic necessity. A problem, however, lies in the conception of Lithuanian as a “pure” language, to which it is forbidden to mingle with other languages. This can well contribute to marginalizing minority groups, as their supposedly corresponding languages, in this view, could not contribute to the national language and its accompanying policies. The concept of the state as a political expression of language-culture implies that, as LKI clearly expresses, there is a “wrong side of the state boundary” (2018)2 where one can find herself. LKI expresses its disappointment for the fact that emigrating Lithuanians tend to choose a cosmopolitan life that inevitably leads to their descendants losing the capability of speaking Lithuanian. Nevertheless, “[s]ome historical Lithuanian communities “on the wrong side of the state boundary” have been more successful at preserving the language, namely the Punks/Punskas community in Poland where Lithuanian language schools exist and Lithuanians make the majority of the population.” (2018) An unfortunate situation according to LKI, some Lithuanians, who find themselves in the neighboring Republic of Poland, are on the wrong side of the border, unlike the fortunate ones, who, implicitly, are on the correct side of the border, namely within the territory where Lithuanian culture and language are given political expression. This implies that all the ethnic minority groups or foreign individuals within Lithuania are, as well, “on the wrong side of the border”. This is a perfect example of undemocratic culturalism: it is not necessarily that the principles of nationalism were, in this case, transferred “from state to society” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2010: 360; see also above), but a clearly bounded and rigid notion of Lithuanian culture is given a political expression and territorial form. The implicit argument is that if a native speaker of Lithuanian wants to have her citizen rights respected, she should live in Lithuania, because there is no other political state that 2 See

http://mokymai.lki.lt/local/staticpage/view.php?page=lietuva.

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is properly comprehensive of Lithuanianness, of its specific cultural traits, and of the needs that this involves for Lithuanians. As LKI describes this with perfect accuracy, a Lithuanian outside Lithuania is on the “wrong side of the state boundary”. Consequently, the LKI sets the direction for language and culture research carried out in Lithuania along its culturalist presuppositions. The Institute is in charge of the publication of several academic journals, such as Acta Linguistica Lithuanica, Archivium Lithuanicum, Kalbos Kult¯ura (Eng., Language Culture) and Terminologija (Eng., Terminology). For instance, the journal that states language-culture parallelism in its denomination, Kalbos Kult¯ura, deals with matters of “the theory and practice of the culture of language” (2018).3 The hardest version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, namely that there is a “culture of language”, is here accepted without reservation and in ignorance of existing research on the matter. Recent empirical research (i.e. Levinson 2003; Bennardo 2009) actually justifies a “weak” version of the hypothesis, revealing a rather complex relation between environmental constraints, linguistic variability, cultural diversity and cognition. Nevertheless inherent in modelling, it appears that linguistic categories influence only to a limited degree one’s understanding of the world and, as such, one’s semiotic competences. This attitude, popular among some Lithuanian linguists and in policy-making Lithuanian institutions, concerning language and culture is reflected in Lithuania’s research policies, as carried out by LMT, which are further on reflected in the way Lithuanian universities formulate their policies and missions. For instance, in 2017, a research project application submitted to a LMT call by the author of the present monograph together with other colleagues from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) was not awarded for no other explicit justification from the part of the LMT than that non-Lithuanian researchers cannot understand Lithuanian culture. This project had the purpose of contributing to semiotic approaches to culture, in consideration of social positioning theory (Harré 2015), by conducting a case study of cultural dynamics in Lithuania, in the context of the process of Sovietization, as taking place starting with the Soviet occupation and until the immediate aftermath of Lithuania’s second independence (or re-establishment) in 1990. As such, the international team of KTU-based researchers who participated in this application claimed no inside knowledge of Lithuanian culture but only that they would apply existing scientific methods for scientific outcomes. LMT chose not to fund this project. While there has undoubtedly been a strong competition for such funding, the review panel did not invoke the existence of more solid, competing research projects and did not indicate any methodological, epistemological or other such flaw in this application. LMT explicitly declared that the project in question was not to be funded because the various senior international researchers involved cannot understand Lithuanian culture since they are not Lithuanian. More precisely, LMT considered that the only project members who had some competence to conduct such research were the only Lithuanian nationals belonging to the group of researchers. As it happens, one of these researchers considered competent by LMT, while considerably capable of car-

3 See

http://lki.lt/kalbos-kultura/.

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rying out the research required, was the least experienced researcher in the team. For instance, the review from LMT mentions: The project leaders […] have a significant expertise in the area of semiotic research. [One of the Lithuanian researchers] also has a significant expertise in the area of music research. [The others] are young researchers who only started working in the area of semiotics and [the other Lithuanian researcher] is a Ph.D. student who works in music research. Sovietism and Lithuanianness, Soviet and Lithuanian identity are not merely given, but a matter demanding for a clear conceptualization. Unfortunately, even the most experienced researchers [of this application] do not have experience in carrying out research on Soviet/Lithuanian identity. Only [the two Lithuanian researchers] carried out research on Lithuanian identity, related to music.

The review makes a fine slalom, avoiding to explicitly state nationalist, even border-racist assumptions, such as that non-Lithuanians cannot conduct research on Lithuanian (cultural) identity, but cannot avoid obvious culturalist assumptions. Some discriminatory statements are explicit, nevertheless: two of the researchers involved are deemed not competent enough, not in consideration of their research record, but because of their age, being too “young” (Lit. jaunieji). The implicit culturalist assumptions stem most obviously from the review’s contradictions. After having admitted, nevertheless, that the project leaders have a significant expertise in semiotic research and that the only two Lithuanians of the group prove competence in conducting research on Lithuanian and Soviet identity, the reviewers categorically stated that: The composition of the project group is not optimal because all the members lack experience in researching Lithuanian identity.

With this argument, LMT proves to be aligned to the culturalist ideology and policy of LKI: they consider that (1) non-Lithuanians cannot understand (elements of) Lithuanian culture and that (2) a scientific investigation of Lithuanian culture can only be carried out by Lithuanian scholars. This implies that there is a specific Lithuanian science, which is subject to Lithuanian culture. The subordination of science to culture is one of the specific fallacies of culturalism. As such, given this ideology practiced by governmental Lithuanian bodies, universities correspondingly adapt and adopt culturalism. For instance, the Department of Lithuanian Studies of Vilnius University addresses its prospective students in a thorough culturalist rhetoric (Lituanistini˛u Studij˛u Katedra 2018). In this department’s address to non-Lithuanians interested in studying the Lithuanian language, the Lithuanian language is described as special and interesting in an objective way. For instance, Lithuanian is declared “[m]elodic and pleasant to the ear” in absolute, objectively, regardless of the students’ native languages and backgrounds (see http:// www.lsk.flf.vu.lt/en/department/courses-for-foreigners/lithuanian-language). Due to its glottocentric and culturalist perspective, the address is thoroughly uncritical about a number of issues. It is commonly accepted in scholarship on the matter that Baltic languages, among which Lithuanian, share a substantial amount of common etymologic linguistic features with Slavonic languages (e.g. Kroeber 1960). This common linguistic ancestor, which probably is not one language strictly but a set

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of multilinguistic elements, is referred to as Slavo-Baltic or Balto-Slavic (see Balode and Holvoet in Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001a: 20, 43; Ambrazas in Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001b: 406; Koptjevskaja-Tamm in Dahl and KoptjevskajaTamm 2001b: 540). The Department of Lithuanian Studies of Vilnius University makes it sound as if there is no such commonality between the Baltic and Slavonic languages. The following paragraph from a text written by Inga Hilbig on behalf of the Department of Lithuanian Studies is very telling (see http://www.lsk.flf.vu.lt/en/ department/courses-for-foreigners/lithuanian-language): We often have to explain to foreigners that “No, Lithuanian is not a Slavic language, it’s a Baltic language. Most of the inhabitants of Lithuania know or at least understand Russian due to historical and political circumstances, while in the Vilnius region Polish is another language widely spoken or understood, however neither Russians, Poles or any other person who has not specifically studies Lithuanian will understand it. The only surviving living language close to Lithuanian is Latvian, which is also a Baltic language, however we cannot be understood even by who we often refer to lightheartedly as our Baltic “brothers”. Estonians, who are often mistakenly referred to as Baltic, speak a Finno-Ugric language, and not an Indo-European language, so it is not worth looking for similarities between Estonian and Lithuanian. Lithuanian is special because of that fact that it survived at all. It could have very well disappeared in the margins of history for all times from the language map of Europe, just like Lithuania itself from the geographic and political face of the earth. Often it was forced to make a decision to “be or not to be”. (Hilbig in Lituanistini˛u Studiju Katedra 2018)

By such statements, this academic department implies various non-scientific, ideological positions and manifests the undemocratic assumptions of culturalism. First of all, by the categorical rhetoric by which it delimits Lithuanian from Slavonic, labelling it as Baltic, it implies that there is hardly any linguistic connection between Baltic and Slavic languages. This is not true. Latvian is mentioned as another Baltic language, which leads us to a use of bloodline metaphor: Latvians are called “brothers” of Lithuanians, in contrast with everyone else. As such, nobody who is not a Latvian can aspire to a metaphorical “brotherhood” with Lithuanians. All the more, even Latvians can only be regarded as brothers in a “lighthearted” acceptance. The statement is also inconsiderate of gender neutrality, as Lithuanians and Latvians are mentioned to be brothers only, but not sisters. The implicit male-centeredness is one more indicator of uncritical culturalism. The text cuts of Finno-Ugric languages, such as Finnish and Estonian from the “Baltic” sphere, which is inaccurate. While in a strictly etymological sense, Lithuanian and Latvian are what has been labelled as Baltic languages, while Finno-Ugric languages are not; etymologically these languages being distinct to Indo-European generally, scholarship in areal linguistics acknowledges a set of Baltic Finnic languages, in the context of a wider group of Circum-Baltic languages (see Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001a, b). This is to say that, as languages around the Baltic Sea have been historically mixing irrespective of etymological origin, they share various elements in various ways. Thus, linguistic scholarship accounts for the use of the term Baltic as a geographic region of particular linguistic, topological mingling. At least in these statements to its international students, Vilnius University’s Department of Lithuanian Languages does not admit such a use of the term Baltic. Of course, this is not explicitly stated but rather implied by singling out differences, which are thus claimed to be clear, a typical strategy of

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glottocentrism (see above), and by not mentioning similarities. Not mentioning similarities is a good defensive rhetorical device: the department can only be accused of what it explicitly states about the Lithuanian language not about what it does not state about other languages. However, in the view of this criticism of culturalism, its implications become clear. The text mentions that the brotherhood of Lithuanians and Latvians is not that strong a bond after all, because these two populations do not really understand each other, once more stressing linguistic differences. The text allows for a vague space of (mis)interpretation as it does not claim that the Lithuanian language and the Latvian language, while related, are mutually incomprehensible, but that Lithuanians, the people themselves, are not understood by their Latvian “brothers”. Thus, the term of endearment “brother” is eventually tweaked to stress the difference and suggest a lack of understanding, perhaps a light enmity, between the people themselves. Further on, Estonians are mentioned. The Estonian people constitute the grammatical and logical subject, not the Estonian language. The text defines Estonians as the people who “speak Estonian”, thus proving utter, uncritical indiscrimination between language, citizenship and ethnicity. As the Estonian language is of an entirely different origin, the text claims, “it is not worth looking for similarities between Estonian and Lithuanian”. In what regards scientific accuracy, this is another statement which does not correspond to the common opinions in current scholarship, where many linguistic exchanges between these languages in the Baltic region are rather acknowledged and deemed valuable for analysis in search of similarities (see Larsson in Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001a: 238–253; Holvoet in Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001b: 363–390; Christen in Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2001b: 499–520). In what regards cultural separatism, Estonians are simply dismissed as not worth looking at. A typical implication of glottocentrism, supposed lack of similarity implies that any attempt of collaboration is artificial. All of this leads to the conclusion sought by the Department of Lithuanian Language in this paragraph, namely that “Lithuanian is special”. The reason invoked for the outstandingness of Lithuanian is its survival. This could be claimed, however, about any language, particularly any of the littlespread but still spoken languages of the Baltic area. Moreover, the language used here, namely the term of survival, reveals vitalist assumptions about language, typical of culturalism (see above). This leads to a supposed justification for separatism by the author’s statement that Lithuanian “was forced to make a decision to be or not to be.” This implies that there is no middle way: Lithuanian either is or is not, and this situation is forced upon Lithuania and Lithuanians by the external context. Thus, Lithuania is justified to choose separatism because otherwise, if it chooses language and implicitly cultural mixing, it will cease to be. The text continues with other fallacious claims about language and culture but the main points are explained. The want of English grammar of the text is also an indication of culturalism and ethnocentrism. The endorsement of linguistic separatism is, of course, ideological and obstructs the properly scientific investigation of languages. It has been long noticed that, particularly in the Baltic context, nationalist pride from all sides has been blurring language research:

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Subjectivity is, as we have noted above, very much in evidence in the investigation of Balto-Slavonic linguistic unity. We have already become aware of the natural or ‘objective’ difficulties of the issue; but these are complicated by emotional interpretations in the form of personal egoisms and even of national passions. It seems obvious that it is chiefly the Balticspeaking scholars like Endzelins, Buga, Skardzius, and others who are against the theory, as it is perhaps offensive to their national susceptibilities and to their desire for recognition of separateness. On the other hand Slavonic scholars, no matter what their nationality, but more particularly the Poles (e.g. Porzezinski, Rozwadowski, and Otr˛ebski), are strongly in favour of the theory. Here no doubt historical and political reasons as well as a priori personal considerations are involved. ‘Objective’ Western scholars like Meillet and Pisani, on the other hand, are understandably guided by the light of their own knowledge and take sides accordingly. (Matthews 1957: 425)

Thus, the position adopted by the Department of Lithuanian Language is one of many such examples of a culturalist war raging among ideologically-biased linguists. While in the Baltic area such ideological quarrels with academic pretenses stand out, the situation is, unfortunately, not unique. The same can be observed in many instances within the European Union, in its struggle for political unity. Unfortunately, the problem is propagated from the superior levels of leadership, repeating the naïve benevolence of multiculturalism, as endorsed by classic Boasian anthropology. For instance, as often the case, in a recent speech, the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani stressed the importance of “European values” (Tajani 2017). He stated that the future of the European Union relies on “three pillars”, namely not building borders between Europeans, defending “European values” and placing “citizens at the heart of all political action.” (2017) He explained that the EU “means more than just banking and the euro,” but “[a]bove all it means the defense of our values: freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and safeguarding human rights among others.” (2017) While this list of values is easily accepted in view of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), it conflicts with the principles of the Declaration by endorsing a specifically European cultural identity as crystalized around these democratic principles. The problem consists, first of all, in crystalizing (European) public opinion around a notion of cultural identity. This leads to (1) claiming a European monopoly on what in fact are universal human rights and (2) calling these, not only European, but in a classic Aristotelian fashion, values instead of rights. The multiculturalism that this supposes inevitably implies politics of identity, which regards values as cultural traits. Also, it indirectly suggests that non-Europeans are not a European concern because they might not abide by these, so-claimed, European values. This opinion is what, ironically, justifies separatist movements such as Brexit: if it is not universal human rights, but a set of cultural values that defines the social organization, and the political and economic decisions of the EU then many might not want to be part of it. Ultimately, in this view, what defines Europeans is an ideological theory of culture. In the same way as a century ago the USA managed, though not without difficulties, to receive a massive wave of immigrants by redefining American identity, in light of the various positions regarding the melting pot, so is the EU currently trying. While the intention is noble, the same risk exists as with early American anthropology and pragmatism, namely the fabrication of a cultural European identity that, in

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the best case, can become a continental-scale nationalism or a more acute culturalism. Fabricating a broader and more inclusive identity is a solution only to an immediate impasse, but in the long term, not only does it not solve the initial problem, but can cause a setback. It is because of the ideological biases of early American anthropology and the presuppositions of the linguistic turn which enforced it, despite its localized solution, that culturalism remains a widespread ideology, conflicting with human rights, and occasionally slipping into nationalism. All of these manifestations of culturalism indicate the need for a new understanding of culture, detached from cultural and linguistic relativism.

3.3 The Monocultural Pluralism of Culturalism It would be hasty to assume that the early anthropologists, the promoters of culturalism, would consciously endorse the separatism that their theory of culture came to endorse. Franz Boas’ The Mind of Primitive Man 1938 [1911] was published in the midst of an unprecedented intake of immigrants in the USA. Between 1870 and 1920 the United States received more than 27 million immigrants, which fueled an American collective skepticism towards immigration and a rise of racism. This racist surge was so intense that it even produced pretenses of scientific evidence for the superiority of the “white race” (see Bernstein 2015: 347–348). Thus, Boas’ relativism had as an aim countering such a wave of fake science and racism. Boas made the fundamentally critical separation of physical anthropology and cultural anthropology by making a categorical distinction between biological and cultural variation (see Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 103). Also, Boas advocated for a concept of “cultural cosmopolitanism” which, while seemingly liberal and aiming at protecting the human rights of minority groups, especially in the context of Western imperialism, inherited the romanticist idea of nation: Michael Forster argues that Boas also inherited what he calls Herder’s “pluralist cosmopolitanism”, the ethical insistence on the right of the single nations or single cultures to develop their individuality. (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2012: 104)

Thus, while this notion of pluralism came out of a noble intention, it has also been a Trojan horse of the nationalist concept of culture into American anthropology. A problematic aspect of it is that while very well distinguishing between cultural and physical anthropology, it ignored the role of the body for language production and, more generally, for modelling. This feeds well into the program of the linguistic turn. Interestingly, a similar agenda is found in the American pragmatism of the time, in Charles Peirce’s direct disciples, James (2008 [1909]) and Dewey (1937), as Bernstein explains (2015). James was the first to openly address the plurality of culture in his 1908 lectures at Oxford University, which were published one year later in the collection A Pluralistic Universe (2008 [1909]). While pluralism seems to be a reoccurring theme in pragmatism generally, it is safe to assume that James’ emphasis on pluralism as an ontological concept (see James 2008 [1909]: 141–142) was inspired

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by Peirce. From James, also Dewey and Kallen inherited this concept as a central aspect of culture, though in different forms. I argue that Dewey’s concept makes his educational and political philosophy rather compatible to Eriksen and Stjernfelt’s critique of multiculturalism, while Kallen did not resist the assumption of culturalism. While early pragmatists such as James and Dewey had a tendency towards empiricism, later ones, such as Rorty or Kallen, bounded pragmatism to the linguistic turn (see Koopman 2009). Given his linguistic turn philosophy, it is understandable why Kallen’s pluralism assumed the relativist positions of culturalism. However, both of these versions of pragmatism, and thus, their pluralistic implications for culture differ to Peirce’s notion of pluralism and its implications for culture. The cornerstone of a Peircean approach to culture, as Cobley argued in a biosemiotic perspective, stands in Peirce’s notion of continuity (Cobley 2016: 3).

References Académie Française. 1995 [1635, 1752, 1816]. Status et règlements (Statutes and Reglementations). Available at http://www.academie-francaise.fr/sites/academie-francaise.fr/files/statuts_af_0.pdf. Accessed 17 Feb 2018. Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of Culture. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Benedict, Ruth. 1959. Patterns of Culture. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Bennardo, Giovanni. 2009. Linguistic relativity and spatial language. In Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Anita Sujoldzie, 137–152. Oxford: Eolss. Bernstein, Richard. 2015. Cultural pluralism. Philosophy and Social Criticism 41 (4–5): 347–356. Boas, Franz. 1938 [1911]. The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: The Macmillan Company. Cobley, Paul (ed.). 2001. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics. New York: Routledge. Cobley, Paul. 2010. The cultural implications of biosemiotics. Biosemiotics 3: 225–244. Cobley, Paul. 2016. Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics. Dordrecht: Springer. Dahl, Östen, and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (eds.). 2001a. The Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 1: Past and Present. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Dahl, Östen, and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (eds.). 2001b. The Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1959 [1916]. Course in General Linguistics. ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Dewey, John. 1937. Education and social change. Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 23 (6): 472–474. Draft Committee. 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations. Available at http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/. Eriksen, J.-S., and F. Stjernfelt. 2010. Culturalism—From idea to unconscious presupposition. Sociologija II (4): 359–376. Eriksen, J.-S., and F. Stjernfelt. 2012. The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism. New York: Telos Press. Harré, Rom. 2015. Positioning theory. In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, Sandel Todd, 1–9. Heidegger, Martin. 2000 [1953]. Introduction to Metaphysics (Einführung in die Metaphysik). New Haven, London: Yale University Press.

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Hofstede, Geert, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. 2010. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Intercultural Communication and Its Importance for Survival, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. James, William. 2008 [1909] A Pluralistic Universe. Rockville: Arc Manor. Koopman, Colin. 2009. Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty. New York: Columbia University Press. Kroeber, A.L. 1960. Statistics, Indo-European, and Taxonomy. Language 36 (1): 1–21. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levinson, Stephen C. 2003. Language and Mind: Let’s get the issues straight. In: Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought 25–46, Cambridge, MA, London: The MIT Press. Lietuvi˛u Kalbos Institutas (Lithuanian Language Institute). 2018. http://mokymai.lki.lt/. Accessed 17 Feb 2018. Lituanistini˛u Studij˛u Katedra (Department of Lithuanian Studies), Vilniaus Universitetas (Vilnius University). 2018. http://www.lsk.flf.vu.lt/en/. Accessed 24 Feb 2018. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984 [1979]. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (La Condition Postmoderne: rapport sure le savoir). Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Matthews, W.K. 1957. The interrelations of baltic and slavonic. The Slavonic and East European Review 35 (85): 409–427. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1995. La Nature. Notes. Cours de Collège de France. Paris: Seuil. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967 [1901]. The Will to Power (Der Wille zur Macht). Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. Rorty, Richard M. (ed.). 1967. The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method with Two Retrospective Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stables, Andrew. 2012. Be(com)ing Human: Semiosis and the Myth of Reason. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers. Tajani, Antonio. 2017. Speech by the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani Award Ceremony Princess of Asturias Award for Concord. European Parliament, The President. October 20. Available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/the-president/en/newsroom/speech-bythe-president-of-the-european-parliament-antonio-tajani-award-ceremony-princess-of-asturiasaward-for-concord. Wagner, Anne, and Jan M. Broekman. 2010. Prospects of Legal Semiotics. Dordrecht: Springer.

Chapter 4

Language, Culture and Pluralism

Abstract This chapter focuses on the contribution to cultural theories of pragmatic philosophy. In its early forms, pragmatism developed its own concept of pluralism. While inspired from Charles Peirce’s idea of plurality in logic, starting with William James, the debates on pluralism in pragmatism have had culture as a main concern. Developing simultaneously with cultural anthropology, in pragmatism as well, pluralism has often been regarded as a result of a rather monadic multi-culturalism: the situation where cultures co-exist territorially, but are carefully separated for the sake of preservation. In view of post-Peircean developments, the case is made for a pragmatic semiotic approach to culture that avoids the relativist construal of culture as mirrored in language.

4.1 Pragmatic Concepts of Pluralism The idea of cultural pluralism originates in American pragmatism (see Bernstein 2015: 1), which developed its own metaphysical concept of pluralism (see also Chap. 1, Sect. 1.4). This development is simultaneous and aligned with the advocacy for cultural relativism in the early American anthropology of Franz Boas, and its disciples, among which most prominent Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf and Ruth Benedict. Thus, together with classic anthropology, pragmatism is part of the milieu that led to the more recent notion of multiculturalism. The first influential and explicit development of pluralism in pragmatism is attributed to James (2008 [1909]). His concept of pluralism was further adopted in Kallen’s pragmatic cultural criticism (1996 [1915], 1956). Kallen found this concept instrumental in his refutation of the “melting pot” (see Chap. 1 in the present book and Shumsky 1975) view of American society, namely the idea that differently cultured immigrants arriving in the USA “melt” together with the existing population into what is a newly refreshed and dynamic American democracy. Kallen did not agree with the melting pot view because he found it undemocratic on cultural relativist grounds. Most of all, he took issue with the disregard of American society towards the loss of cultural heritage and identity of the newcomers. His criticism is exemplary for the ideology of (multi)culturalism, preferring separatism © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Olteanu, Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17883-3_4

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and expressing it politically, rather than cultural blending with the risk of changes of identity. As such, he argued for replacing the “melting pot” metaphor for society with the metaphor of a symphonic orchestra. The differently performing individuals and social groups would each play their distinctive role in a symphonic democracy, in this view, each according to their own “specific timbre and tonality” (Kallen 1996 [1915]: 42). Not only is the culturalist view on cultural plurality clearly expressed in this metaphor, as every social player is distinct and, as it were, plays distinctively, but Kallen also held to a clearly defined concept of “nation” as the expression of a reality, which, also, has a “spirit” (Kallen 1996 [1915]: 42). As such, the inherited culture and nationality of an individual or group cannot change. He considered that the prosperous development of the individual, her very happiness, irrevocably depends on “ancestral endowment” (Kallen 1996 [1915]: 92). In this view, if happiness ultimately depends on each individual on nationality and heritage culture, it would be impossible to set out a list of universal human rights. Any such claimed rights would be unimportant for some and abusive for others. Coming from a much less relativist and rather realist position, another loud defender of democracy and student of James, namely John Dewey, held with suspicion (see Bernstein 2005: 5; Menand 2001: 400; Eisele 1983: 151–152), to say the least, Kallen’s refutation of the melting pot. Dewey tended to disagree with the metaphor of society as symphonic orchestra. Nevertheless, he saw a good potential in this metaphor as well, namely that society should have a symphonic cohesion. Despite his criticism, there is common ground between Dewey and Kallen’s theories of cultural assimilation. Dewey too held to the reality of the nation concept and admitted with Kallen that “each cultural section should maintain its distinctive literary and artistic traditions” (Dewey in Eisele 1983: 152, see also Menand 2001: 400). However, Dewey expressed his reluctance towards the risk of separatism within society. His warning to Kallen was that the distinctively performing parts of an orchestra have to make the effort of harmoniously playing together (see Bernstein 2005: 4; Menand 2001: 400). A main difference between Dewey and Kallen is that Dewey considered democracy necessary for cultural pluralism, while Kallen saw it the other way around. In Kallen pluralism appears to be a metaphysical concept which, if practiced in society, should naturally lead to democracy. Thus, Kallen made of pluralism, arguably, an a priori principle for politics. This is likely an inheritance from James’ metaphysical notion of pluralism, which Kallen applies in a top-down fashion in his model of society. It is noteworthy that both Peirce and Dewey expressed some reluctance towards James’ more radical notion of pluralism and his preference for replacing the view of the world as universe to one of a pluriverse (see Menand 2001: 88). The Peircean criticism in this regard would aim at recognizing the presence of the monadic element in reality simultaneous with the elements of dualism and triadism (more below in Sect. 4.2). James’ idea of the pluriverse is dismissive of any form of monadism at any time present in reality. For Dewey, concretely, democracy is the frame within which education can cultivate an integrative and tolerant society: Our public school system was founded in the name of equality of opportunity for all, independent of birth, economic status, race, creed, or color. The school can not by itself alone create or embody this idea. But the least it can do is to create individuals who understand

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the concrete meaning of the idea with their minds, who cherish it warmly in their hearts, and who are equipped to battle in its behalf in their actions. (Dewey 1937: 474)

Thus, Dewey has a rather empirically-grounded, bottom-up view on society. A democratic society is a frame within which education can be practiced not manipulatively. Thus, in such a context, education can cultivate pluralism. It is democracy supported by a non-coercive educational system that assures plurality, not the other way around. In this view, the melting pot does not appear to be destructive of identity (or personality). What makes the cultures in the pot melt together is a liberal, progressive, and pluralist-supportive education that empowers rather than manipulates. Individuals and minority groups are thus empowered to learn, and the process of acculturation happens critically and voluntarily: Democracy also means voluntary choice, based on an intelligence that is the outcome of free association and communication with others. It means a way of living together in which mutual and free consultation rule instead of force, and in which cooperation instead of brutal competition is the law of life; a social order in which all the forces that make for friendship, beauty, and knowledge are cherished in order that each individual may become what he, and he alone, is capable of becoming. (Dewey 1937: 474)

Nevertheless, while the disputed conception of the melting pot was (and remains) rather vague and anecdotal, it too is not entirely free of elements of culturalism. To begin with, it supposes a cultural transformative process in which cultural identity can be lost along the way. As disputed, it occurs that all those who “melt” together in the pot change cultural identity. The old population changes cultural identity to a small degree, according to the force of the intake of immigrants, and the immigrants change their cultural identity altogether, as they are thrown into a cultural pot incomparably bigger to their immigrating cultural group. In addition, the melting pot supposes that the resulting culture is homogenous: it supposes that for a democratic governable society, a homogenous culture is necessary. In this regard, Kallen’s criticism has a valuable point: there is no reason for supposing that cultural heterogeneity, which he termed cultural pluralism, would obstruct democracy. However, both Kallen and the defenders of the melting pot held to a strong notion of cultural identity which, more problematic, was assumed to be rigidly bound to the individual’s (or the group’s) lifestyle. In the melting pot view, diverse cultural identities have to blend into a homogenous culture that can claim one identity under one banner, such as American, in this case. In Kallen’s view, the loss of cultural identity implies the loss of personal identity and the bending of a person’s lifestyle and worldview into one uniform ideology. In the perspective of the present semiotic approach to culture and multiculturalism, it must be considered, though, that William James was substantially influenced by Charles Peirce. It is hence insightful to inquire on just how much was the established pragmatic notion of pluralism originating in Peirce’s semiotics, and what would a more-Peircean, less-Jamesian account of pluralism imply for the discussions around the melting pot and the orchestration metaphors, and for multiculturalism and democracy.

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James observed that Peirce’s notion of plurality is essentially bound to his notion of continuity, termed synechism (CP 5.484, 6.169). This is because continuity begins from the first principle of evolution and organization, which Peirce identifies to be chance. The idea that chance is always present in evolution is Peirce’s doctrine of tychism, to which James adhered, albeit without being in full agreement with Peirce’s connected idea that categorically monadic entities are entirely governed by chance: Mr. Peirce’s views […] are altogether congruous with Bergson’s. Both philosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is genuine. To an observer standing outside of its generating causes, novelty can appear only as so much ‘chance’; to one who stands inside it is the expression of ‘free creative activity’. Peirce’s tychism is thus practically synonymous with Bergson’s ‘devenir réel’. The common objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly, ex nihilo, they shatter the world’s rational continuity. Peirce meets this objection by combining his tychism with an express doctrine of ‘synechism’ or continuity, the two doctrines merging into the higher synthesis on which he bestows the name of ‘agapasticism[’] […] which means exactly the same thing as Bergson’s ‘evoltuion creatrice’. Novelty, as empirically found, doesn’t arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibility, for adjacents in experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum being both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctiveness being realized effectively only after a concreted interval has passed. The intervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and all the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous infiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut. Just so, in a curve, the same direction is never followed, and the conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by supposing it to do so for however short a time. Peirce speaks of an ‘infinitesimal’ tendency to diversification. The mathematical notion of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same and yet nascent other, of an identity won’t keep except so far as it keeps failing, that won’t transfer, any more than the serial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality instead of applying them to concepts alone. (James 2008 [1909]: 163)

Thus, James inherited from Peirce the idea that the presence of an element of chance in any evolutionary phenomenon accounts for pluralism, as a metaphysical principle of the universe. Plurality appears as implicit within evolution, stemming from the continuous dispersion of chance. The notion of cultural pluralism in pragmatism thus originates in a theory of evolution as synechistic pluralism, as James names it in Peirce’s terms: […] if such a synechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or statistically generalized, pictures of development of reality. (James 2008 [1909]: 164)

In this view, pluralism permeates culture, implying that no culture, though distinguishable, can exist in a monadic, isolated manner. No culture ever existed in a pristine, original state, as Cobley and Stjernfelt argue, in what is a generally Peircean semiotics (2015: 303, see above Chap. 1, Sect. 1.4). Peirce grounded his theory of evolution in his phenomenal categories, which James did not fully adopt. In the Peircean view, pluralism is triadism. Plurality is meaning which, in turn, is that which characterizes life. More precisely, in this vein, Kull describes life as “local plurality” (in Bundgaard and Stjernfelt 2009: 119, see also Kull 2007 and above Chap. 1, Sect. 1.4).

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In his development of pragmatic philosophy, James did not consider the semiotics of Peirce, or, at least, he did not regard it as the main purpose of Peirce’s inquiries. For the latter pragmatism meant a principle of semiotic logic (CP 5.14), while for James pragmatism was a theory of knowledge meant to drive philosophical inquiry. As generally agreed upon, James’ pragmatism, like that of Dewey, is an empirical pragmatism (e.g. Koopman 2009). The following generation, of mid-twentieth century pragmatism, represented by philosophers such as Richard Rorty or Robert Brandom adopted and even led the linguistic turn, trading empirical pragmatism for a linguistic pragmatism (i.e. Rorty 1967). Koopman distinguishes between what he terms classicopragmatists, namely the empiricists of James’ generation, and neopragmatists, namely the linguistic pragmatists of Rorty’s generation, and argues in favor of the current possibility in pragmatism for a new comprehensive and synthetic turn to a doctrine of meliorism (Koopman 2009: 5). This can be described as a processual turn: instead of founding a pragmatic theory of knowledge that attributes knowledge acquisition to experience, be it a rich notion of experience as characteristic of pragmatism, or to linguistic phenomena, Koopman explains that the focus of pragmatism can now be directed to the process of transition itself. He describes it as “transitional and meliorative cultural criticism” (Koopman 2009: 7). While this is an insightful and revealing reflection on pragmatism, I argue, Koopman does not take into account the possible contribution that Peirce’s pragmatism can have for the doctrine of meliorism and for cultural criticism. Not unusual for pragmatic scholarship in general, this account considers Peirce’s pragmatism independently of his semiotics. James himself did not manifest a particular interest for semiotics. This is why, after James’s version of pragmatism became popular, albeit a term explicitly attributed to Peirce (see James 1907: 46), Peirce re-termed his principle of logic. He did not want to have his maxim of logic mistaken for a theory of knowledge, but also (pragma, translatable as action), did not want to give up on the Greek root Peirce renamed his initial pragmatism to pragmaticism (CP 5.414).

4.2 Peirce’s Semiotic Pragmaticism and Triadism as Pluralism Peirce’s semiotics is, thus, of twofold importance for the present critique of multiculturalism. One of the reasons is that it is one of the main sources for the development of biosemiotics, a biological theory of signification that, unlike classical anthropology, approaches culture in non-glottocentric and non-anthropocentric terms (Cobley 2016, see more in Chap. 5, Sect. 5.1). The other reason, which is discussed in the present chapter, consists in Peirce’s influence on the pragmatic notion of pluralism and the discussions of cultural pluralism that followed in this vein. These matters, of course, are interconnected. Both the emergence of American anthropology with a focus on culture and language and the pragmatic interest for pluralism are bound to the unprecedented flux of immigration into the USA at the beginning of the 20th

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century and the surge of nationalism and racism, particularly in Europe. Peirce’s pragmatism and the theory of modelling implicit in his semiotics, which inspired the development of biosemiotics, are intimately connected. This connection comes down to the centrality of the concept of continuity in Peirce’s thought, accounting for the continuity of signification across nature and cultures. It is noteworthy that Peirce wrote and, particularly, had his most fertile intellectual phase, just before the climax of the immigration influx. The following generation of American pragmatists, which witnessed and reacted to the growth of racist and nationalist ideologies, had, thus, a concept of pluralism to build upon. Nevertheless, like several of Peirce’s concepts, his ideas on pluralism have also been biasedly received. In a Peircean view, pragmatism can be thought of as critical common sense: I have myself called pragmatism “critical common-sensism”; but, of course, I do not mean this for a strict definition. (CP 5.494)

While James likely subscribed to this as well, he had a different concern than Peirce, in his development of pragmatism. Peirce’s main concern consisted in developing a system of logic. He considered that logic consists in actions of signs, a phenomenon which he termed semiosis (see below), thus affirming, “[l]ogic […] is […] only another name for semiotic ({sémeiötiké}), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs.” (CP 2.227) The tool of logic, namely the sign, was defined by Peirce in a manner similar to that of de Saussure, but also critically different. The similarity stands in recognizing that signification is a relation. The first main difference between Peirce’s semeiotic and de Saussure’s semiologie stems from their different interests. While de Saussure was interested in developing a theory of language, Peirce’s concern was developing a relational logic. Throughout 20th century semiotics, these similar endeavors were often fused (or confused) for the purpose of developing a complex philosophy of meaning (or theory of representation). These synthetic efforts could only have been biased and dishonest to either Peirce or de Saussure because of how the relation between logic and language was seen by these two. The main concern in this regard is that Peirce’s logic is anti-psychologistic, meaning that he regarded psychological phenomena as sub-cases of logical phenomena, not the other way around (CP 2.209, 2.309, see Stjernfelt 2014: 44). Furthermore, in Peirce’s view, physiological phenomena are sub-cases of semiosis (see Sebeok 2001: 70–71). Consequently, in this view, language appears as a fine-tuned formal system that reflects (or can reflect) logic. Logic is not expressed linguistically only. Rather, the recognition and production of language is possible due to logical operations. On de Saussure’s account, the sign necessarily contains a psychological dimension (see above Chap. 2, Sect. 2.1, de Saussure 1959 [1916]: 66). It is for this reason that Sebeok has drawn primarily on Peirce’s notion of sign to develop a biological and zoological theory of meaning (see below Chap. 6, Sect. 6.1, Cobley 2016: 28; Sebeok 1991: 17, 2001: 70–71). On Peirce’s account, the pragmatic dimension of signs is connected with antipsychologism. Peirce famously stated that “[a] sign is only a sign in actu by virtue of its receiving an interpretation, that is, by virtue of its determining another sign of the same object.” (CP 5.569) Once his semiotic taxonomy developed, Peirce thus

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defined the principle of pragmatism in semiotic terminology. The sign is a pragmatic phenomenon. Retrospectively, more than semiotics being founded on pragmatism, pragmatism is a logical consequence of semiotic logic (see Bellucci 2013: 342). Peirce’s definitions of pragmatism (or pragmaticism) that do not make use of semiotic terminology are equivalent with the statement that signs are only signs in actu, once admitted that the tool of logic is the sign. Such a definition, for instance, was that of stating that indicative judgments are possible only because they are simultaneously imperatively expressible: Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood. (CP 5.18)

Peirce was explicit about the central place that pragmatism occupied for his philosophical thought and its relevance, as he saw it, for epistemology: A certain maxim of Logic which I have called Pragmatism has recommended itself to me for diverse reasons and on sundry considerations. Having taken it as my guide in most of my thought, I find that as the years of my knowledge of it lengthen, my sense of the importance of it presses upon me more and more. If it is only true, it is certainly a wonderfully efficient instrument. It is not to philosophy only that it is applicable. I have found it of signal service in every branch of science that I have studied. My want of skill in practical affairs does not prevent me from perceiving the advantage of being well imbued with pragmatism in the conduct of life. (CP 5.14)

While this latter example is insightful as well, it occurs that Peirce could more easily describe (his notion of) pragmatism retrospectively, once the pragmatismunderpinned logic of signs was established. The insight that Sebeok observed, in otherwise high times of the linguistic turn and glottocentric philosophy in general, was that a theory of biology does not need to be founded on a theory of cognition. Instead, it can be founded on a theory of meaning which does not require from the human researcher to infer upon the psychology of the non-human (without ruling out the possibility of a science such as animal psychology, of course). Unlike cognition or linguistic structures, meaning is continuous throughout the biosphere. This is the case, of course, if meaning is not necessarily a psychological phenomenon. Furthermore, since semiotics is logic, the biosphere can be investigated in view of how organisms pragmatically organize their environment(s) in models. Models are signs or sign systems. Hence, in the age of the linguistic turn, Sebeok proposed a modelling turn. This proposal was partly inspired by Lotman (see 1990: 123), who, in his own turn, had developed a cultural modelling theory inspired from Vernadsky’s notion of biosphere (2005 [1943], 2012 [1938]). While Lotman drew on natural sciences in his theory of culture, he was not concerned with discussing meaning in non-human worlds. Thus, the post-Peircean project of biosemiotics, through a synechistic account of signification and life, reveals the latent possibility of Peircean pragmatism for cultural criticism. While Sebeok’s proposal was received with some enthusiasm in academic semiotic circles, it took much longer for this idea to be closely considered more widely

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in the humanities. Still, in the humanities broadly and in some semiotic theories, anthropocentric and/or glottocentric accounts of knowledge, cognition and social organization led to skepticism towards the Sebeokian hypothesis. Interestingly, it seems that modelling theories akin to natural and hard sciences are more favorable of the Peirce-Uexküll approach than humanities research, as classically conceived, has been (see Stjernfelt 2007: 79; Kralemann and Lattmann 2011: 52, 2013: 3398). The epistemological quality that recommends (which I hereby term) the PeirceUexküll approach for mediating between the humanities and natural and hard sciences stands in the schematicism or mereology intrinsic to this semiotic theory, in contrast to otherwise sterilely analytic and symbolic-centered theories of knowledge. This schematicism is precisely the same as the quality of the biosemiotic approach to culture that renders knowledge, dependent or independent of culture, as modelled not necessarily and never exclusively in linguistic categories. Consequently, it is in the new, technology-inspired digital humanities that the Peircean account of modelling, particularly as received via Kralemann and Lattmann’s theory of semantic as iconic modelling (2011, 2013), is gaining ground (see Ciula and Marras 2016; Ciula and Eide 2017). This points out an opportunity for considering Peirce’s semiotics more carefully in view of addressing the current crisis in the humanities (Nussbaum 2010; Cobley in Bankov and Cobley 2017: 4–5; Martinelli 2016: 1), which, it is argued here, has to be seen as connected with the current refugee crisis and the impasse of multicultural theory (see above in Chap. 1, Sect. 1.4 and more on this below in Chap. 6). One area of the humanities which can reconsider Peirce’s semiotics, therefore, is pragmatic philosophy which, since James, supposed a non-semiotic version of Peirce. Peirce’s pragmatism begets its proper purpose in a sign-based logic, which implies a phenomenological modelling theory. Peirce offered many similar and complementary definitions for the sign concept. One simple formula by which he defined this concept is that “a sign is something, A, which denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant thought, C.” (CP 1.346) Thus, for Peirce the sign has three elements (CP 2.228, 2.242): (1) the sign-vehicle which he also termed Representamen, (2) the Sign’s Object, which is denoted, and (3) the Interpretant, which is the conclusion of the sign. The sign is not the sum of the three dyadic relations between these three elements. The sign is one relation, namely the simultaneous cooperation of the three elements. It can be illustrated as a tripod (see Fig. 4.1), and not as a triangle, as often misinterpreted (e.g. Fiske 1990), particularly as popularized by Ogden and Richards (1923). A triangle as a representation of the Peircean sign is misleading because it can be fragmented into three composing relations between each of the three couples of the three termini. Peirce was explicit in that the triadic sign-relation is not reducible to the sum of its composing parts (CP 5.70-5.72, 5.82-83, 5.209, 1.567). The relations between any two of the sign’s elements are exterior to the sign itself. This is inferred from Peirce’s argument that third degree graphs are not reducible to graphs of lesser degrees while any graph of a higher degree can be represented by a graph of the third degree without losing any of its qualities. Peirce’s notion of pluralism consists in this notion of triadism. In the sign-relation, monadism, dualism and triadism are implicitly manifest while qualitatively differ-

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Fig. 4.1 The sign-relation according to Charles Peirce

ent. In addition, this notion of the sign does not allow for the isolated real existence of monads, dyads, or even of signs. The possibility of signification is the monadic dimension present in each of the sign’s elements, particularly the Representamen. Nevertheless, none of the individual elements has a proper existence of its own, outside the relation. The same is true for the dyads that can be drawn among the three elements. While exterior to the sign relation, they nevertheless have to be supposed as real existents: if the elements are there, the relations between them cannot be ignored. They determine the actuality of the sign. Finally, the proper sign is the triadic relation, and such triadic relations cannot exist in atomistic states, separated or separable from the rest of reality. The three elements of the sign correspond to three phenomenal categories, which Peirce termed Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness (e.g. CP 8.328). These categories, particularly the apparently hierarchical terminology (first, second, third) that Peirce chose for them, stirred some skepticism and criticism, particularly in pragmatism. For instance, the idea that an element of Firstness somehow precedes an element of Secondness led some pragmatists to suspect Peirce of a priorism. Colin Koopman considers that Peirce’s quest for truth in a logical and metaphysical concern implied a strictly factual theory of truth as external and inconsiderate of cultural and epistemological meliorism (Koopman 2009: 43, 57). However, the categories are phenomenally inter-twined, as manifested in signs. Signs might be cultural or cognitive, but not necessarily. The instrumentality of the categories consists in the analysis of signs in view of the relations among the termini. Signs develop within sign contexts, that is, within Universes of Discourse (see CP 2.373, 2.383, see above Chap. 2, Sect. 2.1). Rather, I argue that through his pursuit of signification as logical, Peirce’s semiotics escapes psychologism and culturalism without ignoring the cultural reality of humans (and of other animals). As signs are contextual, they continuously evolve together, towards new Interpretants. Peirce termed semiosis the phenomenal triadic cooperation generative of meaning, which he contrasted to dyadic interaction, described as dynamic, which implies its mechanistic characteristic:

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4 Language, Culture and Pluralism All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects [whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially] or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by “semiosis” I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this trirelative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. (CP 5.484)

As such, the sign is phenomenal and purposeful. The phenomenon of semiosis suggests an implicit meliorism in Peirce, to use Koopman’s term, which could be one interesting way of drawing afresh the attention of contemporary pragmatism to more recent readings of Peirce in contemporary pragmatism. Semiosis is the cooperation of signs and it is an evolutionary, that is, transitional phenomenon. Interpretation follows interpretation, not in a relativist infinite regression, but framed in the actuality and contextuality of universes of discourse (see Feil and Olteanu 2018). Universes of discourse, like the signs which belong to them, do not have an atomized, isolated being. They are linked by continua of signification, on account of which they are also accessible from the exterior, in contrast to Derrida’s concept of text as isolatable (see above Chap. 2, Sect. 2.1, Derrida 1976 [1974]: 158). Continuity is therefore a central concept of the phenomenal logic that Peirce developed upon his pragmatic maxim, as James was aware (see above, Chap. 3, Sect. 3.1). Peirce termed his doctrine of continuity, mutually implicit with the schematic character of his semiotics (see above Chap. 1, Sect. 1.1, Favareau 2010: 706–707; Cobley 2016: 3), synechism. He described synechism as “that tendency of philosophical thought which insists upon the idea of continuity as of prime importance in philosophy and, in particular, upon the necessity of hypotheses involving true continuity.” (CP 6.169) Synechism, Peirce clearly stated, is conceived in the “synthesis of tychism and of pragmatism” (CP 5.484). That is to say, it is a consequence of the doctrine that evolution begins by chance in conjunction with the thesis that signs are only signs in the way in which they are used. In brief, if sign use begins by chance, its further evolution, into more complex interpretants, will stay continuous, retaining an element of chance all throughout semiosis. As such, essentially, synechism is an anti-dualistic doctrine: Synechism, as a metaphysical theory, is the view that the universe exists as a continuous whole of all of its parts, with no part being fully separate, determined or determinate, and continues to increase in complexity and connectedness through semiosis and the operation of an irreducible and ubiquitous power of relational generality to mediate and unify substrates. As a research program, synechism is a scientific maxim to seek continuities where discontinuities are thought to be permanent and to seek semiotic relations where only dyadic relations are thought to exist. Synechism and pragmatism mutually support each other: synechism provides a theoretical rationale for pragmatism, while use of the pragmatic maxim to identify conceivable consequences of experimental activity enriches the content of the theory by revealing and creating relationships. (Esposito, n.d., see also in Cobley 2016: 3)

Despite suspicions of a priorism, Peirce particularly inspired the anti-dualist direction of pragmatism to begin with. In what particularly concerns the present monograph, in a synechistic account of semiotics, meaning is seen as continuous throughout nature and culture and, consequently, across cultures. Culture, humanity,

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as well as the entire biosphere are understood as wholes composed of parts. Regional cultures are parts of the culture of humans in a global dimension. As such, distinguishable cultures are neither fully separate and independent, nor entirely determined by a whole. This is true at any level. Neither should culture at a global scale be conceived, as it were, “in the singular”. The principle of synechism claims that aspects of cultures, while together forming cultures, have a degree of relative independence that allows for their pragmatic adoption in different (cultural) contexts. The (vertical) nature-culture continuity and gradual and disparate growth of cognitive complexity implies a (horizontal) cross-cultural continuity. Given the purposeful dynamics of semiotics, such a doctrine of continuity led Peirce to develop a theory of evolution. As explained above (Chap. 3, Sect. 3.2), James (2008 [1909]: 163) considered the implicitness between continuity and evolution in Peirce, but did not explicitly bring semiosis into the discussion. For Peirce, evolution at any scale is a continuous growth of meaning. This involves a mereological view of evolution in biosemiotics (see more in Chap. 5, Sect. 5.3). The continuity of semiosis and the inseparability of triadic sign relations necessarily imply, Peirce considered, a theory of evolution: First is the conception of being or existing independent of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the conception of reaction with, something else. Third is the conception of mediation, whereby a first and second are brought into relation. […] Feeling is First, sense of reaction Second […] the tendency to take habits is Third. Mind is First, Matter is second, Evolution is Third. (CP 6.32)

Here there is the risk of claiming mind/matter dualism in Peirce. This is not the case, however, if mind, matter and evolution are considered as simultaneously triadically dependent. Evolution is not a reaction to the action of mind and matter. Rather, all these three are equally and simultaneously participating in semiosis, a hypothesis which drew the attention of biosemioticians to the notion of coevolution (see Deacon 1997, 2012; Pietarinen 2012; Scalia 2019), where the coevolution not only of species but also of features within one species is considered. Through this statement Peirce is not claiming that mind and matter are two sides of the same coin. More than the claim that mind and matter cannot be considered separately, they cannot be considered in abstraction of evolution.

4.3 Language and Culture Parallelism Besides pragmatism, the beginning of the discipline of anthropology in the USA at the dawn of the 20th century was marked by the same debates about cultural integration. As explained above, the immediate solution at hand against racism, at the time, was relativism (Chap. 3, Sect. 3.3). The relativism inspired by Franz Boas became the main post-war academic approach to culture. By the 1950s and 1960s, when Roland Barthes (e.g. 1972 [1957]) established the semiotic approach to contemporary culture, grounded in de Saussure’s semiology, cultural relativism of Boasian origin, as developed by Benedict (1934), was the normative cultural criticism. From then on,

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structuralism and, later on, post-structuralism, which carried the banner of semiotics for most of the second half of the 20th century, have been inherent of the culturalist clause. The two main philosophical traditions originating in Peirce, semiotics and pragmatism, succumbed to the linguistic turn: the former in the form of semiologie and structuralism, and the latter as a language-based theory of knowledge. At this stage, it is interesting to note that semiotics and pragmatism turned their attention to articulated language, as the vehicle of knowledge when they have split. It seems that 20th century philosophy of language ignored that these two were present in Peirce at the same time, pragmatism being, for Peirce, the maxim on which semiotic logic is founded. The history of the last century suggests that the separation of semiotics and pragmatism into either non-pragmatic semiotics or non-semiotic pragmatism, is bound to glottocentrism and, as such, relativism. The culturalist view of culture is analogical to the Sapir-Whorf view in sociolinguistics, according to which how we speak shapes how we think, to various extents (see Hill and Mannheim 1992; Pütz and Verspoor 2000). For instance, Sapir, one of the three main advocates of this linguistic relativism, considered that “the tacit, “aesthetic” quality of the form-feeling of actors for their culture meant precisely that pattern in culture was like pattern in language.” (Hill and Mannheim 1992: 380) In this line of thought, then, the relations between cultures have been understood like the relations between languages. This means that to understand each other, two individuals with different cultural backgrounds need a translation. It leads to assuming that until the interlocutors have become acculturated into a common culture, they cannot properly understand each other. This also fits in the holistic determinism construal of culture: like signs in a Saussurean sign system, composing parts of a culture have no autonomy. As such, culture itself is not a pluralistic phenomenon. The identification of a pattern in a culture supposes a rigid top-down imposed law, which cannot be negotiated and cannot be properly understood from outside of the respective culture. As such, the conventionalist perspective of language that the linguistic turn and structuralism inherited from Ferdinand de Saussure makes intercultural translation seem all the more rigid. Since languages are arbitrary codes, there is no possibility for two humans to properly communicate unless they share the same code. This idea, I explain in the present book, is rooted in the various forms of the hypothesis of language as double articulation. In this view, two individuals from different cultures can never have a proper dialogue: it is not possible for them to teach each other a common code if the codes that each of them master are purely conventional, and thus, unrelated. The positivist answer to this impasse of relativism is that the individuals’ languages, while different, nevertheless refer to the same empirically objective reality, which becomes the middle term for translation. This answer, however, besides revealing the main assumptions of the linguistic turn, comes from an extreme empiricist perspective, which all the more emphasizes the irreconcilability between mental and material processes. The answer developed in this book differs from both of these accounts. Firstly, I consider that inter-cultural communication is possible not only on account of linguistic codification. Secondly, I argue that languages are inter-translatable not merely because they refer to the same objective

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empirical reality, but because linguistic phenomena are embodied phenomena and, as such, languages are ecological and open systems. Eriksen and Stjernfelt note that the romantic notion of nation, the cornerstone of nationalist ideology, as stemming from 19th century German romanticism, such as clearly the case of Herder, was inherited by linguistic relativism and post-war anthropology: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has, however, had a huge effect, and it can still be encountered today, often accompanied by the “linguistic turn” in philosophy. The idea has thus given rise to popular but incorrect cultural relativist imaginings such as that about the manifold Eskimo concepts of snow and the like […]. If “language” in the generalization often promoted by “the linguistic turn” thus may mean “cultural systems of value and thought in general”, then the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis becomes easy to reconcile […] with the idea that culture, as a whole, is learned like a language and is as systematic and coherent as a language. (2010: 370–371, 2012: 134)

This relativist view on culture and language survived in the mainstream semiotic approaches to culture of the late 20th century, namely what I hereby refer to as glottocentric semiotics, adopting Cobley’s (2016) term. For instance, the broad area of sociosemiotics (or social semiotics), overlapping to large extents in scope and methods with cultural semiotics, inherited the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis from sociolinguistics. Randviir and Cobley note so: Indirectly […], the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis influenced the development of sociolinguistics and, in turn, this influenced part of the development of sociosemiotics. (in Cobley 2010: 119).

The structuralist vein of semiotics, having its roots, firstly, in Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology, and also, in Roland Barthes’ analysis of culture (e.g. 1972 [1957], 1977) has been the mainstream semiotic approach to society and culture in the second part of the 20th century. This tradition of scholarship is inherent of cultural relativism, which, as explained, is mutually implicit with culturalism. Thus, many discourse analysis attempts, stemming from this semiotic school, endorse the same ideological multiculturalism, embedded in culturalism, which is nothing more than “so to speak, nationalism transferred from state to society.” (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2010: 360) The present study employs a different semiotic approach to multiculturalism, that is, the realist branch, which for arguably inevitable reasons took the form of a biological theory of meaning, termed biosemiotics (see Stepanov 1971; Sebeok 1991, 2001). In this view, diversity is seen as a condition for development in the broadest sense. Scholarship along the lines of what was termed realist semiotics (Deely 2001; Stjernfelt 2006) endorses that culture presupposes plurality. On this account, culture cannot be conceived as isolated: culture is multi-culture. The biosemiotic clause that semiosis is continuous that recommends a phenomenal theory of knowledge of assumed subjectivity, a –science to use Kull’s (2009) term (see Chap. 2, Sect. 2.2), implicitly dismisses nationalism: It is certainly misleading simply to equate ‘society’ with the nation state. Rather than seeing each person as a stable representative of a stable society, to make sense of human living, we

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4 Language, Culture and Pluralism should start with where human living makes sense: with my (and your) sense of being alive, now. (Stables 2012: xi)

Studying human organization in awareness of individuals’ subjective phenomenality and extensive, though relative freedom, leaves no space for the suprastructural supposition of nation. This argument, however, requires much care, as alone it does not deny the possibility of culturalism. It is, however, as proved in Stables’ approach to education, an excellent starting point for discussing the organisation of post-human societies in views free of dualism and solipsism. The relevance for modelling of hereand-now phenomenality is also stipulated in biosemiotics by Hoffmeyer’s concept of skin (2008), and, additionally in cognitive semiotics as well by Stjernfelt’s concept of co-localization (2014: 108–114), and in zoosemiotics by Martinelli’s observation that indexicality, while not semiotically basic, does not require complex cognition (2010: 70). Given its Peircean origins, biosemiotics belongs to the pragmatic school of semiotics. As mentioned above, Peirce-inspired pragmatists, such as William James and John Dewey, were the first to promote a notion of pluralism in regard to culture (see Bernstein 2015), which led to Horace Kallen coining the concept of “cultural pluralism” (1998 [1924]). Nevertheless, in a similar way to the relativism of non-pragmatic semiology, non-semiotic pragmatism also fell short in developing an unbiased and non-anthropocentric framework for cultural analysis. I argue that a biosemiotic approach would bring a biocentric turn to multiculturalist theory, as well as to cultural criticism in general. Implicitly, a biocentric multicultural theory would easily shake off epistemological relativism, given its account of meaning as modelled ecologically and not only linguistically. Until recently, researchers in biosemiotics hesitated to approach culture and, particularly, human culture. This hesitation can be explained on account of the cautiousness of avoiding a number of confusions that can stem from the epistemological entanglements of glottocentrism and semiotic realism. The main tool of sociosemiotics for cultural analysis is the language-bound concept of text (see Marrone 2017 in Bankov and Cobley: 105–120), which presents certain difficulties for a biosemiotic approach. A fully and explicitly semiotic approach to multiculturalism has not yet been developed, despite abundant recent cultural and social semiotic research. These recent approaches inevitably carry on the 20th century linguistic turn relativist epistemologies. This could be the reason for the lack of a sociosemiotic theory of multiculturalism: it would largely overlap with existing theories grounded in anthropology and sociolinguistics. A biosemiotic approach, on the other hand, can offer fresh and critical insights by making possible the bridging of, for instance, cultural and evolutionary anthropology and sociobiology and sociolinguistics. In the next chapter, I explain my view that the biosemiotic approach to multiculturalism reveals construals of knowledge and communication as environmental, thus handing over the discussion on multiculturalism to ecosemiotics, its ecological offspring.

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Stjernfelt, Frederik. 2014. Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns. Boston: Docent Press. Vernadsky, Vladimir I. 2005 [1943]. Some words about the noösphere. 21st Century Spring: 16–21. Available at: https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/translations/The_Noosphere.pdf (accessed 17 November 2018). Vernadsky, Vladimir I. 2012 [1938]. The Transition from the Biosphere to the Noösphere: Excerpts from Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon, trans. with an Introduction by W. Jones 21st Century Spring–Summer, 10–31. Available at: https://21sci-tech.com/Articles_2012/SpringSummer_2012/04_Biospere_Noosphere.pdf. Accessed 17 Nov 2018.

Chapter 5

Biosemiotic Multiculturalism

Abstract The biosemiotic approach to multiculturalism, introduced in the previous chapter, is explained in more detail. The main argument is that a theory of multiculturalism can only be a theory of culture, as cultures are intrinsically plural and cannot be clearly distinguished one from the other. Furthermore, cultures are deemed as schematic scaffoldings, facilitating learning in general, rather than holistic blocks whose composing elements cannot be translated outside the cultural context. A most relevant, unsettled and ongoing discussion regarding culture and human organization is that of the use of symbols. Not surprisingly, this discussion has mostly been carried out in semiotic frameworks. While anthropocentric and language-centered opinions are not infrequent, biosemiotics and cognitive semiotics offer some subtle ways forward in this debate, by considering a fine-grained taxonomy of signs, where symbols are not considered in the interrogation of the competences of a species, but more broadly in a semiotic ecology, comprehensive of research in the humanities, social and natural sciences. Peirce’s semiotic theory of evolution is proposed as a research guideline for a non-dualist theory of culture.

5.1 Peirce and Biosemiotics: Culture in View of Modelling Cobley (2010a, 2016) recently set the ground for a biosemiotic and, implicitly, realist (non-relativist) theory of culture. Cobley’s theory stands in contrast to relativist epistemologies such as championed by Kuhn (1970) or Lyotard (1984 [1979]). He argues that epistemological relativism can be traced back to the modern ontological dichotomies of mind and matter and nature and culture, present in the linguistic turn’s mirroring parallelism between thought and language: The issues of continuity of matter and mind, as well as the spurious separation of nature and culture, have had, in the scheme of things, very little purchase in cultural analysis. These big issues for science have simply not translated well in the terms of the humanities. One reason for this, of course, is the way that science has offered all manner of hostages to fortune to cultural studies, from social Darwinism, through Lysenkonism, eugenics, sociobiology and the development of the nuclear bomb, not to mention science’s masculine bias and other

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5 Biosemiotic Multiculturalism institutional factors that have vitiated its claims to knowledge. As such, observations including Kuhn’s (1970) on the philosophy of science or Lyotard’s (1984) report on knowledge pronouncing an era of incredulity towards the grand narrative of scientific progress, have become the common sense of the humanities. Yet there seems to be a chance, greater than any offered hitherto, to bridge the gap between the two cultures through semiotics as it has been reinvigorated by biosemiotics. (Cobley 2016: xii–xiii)

In their criticism of mainstream multiculturalism, Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2010, 2012) also found Kuhn’s theory of science as the grassroots of cultural relativism. Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigms as enclosed and self-sufficient endorsed an account of cultural paradigms, which appear as distinct and isolatable between one another: […] anthropological relativism had, to a large extent, proved academically victorious and even received support from other disciplines. In the theory of science, the prevailing interpretation of Thomas Kuhn’s idea of science as based on different and mutually exclusive “paradigms” was that the paradigm was holistic and that it thoroughly determined the single scientific facts; just like a Benedictian culture determines its individuals. (Eriksen and Stjernfelt 2010: 362)

Kuhn’s theory implies that scientific communities determine scientific research as construed within the linguistic possibilities of their technical language which has to be, in turn, determined within the possibilities and structures of the natural language(s) in which research was carried. The semiotic realist reply to this is that Kuhn’s position does not justify the falsifiability of scientific hypotheses and the fallibility of scientific theories but, rather, it renders science infinitely subjective, limited and limiting instead of insightful and revealing. Like in the case of Marrone’s concept of text (in Bankov and Cobley 2017), it can be argued that, in Kuhn’s conception, a scientific paradigm cannot offer conclusive proof of phenomenal evidence. Such is also the reason that led Lyotard (1984 [1979]) to consider metanarratives unconvincing and that postmodernity is the condition of human societies realizing the unavoidable ideological bias of all knowledge. As such, in this view, as Kuhn considers, any scientific progress can only be perceived as due to chance and consisting in a revolution, the unexplainable and accidental happening of scientific paradigms agreeing on a new understanding. It is obvious that the criticism that Eriksen and Stjernfelt address to cultural relativism is the same that biosemiotics (e.g. Cobley 2016) addresses to the glottocentrism of (post)structuralism. The same criticism is applicable to linguistic turn pragmatism, with its notion of cultural pluralism, as seen most evidently in Kallen (1996 [1915], 1956). Biosemiotics, the semiotic theory of biology (coined in Rothschild 1962; Stepanov 1971; see Favareau 2010: 34; Sebeok 2001; Kull 2005, 2009) is pregnant with the thesis that evolution and learning require diversity, or, more precisely, that diversity is intrinsic to any phenomenon of growth. This semiotic theory was mostly developed in view of Charles Peirce’s semiotics. Biosemiotics proper started with Thomas Sebeok’s research in the 1960s, when Sebeok discovered the compatibility between Peirce’s semiotics and Jakob von Uexküll’s Kantian approach to biology. Sebeok considered von Uexküll’s interpretation of the environment inhabited by an organism as a model. Uexküll’s theoretical biology is based on the idea that organisms

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make sense of their environments in loops of perceptions and actions (1926). Such loops result in each embodied organism organizing its own self-world, organization for which he used the (German) word Umwelt. In this regard, Umwelt, that is, the environment is subjectively experienced and constructed. Thus, von Uexküll’s groundbreaking contribution was that of introducing the category of meaning in the study of biology, as this notion of environment endorses that organisms organize their phenomenality according to their competences for discovering meaning. He explained that by using objects found in the environment, these become “carriers of meaning” (2010 [1934, 1940]: 140) for an organism. That use consists in assigning meaning is a pragmatic account of environment modelling. Assigning meaning, in this case, is not merely naming, and thus organizing the world in linguistic classes, as per de Saussure’s hypothesis of arbitrariness in signified-signifier articulation. The notion of carrier of meaning explains how the same physical object can be used for different pragmatic outcomes by the same organism, in different situations. For instance, a wooden object consisting of a platform supported by four legs can be used as a chair, as a stair or as a weapon, depending on circumstances. To use Gibson’s celebrated terminology (2014 [1979]), the physical object of such shape and size “affords” such uses. Particularly, it affords the specific uses given the user’s semiotic competencies for modelling. This compatibility between von Uexküll’s theoretical biology, as taken up in biosemiotics, and Gibson’s affordance theory opens up a research avenue in semiotics on problem solving, by studying creativity as innovative use of tools, as exemplified in Duncker’s famous candle problem (1945). Such an embodied account of problem solving constitutes the pre-linguistic and non-cultural ground for collaboration. As a theory of modelling, biosemiotics makes some critical claims in common with James Gibson’s physical ecology. According to Gibson, the senses evolved along with the organisms’ evolution within environments (e.g. 1986). The environmental conditions that afforded the evolution of certain perceptive and modelling capacities have been rather stable across generations. However, in historical time, humans have changed the shapes and substances in the environment. We have done so, Gibson argues, to change what the environment affords us to do (1986, 2014 [1979]: 56). In a semiotic concern, we have done so according to the affordances of our modelling systems, which, as a result, change in turn. Such dynamics are explained in biosemiotics as semiotic scaffolding (e.g., Hoffmeyer 2008a, 2014, 2015; Cobley and Stjernfelt 2015). Semiotics, particularly, the biosemiotic school of semiotics, defines itself simultaneously as a theory of meaning and a theory of modelling (Lotman 1977; Sebeok 1991). That a theory of meaning is synonymous with a theory of modelling is a critically insightful remark. It reveals the starting point of biosemiotics of considering the environment a model. It generally agrees with Gibson’s point that: We all fit into the substructures of the environment in our various ways, for we were all, in fact, formed by them. (Gibson 2014 [1979]: 56)

In von Uexküll’s terminology, the corresponding use of a platform supported by four legs makes the object acquire a chair, or stair, or weapon “tone”, becoming an according carrier of meaning. The totality of such competences of an organism

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to discover meaning carriers, in their non-linguistic form constitutes, according to Sebeok, a primary modelling system (Sebeok 1991: 55, 2001: 145–146). Sebeok explained that: The term Umwelt has proved notoriously recalcitrant to translation, although “subjective universe,” “phenomenal world,” and “self-world” variously approximate Jakob von Uexküll’s intent. However, “model” renders it more incisively, especially in view of his credo (1982: 87) that “every subject is the constructor of its Umwelt.” (Sebeok 1991: 54, 2001: 144)

The primary modelling system of organisms, in this biosemiotic prospective, gives form to an animal’s inner-world, its Innenwelt: The Innenwelt of every animal comprises a model […] that is made up of an elementary array of several types of nonverbal signs […]. (Sebeok 2001: 145)

Sebeok’s innovation stands in dismissing the anthropocentric and glottocentric thesis that rendered modelling systems as strictly linguistic and, therefore, strictly human. Before Sebeok’s biosemiotics, a semiotic theory of modelling was developed in the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics, represented first of all by Yuri Lotman (see Andrews 2003: 11). Sebeok himself adopted Lotman’s definition of model (see Sebeok 2001: 140), namely, a structure of elements and of rules for combining them that is in a state of fixed analogy to the entire sphere of an object of knowledge, insight or regulation. Therefore, a modeling system can be regarded as a language. Systems that have a natural language as their basis and that acquire supplementary superstructures, thus creating languages of a second level, can appropriately be called secondary modeling systems. (Lotman in Lucid 1977: 7)

Sebeok also adopted Lotman’s distinction between what the latter termed primary and secondary modelling systems, but, as explained, he introduced another more basic, non-verbal system, characteristic for zoosemiosis (the semiosis of animals) generally. He considered this to be the justifiably termed primary modelling system while the human-specific systems thus become secondary and tertiary. This view takes into account the obvious reality that, while not in possession of language and/or speech, non-human animals too model their environments, as Sebeok explained (see above, Sebeok 2001: 23). Particularly important for the present thesis is the implication that human-specific modelling systems, hence the cultural organizations of humans and their scientific pursuits, are rooted in non-linguistic modelling systems as stemming from each species’ and individual’s semiotic competences. This means that, like semiosis, modelling is continuous from the modelling of natural environments, through culture and all the way to the most complex scientific modelling. This non-anthropocentric view implies that all human beings, regardless of linguistic competences and cultural peculiarities, understand reality starting from the same, basic semiotic competences, which come with human body morphology and physiological features. In addition, many such competences are shared across species, implying that modelling systems of distinct species overlap to various extents. Indeed, our cultural organizations cannot make abstraction of the physical (hard) environment and, more importantly so, of the environment as perceived by human physiology.

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The capacity of humans and other animals for cultural organization rather places the species on a continuum of semiotic similarity rather than it would differentiate it into groups. This thesis also acknowledges all the specific physiological features of humans as involved in modelling, not only the physiological competence for the double articulation of grunts into phonemes and of phonemes into linguistic units and structures. Therefore, it appears that physical rather than cultural differences between two individuals account for Umwelt distance, for these individuals’ populating distinct Universes of Discourse. Arguably, a person who lives in Barcelona, and is a native speaker of Catalan, and is two-meters high is phenomenally more proximal to a native speaker of Urdu who lives in Lucknow and is two-meters high, rather than to another Catalan native who lives in Barcelona but is one-and-a-half-meters high. The two taller individuals, for instance, could rather play basketball together than with the shorter person from Barcelona. They would share phenomenal worlds (Umwelten) to a larger extent, having common experiences, such as of how is it like to be taller than the average and how are they perceived in their societies. Of course, the immediate reply to this, not to be underestimated, is that the two speakers of Catalan can much more easily express to each other their agreements and disagreements, negotiate and, in general, collaborate. This modelling theory points out to just how important cooperation is, in both nature and culture. Scaffoldings that facilitate cooperation, such as linguistic codes, prove extremely efficient and valuable. As such, the biosemiotic modelling theory does not suppose the otherwise rather racist claim that from physical differences communication difficulties occur. Rather, it is explicative of how attuned to communicate we are, while individually unique: Any observer’s version of his/her Umwelt will be one unique model of the world, which is a system of signs made up of genetic factors plus a cocktail of experiences, including future expectations. (Sebeok 2001: 34)

According to Sebeok’s classification, natural languages are secondary modelling systems. Thus, it occurs just how important communication devices are. Evolutionarily, the role of language is not that of distinguishing one population from another, or one tribe from another, but actually, to facilitate collaboration. These secondary modelling systems are meant to enhance and facilitate collaboration led to the development of superstructures, such as culture and their many further developments, technology, art, science, and so on. Sebeok eagerly adopted the hypothesis that speech evolved as an exaptation of language, having adopted this term proposed by Gould and Vrba (1982). Hominids have undergone a swift biological evolution once with the appearance of language in Homo erectus. The appearance of language led to the exaptation of its codification in speech in the case of Homo sapiens. Sebeok considered that: The cardinal points in this brief scenario are twofold: language evolved as an adaptation; whereas speech developed out of language as a derivative exaptation over a succeeding period of approximately two million years. These twin propositions need to be made plain with reference to a suggestion by Gould and Vrba (1982). These authors emphasize the distinction between historical genesis and current utility, suggesting that characters that

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5 Biosemiotic Multiculturalism evolved for other usages (or none) may later come to be coopted for their current role. The former operation is customarily called adaptation; for the latter, they propose a new designation, exaptation. Accordingly, language consisting of a set of features that promotes fitness had best be thought of as having been built by selection for the cognitive function of modeling, and, as the philosopher Popper and the linguist Chomsky have likewise insisted […], not at all for the message-swapping function of communication. The latter was routinely carried on by nonverbal means, as in all animals, and as it continues to be in the context of most human interactions today. (1991: 55–56)

Regarding speech as an exaptation of language implicitly avoids the Saussurean qualitative distinction between speech and other signifying codes, such as writing. Both speech and writing, as well as other such possible methods of communication are exaptations of language which a species affords. The physiological features of Homo sapiens equip this species with semiotic competences of designing both oral speech and writing. Regarding speech as a result of evolution by exaptation is yet another aspect in which semiotics aligns theory of representation with research in the natural sciences. According to MacLarnon (2012) human speech production can be explained either as “specific adaptations” (224) or as “exaptations, commandeering existing features.” (225) The generally accepted hypothesis in evolutionary anthropology, as pioneered by MacLarnon, is that the production of human speech is first of all possible due to the same exaptation which justified Sebeok to attribute meaning to modelling in the most general sense and not strictly linguistic, followed by some further layers of adaptations: Diet and technology-related changes through human evolution, from the time of early Homo, have produced decreases in jaw and tongue length exaptive for the evolution of human speech capabilities. In addition to these, a three-stage framework for the major features of human speech evolution can tentatively be proposed: first, the evolution of obligate bipedalism in Homo erectus produced the exaptations of laryngeal descent, and the loss of air sacs and the hiatus intervocalis; secondly, during the Middle Pleistocene, human speech breathing control evolved as a specific speech adaptation; thirdly, with the evolution of modern humans, the optimal vocal tract proportions (1:1) were evolved adaptively. (MacLarnon 2012: 235)

As such, the capacity of speech production, as present in the modern human, has undergone layers of scaffolding, starting with an exaptation. In the biosemiotic view, the double articulation hypothesis can be avoided as well, as the discovery of meaning carriers does not primarily rely on phonological articulation but on modelling competences that constituted the prerequisite for verbalization and phonological production in the first place (see Sebeok and Danesi 2000: 108; Cobley 2016: 35). The layered scaffoldings that resulted in oral speech were a pragmatic pursuit of more efficiently communicating and sharing (cognitive) models. Sebeok’s threelevel modelling theory has its main source of inspiration in Peirce, particularly in Peirce’s three phenomenal categories, a central idea in his semiotics (see Chap. 4). In a study conducted together with Marcel Danesi, the two mapped, albeit admittedly “grosso modo” (Sebeok and Danesi 2000: 10), the three levels of modelling (nonverbal, verbal, supralinguistic) onto Peirce’s phenomenal categories (see also Cobley 2016: 36). Interestingly, after introducing the idea of speech as exaptation, Sebeok

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explained that cognition and modelling can and should be regarded as signs in the Peircean sense. One of the reasons for Sebeok’s preference for the Peircean concept of sign, as he explained, is also the affordance of Peircean semiotics to explain the continuity of modelling from simple biology to complex scientific modelling: As Peirce (1935–1966: 1.538) taught us, “Every thought is a sign,” but as he also wrote (ibid.: 5.551), “Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there.” Every mental model is, of course, also a sign; and not only is modeling an indispensable characteristic of the human world, but also it permeates the entire organic world, where, indeed, it developed. The animals’ milieu extérieur and milieu intérieur, as well as the feedback links between them, are created and sustained by such models. A model in this general sense is a semiotic production with carefully stated assumptions and rules for biological and logical operations. This is as true of bees (Peirce 1935–1966: 5.551) as it is, on a far vaster scale, of Isaac Newton’s and Albert Einstein’s grand models of the universe. Einstein, for one, it will be recalled, constructed his model from nonverbal signs, “of visual and some of muscular type,” and labored long and hard “only in a secondary stage” to transmute this creation into “conventional words and other signs,” so that he could communicate it to others. “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken,” Einstein wrote in a letter to Hadamard (1945: 142–143), “do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be ‘voluntarily’ reproduced and combined. (Sebeok 1991: 57)

From Einstein’s explanations on which Sebeok drew here, it clearly occurs that Einstein formulated his theory in a conviction contrary to the glottocentric and culturalist views, so common in his time, that a natural language frames cognition and, further on, scientific modelling. Language served him as a support (scaffolding) to express and contribute to knowledge, making his knowledge available for others as well. His knowledge was initially modelled non-verbally. Of course, this was no easy task. He successfully used natural and scientific languages to communicate his understanding. Natural language was not ideal for communicating his model of the universe, but eventually he arrived at the right formulations. This is to say that second and third level modelling systems made it possible for the communication and for the finer understanding of a primary level modelling of the world. In this view, science can be developed without ideological, cultural or linguistic biases. Precisely this affordance recommends Peirce’s semiotics, according to Sebeok, as the starting point for a biological theory of signification or a semiotic theory of biology. These two appear to be the same in this Peirce-Uexküll cooperation. This modelling theory also endorses that language itself changes, according to the development of models. In time, a scientific theory can impact on the everyday use of language. It is safe to assume that since Einstein’s theory popular conceptions of space and time changed accordingly. In a critical discussion on his version of pragmatism (or pragmaticism), when explaining that continuity (the principle of synechism) is essential for this doctrine, Peirce particularly insisted on the idea that natural and scientific modelling are semiosic phenomena of the same continuum. He claimed, to begin with, that scientific experiments do not have any value if considered in isolation to each other. Rather, Peirce considered “that every connected series of experiments constitutes a

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single collective experiment.” (CP 5.424) Once the principle of synechism is established, Peirce described scientific experimentation, for the purpose of modelling: What are the essential ingredients of an experiment? First, of course, an experimenter of flesh and blood. Secondly, a verifiable hypothesis. This is a proposition relating to the universe environing the experimenter, or to some well-known part of it and affirming or denying of this only some experimental possibility or impossibility. The third indispensable ingredient is a sincere doubt in the experimenter’s mind as to the truth of that hypothesis. (CP 5.424)

This brief account of scientific experimentation and modelling proved seminal for all (bio)semiotic modelling theory (or theories) to come. First, Peirce declared that only a living biological organism, that is, flesh and blood, could conduct scientific experimentation. Natural, environmental modelling, that is to say, a subjective and unique Umwelt is necessary for scientific modelling. The second element in this process is the formulation of a hypothesis by this knowing subject. The hypothesis has the form of a proposition (or dicisign, in Peirce’s terminology) which is derived from the experimenter’s Umwelt. As such, it is claimed that the experimenter can relate to the environing reality around him with some reliability of phenomenal evidence. The third element that Peirce presents is rather characteristic for scientific thought in particular, namely entertaining a degree of doubt towards the hypothesis. This is possible because a propositional modelling of the environment is verifiable. This claim about propositions stands in stark opposition with the relativist account of text semiotics, where it is considered that semiotic artefacts (texts) do not provide phenomenal evidence (see above, Marrone in Bankov and Cobley 2017). It grounds propositional knowledge in the organism-environment relation or, to use the biosemiotic term, in the Umwelt. Such propositions are relevant because they are verifiable. The organism which made a subject-predicate structured observation can doubt it, verify it and, if so proven, deny or change it. Not only does this account for semiotic ground modelling in the organism’s embodied, phenomenal world, but while doing so, it admits that organisms can change their minds. If one’s linguistically expressed notion of the world proves wrong, she can change her mind. Language does not act as a rigid superstructure, blocking partial structural changes of cognitive models or behavioral decisions. To illustrate the consequences of this logic with a previous example, if one considers that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a standard and acceptable, or even desirable cultural practice, when confronted with evidence that FGM is often unsafe and, perhaps more importantly, that females who undergo such procedures suffer traumas, one can change her mind about it. Habits, supposedly cultural, can be proven wrong and changed. Phenomenal (or empirical) evidence cannot be denied for the sake of cultural relativism. This is especially so when such evidence is of basic, undeniable biology. If culture has such grip over individuals and groups that these cannot accept or even notice tensions between phenomenal evidence and rooted practices, then there is nothing worthwhile in knowledge anyway. If this were the case, we would never properly know anything useful, other than perhaps by fortuitous accident. If we cannot change our minds then we cannot learn at all. As mentioned (Chap. 1), a theory of multiculturalism implies a theory of learning and of communication, as it

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problematizes how cultures relate to cultures, how individuals relate to individuals, and how individuals relate to their own and others’ cultures. Peirce’s account of scientific experimentation supposes that while it is necessary to doubt our own hypotheses, our own observations of the environment, for the purpose of testing them and of attaining more and more refined understandings of the environment, it is nevertheless necessary to accept that we can extract satisfactory observations from immediate surroundings quite intuitively. As I remarked somewhere else, together with Andrew Stables and Maria Kambouri-Danos, “[w]e cannot and we do not proceed with most of our lives by doubting everything. We accept (which is distinct from approve).” (Olteanu et al. 2016: 629). Peirce’s semiotics accounts for such anti-Cartesianist epistemology. For him, modelling inevitably starts with abduction, also termed retroduction and hypothesis: Retroduction goes upon the hope that there is sufficient affinity between the reasoner’s mind and nature’s to render guessing not altogether hopeless, provided each guess is checked by comparison with observation. It is true that agreement does not show the guess is right; but if it is wrong it must ultimately get found out. The effort should therefore be to make each hypothesis, which is practically no more than a question, as near an even bet as possible. (CP 1.210)

Thus, learning and modelling suppose doubt but do not start with it (see also Stables 2012: 55, 124). The passage from accepting relations in the environment which seem obvious to doubting and to remodeling them is continuous. Culture itself could not develop in omission of natural environments, the morphology and phenomenology of embodiments and all the physical restrictions that these suppose. Correspondingly, the biosemiotic account of modelling frames learning, understanding and communication are as environmental phenomena, instead of regarding them in view of an individual/collective dichotomy. This is foundational for ecosemiotics, the semiotic theory of ecology, which accounts for culture as regulated in looping processes of modelling between organisms and environments. When Winfried Nöth coined ecosemiotics in 1998, he explained that biosemiotics implies an ecological account of knowledge: The semiotic nature of the organism-environment relation according to Uexküll is most apparent in his model of the functional circle (Uexküll 1982: 8). It shows the organism (the subject) as a ‘receiver of meanings’ with perceptual and operational organs in an environment whose objects are defined as “carriers of meaning”. The meanings and signs of this Umwelt are by no means transmitted from an exterior environment to the interior of an organism. Instead, there is a relation of complementarity between the Umwelt and the inner world of the organism. The carrier of meaning has the function of a “counter-structure” of the receiver of meaning (Uexküll 1982: 8). Umwelt and inner world thus constitutes a hermeneutic circle for the organism’s inner world contains, in more recent terminology, a cognitive model of its Umwelt so that we can conclude that the organism is not just a recipient, but a constructor of its own environment. (Nöth 1998: 339)

Considering this, social behavior can be explained as grounded in environment modelling, and not subjected to the horizon of the semantic categories of one (or a few) languages. This explains how the same physical object can be used differently, according to an organism’s needs. A chair, for instance, can be used as a particular

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kind of chair, given the circumstance: it can be a pupil’s chair or the teacher’s chair depending how it is positioned in the classroom, or even a king’s throne if positioned in the right manner. As exemplified by Duncker’s (1945) famous candle problem, while it is difficult for humans to forget their socially constructed meanings, they can nevertheless do so for the purpose of solving a problem. The solution to the situation that Duncker presented to the subjects of his study was to reinterpret an object that was used as a box, as a shelf-like support instead. The subjects had to find a way to attach a candle vertically, by a wall, with nothing else but a hammer and some thumbtacks, placed in a box. The solution to this is to empty the box of thumbtacks and to hammer it into the wall, as a support for the candle. To reshape well-established sign-relations requires an effort of imagination. Reshaping signrelations is the very definition, in a semiotic perspective, of creativity. The fact that in one’s Umwelt some objects and structures are recognized as corresponding to the language-culture categories of “box” and “support” or “shelf” does not mean that they cannot be pragmatically remodeled at all. According to Nöth’s observation above, the fact that an organism’s inner world contains a cognitive model of its Umwelt, implies that, much more than being mirrored in language, culture reflects biology. The highest degree of difficulty in being creative consists in reshaping primary modelled relations. This is more difficult than reshaping second or third level models, such as linguistic labels, yet still possible and often necessary either for improving quality of life, or even for survival. Such efforts of imagination resulting in remodeling could prove critical in the context of the current ecological crisis. Related to our environmental awareness, the peaceful cooperation across cultures proves critical for survival. To accept that we are stuck in linguistic categories means to accept impending ecological disaster, if not annihilation by war before that. If we are prisoners of a solipsistic language-culture selfdefining circle then we are alienated from nature, and detached from our biosemiotic competences, in a way in which we cannot hope to cooperate with nonhuman nature or with other culture-language blocks anymore. Regarding behavior in the interrogation of modelling, as per Cobley’s (2016) recommendation for a biosemiotic approach to culture, we can liberate the concept of learning from the narrow scope of (modern) pedagogy. This is necessary for detaching theory of knowledge and educational philosophy from the dualism of contractualism. While Eriksen and Stjernfelt (2012) criticized the cultural relativism endorsed by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, as contradicting democratic principles and human rights and being empirically unfounded, independently, Cobley proposed a biosemiotic approach to culture precisely as an alternative to the glottocentric epistemology endorsed by this hypothesis: Commonly, the important distinction between language as a cognitive capacity and the verbal interaction which is one of that capacity’s manifestations is not made. So, any cognitive considerations in [the notion of language as]’chatter’ that remain knowingly or unknowingly embrace the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativism too readily (for example, Bragg 2003; Bryson 1990; McCrum et al. 2002; Deutscher 2010). In such popular accounts, it is implicit that language as manifest in speech is ‘special’ and little heed is given to other forms of semiosis. (2016: 30)

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Cobley’s critic is pointed at the anthropocentric idea that language overwrites other capacities for meaning-making and thus constitutes, where it occurs, a sufficient and primary modelling system. What recommends studying culture in the interrogation of modelling comprehensively in contrast to language strictly is not only the realization that language behavior does not overwrite other biological modelling competences but also that language behavior is a subset of semiosic behavior. This admits that language is an evolutionary realization to which semiosis led. Language inherits the features of semiosis in general, as developed at an evolutionary scale, which makes it “important to emphasize the centrality in biosemiotic thinking that language behavior, as a subset of semiosic behavior, inherits all the latter’s definitional properties, and that therefore it could not be otherwise that sign behavior of all sorts is grounded in situated, instantiated actions at all points—just as both Charles S. Peirce and Jakob von Uexküll each independently observed, approximately 100 years ago.” (Favareau and Kull 2015: 14, see also in Cobley 2016: 30) As such, biosemiotics is detached from three mainstream competing views on language, namely (1) the view that language has nothing to do with hard, objective reality, being a purely conventional “chatter”, (2) that language consists in grammatical constructions imposed upon formal models and (3) that language is a species-specific cerebral capacity (see Cobley 2016: 30).

5.2 The Symbolic Species Debate and Its Consequences for Multiculturalism It took a couple of decades for biosemiotics, since its emergence on the academic stage, to explicitly address culture. This delay is partly due to the scholarly established topics of certain semiotic schools. Cultural semiotics (see Posner 2004) and sociosemiotics (Randviir and Cobley in Cobley 2010b: 118–134) have mostly been developed in the structuralist and poststructuralist vein of semiotics. These schools are contrasted with Peircean semiotics in ways similar to sociolinguistics, and in a historical process, they have assumed an anthropocentric position by discussing meaning as a characteristic of human culture. In this regard, they are particularly contrasted with biosemiotics. The roots of the established semiotic approaches to culture are found in the anthropocentric idea that only human culture makes use of symbolic forms. The landmark scholar to have entrenched the idea of humanity as a symbolic species was Cassirer (1944). Cassirer distinguished between signs, as widely used in the animal world, and symbols, as specific to humans. Symbols, in this view, appear as complex and particular signs, a distinction echoing the Saussurean binary distinctions. This is contrasted to trinary sign classifications, such as, most prominently, Peirce’s classification, which constitutes the backbone of biosemiotics: The binary classification of signs (in the generic sense) into subjective symptoms and objective signs (in the specific sense) is only one of many. Cassirer, for example, had a considerably different binary classification, signs and symbols, the latter being a characteristic only of humans. The most widely accepted classification today, however, is not binary but one based

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5 Biosemiotic Multiculturalism on a trinary principle, established by Peirce. Peirce’s classification is complex and has many far-reaching ramifications, but it is rooted in a three-way distinction between icon and index, with both opposed to symbol, all of which are really different facets of one generic sign. (Sebeok 1991: 24)

The assumption that humans are differentiated to other animals by their use of symbols has been, thus, disseminated in many branches of semiotics. However, in biosemiotics this thesis reveals a more detailed criticism, with subtler borders between signification types. Peirce himself did not attribute symbols to humans only. On the contrary, he seemed to consider that the general, logical modelling capacities of humans are more spread along biological evolution: Look at the little birds, of which all species are so nearly identical in their physique, and yet what various forms of genius do they not display in modelling their nests? This would be impossible unless the ideas that are naturally predominant in their minds were true. It would be too contrary to analogy to suppose that similar gifts were wanting to man. Nor does the proof stop here. The history of science, especially the early history of modern science […] completes the proof by showing how few were the guesses that men of surpassing genius had to make before they rightly guessed the laws of nature. (CP 5.604)

In this text, Peirce was referring to abduction, the logical operation of advancing hypotheses. His point was that intuitive guesses are often close to being true or, at least, a right starting point for further, even scientific inquiries, because of biologically developed modelling capacities. As such, it is pragmatically recommended to act in accordance to intuitions, rather than to doubt. Of course, in abduction, signification is not predominantly symbolic, but rather iconic, mostly pertaining to Peirce’s category of Firstness. Thus, in view of the Sebeokean modelling theory, Peirce here accounted for birds building nests as a primary level modelling capacity. The discussions in biosemiotics on symbol use in the biosphere prove more caution than, say, cultural studies or discursive theories because Peirce’s sign taxonomy does not come down to the icon-index-symbol triad merely, but is grounded in his three phenomenological categories, which endorse several trichotomies of signs (see Table 5.1). Thus, features of symbols, which an index might not have, are shared in other sign types, which are less complex than an index in some regards but more complex in other regards. An example for this is the legisign sign type which, while it does not suppose such a concrete relation to actual existence as indexes and, implicitly, symbols, it nevertheless represents its representamen in a general, rather

Table 5.1 Peirce’s trichotomies of sign types

Category of relation

Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

Firstness

Qualisign

Icon

Rheme (predicate)

Secondness

Sinsign

Index

Dicisign (proposition)

Thirdness

Legisign

Symbol

Argument

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habitual, way. Another such example is constituted by rhemes, signs that are predicates. Rhemes, as well, do not show a causal existential relation to their object, but are qualitatively descriptive of the sign’s conclusion. Thus, particularly in view of legisigns, many meaning phenomena in the non-human (parts of the) zoosphere could be accounted for as habitual, for instance ritualistic, without necessarily being symbolic. The discussion, however, is rather complex and the hypothesis that non-human animals make proper use of symbols must still be considered (e.g. Martinelli 2010: 72, Stjernfelt 2014: 162–177, 296–299). Interestingly, yet not entirely surprising, given his criticism of the Homo symbolicus hypothesis, on some occasions Sebeok himself attributed symbol use to non-human animals. In the development of zoosemiotics, Martinelli points out to this criticism in Sebeok (1990: 42–43): The concept of symbolicness has been for many years […] defined as “the ultimate sign of human distinction”, that is, a concept (and a consequent mental/interactive capacity) of which only humans were claimed to be capable. As with many other anthropocentric barriers, this one too met its unavoidable fate. As symbolicness is primarily a semiotic concept, it is no wonder that it has been up to a semiotician, Thomas Sebeok, to set the record straight […]. (Martinelli 2010: 72)

In this regard, Martinelli cites Sebeok that: The fondly cherished mythic characterization of man, adhered to by E. Cassirer’s epigones and many others, as a unique, animal-Symbolicum can be sustained only if the definition of ‘symbol’ is impermissibly ensnared with the concept of natural language […]. By every other definition—invoking the principle of arbitrariness, the idea of a conventional link between a signifier and its denotata, Peirce’s ‘imputed character’, or the notion of an intentional class for the designatum—animals demonstrably employ symbols. (Sebeok 1990: 42, see also in Martinelli 2010: 72)

Martinelli’s argument comes down to the observation that, compared to humans, organisms of rather simple biology and cognitive apparatus, show complex social behavior, inherent of ritualization and habits. As he points out, Sebeok did not refrain to recognize symbol-use in the cases of the sexual rituals of dipterans of the Empididae family and in the dance of honeybees. However, in light of the state of affairs of the current debate on symbolism in the animal world, whether these are proper symbols in the Peircean sense is less important. Deacon (1997, 2012) has led this debate, making the case for humanity as the symbolic species, in a comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective, using Peirce’s semiotic triad of the icon-index-symbol. However, I consider that, given Peirce’s richer classification of signs, particularly whether humans only show symbol-use strictu sensu is not necessarily revealing for what distinguishes the human species. In contextual use, the distinctions between, on the one hand, symbols and, on the other, legisigns, propositions and arguments are so vague that the discussion might be obsolete (see more below). At this stage, it is important to take note that in the cultural, social and interpretative semiotic schools the anthropocentric account of symbols was disseminated as inherited, to some extent, by the young Umberto Eco’s general theory of semiotics (1976 [1979]). These are the branches of semiotics which have been developed

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independently of a theory of biology. When interdisciplinary approaches to symbol use, such as cognitive, evolutionary and neuroscientific found it useful to draw on semiotic theories, they relied on biosemiotics, as exemplified by Deacon’s approach. Recently, as a pragmatic tendency towards a unified semiotic framework can be noticed, approaches to sociosemiotics emerged (i.e. Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Kress 2010) which are, arguably, more compatible with biosemiotics. This can be observed, for instance, in the mutuality of the concept of semiotic resources (Kress 2010) in sociosemiotic studies on multimodality and that of semiotic competence (Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006), explaining organisms’ capability of constructing Umwelten. Arguably, this is due to the shared interest for communication, as biosemiotics itself came to be developed as a theory of modeling on account of the concepts shared between biology and communication studies (Sebeok 1991: 23; Stjernfelt 2007: 197). It is noteworthy that while most semiotic approaches to communication have rightly criticized classical information theory (e.g. Shannon and Weaver 1964) for being hermeneutically rigid (see Fiske 1990: 40–46), biosemiotics tended not to dismiss the terminology of information theory, but to add to such concepts a more comprehensive load. This is, first of all, possible due to the semiotic notions of sign and semiosis. In the biosemiotic perspective, like in semiotics in general, a message is not merely a package of information that one can unpack and, thus, by decoding it, derive information expressed in a set of raw data which are not open to subjective and contextual interpretation. Sebeok, simply but much more comprehensively, stated that “A message is a sign, or consists of a string of signs.” (1991: 23). In addition, following the premises of information theory, Sebeok states that the inception of a message “can be pictured as in a box, designated the source” (1991: 23). Nevertheless, here as well, he made a critical addition that changes the meaning of these concepts, namely that: The source box is nothing more than a formal model used for facilitating the comprehension of hypothetical constructs: given a certain input, one must, more or less, guess at what takes place to account for the output. (1991: 25)

By regarding the coding of messages as a matter of formal modelling, Sebeok implies that communication processes are bound to what can now be termed semiotic competences (see Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006), in accordance with Gibson’s theory of affordance (e.g. 2014 [1979], see above) and with the discussion on competence in the semiotic approach to education (Pikkarainen 2014, see above). To put it briefly, by taking into account the complexity of life, in a biological sense, as the starting point of communication, cybernetic notions beget a hermeneutical dimension. This is clearly seen in Sebeok’s conclusion that […] communication is that criterial attribute of life which retards the disorganizing effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; that is, communication tends to decrease entropy locally. In the broadest way, communication can be regarded as the transmission of any influence from one part of a living system to another part, thus producing change. It is messages that are being transmitted. (1991: 22)

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Sebeok’s argument revolves around the foundational idea for biosemiotics that exosemiosis is a further development of endosemiosis. This is to say that as an organism communicates within itself, it has acquired the competence of communicating to other organisms outside itself, as well. This is the starting point of biosemiotics, which should seek, according to Stjernfelt, to establish the concept of sign as the basic concept for biological science, without falling into vitalism: The semiotic metaphors abundantly used by the biology of our day have often been noticed: ‘genetic information’, ‘messenger-RNA’, ‘DNA code’ etc. pointing to the semiotic role of certain entities in a goal-oriented process and thus bearing witness to the indispensability of the teleological or intentional concepts even at the most tiny orders of magnitude in biology. Now, the introduction of biosemiotics is an attempt to take this mass import of metaphors seriously without on the other hand falling prey to vitalist excesses. Such recurring expressions must be a sign that biology is basically a semiotic science and that it – pace Kant – will never get rid of its semiotic vocabulary. Thus, the basic idea of biosemiotics is to establish the sign as a primitive concept in biology, and something like a Bohrian complementarity seems to appear: no matter how thorough a purely biochemical description of biological processes might become, it seems it will still be lacking the intentional understanding conveyed by the semiotic concepts or metaphors – and, probably, vice versa, semiotics needs the biochemical underpinning before becoming real biosemiotics. (Stjernfelt 2007: 197–198)

The extreme opposite to vitalism that also presents an epistemological danger would be a rigid cybernetic theory that treats communication in a positivistic manner. Avoiding this position, however, does not require as much care, as long as the biosemiotic program remains mindful that “biology cannot be reduced to mechanistic physics” (Stjernfelt 2007: 197). The production of speech is surprisingly similar to the transmission of, for example, genetic code. That human beings, as well as other species, communicate, as it where, from one “box” to another requires some presumptions that semiotics avoids to start with: (1) the solipsistic understanding of the individual organism as a “box”, (2) of knowledge as quantifiable and, therefore, (3) as perfectly possible to codify without altering it. Thus, one of the reasons for which multicultural theory, as well as any theory of culture, supposes a biological theory is because communication theory requires a biological theory. The purpose of endosemiosis is (often) the same with that of exosemiosis, namely cooperation. Cooperation is essential for survival, either of the individual organism or of the species, and, inseparably related to survival in the case of complex organisms, is a more complex state of wellbeing. For this reason, Cobley finds the concept of endosemiosis of foundational importance for a theory of culture. Since semiotics, in its biological theorization, seems to be the only theory of potential cultural criticism, to provide such a concept that is comprehensive of both intra- and extra-organism communication, pointing to Deacon’s theory of consciousness, he argues that: Not only is endosemiosis, as a concept, less common than it ought to be, but its role in the formation of the self that Deacon shows to be indispensable in the growth of life struggles to get on the agenda of considerations of either sociality or cultural production. (Cobley 2016: 6)

The recent uptake of the concept of competence in the semiotic approach to education (Pikkarainen 2014) shows very similar considerations. Competence is one of the

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classic common interests of semiotics and, as Pikkarainen explains (2014: 622) educational philosophy and theory. As in biosemiotics, in an educational regard, semiotics discusses competence as a communicational but not instructional phenomenon. Here as well, it is revealed how in its approach to knowledge as meaning, semiotics implicitly takes an ecological position in what regards learning, aligned with Gibson’s theory of affordances (2014 [1979], see the previous section). Pikkarainen dismisses the spread educational perspective on competence as a product of the educational process. He is particularly critical of the term product, suggestive of cybernetic undertones. The discussion of competence as a product of education is inherent of ideological assumptions, as observed in the various other themes that it implicitly addresses: Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—there are deep problems and discrepancies in the definition of the concept of competence and its relationships to relative concepts like qualification, competency, attribute, skill, ability, capability, knowledge, attitude, value, etc. Also, the theoretical and ideological contents of the concept’s use have been an object of criticism. (Pikkarainen 2014: 622)

The semiotic take, according to Pikkarainen, is, like the biosemiotic one, aware of the intimately hermeneutic phenomenon of knowledge acquisition, unlike the cybernetic approach. This semiotic discussion on competence, however, does not mystify the concept in metaphysical speculations, which would slip into gnostic relativism. Rather, semiotic criticism reveals the danger posed by the trivializing of the notion of competence, in an ideological framing of education, namely the acceptance of mechanistic and rigidly instrumental accounts of knowledge and interpretation, because the possible usefulness of the concept of competence lies more in the analytical understanding and not, at least not directly, in the detailed measurement of the product of education. The promise of the semiotics of education lies in its possibility to help in understanding the meanings of education and educational action as meaningmediated meaning-making. The concept of competence is central in understanding all action and thus an essential but neglected part of any viable theory of action. (Pikkarainen 2014: 622) Thus, as endorsed by these social, biological and educational semiotic theories, the transmission of messages cannot be reduced to an isolated and mechanical, bilateral exchange. Instead, it involves a complex hermeneutics that gives biological organisms existential bearing. It is notable that Pikkarainen’s argument suggests the exploration of competence regardless of structures classically considered symbolic, such as attitudes and values. Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen comments that one of the most valuable novelties of Peirce’s semiotics, for philosophy in general, stands in its revealing of “the possibility of the immanent dialogical or communicational character of logic” (2006: 53). It is in this basic hypothesis of biosemiotics, inherited from Peirce, that the key to a biosemiotic theory of culture which essentially avoids culturalism is found. Communication is a criterial attribute of life, accounting for the inner plurality of organisms, due to endosemiosic phenomena, and for the inner plurality of culture(s). In this perspective, no semiosic (strict) thresholds can be drawn between cultures

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within a society (or community). Culture is inherently pluralistic as the communication of life forms is inevitable. However, if cultural phenomena can only be pluralist because biological phenomena are pluralist, it does not mean that culture also inherits a life of its own, greater than that of biological organisms, in a vitalist sense. Neither does it mean that we can ignore the possibility of the emergence of censorship and dictatorship or the circumstantial willingness of one population to wipe out another population, instead of the arguably more pragmatic option of cooperation. Rather, biosemiotics undermines the supposed importance and role of cultural identity. It is by means of fabricating the sense of cultural (or national) identity that neighbors become aware of the other’s otherness as a reason and justification for conflict. All of this supports biosemiotics’ biocentrism as a rather adequate platform for cultural tolerance than the anthropocentrism of some cultural and anthropological studies. As well, such biocentrism does not endorse vitalism: if culture is studied in the interrogation of modelling, the same as life, and if semiosis is continuous along biological existence, it does not imply that culture behaves like biological organisms, but only that life is a prerequisite of culture, and culture is an evolutionary consequence of life’s criterial attribute of communication. These critical arguments in biosemiotics notwithstanding, scholarship is still required to bridge certain gaps and address matters of epistemological compatibility between biosemiotics, cultural semiotics (as well as cultural studies in general) and communication theory. Sebeok pointed out that a source of much confusion in what regards the use of symbols and the specifics of human animals is that the central place that verbal, linguistic expression has in human societies obscured the importance of nonverbal communicative expressions, which are much more spread not only in the zoosphere and biosphere, but in humans particularly too: The human’s rich repertoire of nonverbal messages by sharp contrast with language never constituted a unified field of study, and therefore lacks a positive integrative label. What all nonverbal messages have in common is merely that they are not linguistic. This negative delineation has led to terminological chaos in the sciences of communication, which is manifoldly compounded when the multifarious message systems employed by the millions of species of languageless creatures, as well the communicative processes inside organisms, are additionally taken into account. (Sebeok 1991: 23)

Biosemiotics itself is not entirely spared by the symbolic animal hypothesis, as ultimately, the articulated language of human beings is thoroughly symbolic. This is probably the main reason for which the linguistic turn appeared very alluring: once natural evolution theory has become unavoidable, philosophy had to explain the chimaera-like concept of mind in light of everything that natural evolution entails: genetic, cognitive and neurological evolution, human migration, and so on. The first such philosophical attempt, the linguistic turn, fell for the temptation of considering human linguistic communication altogether conventional, supporting a notion of symbol (e.g. Cassirer 1944), on some accounts even of sign (e.g. Eco 1976 [1979]), as (purely) conventional. The linguistic turn, then, consisted in the reasoning chain that (1) since abstract convention in the form of linguistic articulation is the distinctive feature of humans then (2) mind and, consequently, culture, are linguistic structures, which means that (3) all sociocultural reality is conventional.

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Thus, biosemiotics as well did not altogether avoid the problematization of humans as distinguished by their use of symbols, but the debate here is much subtler. This topic started to be explicitly discussed in biosemiotics once with Terrence Deacon’s book (1997) The Symbolic Species. Deacon, by accommodating semiotics with a neurological and anthropological framework, developed a theory of evolution, comprehensive of various classic theories such as Baldwinian, Larmarckian and Darwinian. Consequently, Deacon uses Peirce’s semiotics, particularly the Peircean icon-index-symbol trichotomy as a semiotic theoretical support. Peirce’s taxonomy of signs fits very well this framework, as Peirce developed his semiotics in view of a teleological phenomenology of sign evolution. By his most famous icon-indexsymbol trichotomy, Peirce posits that habitual signification, which contains a degree of conventionality, rests upon signification necessarily consisting in actual connection which rests, in turn, on signification due to accidental similarity. Thus, to begin with, the biosemiotic position on symbol use excludes the possibility of purely conventional signification. Abstractions and conventions, in this view, while proved useful, given the pragmatic purposefulness of semiosis can only be used on ground of more basic semiotic competences of organisms of using indexes and icons. This means that conventionality is either impossible or useless unless it is nested in actually existing connections and similarities. This is the starting point for the biosemiotic view on language. The discussion has become more precise since, as, for instance, Stjernfelt criticizes the idea that pure icons and then indexes are chronologically manifested in evolution for semiosis to arrive at symbolic structures only in a late stage, in very complex organisms, namely in primates, and fully assumed into a symbolic modelling system by humans (Stjernfelt in Schilhab et al. 2012: 39–63). Ultimately, Stjernfelt’s resolve is that organic evolution and semiotic evolution do not parallel each other, growing in complexity together but, instead more evolved species acquire more semiotic competences and, therefore, freedom, by gaining a more refined access to distinguishing among meaning phenomena (Stjernfelt 2014). What more biologically complex organisms discover is not more complex signs, but the more refined divisions of experienced signs allows for a more complex semiotic compositional design. Stjernfelt finds that propositional structures, the Peircean dicisign, is a pivotal sign type in navigating the physiology of arguments (Stjernfelt 2014). It is insightful to note, at this stage, that Stjernfelt’s interrogation of human cognition draws on sign types, such as the dicisign, that do not belong to the iconindex-symbol trichotomy, Thus, this more subtle analysis of symbol use is possible by making use of Peirce’s fine-grained sign taxonomy in its entirety. This observation leads Stjernfelt to: …the fact that semiotic evolution should not be seen as going from the simple to the complex in terms of beginning with atomic signs which later serve as building blocks for more complex signs. The process from simple to complex should be conceived of in a non-compositional way: the overall semiotic argument process structure is there from the metabolic beginning – and semiotic evolution rather takes the shape of the ongoing subdivision, articulation, and sophistication of primitive signs, an ongoing refinement of parts and aspects acquiring still more autonomy. Hence, on this view, semiotic compositionality rather forms an important achievement than it forms the starting principle: the ongoing autonomization of parts and aspects of Dicisigns and their combinations may make them more and more compositional –

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resulting in a growth of combination possibilities and hence increasing cognitive plasticity. Such segmentation of the argument process thus constitutes the overall shape of the increase in “semiotic freedom” during evolution, highlighted by Hoffmeyer (2010). (Stjernfelt in Schilhab et al. 2012: 47)

Thus, the development of cognitive capacities results in the acquisition of higher degrees of semiotic freedom by facilitating more sophisticated means for the segmentation of arguments. Without further scrutinizing the discussion in biosemiotics on the emergence of symbol use here, it occurs that such an approach to culture can avoid anthropocentrism and glottocentrism by aligning natural evolution and cultural learning on a wide spectrum of modelling: So as to the “cognitive field” as a whole, Peirce articulates a broad conception of cognition, not defined in opposition to perception, not presupposing language nor consciousness, which has the character of generalised inferences between generalised propositions called Dicisigns. As endemic to pragmatism, this conception is inimical to hypostasized dualisms often pervading the cognitive field: subject/object, sign/perception, image/language, animal/human, proposition/non-conceptual content - many of which are even often coupled on top of one another to large lumps of presuppositions such as that of man and animal differing so that man only has the privileges of objects, signs, language, propositions… Not that Peirce’s doctrine lacks distinction; anti-Cartesianist as he is, however, he avoids taking such distinctions to refer to nicely separated ontological realms which invariably lead to artificial conceptual problems of how to reconnect again what was once cut apart - rather reality is taken to display continuous transformation and intermediary forms between the phenomena distinguished. (Stjernfelt 2014: 6–7)

It is a similar argument, in Stjernfelt’s view, that caused Umberto Eco’s conversion to a semiotic theory more accepting of primary, prelinguistic and pre-cultural modelling occurring by cognitive types (CT) (1997) than his original general theory (1976 [1979]). However, Eco’s theory is not inclined to draw on iconic signification as an explanation, and thus, adopt a mereological analysis method, but on typicality of a more basic semiotic kind than symbolic, such as manifest in legisigns: The CT, even if subject to ongoing trial-and-error negotiations, has the property of being a perceptual type, hence pre-linguistic, and hence safe from all semiotic doubt, cultural relativism, etc. True, different cultures will form different CTs, but as a rule not entirely different – they will still be constrained by certain ‘lines of resistance’ as it is called in Eco’s weak ontology. Its main function is to facilitate the recognition of yet-unseen tokens of its type. The important step here is that Eco succumbs to Peirce’s insistence that the generality of the symbol is not the only generality in semiotics; it is preceded by – and conditioned by – typicality, the fact that phenomena tokens are organized in types before symbolicity and linguistic categorization further organize them. However, the CT is, due to its perceptual status, pri-vate, so how do we guarantee that a CT is in fact present? – only by the intersubjectively controllable detour of successful referring. If speakers pragmatically agree in referring to a phenomenon this must count as a proof of shared (or, in any case, sufficiently similar) CTs. (Stjenrfelt 2007: 69)

In this regard, Eco’s theory presents some similarities to Deacon’s symbol theory, as revised in the more comprehensive view of Peirce’s rather complex taxonomy of signs (in Schilhab et al. 2012).

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In general, in the pragmatic vein of semiotics, modelling appears not as a deconstruction, as poststructuralism might suggest, nor as a purely conventional construction, as most of 20th century philosophy, including classic constructivism might endorse, but, as the scaffolding of arguments by propositional signs and the finegrained sign typologies that these entail. Hoffmeyer’s (2008a, 2015) uptake of the constructivist concept of scaffolding in semiotics is therefore not accidental. The insights that classic socioconstructivism revealed about learning (Vygotsky 1978; Bruner 1957, 1999 [1960], 1966) are prescinded from their non-realist clauses in Hoffmeyer’s biosemiotics, leading to a comprehensive view on knowledge acquisition as semiotic discovery, occurring through semiotic competences, resulting in greater semiotic freedom. From this perspective, acculturated human beings rather possess a higher freedom of adopting aspects from various and different cultures in a pragmatic modelling purpose. Once with the growth of semiotic freedom, semiotic devices are designed for systems more and more mereologically operational, instead of holistically rigid, as cultural relativism claimed (see Chap. 1, Sect. 1.5, Chap. 2, Sect. 2.2 and Chap. 3, Sect. 3.3). Thus, instead of abstract generalizing through use of symbols, Stjernfelt proposes the cognitive-logical capacity of hypostatic abstraction as a description of human specificity (2014: 162–168). In brief, Peirce’s hypostatic abstraction consists in deducing (the singularity of) qualities from dyadic relations. For example, at the perceiving of a black wall it is hypostatically abstracted that blackness exists in the respective wall. Without going into further detail, the relevant point here is that biosemiotics allows for a plastic understanding of generality, abstraction and symbolicity, admitting species specific distinctiveness, while avoiding anthropocentrism and, also, glottocentrism, which is often linked to the symbolic species thesis. All of these considered, biosemiotic modelling theory accounts for a mereological theory of culture, wherein cultures are inner pluralistic, and their components have relative independence from the whole. As such, since cultural structures can be inherited from one culture to another, neither can cultures be clearly and strictly be separated one from the other. As Cobley observes, Sebeok’s semiotic notion of environment, Umwelt, as inherited from von Uexküll is best translated into English as model (Cobley 2016: 7). In Sebeok’s words, “All organisms communicate by use of models (umwelts, or self-worlds, each according to its species-specific sense organs), from the simplest representations of manoeuvres of approach and withdrawal to the most sophisticated cosmic theories of Newton and Einstein.” (Sebeok 2001: 23) In this view, the biosemiotic approach to cross-cultural communication largely coincides with ecosemiotics (Nöth 1998; Kull 1998, 2008). Biosemiotics is also compatible in most ways with the semiotic framework of education (see Gough and Stables 2012; Olteanu 2015), termed edusemiotics (Semetsky 2010; Stables and Semetsky 2015). The edusemiotic framework also underpins a construal of learning as coextensive with living, liberated from the narrower scope of pedagogy and educational sciences. This account of learning recommends regarding intercultural communication as a learning phenomenon. From this semiotic perspective on learning, the framing of diversity as unavoidably generating conflict misses the main consequence of diversity, namely that it is

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a prerequisite for the possibility of communication and a catalyst for learning. This holds true not only in human societies, but everywhere in nature, because everywhere in nature communication phenomena are manifest. Certainly, the many historical examples of cultural, religious or ethnic conflicts should not be ignored in an inquiry on communication across cultures. Diversity generates conflict because communication itself consists in a tension, and not because of a specific characteristic of diversity underpinning conflict. Communication always implies learning, to some extent. Learning never ceases. It is potentially infinite because the generation of signification is infinite. That signification is infinite is one of the main thesis of Charles Peirce (CP 5.484, CP 2.92), crucial for the development of semiotic theory. Interlocutors always learn something in an act of communication because the knowledge of two different knowing subjects can never coincide. Even in the simplest dialogue, such as when I ask a friend what time it is, learning is manifest. Besides the discovery of obvious information, such as finding out what time it is, there are profound learning phenomena involved in any communicational act. For instance, through this interaction the idiolect that me and my friend communicate by is evolving. Also, perhaps, we learn how much or in what ways we can trust (or mistrust) each other. In Peirce’s view, that reasoning is generally infinite, as it always involves more reasoning, is the answer to the paradox of learning, namely how it is possible to learn, since learning involves acquiring knowledge about the unknown? This is, as well, the Peircean answer to multicultural situations. Peirce’s solution is based on the idea that similarity experientially bridges the known and the unknown, which he answers by recurrence to the three categories: Thus, every reasoning involves another reasoning, which in its turn involves another, and so on ad infinitum. Every reasoning connects something that has just been learned with knowledge already acquired so that we thereby learn what has been unknown. It is thus that the present is so welded to what is just past as to render what is just coming about inevitable. The consciousness of the present, as the boundary between past and future, involves them both. Reasoning is a new experience which involves something old and something hitherto unknown. The past as above remarked is the ego. My recent past is my uppermost ego; my distant past is my more generalized ego. The past of the community is our ego. In attributing a flow of time to unknown events we impute a quasi-ego to the universe. The present is the immediate representation we are just learning that brings the future, or nonego, to be assimilated into the ego. It is thus seen that learning, or representation, is the third Kainopythagorean category. (CP 7.536)

As in Deacon’s discussion on sign types and symbol use, Peirce’s semiotics implies a theory of evolution. This, as well, must be considered in view of an approach to culture: In biosemiotics, Peirce provides an evolutionary philosophy, a cosmology and a sustained consideration of purpose, causation and finality (see, for example, Hoffmeyer 2008a, b). (Cobley 2016: 40)

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5.3 Peircean Categories and Evolution The cornerstone of Peirce’s theory of evolution is a bold claim about cooperation and, even more so, a strong advocacy for altruism. This is a principle properly manifested in the Third category, namely the category of mediation and of logical types: Logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. They must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community […]. This community, again, must not be limited, but must extend to all races of beings with whom we can come into immediate or mediate intellectual relation. It must reach, however vaguely, beyond this geological epoch, beyond all bounds. He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the world, is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the social principle. (CP 2.654)

This is to say that the logical apodosis of (endo)semiosis consists in social cooperation. From this perspective, racism, nationalism and culturalism are obvious logical errors that would “block the way of inquiry” (CP 1.135), to use a celebrated Peircean phrase. Refusing social cooperation looks very much like the contemporary pointless (non-pragmatic) rhetoric which is contemporary known as populism: When society is broken into bands, now warring, now allied, now for a time subordinated one to another, man loses his conceptions of truth and of reason. If he sees one man assert what another denies, he will, if he is concerned, choose his side and set to work by all means in his power to silence his adversaries. The truth for him is that for which he fights. (CP 1.59)

Peirce termed the principle of altruistic sacrifice agapism, using the Greek etymological root of referring to selfless love (CP 6.302). Self-centered isolation does not preserve diversity, as the politics of recognition would have it (e.g., Taylor et al. 1994), give its inheritance of the (post)structuralist construal of system and the relativist concept of culture. When he prescribed that the “first rule of reason” is the expression “Do not block the way of inquiry”, Peirce was explicit that learning and the desire to learn imply looking outside oneself: in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think. (CP 1.135)

Thus, in this view, preserving a certain state of cultures and their supposedly corresponding identities by isolating them blocks learning. To the evolutionary doctrine based on the principle of self-sacrificial love, Peirce referred to as agapasm (see also James 2008 [1909]: 163 and the discussion in Chap. 4, Sect. 4.1). He described agapism as the movement of love or, as altruism is often referred to, the Golden Rule (see also Olteanu 2015: 211): The movement of love is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony. This seems complicated when stated so; but it is fully summed up in the simple formula we call the Golden Rule. This does not, of course, say, Do everything possible to gratify the egoistic impulses of others, but it says, Sacrifice your own perfection to the perfectionment of your neighbor. Nor must it for a moment be confounded with the Benthamite, or Helvetian, or Beccarian motto, Act for the greatest good

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of the greatest number. Love is not directed to abstractions but to persons; not to persons we do not know, nor to numbers of people, but to our own dear ones, our family and neighbors. “Our neighbor,” we remember, is one whom we live near, not locally perhaps but in life and feeling. (CP 6.288)

Our neighbour, in the purpose of the present inquiry, can be understood as the culturally different. With the doctrine of agapasm Peirce offers, besides a full-blown theory of evolution of meaning, a shortcut to what a theory of multiculturalism, in his view, should be based and focused on. In this view, genuine care, even love, for the culturally different is intelligent semiosic behavior that allows for the development of arguments by the creative use of cross-cultural coupling of meaning structures. To lack such semiotic competence is a critical limitation. As a result of cross-cultural communication, the interlocutors gain competences for the composition of sign-relations of higher degrees of freedom and, as such, more operational. The mereological and anti-culturalist underpinning of this theory is straightforward as it construes the resistance towards such cooperation as semiotic impoverishment. That cooperation is possible on account of mereological freedom, and inner pluralism accounts for that communication and signification can never be perfectly clear and precise, but always contain a certain degree of vagueness. As Nöth and Santaella notice (2011), if signification would not be partly vague, but everything that had to be expressed would be expressed with perfect precision, complete, as it were, there would be nothing left to discuss. Lotman observed the same, arguing that while if there is no intersection (or overlap) between the linguistic codes mastered by two interlocutors there can be no communication, “a full intersection […] renders communication insipid.” (Lotman 2009 [1964]: 5) Culturalism is largely unaware of this: if culture in its entirety strictly determines how its composing elements and the relations among them are interpreted, then there is nothing that can be discussed cross-culturally. If an act of communication would not contain any tension at all, there would be nothing to learn and, as such, communication would be impossible. Tension is, in a Peircean view, a criterion of signification in its Second Dimension, such as indexes and propositions. Thus, it corresponds to the second principle of evolution, namely necessity. Peirce termed this evolutionary principle anancasticism and its corresponding doctrine, anancasm (CP 6.302). In this view, following the principle of synechism that evolution is continuous, necessity is present in, but also transcended by agapism. Communication is possible, to begin with, because of a syntax of embodiment, which renders individuals similar, and not primarily because of differences, as supposed in the (post)structralist vein(s). Diversity, while it generates differences, primarily generates structural similarities. Identity does not evoke differences and nor does it evoke similarities. Thus, on a Peircean account, difference is not the criterion of meaning-making and of learning. Rather, it is similarity that makes discovery possible (CP 2.278, Stjernfelt 2007: 57; Olteanu 2015: 52, 55). While for Peirce similarity and difference (or dissimilarity) are, so to say, two inseparable sides of the same coin (see above Chap. 3, CP 1.567), he thought of identity as the complementary opposite of otherness (CP 1.566). Between these two pairs (which do not constitute dichotomical relations) there is a categorical difference: similarity and dissimilar-

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ity are characteristics of Firstness, while identity and otherness are characteristics of Secondness. Thus, in an evolutionary regard, identity and otherness, which are the currencies of mainstream multicultural theory (e.g. Taylor et al. 1994; Kymlicka 1995, 2001; Máiz and Requejo 2004, see Chap. 1 in the present monograph) occur by necessity. Certainly, there is an immediate need to recognize the distinction between self and other. On Stjernfelt’s account, this is simply the effect of basic logical syntax, which he terms co-localization (Stjernfelt 2014: 108–114; see also Martinelli 2010: 70 and more in Chap. 6, Sect. 6.4). By necessity, secondary modelling systems, such as native languages, reproduce the logical structure of space-time co-localization, as particularly reflected in the coupling of subjects and predicates in propositions. Similarity consists in a partial sharing of qualities, while the total sharing of qualities would be identity. From a partial overlapping of qualities stems structural similarity, the prerequisite for diagrammatic reasoning. The sharing of qualities is the implication of inhabiting overlapping phenomenal worlds. According to Stables, the overlapping of phenomenal worlds is a prerequisite for learning (Stables 2012: 49). This is another thesis shared by both the semiotic approach to education and biosemiotics. In the biosemiotic view, as explained, each organism models its own environment, according to its own species-specific and individual capabilities (Sebeok 2001: 140–146). This does not endorse a solipsistic notion of knowledge and reality. On the contrary, the understanding of environments as self-worlds accounts for their interaction and for a supra subjective phenomenality (see Deely 2001). Interactions between organisms contribute to the development of environments which phenomenally overlap according to the interactors’ possibilities to engage with and articulate meaning. The organization of a self-world is fundamental for the possibility of purposeful communication. In the self-world, structures of meaning are organized and these structures, defining an organism’s phenomenality, will be used by the organism for any comparison, that is, for any interaction with a non-self. In instances of intercultural communication, therefore, it is supposed that interlocutors are learning something that makes them more acquainted with a culture different then their own. As such, dissimilarity, as relatively contrasted to similarity, is, as well a prerequisite for learning. This contradicts the politics of recognition view on multiculturalism (Taylor et al. 1994), which stresses the importance of enforcing distinction for the purpose of preserving cultural identity. As a definition, an intercultural act of communication supposes an inquiry into a culture less familiar than the culture which the interlocutors inhabit. For this reason, the present theory is developed in view of a mereological theory of learning, namely a semiotic one, that renders similarity as accountable for the possibility of communication and learning in general and distinction as necessary for the articulation of Second sign types. Learning, at the same time, opens new possibilities for inquiry for the learner while also limiting them. However, in this mereological view, the insistence on difference in (post)structuralism-inspired multicultural theory is exaggerated. By learning, in general, organisms rather gain competences, much more than losing them. Consequently, by learning, organisms gain semiotic freedom. This means, for instance, that adaptability to cultural context is a semiotic virtue. To adapt is a smart semiosic behavior. It is true, nevertheless, as Peircean semiotics expresses as well,

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that learning contains, among other aspects, a dimension of Secondness consisting in focused signs, such as indexicality, which implies excluding certain objects from the attention of a reasoning process, in favor of others. Learning consists in shaping one’s phenomenal world and, as such, it has a degree of plasticity. In the larger scope of developing a semiotic theory of learning and education, Andrew Stables remarks that: […] while personal history enables new understanding, it also constrains it, for without such history, there can be no response at all. It is an important truth little acknowledged in educational theory that that which makes knowledge and understanding possible – our interpretive frameworks including our assumptions and prejudices – is also that which limits them. (2012: 46)

Living in a certain community and acquiring certain cultural practices shapes one’s possibilities of learning in a certain fashion. It opens up some interpretative possibilities and it limits others. Thus, by living in a certain community one might become little attuned to the concerns and particularities of a different community. This is a common sense limitation and it can be overcome when necessary, as it is a matter of learning. Circumstantiality is simply the First element in learning, and hence, in a semiotic theory of evolution. According to Peirce, learning (signification) starts by chance. This is the evolutionary principle of tychism (CP 5.602). As an example, a young child might not see the need for and the beauty of mathematical calculus, but she can certainly discover these spontaneously. To understand them in a way that facilitates their communication may take years of effort and studying, but this is no reason to abandon the pursuit (see Sebeok’s anecdotal example about Einstein in Sebeok 1991: 57 and in the present chapter of this monograph, in Sect. 5.1). Of course, there could be good reasons for abandoning, at least temporarily, a curricular subject, such as calculus. For instance, at a certain stage of her life, a person can feel a complete lack of interest for the subject, or experience interests for other subjects to the extent that she has no time to dedicate to calculus, or, for what explanation may it be, experience a psychological distress. In short, the reason for abandoning a certain study, at least temporarily, is what John Dewey described as losing one’s soul (Dewey 1997 [1938]: 49), which is aligned to the principle of agapism: if phenomenally no love is manifest, a different anancastic path can be pursued eventually. Genuine interest for other societies, communities and cultures, not merely as an intellectual curiosity, but in an agapic regard, is something that we learn. The process of learning to care about others starts by chance, proceeds, in various ways, by necessity, because drawing distinctions is necessary for survival and continues agapically, as the apodosis of semiosis is manifest in altruism, the best principle of social organization.

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Chapter 6

An Embodied Approach to Intercultural Communication

Abstract The main stake for a semiotic theory of multiculturalism consists in understanding communication in cross- and inter-cultural contexts. This chapter explains how the semiotic approach to multiculturalism, as developed in this book, questions the main lines of argumentation in intercultural communication theories. The first observation is that, in view of an embodied and multimodal construal of meaning, no communicational instance can be labelled as non-intercultural, just like no particular translation can be monomodal. This hypothesis is pursued on account of the argument that an embodied notion of meaning implies that organisms’ modelling of environments is a process of design, wherein resources are used according to competences. Such design loops lead to new competences, which make possible the discovery of new resources and, thus, the acquisition of higher degrees of semiotic freedom. The concept of text here becomes useful as it allows for an exploration of modelling as morphological, in conjunction with insights from typographic design. From this unified semiotic perspective, every communicational act supposes a translation, which is always multimodal. The implications of regarding higher degrees of inter-culturality in communication as corresponding to higher degrees of multimodality are explored.

6.1 Semiotic Body, Semiotic Text and Semiotic Culture In previous chapters (see particularly Chap. 2, Sect. 2.2), I explained that the notion of text as the main tool for cultural analysis has mostly been thought of as disembodied, underpinning a Cartesian, purely mental construal of meaning (for a discussion on the distinction between text and model semiotics see Chap. 2, Sect. 2.2). This idea, entrenched in the linguistic turn, is rooted in de Saussure’s distinction between language (langue) and speech (parole) and, as well, from the resulting distinction between speech and writing as different systems of signs. For a biosemiotic criticism of multiculturalism and a corresponding model of intercultural communication, a non-dualist concept of text or modelling is required. The language/speech distinction leads to other Cartesianesque dichotomies, expressed not in terms of mental structures, as typical of post-Cartesianism, but in terms of social and linguistic structures: © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Olteanu, Multiculturalism as Multimodal Communication, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17883-3_6

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In separating language from speaking we are at the same time separating: (1) what is social from what is individual; and (2) what is essential from what is accessory and more or less accidental. (de Saussure 1959 [1916]: 14)

Cobley recommends that, in its approach to culture, to abide to its synechistic principle of pragmatism, biosemiotics must avoid this typically modern dichotomy (2016: xii, 22, 45, 57, 56). Such a dichotomy that isolates the individual from and within the community is, I argue, non-agapic. Regarding language as an a priori category of human knowledge is the fundamental assumption of the linguistic turn. It endorses an ideological view on language and its defining role for culture and, in some cases, cognition. A non-dualist, non-essentialist and non-ideological approach to culture should collapse the dichotomy between language and speaking. Biosemiotics, following the principle of synechism, eliminates this distinction by its embodied account of meaning: meaning is always embodied in some form. An insightful observation is that both writing and oral speech are competences of the body. Speech and writing do not merely represent the superimposed system that is language. Neither does writing represent speech. Rather, writing and speaking are modalities that embody meaning. We speak and write by using our bodies. The means used in speaking, writing or any form of communication are, according to Elleström, “technical media of distribution of sensory configurations” (2018: 285), which participate in the production of a media product, as the intermediate stage of a communicative act, which makes transfer (of information and meaning) possible. While some parts of the body are directly used in the act of writing, such as fingers, arms and eyes, the whole of the body participates in the act. This holistic participation of the body is, nonetheless, diagrammatic: composing parts of the body participate each in their own functionality, thus building up the body’s communicational affordances. The recent advancements in biosemiotics theory inevitably led to the development of a semiotic concept of the body (Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006; Hoffmeyer 2008b). Such a concept should free a construal of meaning from the supposed arbitrariness of Saussurean sign systems and, instead, create root meaning in the body. Stjernfelt considers that in the (post)structuralist view, “the body concept would be conceived of as subjected to the free arbitrariness of semiotic systems—and no special attention would be paid to the body as a crucial prerequisite of semiotic articulation.” (Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006: 14) A disembodied notion of meaning, subject to absolute arbitrariness results in a relativist view of meaning, where the morphological aspect is ignored. This is mutual with the signifier/signified dichotomy, that is, the separation of meaning and its form. Thus, Stjernfelt explains that: What is called for is a concept of the body which, in itself, makes evident the basic semiotic competences of an organism, i.e., a body concept which entails semiotics. It is to be expected, naturally, that this will give rise to a more fine-grained typology of bodies depending on how complicated and sophisticated semiotic behavior the organism in question is able to indulge itself in. (in Nöth 2006: 14)

From a text semiotics perspective, reading and writing, namely the operations performed on texts, are the semiotic behaviors behind cultural production. In consideration of the semiotic account of the body, these human capabilities have to be

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conceptualized as embodied. However, the simple observation that interpretation is embodied has been ignored in many of the late modern theories of language and representation. In general, cultural studies and most of the established textual semiotic approaches to culture dissociated text and its morphology (discussed above, see Chap. 2, Sect. 2.2). To refer to the morphology of a text, I shall use the term typography. The semiotic notion of the body implies a semiotic, that is, non-dualist tool, for discussing culture. For this purpose, the concept of text should be expanded to encompass the materiality of signification, as per Elleström’s argument that, in communication, “the intermediate entity connecting two minds with each other is always in some way material, although it clearly cannot be conceptualized only in terms of materiality.” (2018: 280) This is what recommends a biosemiotic approach to writing morphology, that is, to typography. From a biosemiotic perspective, the concept of text is necessarily typographic, in the sense that text is a design, not only a dyadic articulation. Developing a typography of signification, as more specific than a typology of signification, is a step towards unifying biosemiotics and the recent social semiotic approaches to multimodality (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Kress 2010), given the former’s program of a “fine-grained typology of bodies” (Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006: 14) and the latter’s interest for design. To this purpose, not only the semiotic concept of text but also the aesthetic concern of typography should undergo refinement. In accordance to Elleström’s remark, text cannot be conceived as purely mental and design cannot be conceived as purely material. In literature on design, it is assumed that text and typography are mutually implicit. For instance, Bringhurst describes typography as “a craft by which the meanings […] of a text can be clarified, honored and shared, or knowingly disguised.” (2004: 17) While the relation between text and typography is implicit here, an arbitrariness between text and typographic style is still assumed. Nevertheless, typographic design scholars, such as is the case of Bringhurst, are aware that content and morphology are inter-dependent: The typographer’s one essential task is to interpret and communicate the text. Its tone, its tempo, its logical structure, its physical size, all determine the possibilities of its typographic form. The typographer is to the text as the theatrical director to the script, or the musician to the score. (Bringhurst 2004: 20)

The production of typography is a pragmatic use of the body’s semiotic competences. The same holds true for speech. Modern culture, inherent of postCartesianism, ignored the natural ground of culture and, therefore, that embodiment is the starting-point of design. There is, nevertheless, at least one interesting example in late modernity of a non-dualist approach to design which points straight to biosemiotics. Modern constructivist architecture offered a biocentric account of design by adopting, most interestingly, precisely the theoretical biology of Jakob von Uexküll, the forefather of biosemiotics. Botar (2001) notes that Bauhaus architectural style was inherent of von Uexküll’s biologische Weltbetrachtung (biological (world) observation). As Botar explains, this connection can be explored in view of developing a “category in the history of ideas broad enough to be useful to cultural historians concerned with attitudes towards

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nature”. (2001: 593) While Botar’s concern was the interwar period, his observation can contribute to a general theory of cultural history or intellectual history, such as Deely’s (2001) project of understanding intellectual history from the point of view of contemporary semiotics. Such an endeavor has the potential to reshape the language of history of ideas towards a history of meaning dynamics. In this view, cultures are not deemed as distinct, but co-evolving by shared scaffoldings, which can be adopted from one culture to the other. Addressing the subject of writing from a biosemiotic perspective means addressing typography, as an embodied phenomenon.

6.2 Dualism and Monomodality The dualism of modern philosophy implied a paradigm of monomodal expression: if knowledge is purely ideal, not materialized, then the shaping that senses perform should be avoided as much as possible in the pursuit of knowledge. Philosophical inquiries have been conducted in the ideal of a linear linguistic expressivity, so as to favor the communication of proper ideas as purely mental. As such, a text should be as linear and plain as possible. Modern Western culture thus inherits a preference for monomodality, as Kress and van Leeuwen write: For some time now, there has been, in Western culture, a distinct preference for monomodality. The most highly valued genres of writing (literary novels, academic treatises, official documents and reports, etc.) came entirely without illustration, and had graphically uniform, dense pages of print. Paintings nearly all used the same support (canvas) and the same medium (oils), whatever their style or subject. In concert performances all musicians dressed identically and only conductor and soloists were allowed a modicum of bodily expression. The specialized theoretical and critical disciplines which developed to speak of these arts became equally monomodal: one language to speak about language (linguistics), another to speak about art (art history), yet another to speak about music (musicology), and so on, each with its own methods, its own assumptions, its own technical vocabulary, its own strengths and its own blind spots. (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 1)

To these examples, I add that the one language developed to speak about history of ideas is history of ideas: our construal of history is post-Cartesian. This evidently infuses post-Cartesianism in our cultural history and, also, in cultural criticism, as implied by the metaphorical conceptualization of culture as “software of the mind” (Hofstede et al. 2010). A post(Cartesian) account of culture and cultural evolution inevitably supposes the construal of culture in the singular, as seen in classic American anthropology. For this reason, I consider Deely’s (2001, 2009) project of a semiotic approach to history particularly relevant. While arguably incomplete still, Deely’s intention has to be considered in what is a semiotic approach to culture and to multiculturalism. Monomodal culture is the result of the effort of stripping meaning of its morphological design for the pretended purpose of achieving a clear expression of ideas undisturbed by their material embodiment. I take the following quote, as an example for manuscript research as an endeavor of history of ideas, which would considerably affect construals of culture:

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[…] because artificial things belong to the genus of substance by reason of their matter, but natural things by reason of their form, as appears from the Philosopher (Phys. ii, 1) and again from the Commentator (De anima ii). (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Suppl. IIIae 79.2)

The quotation is from Thomas Aquinas, who refers to the Philosopher, Aristotle, and to his Commentator, Ibn Rushd. In this passage, Aristotelian concepts, as handed down to scholasticism, are used to discuss matter and form. In modern scholarship there is, of course, a clear awareness that Aquinas wrote in Latin, using concepts expressed initially in classical Greek, which have reached him as translated into Latin from Arabic. Our mode of addressing language, namely linguistics, developed a by now well-established tradition of translation. Scholarship in linguistics has mostly been aware that translations and technical idiolects are an intrinsic part of the history of ideas. What this monomodal language about language does not consider is the very morphology of the media used in these series of translations and interpretations. The analysed subject does not consist only in ideas expressed in Latin via Arabic and via Greek, but it is inherent of cross- and multi-modal transductions from Ancient Greek language and script, to Arabic, Al-Andalus language and script, to Medieval Latin language and script. Each of these languages has its specific alphabet, with its specific morphology, style, technique and technology. In brief, translation is always, though to various degrees, intermedial. By acknowledging that meaning is embodied it appears naïve to assume that the designs of the manuscripts and the many transductions undertaken are irrelevant for intellectual history. If we take it to be a history of purely mental ideas, then their morphological design can be avoided, but this should raise the question as to whether a history of ideas perspective is therefore satisfying, for cultural criticism. The semiotic modelling of this history would take into account the design of ideas, or, rather, of signs, in their multimodal complexity. It would accordingly reveal new insights about cultural history. Such a project is, since recently, underway in digital humanities (e.g. Ciula and Eide 2017). This initiative is representative for the kind of social impact that the digital turn has. Digital media have made obvious the multimodal and schematic character of the human Umwelt, inclusive of culture and communication. While during modernity various schools of linguistic translation were established, no school of multimodal transduction was developed. It is only with the recent and ongoing change of media, from linear printed text to multimodal texts, that the importance of multimodality was noticed in translation studies (Pérez-González 2014). In addressing multimodality, translation studies make explicit reference to semiotics, thus admitting the linearity of the tools that linguistics so far made available for translation. For instance, multimodality is mentioned in translation studies in the context of discussions on advertising translation and always with a reference to semiotics (see Torresi in Baker and Saldanha 2009: 6–9, González in Baker and Saldanha 2009: 13–20, Stecconi in Baker and Saldanha 2009: 260–263). Particularly interesting, it is in the context of digitization and the multimodal shift that this produces that “[t]ranslation and interpreting often interact with the semiotics of the human body.” (Pérez González 2014: 122) Moreover, the semiotic approach to translation takes as a starting hypothesis the Peircean notion of semiosis (see

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Stecconi in Baker and Saldanha 2009: 261). Stecconi bases the semiotic approach to translation on Jakobson’s explanation that “the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign” (Jakobson 2000 [1959]: 232). Even more so, semiotics serves as an appropriate multimodal translation theory given that “[t]ranslation, according to Charles S. Peirce, is semiotic mediation.” (Nöth 2012, p. 279) Thus, the semiotic approach to translation implies that translation is present in any interpretative act, even when trans-linguistic translation, from one code to another, is not necessary. Actually, any understanding supposes a transduction, as it supposes a multimodal schematic model of what is apprehended. It is for this reason that acculturation always supposes translation, but not because acculturation depends to a high degree on language acquisition, as rather assumed in sociolinguistics (Regan et al. 2009: 10). In this view, intercultural communication does not appear more obscured by the need of translation than any other communicational instance. Translation studies based on non-semiotic theories of language (read mainstream linguistics) tended to ignore the cross- and multi-modal aspect of meaning. This is the reason for which Sebeok established biosemiotics as a modelling theory (1991, 2001) and for which, Elleström argues (2018, 2019), a new model of communication is currently needed. The linearity of monomodal texts, as preferred in modernity, entrenched the habit of overlooking a whole range of potential meanings and interpretations in its scholarly approach to the history of ideas by ignoring ideas’ inherent morphological embodiment. Modelling in the modern view assumes that knowledge is communicated by the transmission of mental entities—ideas—which are best transmitted monomodally. In this regard, text is stripped of typography. This is seen in Ferdinand de Saussure’s synthetic account of (modern) linguistics, through his idea of language as articulation of meaning and form. De Saussure’s distinction between signifier and signified, which allows the construal of language as a purely conventional code, rests on the assumption that form can be empty of meaning and it is up to interpreters to use form as they please. This disembodied view of meaning is justified, Stjernfelt explains, in view of a body concept “as subjected to the free arbitrariness of semiotic systems” (in Nöth 2006: 14). Of course, the fact that semiotic systems are entirely arbitrary is a Saussurean presupposition as well. The view that interpreters can use any form for any meaning is un-ecological. An Umwelt, rather, is constructed as simultaneously made possible and limited by available semiotic competencies for discovering and using semiotic resources. In this view, having a form is a metaphysical possibility and condition without which encoding would be impossible. In the (post)structuralist view, form can be void of meaning, unless we conventionally assign and, thus, encode it. For this reason, the more linear and monomodal is the signifier, the more precise is the intended signified. Design, namely the relation between and inclusive of signifier and signified, is ignored. The extreme example of this view is the situation where the stylization of typography is regarded as a change of code. The biosemiotic alternative to this is that meaning articulation is a design dependent on semiotic affordances, competences and resources.

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6.3 Double Articulation: Linguistic Cartesianism The double articulation hypothesis in linguistics, as advanced by André Martinet (1962, see also Chap. 2, Sect. 2.1 in this monograph), is an expression of modern mind/body dualism, not taking fully into account that meaning is embodied. Martinet interestingly noticed that language is an economical means of communication: thousands of possible grunts are articulated into a few dozens of phonemes, which can be further articulated into thousands of morphemes (words), which can be used in an infinity of communicative instances. According to Martinet, languages can be recognized and, thus, distinguished from one another because of double articulation: What we consider properly linguistic is what is achieved, in matters of communication, by means of the double articulation pattern: double articulation is what protects the linguistic frame against interference from outside, what makes it really independent and self-contained. (Martinet 1962: 59)

Martinet inherited de Saussure’s semiological distinction between spoken language and writing considering that the criterion for differentiating language resides in the oral articulation of speech. The idea behind Martinet’s phonetic double articulation hypothesis stems from Ferdinand de Saussure’s distinctions of form and content and of speech (parole) and language (langue). The form/content distinction parallels the Cartesian mind/body distinction. The speech/language distinction is entrenched by the double articulation hypothesis, which imposes that speech is responsible for a specifically human cognitive competence of dealing with meaning. Thus, Martinet’s functionalism inherited de Saussure’s conventionalist and anthropocentric view on language. In contrast, the biosemiotic approach to language evolution draws on Perice’s maxim of pragmatism, arguably more comprehensive than the account of language as function responding to needs. Martinet considered that double articulation describes perfectly what characterizes human language, less in contradistinction to various forms of animal communication than in contrast with human experience before it has been analysed with a view to linguistic communication. What characterizes linguistic communication and opposes it to prelinguistic groans is precisely this analysis into a number of units which, because of their vocal nature, are to be presented successively in a linear fashion. […] Monemes [these units] are the smallest segments of speech that have some meaning attached to them. According to Saussurian terminology, they are minimal ‘signs’, with two faces: signifiant and signifié. (1962: 22)

Thus, two thresholds are supposed in support of double articulation: (1) one between humans, capable of speech, and non-human animals, and (2) a second one between humans who do not speak yet, such as infants, and speaking humans. Particularly the second distinction indicates that the old psychoanalytic assumption, as found in Piaget (1959 [1926], see Chap. 2, Sect. 1.2) as well, of a capability of infants for language acquisition, is a default standard in double articulation linguistics. Alternatively, Danesi (2000) considers that the advantage of a semiotic approach to language acquisition resides precisely in ignoring how age determines cognitive

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capabilities for language learning in favor of a focus on the learning process as semiotic. Considering this, if semiotic structures that influenced the quick acquisition of a native language are repeated in the process of secondary language learning, the secondary language would be as easily acquired as the native language. This, of course, supposes replacing the stress on cognitive abilities for learning language with a focus on semiotic competences. Discussing educational contexts, Pesce (2013) makes a similar argument. He considers that by defining knowledge in a Peircean manner as “the result of semiosic processes” (2013: 766), by which interpretants are produced, communicating knowledge appears as a rhetoric design, in light of a “new metaphor of cognition” (766), where “[t]he ‘phantasm of control’ must be abandoned insofar as a sign gives rise to interpretants that are never fully determined; multimodal aspects of teaching situations become an essential issue; and […], the part played by teachers’ speech must be strongly questioned and the function of group talk reconsidered.” (766) This new metaphor of cognition, which, Pesce explains, Peirce implicitly suggested, supposes but a weak connection between cognition and language; the Sapir-Whorfian presumption. Furthermore, it also implies a rather weak limitation that culture imposes on individuals and collectives. This semiotic alternative to (psychological and sociological) pedagogy is so far underexplored. It has been, however, one of the main foci of the recent and heterogeneous framework of edusemiotics (e.g. Semetsky 2010; Stables and Semetsky 2015), within which Pesce writes as well. Martinet’s concept of double articulation is bound to Ferdinand de Saussure’s articulation of expression and content into linguistic signs, on ground of de Saussure’s idea that a system of signs (such as language) supposes “oppositions” among the signs constituting it, as Akamatsu explains: The paramount importance that the concept of “opposition” assumes in phonology as elaborated by Martinet is undeniable in the whole of phonematics but also in the relevant parts of prosody. The concept of “opposition” is fundamentally a Saussurean one – “… dans la langue il n’y a que des différences…” – and underlies a number of phonological concepts and analytical tools with which phonology operates, viz. “distinctive function”, “commutation test”, “phonological opposition”, “relevant feature”, “phoneme”, “neutralization”, “archiphoneme”, and so on. (2009: 62–63)

On this account, a sign, such as a word, is meaningful because of its opposing neighboring signs of the same language. This thesis supports a rigid understanding of code (and language) as consisting of a finite number of possible signs. Also, it endorses that language is a predominantly arbitrary system: within itself, a language might present an iconic structure as according to the relations of oppositions between its signs, but in relation to other sign systems (languages or not), a language appears arbitrary. As explained above, this is the central claim in culturalism, as perpetrated especially from post(structuralism) and sociolinguistics, with an apogee in Derrida’s différance (1976 [1974]). In this Saussurean line of thought, language and writing are distinct sign systems, as de Saussure explicitly stated:

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Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first. The linguistic object is not both the written and the spoken forms of words; the spoken forms alone constitute the object. But the spoken word is so intimately bound to its written image that the latter manages to usurp the main role. People attach even more importance to the written image of a vocal sign than to the sign itself. A similar mistake would be in thinking that more can be learned about someone by looking at his photograph than by viewing him directly. (1959 [1916]: 23–24)

On account of this distinction, form appears as a meaningless container into which meaning can be arbitrarily inserted. Contrary to de Saussure’s claim, a detective, an artist or a digital native well know that a photograph can reveal arguments that are not as easily noticed in the direct observation of the photographed object. This observation pinpoints the problems that Saussurean linguistics presents for crossmodal communication, such as often the case in digital media and, particularly, for the process of digitalization itself and for digital literacy. Instead of modelling communication in view of this semiological conceptualization of language and its implied distinction between speech and writing as different sign systems, Elleström considers that media products, namely anything that is communicated need “technical media of distribution of sensory configurations” (2018: 285) to be realized. From this point of view, speech and writing are such technical media: Technical media are material devices, either simply present in the producer’s mind’s environment or more or less crafted, that cause media products to physically manifest in the world. They are entities that have the capacity to display media products and make them available for the senses of the perceiver; they distribute sensory configurations […]. (Elleström 2018: 285)

In view of this modelling of communication, he considers “that semiotic approaches to communication based on the tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure, which downplay the role of iconicity and indexicality, have been harmful to the development of theory that also embraces non-verbal communication. Peirce’s semiotic framework is much more fruitful as it incorporates sign types that work far outside of the linguistic domain.” (Elleström 2018: 288) Arguably, that all communication implies an intermedial translation to some extent has been the cause of much confusion in both intercultural communication and cross-modal translation. Digital culture and multiculturalism are both difficult to reconcile with the implications for culture that were developed upon Saussurean linguistics. In the Saussurean view, to write is to translate from a natural, human language, into a different mode of communication, which, like oral speech consists in a set of possible morphological units, void of meaning on their own, can arbitrarily contain any meaningful content. This assumption of de Saussure’s, retained in many schools of linguistics and often present cultural studies and anthropology, is accounted for on the grounds of the prevalently monomodal expressivity of (late) modern philosophy and culture of the time. In that view, different sensory modalities meant different codes which meant different languages, which results in disregarding that morphology and syntax have meaning intrinsically. Rather, I argue, morphogenesis is a matter of design. Design, that is form-content articulation, is a possibility of embodied morphology, realized through technical media.

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6.4 Double Articulation in Semiotics In semiotics, double articulation has been discussed from a number of perspectives. In Hjelmslev (1954) and Jakobson’s (1990: 230) approaches, double articulation remains an anthropocentric cornerstone of linguistics and often semiotics. Bound to its anthropocentrism, this hypothesis also underpins a relativist knowledge theory wherein meaning stems from difference and opposition. In brief, in this view, culture is considered a codified system that determines cognition, to a large extent. This line of thought survives in Chandler’s (2002) recent semiotic account of double articulation. While Chandler is aware that semiotics regards even a phoneme as signifying, his account of articulation still shares, to a large degree, the Saussurean hypotheses that Martinet inherited as well. This has been a mainstream assumption in semiotic approaches to communication, starting with Roland Barthes’ first semiotic analysis of media products (1972 [1957]) and being properly established in media semiotics with Danesi’s reception of the opposition-based theoreticians of semiotics such as Barthes, Jakobson, Greimas (Danesi in Cobley 2010b: 142–143). However, in Danesi’s media semiotics, the concept of opposition as meaning generator arrived in a more refined form, in view of several versions of its application, such as, for instance, semantic differential, Greimas’ semiotic square, Lévi-Strauss’ set-based organization of oppositions, accepting of a spectrum of “levels and scales of opposition” (Danesi in Cobley 2010b: 143). I consider that biosemiotics, given the centrality that embodiment has for meaning-making in this regard, does not discuss meaning relative to concepts of opposition or difference. Rather, like in Stables’ semiotic refutation of philosophical Cartesianism (2012), biosemiotics discusses meaning mereologically and relatively to a conceptualization of phenomenal presence. In the purpose of developing a discursive theory in awareness of multimodally constructed culture, Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) and, more recently, in the purpose of developing a sociosemiotic theory of communication, Kress (2010: 5–8) contradict this notion of language articulation. Instead, in these instances, meaning is construed as conceived in multiple articulations occurring through semiotic resources: Where traditional linguistics had defined language as a system that worked through double articulation, where a message was an articulation as a form and as a meaning, we see multimodal texts as making meaning in multiple articulations. (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 4)

This account of multiple articulation can be supported and further explained in light of Stjernfelt’s idea of co-localization (2014: 108–114), namely the idea that colocalization (in time and space) consists in the basic syntax that allows for subjectpredicate articulation. The fact that the presence of a perceivable body is an implicit index is a central hypothesis in zoosemiotics. For instance, Martinelli notices that indexical signification “does not require complex and multi-layered mental processes […] because an index tends to require temporal presence and spatial continuity, and its encoding is strongly bound to the hic et nunc of semiosis.” (Martinelli 2010: 70) Accordingly, the basic common feature that makes modelling possible in all animals, according to

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Sebeok, stands in the competence for survival resulting from “the correct decipherment of indexical signs ceaselessly barraging their Umwelt.” (Sebeok 1997: 282, see also Kull 2003). The hic et nunc itself is articulation and it necessarily corresponds phenomenally to an organism’s capacities for modelling which imply the totality of sensoria available. As such, in the case of many species, among which, obviously, humans, the hic et nunc is multimodal. Humans cannot conceive of meaning other than multimodally. This supports Stjernfelt’s co-localization hypothesis. The hic et nunc is the only prerequisite for articulation and it is necessarily multimodal. It is the process of digitalization that recently evoked this focus on multimodality in meaning theories. The translation of texts from non-digital onto digital media reminds that the human Umwelt is multimodal. Accordingly, Danesi remarks that instead of furthering the disembodying of human culture of modernity, “the Digital Galaxy will […] bring about a reintegration of the body and the mind” (2002: 177). Here Danesi uses one of McLuhan’s expressions to refer to the social world of digital technology and its corresponding communication media. Marshall McLuhan coined the celebrated “Gutenberg Galaxy” expression to refer to the sociocultural world of humans as shaped by the printing press and its corresponding media (1962). Danesi considers that “[t]his process of re-embodiment is a result of what McLuhan (1964) called ‘re-tribalization’.” (2002: 177) The reason for which “[r]e-tribalization involves re-embodiment”, Danesi further explains is that “it engages people in faceto-face contact.” (Danesi 2002: 177) The turn to multidmodality, generated by digitalization, reverses the disembodiment implied by Cartesian dualism without merely substituting mental ideas for linguistic categories, as was the case of the linguistic turn. It may appear paradoxical, but as much as digitalization means mediation, hence thickening the layers of social representation(s), its phenomenality brings human organization in the embodied here and now. This is because digital media are akin to the human Umwelt and, thus, prove rather ecological, at least in comparison to printing and broadcasting media. This is accounted for from a bio- and cognitive semiotic perspective through Stjernfelt’s hypothesis of co-localization as basic syntax. The idea of co-localization accounts for the creative economy of language, due to our embodied semiotic competences. Particularly, as knowledge is subjectively embodied, the co-presence of two distinguishable entities results in a perceptual judgment of propositional structure. An Interpretant of a Subject-Predicate structure results where two elements, acting as Representamen and Object are together present. This account of meaning articulation differs from de Saussure and Martinet’s conventionalism, justifying that meaning articulation is not necessarily linguistic. Meaning stems from the way in which two elements relate to each other so as to imply a third. Stjernfelt explains this either by what he terms collateral information or because of the continuity of logical predicates, a central idea in Peirce’s semiotics (Stjernfelt 2014: 90–91, see also Bellucci 2013). Given the co-localization of two elements, one is used as Subject (Object of the sign) and the other as Predicate (Representamen), implying a propositional Interpretant. As such, this view does not concern languages (or codes, in general) as arbitrary to each other, but inter-connectable given their co-existence (their phenomenal over-

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lapping). The notion of co-localization, that for biological organisms phenomenal presence is meaningful, endorses that articulation is a basic semiosic phenomenon. Thus, it explains the phenomenal overlapping and translatability of simultaneously present codes. Therefore, languages are inter-translatable, because they share ecological relations, and not because of the positivist stance that they refer to in the same empirically objective reality. Certainly, this also evades the relativist and solipsistic assumption that the empirical reality to which each language refers is languagemodelled. According to Elleström, media products “can be analyzed in terms of four kinds of basic traits,” (2018: 286) which he terms media modalities. The first three of these he terms presemiotic, the fourth being the semiotic modality. The presemiotic modalities are material, spatiotemporal and sensorial, the third implying interpretation. It is these three presemiotic modalities that together constitute phenomenal presence: if aspects of materiality, spatiotemporality and sensoriality are perceived, an entity which corresponds to these traits is present in the Umwelt of an organism, being thus invested with meaning. As a modelling system developed by embodied beings, language is ecological. For instance, two human beings having a chat while walking through a forest understand many elements of the forest’s semiotic system, immersed as they might be in their human dialogue. Similar intra-language examples can be found: an Englishman makes sense of his walk through the streets of the non-English looking city of Tokyo. If another Englishman accompanies him, their dialogue overlaps with the phenomenality of Tokyo, as they interact with various semiotic systems and articulate meanings according to their competences for using the encountered resources. The cultural differences that Englishmen might be exposed to in Tokyo do not constitute a world altogether alien for the Englishmen. They still make sense of their environing world.

6.5 Text as Multimodal Presence Still, in view of Danesi’s media semiotics, digitalization presents a semiotic paradox stemming from a merging of the supposedly opposite realities of globalism and tribalism: […] rather than having resolved conflicts among people by allowing them to get into contact, digital technology has brought out the ‘tribal animal’ within us even more. Not only across the globe, but also within nations, there are more and more subcultures (such as teenage gangs) which have developed their own peculiar forms of tribalism. Indeed, the more the computer is used to conduct everyday affairs, the more people seem to resort to traditional forms of discourse and interaction. The paradox of everyday life in the Digital Galaxy is that it engenders both ‘globalism’ and ‘tribalism’ at once. (Danesi 2002: 177)

This paradox, however, holds only in view of the Saussurean and (post)structuralist notion of sign systems and its subsequent culturalism. Danesi does not hesitate to

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acknowledge the individual existence of nations, within the globe, or of (other) subcultures in isolated, or at least clearly identifiable, and independent forms. Precisely because culture is embodied, from a biosemiotic perspective, in the interrogation of modelling, I claim that that conflict between the notions of global and tribal societies and cultures is eluded. The starting point of biosemiotics as a theory of modelling is the impetuous need of life forms to communicate (e.g. Sebeok 1991: 38). Communication, I argue, starts from bodily presence. “Face-to-face contact”, Danesi’s own wording, does not suppose tribalism in the sense of separatism but only phenomenal presence and evidence. Grounded in biosemiotics, zoosemiotics already consists in a theory of multimodal representation, assuming that animals make sense of their environment through the use of all available channels of sensory perception. This observation goes back to Darwin (1897 [1872]), but modern philosophy has long been ignoring it. Implicitly, as Martinelli explains (2010: 91–93), the awareness in zoosemiotics that high social behavior in animals corresponds to multi-sensorial semiosis blurs the mind/body dichotomy. The modern, Cartesian mind/body dichotomy detached our construal of humanity as grounded in the hic et nunc of embodiment. It alienates our understanding of ourselves as belonging to the animal realm. The depreciation of embodied presence and morphology is linked to modernity’s monomodal expressivity. Philosophers in the Cartesian tradition have considered nature and culture as an irreconcilable dichotomy because it was the print medium that framed the mind of modernity. Danesi takes this mediatic shaping of epistemology as the cornerstone of media semiotics: Reading and writing activate linear thinking processes in the brain, because printed ideas are laid out one at a time and can thus be connected to each other sequentially and analysed logically in relation to each other. Orality, on the other hand, is not conducive to such precise thinking, because spoken ideas are transmitted through the emotional qualities of the human voice and are, thus, inextricable from the ‘subject’ who transmits them. Literacy engenders the sense that knowledge and information are disconnected from their human sources and thus that they have ‘objectivity’; orality does not. (Danesi 2002: 15–16)

This linear medium inspired de Saussure’s separation of language and writing as two distinct systems of signs. Descartes’s mind/body dichotomy is rooted in the abstract modelling system of linear text. In modern monomodal textbooks, the vehicles by which, as Danesi explains, literacy becomes a social reality, the purpose of design was that of being invisible (perhaps minimal), so that the materiality and morphology of the text would not hinder the reception of pure ideas, transmitted by linguistic means. In a sociosemiotic approach to literacy, Bezemer and Kress note that the emergence of multimodality reveals that the relation between social reality and modes of representation is a matter of design (see also Crook and Lackovic 2017): Frequently writing is now no longer the central mode of representation in learning materials—textbooks, Web-based resources, teacher-produced materials. Still (as well as moving) images are increasingly prominent as carriers of meaning. Uses and forms of writing have undergone profound changes over the last decades, which calls for a social, pedagogical, and semiotic explanation. Two trends mark that history. The digital media, rather than the

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(text) book, are more and more the site of appearance and distribution of learning resources, and writing is being displaced by image as the central mode for representation. This poses sharp questions about present and future roles and forms of writing. For text, design and principles of composition move into the foreground. (Bezemer and Kress 2008: 166)

Bezemer and Kress are here describing the recent iconic turn, consisting in the hypothesis, as Moxey has it, “that physical properties of images are as important as their social function. In art history and visual studies, the disciplines that study visual culture, the terms ‘pictorial’ and ‘iconic turn’ currently refer to an approach to visual artifacts that recognizes these ontological demands (Boehm 1994; Mitchell 1994).” (Moxey 2008: 132) It is telling that in their investigation of digital educational materials, Bezemer and Kress recur to Uexküllian terminology, namely the concept of carrier of meaning, which is not common to sociosemiotics’ pre-iconic turn. Typographical design thus appears as an indispensable characteristic of any text, which is, as Gianfranco Marrone states “the specific object of study for the semiotician” (2017: 108). Therefore, as the semiotic concept of text has been enlarged to comprehend social reality (Stables 1997; Posner 2004), a concept of typography should be explored and expanded in such a direction. In this view, architectural design and urban planning are instances of typography because they constitute texts of which society is weaved. Text as such, biosemiotics reminds us, is morphological. This is one of the main and most fertile contributions of biosemiotics which, unfortunately, is often overlooked. According to Marrone, for the long tradition of text semiotics: The text is not a given entity nor phenomenal evidence; it is the result of a double construction: a socio-cultural configuration before and analytic re-configuration afterwards. (2017: 108)

The sociosemiotic school, which Marrone adopts here, always insisted on and expanded this concept of text which, via de Saussure, inherited Cartesian dualism. A theory of culture founded upon this concept of meaning implies a disembodied concept of culture that affords relativism, being disengaged from embodied phenomenality. If meaning is the double construction of socio-cultural configuration and analytic re-configuration, it is in no way anchored in the empirical, or, to use Martinelli’s zoosemiotic expression, epistemologically minimal, in the hic et nunc. A convenient consequence, in this conception, sociosemiotics takes the form of culturalism: all we know is the codified culture that, as well, determines our behavior.

6.6 Ecosemiotics as a Digital Media Theory As mentioned above (Chap. 4, Sect. 4.3 and Chap. 5, Sect. 5.2) the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language determines reasoning, largely influenced the development of sociosemiotics (see Randviir and Cobley in Cobley 2010b: 119). Herein occurs why the biosemiotic corpus hesitated for a long time to use the otherwise central semiotic concept of text and, along with it, until recently also hesitated to approach head-on matters of human culture and society. From a biosemiotic perspective, text

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is morphological, and thus, it can only be typographical. As such, text is phenomenal evidence. This is, most likely, what Bauhaus architecture found inspiring (and design in general can find inspiring) in von Uexküll’s theoretical biology: namely that “carriers of meaning” (2010 [1934]: 140) are morphological. There cannot be a bodiless semantics or a meaningless embodiment. Peirce’s semiotics accounts, particularly through its notion of dicisign implying a syntax which Stjernfelt calls co-localization, for the phenomenal evidence of signification (see Stjernfelt 2014: 51–55). In short, interpretation, particularly the propositional type, which consists of an index and a predicate, carries phenomenal evidence. Interestingly, it is now, in the age of digitalization, coinciding with the age of (accelerated) globalization, and its multicultural problematizations, that meaning, representation and translation theories turn to semiotics for insights more comprehensive then classically found in linear theories of meaning, such as much linguistics and philosophy of language. Digitalization, as a shift from linear and monomodal to multimodal media, reminds that the human Umwelt is multimodal. This suggests that communication which involves a plurality of cultures is a sub-case of cross-modal translation. Thus, cross-modal communication is a more appropriate idiom for referring to what has been labelled intercultural communication (see Chap. 1, Sect. 1.1, Gudykunst 2003; Kiesling and Paulston 2005; Kotthoff and Spencer-Oatey 2007; Hofstede et al. 2010). Given the globalizing context in which discussions on multiculturalism ought to take place, any current discussion on multiculturalism must take into consideration a media theory comprehensive of digitalization. As explained, such a theory is likely to be a semiotic one. In turn, the mainstream semiotic approaches to culture, in the search for a non-dualistic meaning theory, dismissive of double articulation, turned to Charles Peirce. Thus, biosemiotics, the Peircean school par excellence recently gained a popularity that brought it on the central stage of semiotic theoretical debates, finally finding its own theory of culture, either directly as a theory of modelling (Cobley 2010a, 2016) or, complementary, through its ecology-focused sub-branch, ecosemiotics (Nöth 1998; Kull 2008; Maran and Kull 2014). Through the prism of a multimodal sociosemiotic theory, Kress (2010) addresses the topic of intercultural communication and integration and points out, as well, the need for a remodeling of communication theory for the global context: European (nation) states have, for the last three or four decades been in a phase of rapid and deep transition. After a period of about 150 years in which the aims of the (nineteenthcentury) nation-state, with a nationally conceived and to some extent nationally controlled economy, shaped conceptions and practices of communication, the trend now is towards a situation where the demands of globally organized markets are reshaping the ground of communicational conditions. The still ruling conceptions and metaphors around communication – as for other social practices and structures – come from that earlier period, shaped by its requirements and structures. One instance is the still active even though by now barely residually present nineteenth-century notion of the ‘mass’ – as in ‘mass-society’, ‘mass-communication’. New social, economic, political and technological givens require new names/metaphors capable of functioning as essential guides to thought and action. (Kress 2010: 19)

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I consider that contemporary sociosemiotic theory, such as Kress’ account, is in need of more clear biocentric and ecological awareness. This can be provided by bioand eco-semiotic theories. Ecosemiotics was initially defined by Nöth as “the study of semiotic interrelations between organisms and their environment” (1998: 333). Maran and Kull notice that, since semiotics is often defined as a “study of mapping and maps, that is a study of modelling systems” (2014: 41), it particularly studies “the impact of the maps on the mapped” (41). On this account, meaning structures, such as texts or maps, are regarded as ecological dynamics occurring between organisms and their environments. The discursive approaches to digitalization make notice that mediations impact on the material, but such theories remain glottocentric, inheriting the un-ecological emphasis on difference and opposition in language and, hence, in modelling in general. The discursive approach to digitalization is pregnant with glottocentrism and its claims for ideology: Online or offline, spoken or typed, face-to-face or digitally “mediated,” what people do with language has material consequence (cf. Foucault 1981), and language is instrumental in establishing categories of difference, relations of inequality, or at the very least, the social norms by which we all feel obliged to live our lives [...]. (Thurlow and Mroczek in Thurlow and Mroczek 2011: xxvii)

On the biosemiotic and ecosemiotic perspectives, meaning is not something merely created or invented by human observers, a reading that human cognition alone can effect. The reception of Uexküll’s theoretical biology in Bauhaus architecture (see above, Botar 2001), is an inspiring example for the reception of a theory of embodied meaning in socio-cultural modelling. Interestingly, this aesthetic style, gaining popularity in the first half of the 20th century, was interrupted precisely by nationalist and isolationist worldviews, which culminated with the devastating Second World War. Like in humans’ natural environment, meaning in digital media is articulated in combinations of multiple modes of representation (visual, audio, moving images), which is not the case of plain text-books. Given this similarity, the digitalization of society reveals that human culture and language are grounded in the biosphere. Hence, scholarship from semiotics and digital humanities (henceforth DH) can be brought together in an interdisciplinary framework for modelling. Following scholarship in the DH (Ciula and Marras in Olteanu et al. 2018), a model is understood as a pragmatic representational device in an interpretative context. As generally the trend in representation theories, digital humanities mentions that semiotics can bridge, as a conceptual framework, our modelling of the natural, pre-alphabetic environment and of digitalized societies on account of the attribution of signification to living organisms (Ciula and Marras 2016). As such, Ciula and Marras find that Kraleman and Lattmann’s (2011, 2013) “theory of models as icons in the Peircean sense acts as a generic framework to contextualise the creation and use of models in the sciences, humanities and, we could even say, life.” (Ciula and Marras 2016: 5) This recent observation opens up new avenues for research in DH, semiotics and modelling in general. It is from this same interdisciplinarity that a modelling-based theory of global multiculturalism should develop.

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Kralemann and Lattmann (2011, 2013) proposed Charles Peirce’s semiotics as a ground for modelling in scientific research and life in general. Together with Elleström’s Peircean-based theories of media and iconicity (2010, 2013), their theory was adopted in DH (see also Ciula and Eide 2017), particularly in view of the consideration that “models can and should be understood as signs” (2011: 51) because the relation of the model to its object is like the one between the sign and its object. Similarly, Danesi argues for the similarity and compatibility of Peirce’s concept of representation (Representamen) and the McLuhnian concept of medium as message (2008: 117). Kralemann and Lattmann’s modelling theory is indicative of the iconic turn, which grounds meaning in mental images and diagrams (see also Stjernfelt 2007: 53). It is contrasted to the linguistic turn’s grounding of meaning in strictly articulated language. The iconic turn implies, thus, a multimodal turn. Consequentially, it highlights an affinity between archaic and digitalized societies, which distinguishes these from societies dominated by the print medium. This affinity was first observed by McLuhan, in the early stages of media theory: In the electronic age which succeeds the typographic and mechanical era of the past five hundred years, we encounter new shapes and structures of human interdependence and of expression which are “oral” in form even when the components of the situation may be non-verbal. (in McLuhan and Zingrone 1995: 178)

This is the reason for which both Sebeok (e.g. 1991, 2001) and, more recently, Elleström (2018, 2019) advocated for a modelling theory as a communication theory. Thus, the recent iconic turn in academic disciplines might well be an effect of digitalization broadly in society. The icon, according to Peirce, is the sign that signifies due to similarity to the object of reference (CP 2.247). As Peirce did not assign signification to the verbal modality, his semiotics is proving very fertile now, in the digital age. Peirce had an avant-gardist interest for what is now referred to as multimodality, by discussing similarity across sensory modes (CP 1.312). Kralemann and Lattmann (2013) find fertile Peirce’s idea that similarity is the criterion that renders a representation operational (see also Stjernfelt 2007: 79). On account of Peirce’s notion of iconicity, a model presents its object as operational without the representation losing the object’s other characteristic elements. In this view, culture is modelled radically differently from textual analytic re-configurations of sociocultural configurations. The main difference stands in the ecosemiotic awareness that the model impacts back on the modelled, an idea present in Gibson’s theory of affordances (2014 [1979], 1986) too, albeit in different terminology. The root is the biosemiotic claim that nonverbal modelling systems pre-exist and define secondary modelling systems, such as phonetically articulated language. Hence, the biosemiotic approach can bring a biocentric awareness in cultural studies, closing the epistemological and methodological gaps between the various humanistic approaches to culture and theories considering of natural evolution and environmental matters, such as sociobiology, evolutionary anthropology and ecology. It is unsurprising that the emergence and relevance of ecosemiotics itself has been remarked to be bounded to the iconic turn, which accounts for a smoother continuity of nature and culture:

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Ecosemiotics has partly emerged due to the deepened understanding of the non-symbolic sign processes’ role in the research objects both in biology and the humanities. […] In many recent approaches in the humanities, such as posthumanism and ecocritical studies, the conception of purely cultural objects has been problematized. These observations point to the need for an interdisciplinary re-ordering that would allow their models to perceive the natural environment as influenced by human signifying and modifying activities and cultural texts, and to be rooted in the human perception of the environment and bodily engagement with that environment. (Maran and Kull 2014, p. 42)

Connected to his observation about the orality of the electronic age, McLuhan anticipated yet another potentiality of the digital that regards multiculturalism even more directly. He considered that “Printing evoked both individualism and nationalism in the sixteenth century.” (1997: 10) In a semiotic concern, as Cobley explains, individualism and, consequently, isolationism, of which nationalism is a common sub-case, were evoked by glottocentrism (2010a, 2016). These two considerations can constitute together the nucleus of a semiotic media theory. This would be a media semiotic theory different to Danesi’s (2002, 2008), though similar in many regards. However, the main difference stands in the biocentrism of this new proposal. In view of McLuhan’s theory, it can be argued that during the age of modernity ways of production were developed that are harmful for the natural environment because the modern medium of printed text alienated human society from some of the basic characteristics of its possible Umwelten. As characteristic for highly social animals (Martinelli 2010: 91), human beings model their environment multimodally, by using a variety of sensory channels. Thus, the monomodal medium of the textbook, as spread by print technology, proves un-ecological for human society. In the same way, the semiotic concept of text, upon which media semiotics as well has been developed, results in un-ecological because relativist meaning theories. Dominated by printing technology, the philosophy of modernity conceived of education as human-specific, endorsing a non-ecological secondary modelling system of humans. In contrast, I argue that learning processes, even in an educational sense, are manifest widely in nature. This is a common claim in semiotics because, as Nöth sees it, learning and teaching reveal the processes of meaning-making in general (Nöth 2014: 456). As the expansion of the concept of text (see above, Stables 1997; Posner 2004) resulted in an expansion of the notion of literacy, particularly, towards niche conceptualizations of environmental (Stables and Bishop 2001), media (Gaines 2010) and, particularly, digital literacy (Kress 2003; Lankshear and Knobel 2008), a bio- and eco-semiotic account of text or, better, of model, requires the development of an according notion of literacy. The development of such a comprehensive literacy concept has been the concern of ecosemiotics (see Maran 2014), as a development of ecocriticism in view of the Umwelt theory. Concerning multiculturalism, an understanding of multicultural or cosmopolitan literacy should be established. Such literacy can be properly explained in semiotic terms, as competences for using semiotic resources. In brief, an account of cosmopolitan literacy is necessary. It should be understood as the capacity for modelling that allows for the scaffolding together of semiotic devices belonging to different cultures, which results in an increase of semiotic freedom. Higher levels of semiotic freedom imply increased proficiency for

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intercultural (cross-modal) communication. Given the context of globalization, such a notion of literacy must necessarily be comprehensive of digital and environmental literacies (see also Healy and Morgan 2012: 1048). This comes as contradictory to the mainstream assumption, as inherited in sociosemiotics as well, that “differences between societies and cultures means differences in representation and meaning” to the point “that languages differ and that those differences are entirely linked with differences of histories and cultures.” (Kress 2010: 8). This latter view leaves too little space for individual (or collective) freedom. The contribution of digital texts to contemporary society implies a construal of literacy different to the traditional concept as mastering a finite set of skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Literacy is still understood to consist in the competence of reading, or interpreting, that enables one’s participation to social life (Lankshear and Knobel in Lankshear and Knobel 2008: 5), but as texts are translated from print to digital media, the notion of reading is expanded to comprise of modalities other than visual perception and decoding of writing systems. Inhabiting an environment to which digital designs contribute implies a plurality of such digital literacies (Kress 2003: 4; Lankshear and Knobel in Lankshear and Knobel 2008: 1; Bawden in Lankshear and Knobel 2008: 28; Erstad in Lankshear and Knobel 2008: 184). The better understanding and cultivation of digital literacies is mandatory if democracy is to survive in the current trend of nationalistic isolationism, as the spread of populist rhetoric, at least in Europe, can be traced through online behavior (Bartlett et al. 2011).

6.7 A Biosemiotic Account of Typography As it clearly occurs in Stjernfelt’s (2007) Diagrammatology, biosemiotics flourished exponentially once with the recent iconic turn, which grounds meaning in embodied schemata formed in any combination of modalities. As such, the iconic turn, which Stjernfelt also terms a “morphological turn” (2007: 53), implies an “embodiment semiotic turn” (Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006: 14). Stjernfelt explains that liberating the concept of meaning from the linguistic relativism of structuralist conventionalism allows for a semiotic concept of the body: Structuralists would emphasize that the body concepts differ in various languages and cultures, in short, in different semiotic systems, and that a study of such systems would produce just as many cultural representations of the body. In this line of thought, no extra-structural constraints are supposed to determine the spectrum of possibilities of body representation. (Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006: 14)

With this observation, Stjernfelt clarifies that the biosemiotic criticism to cultural relativism starts from the accusation that the latter supposes a dualist philosophy and a disembodied conception of language. The role of the development of a (bio)semiotic concept of the body is that it follows the merging of embodied experience and articulated language into a modelling theory where linguistic modelling does not overwrite non-linguistic schematic models.

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Furthermore, in terms of visual art, Moxey explains that the turn to a pictorial phenomenality emphasizes the role of the (human) body in aesthetic experiences (2008: 137–138). However, for Moxey images “cannot be read,” as they exceed “the possibilities of a semiotic interpretation.” (132) This would be the case only in view of the classic sociosemiotic account of text, because of its assumption that articulated language is always present in the act of reading, that is, in manipulation of meaning. Instead, the iconic turn in semiotics well exploits the possibilities for multimodal semiosis. Stjernfelt (2007) describes the iconic turn as a switch of attention to “continuous models not reducible to algebra” which “are introduced alongside feature-preserving mappings of such models between (mental) domains—in cognitive semantics, cognitive linguistics, in the Peirce renaissance in semiotics, etc.” (2007: 53) The main idea that generated the iconic turn is the pragmatization of the Kantian notion of schema in areas of research such as mentioned by Stjernfelt. The same was accomplished by von Uexküll’s Kantian theory of biology, through concepts such as Umwelt, meaning carrier and tone (1926, 1934, see above Chap. 5, Sect. 5.1). Such a theory accounts for knowledge acquisition as modelling by means of embodied icon manipulations such as mapping, framing, diagrammatic reasoning, etc. In this perspective, meaning phenomena are intrinsically multimodal. For instance, as a crucial point in their theory of multimodal discourse, Kress and van Leeuwen note that: […] clearly, framing is a multimodal principle. There can be framing, not only between elements of visual composition, but also between the bits of writing in a newspaper or magazine layout […], between the people in an office, the seats in a train or restaurant […], the dwellings in a suburb, etc., and such instances of framing will also be realised by ‘framelines’, empty space, discontinuities of all kinds, and so on. (2001: 3)

The iconic turn is in contrast with the linguistic turn’s grounding of meaning in strictly articulated language. As Peirce did not assign signification to a modality in particular (e.g. verbal), his semiotics is proving very fertile now, in the digital, iconic and, implicitly, multimodal age. It is in this age that globalization and its perceived multicultural challenges occur. As noticed in Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2001) theory of multimodal discourse, the main argument that recommends semiotics as a modelling theory of culture and multiculturalism is that it satisfies the theoretical challenges that digitalization brings for linguistics, media and communication theory. This is what determined Danesi, in the first place, to develop a semiotic theory of media: Cyberlanguage will become more and more the target of investigation in the study of linguistic change. It has already become a “philological” barometer, so to speak, for inferring evolutionary patterns in language and social institutions. As McLuhan anticipated, digital forms of communication are indeed reshaping language and, as a consequence, social interaction and rituals. Unlike traditional forms of writing, such as the poem and the novel, the new cyberforms are created by the “common person” in our lifetime and, thus, as semioticians and we are in a unique position of being able to see how they unfold and how they are changing the world (for better or worse). (Danesi 2008: 125)

Peirce had an avant-garde interest for what is now referred to as multimodality, by discussing similarity across sensory modes. For instance, he criticized precisely

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the modern educational paradigm of Enlightenment, par excellence the education of linear media such as the textbook, for lacking at once an understanding of the importance of intuition (abduction) and a sense of multimodality. This suggests that abduction is often nonverbal and, as such, supposes transductive processes. He did so by explaining that the scarlet color and the blare of a trumpet could well be an operational iconic relation, if only one has the semiotic freedom to abduct so: One of the old Scotch psychologists […] mentions, as strikingly exhibiting the disparateness of different senses, that a certain man blind from birth asked of a person of normal vision whether the color scarlet was not something like the blare of a trumpet; and the philosopher evidently expects his readers to laugh with him over the incongruity of the notion. But what he really illustrates much more strikingly is the dullness of apprehension of those who, like himself, had only the conventional education of the eighteenth century and remained wholly uncultivated in comparing ideas that in their matter are very unlike. (CP 1.312)

6.8 Writing as Scaffolding The iconic turn implies that modelling systems are ecological, as meaning is attributed to ecological relations (between organisms and their environment), and not on an assumed arbitrariness of semiotic systems. It liberates the concept of meaning from what is strictly human articulated language by not supposing an idealist philosophy, whereby meaning would be unmaterialized. A widely accepted claim by now, Peirce accounted for an isomorphism between logical and material processes (see Pape in Brunning and Forster 1997: 173). Meaning is the result of interactions between organisms with and within their environment. Thus, the iconic turn in semiotics is linked to the development of a semiotic notion of the body (see above, Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006, Hoffmeyer 2008a). The observation that led to this development consists in the iconicity between body morphology and environment, arguably the main concern in Gibson’s (1986, 2014 [1979]) theory of affordances too. For instance, if the body can grasp, the subjective environment presents graspable elements; if the body can walk, it has what it needs to walk on, or if it can swim, it has what it needs to swim in (see also Olteanu in Stables et al. 2018: 104). These are examples of what we can read because we have what we need to read, namely a morphology which we came to term text, eventually, as extrapolated from literary theory. Literary theory, which thus essentially contributed to the modern view on knowledge and to modelling theories, including semiotic modelling theories (see Lotman 1994), has been developed and shaped in the linear and monomodal printed media of modernity. The crucial contribution of biosemiotics stands in explaining the relation between the morphology of the body and its behavior as iconically developed. By this claim, biosemiotics holds that models, or texts, provide phenomenal evidence. While claiming phenomenal evidence, texts, which in this case are ecological relations, continuously undergo re-modelling. Their reshaping is what we came to call writing. Writing, thus, consists in the iconic manipulation of typographic forms. The reason for which icons are the most operational signs, as it occurs in Peirce (see

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Stjernfelt 2007: 78), resides in our existence as embodied organisms. In this sense, modelling starts with and is regulated by the body’s morphology. In his biosemiotic approach to the body, Stjernfelt adopted Merleau-Ponty’s idea that there is a plastic relation between embodied morphology and behavior (see Stjernfelt in Nöth 2006: 25–33; Stjernfelt 2007: 233, 257). From a biosemiotic perspective, the environment (Umwelt) is modelled, or, to use a term preferred in Kress’ sociosemiotics, designed (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 45–66; Kress 2003: 96–99, 2010: 26–27). Design starts with basic embodied icon manipulation. This ecological design process is explained in a biosemiotics perspective by Hoffmeyer through the concept of semiotic scaffolding (see above Chap. 1, Sect. 1.4, Hoffmeyer 2008a, 2015): The network of semiotic interactions by which individual cells, organisms, populations, or ecological units are controlling their activities can thus be seen as scaffolding devices assuring that an organism’s activities become tuned to that organism’s needs. (Hoffmeyer 2008a: 154)

Because we make sense of our environment(s) by layers of scaffoldings constructed upon each other, every new layer of meaning which participates in our phenomenality must fit onto existing structures. This must be considered in what regards the evolution of alphabets and typographic styles and their extention into the plastic arts. This mereological understanding of scaffolding is yet another particularity that recommends Hoffmeyer’s semiotic uptake of the classic constructivist notion, which Cobley and Stjernfelt explain: Here, the scaffold metaphor is stretched a bit - or used creatively, as it were: the scaffold is not taken down when the building behind it is finished, rather, the scaffold becomes, over time, part of the building itself. […] Finally, according to Hoffmeyer’s argument, such scaffolding invariably has semiotic aspects: the piecing together of the semi-autonomous parts of a scaffolding has the character of meaning-bearing couplings as they support still more complicated versions of the basically significant perception-action cycle. (Cobley and Stjernfelt 2015: 292)

As mentioned in the beginning of this monograph, Cobley and Stjernfelt find this notion of semiotic scaffolding as foundational for a non-relativist theory of knowledge which denies the possibility of cultures emerging or developing separately, in isolation (Cobley and Stjernfelt 2015: 303). The biosemiotic uptake of scaffolding avoids the fallacy of culturalism. Writing, or more generally, what the Greek word γ ρ αϕω ´ (gráph¯o) well designates, is a perfect example of such scaffolding: it is an expression of our embodiment, carved historically. This is to say that any instantiation of typographical style, the very morphology of writing, is an inherent part of the cultural history that follows it. Cobley and Stjernfelt’s analysis of semiotic scaffolding reveals how organisms model their world by what can be termed diagrammatic reasoning—a manipulation of icons that signify on account of their part-whole similarities (see also Stjernfelt 2007). Alphabets and writing systems, generally, present such an iconic syntax: small linguistic units, such as phonemes or letters, are structurally similar to the words and

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phrases to which they contribute. Moreover, these constructions are similar to the bodies that perform them and, as such, incorporate these structures into their history. Thus, incorporating the biosemiotic notion of scaffolding with the sociosemiotic concept of text, leads to an extension of the latter as embodied, and not only the result of interpreting as reading, but also as writing. This agrees with and can build upon the claim in ecosemiotics (Maran and Kull 2014) that maps impact on the mapped. In this view, text and model are interchangeable and each of them can serve as the central tool for a media semiotic theory fit for the digitalizing context of global multiculturalism.

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