Toward semiotic sociology: A synthesis of semiology,semiotics and phenomenological sociology

1 Introduction

The most common way to understand the relationship between structuralist semiology, pragmatist semiotics and phenomenological sociology is to conceive them as mutually exclusive alternatives. This view sees each of them as a bunker into which theoreticians can dig and from which they can fire on the occupants of the other two bunkers. Going against the custom of the field, I depart from the bunker model and try to synthesize the three approaches.

In Section 2, I start from a version of structuralism which can be called structuralist code theory and try to expand its horizon of study using the criticisms made of it. The result is a way of reading the classic of structuralist semiology, Saussure (1974, 1983 [1916]), which can be called neostructuralist. Neostructuralist semiology pays attention to the flowing nature of meanings but does not have the conceptual tools to give an exact description of the flow and must therefore be supplemented by Peirce’s (1931–1966) pragmatist semiotics. To make this possible, an isomorphic relation must be developed between Peirce’s and Saussure’s analyses of the sign. This is done in Section 3, where Peirce’s analysis of the object-relation of the sign is also used as a way of introducing an understanding of the motivated nature of the sign into neostructuralism, which makes it possible to surpass the Cartesian dualism between nature and culture, the besetting sin of the structuralist tradition. Neither Saussure nor Peirce gives us a definitive answer to the question of where exactly signs and structures of meaning take place. Section 4 approaches this issue from the point of view of Schutz’s (1982 [1932]) mundane phenomenology. From this point of departure, articulation of the Saussurean sign and the interpretant of the Peircean sign can be understood as Husserl’s (1982 [1931]) intentional act. This enables social theory to go beyond the usual sociological dualism between culture and the institutional structure of society because institutions, following Berger and Luckmann (1966), can be understood as specific patterns of the organization of people’s habits and everyday knowledge. Finally, in Section 5, I discuss the problems the synthetic programme raises in cultural and social theory as well as the question of the appropriate area of application of different theoretical approaches.

2 Structuralist semiology

Following Saussure, structuralist semiology understands the sign as the result of an interrelated articulation of two parallel orders. These are the order of signifiers, or the material bearers of meaning, on the one hand, and the order of signifieds, concepts, associations or meanings, on the other. It is through this process, in which these two parallel orders are articulated together, that the cultural structure, which makes it possible to communicate with signs, emerges.

In both of these orders the identity of the parts of the sign is formed through the play of differences. This means that the identity of the sign consists in being what the other signs are not: ‘In a language there are only differences, and no positive terms’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 166, original emphasis). This makes language work as a purely arbitrary system of signs in which signifiers, on the one hand, and signifieds, on the other, get their identity as relative values. The play of differences is not boundless, however: ‘To say that in a language everything is negative holds only for the signified and the signifier considered separately. The moment we consider the sign as a whole, we encounter something which is positive in its own domain’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 166). And ‘everything having to do with languages as systems needs to be approached … with a view to examining the limitations of arbitrariness’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 182). ¹ In other words, the play of differences is congealed, and the negatively determined identities are replaced by oppositions with a positivity of their own when the orders of signifiers and signifieds are articulated together. At this level, a language is a social fact, which enables communication because every signifier transmits a signified that is shared by a linguistic community. ²

Saussure differentiated two types of relation that determine the identity of the sign. Associative relations determine the sign through their absence. In the sentence a man used a fork, the sign a man gets its identity because of the fact that it is not the sign a woman or a child. In a similar vein, the sign a fork gets its associative identity because it is not the sign a spoon, a knife, an axe, a mobile telephone or to dance. Associative relations are complex. In such a relation ‘any given term acts as the centre of a constellation, from which connected terms radiate ad infinitum’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 174). Syntagmatic relations, for their part, determine the identity of the sign through their presence. They are signs with which the sign can combine so as to make a chain of signs interpretable as a meaningful syntagma. In the example above, the identity of the sign a man is syntagmatically determined by the signs used and a fork. The possibility of communicating in speech (parole) makes it necessary to generate syntagmatic chains of signs. In addition to this, Saussure thought that syntagmatic relations contribute to the determination of the identity of the sign on the level of linguistic structure (langue). Yet it is not clear how exactly he understood this. In what follows I will argue for an extensive interpretation according to which all those syntagmatic chains contribute to the identity of the sign, in which the sign can be placed so that the chain is understood as a meaningful communicative act in a cultural realm. Combined with the above definition of associative relation, this definition of syntagmatic relation leads to a broad concept of structure. ³

Saussure was a linguist of spoken natural language, and by ‘order of signifiers’ he meant order of phonemes. He thought, however, that following the pattern of linguistics of spoken language facilitated studying other systems of signs such as ‘writing, the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, symbolic rites, forms of politeness, military signals, and so on’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 33). He referred to this field of study as sémiologie, which he understood as a science ‘which studies the role of signs as part of social life’ and investigates ‘the nature of signs and the laws governing them’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 33). In speech, the signs are completely arbitrary. Language is the most complex of all systems of expression and has been studied extensively. It is for these reasons that ‘linguistics serves as a model [patron général] for the whole of semiology, even though languages represent only one type of semiological system’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 101). And it is because of these and similar statements that Saussure can be seen as the founding father of semiology. At the same time, however, it is important to know that Saussure himself did not proceed any further toward the field of semiological study. This was left for other scholars, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and A.J. Greimas.

Saussure’s followers expanded his programmatic statements on semiology to an actual corpus of semiological study. In doing this, however, they also articulated his statements on language and cultural systems of meaning into a new form, which I call ‘structuralist code theory’. What spread all over the Western world in the 1960s and 1970s was this form of structuralist semiology, developed in France in the 1950s and 1960s and influenced by the writings of other linguists in addition to Saussure such as Roman Jakobson and Louis Hjelmslev. In what follows, I build up an ideal type of structuralist code theory consisting of seven theoretical commitments. I by no means make the claim that all French semiologists would have approved of all seven. What I do claim, however, is that every one of the seven commitments was part of one or more influential interpretations of structuralist semiology and that criticism of the structuralist programme has found its target primarily if not exclusively in them. This is essential because, as I argue later, it is possible to outline a form of structuralism which breaks loose from all of the seven commitments and yet is based on the Saussurean programme.

The seven commitments of structuralist code theory are the following:

A form of structuralism that makes these commitments, as well as most forms of structuralism which make even some of them, runs into problems with at least two issues. First, it is unable to answer the question of how the structure changes. Second, it is incapable of dealing with the situationally creative use of coded meanings (see e.g. Sperber & Willson, 1986). This does not make them useless in empirical research but it does make them unsuitable descriptions of the ontology of culture and society. ⁴ In what follows I outline a version of structuralism that is more fruitful in this sense. I call it ‘neostructuralism’ and proceed now to the seven commitments of the structuralist code theory in spelling out neostructuralist responses to the ‘seven deadly sins’ of the code theory.

The seven alternative solutions outlined above give a preliminary description of neostructuralism as a variant of structuralism that is different from the structuralist code theory and that is immune to the criticisms that are fatal to the latter. The informed reader will recognize that many of these points have already been made in debates about what is often called ‘poststructuralism’. The reason I prefer the term ‘neostructuralism’ is twofold. First, it is possible to write critical theory from the neostructuralist point of view, but there is no necessary reason why neostructuralist analysis of culture and society should be critical. Here it differs from poststructuralism, which has its substratum in different versions of critical theory. Second, the term poststructuralism is misleading. What poststructuralism comes after is not Saussure’s structuralism but after structuralist code theory, which is only one possible reinterpretation of what Saussure wrote. But there are others, and ideas usually said to be poststructuralist often direct us to problems already present in Saussure. A reminder of this is the fact that the above outline of an up-to-date version of structuralism is in many respects compatible with the careful close reading of Saussure made by historian of linguistics Roy Harris (1987), even if there are differences in detail and area of application. It is thus better to refer to this and similar reinterpretations of structuralism as neostructuralism, a term originally coined by Manfred Frank (1989 [1984]). In the next section, I extend the description of neostructuralism by means of an attempt at synthesis.

3 Pragmatism

The founding father of American pragmatist semiotics was C.S. Peirce. It is commonly believed that his semiotic theory of signs is incompatible with that outlined by Saussure. Here I try to show that their theories of signs can be made commensurable with and complementary to each other. Of course, this is not the only possible point of view from which these theories can be approached, but I believe that it is the most fruitful one. Semiology needs this cooperation for at least three reasons. First, Saussure’s term articulation and Derrida’s term différance locate a central problem for study, but neither of them describes the problem adequately. Peirce’s theory of ‘interpretants’ is useful here. Second, and related to the first point, to see the structure as a process, which is in a constant flux of articulation and rearticulation, is a fruitful point of departure, but it too is left insufficiently determined in structuralism. Peirce’s ideas about constant semiosis can be helpful here. Third, Peirce’s studies in the object-relation of the sign help to map the field of problems surrounding the arbitrariness and motivation of the sign, which has traditionally been the weak point of structuralism. What Peircean semiotics receives in turn for its conceptual arsenal in this synthesis is the core idea of structuralism that the identity of the sign is determined through the play of differences. I will call the synthesis of these approaches ‘neostructuralist semiotics’, thus taking one term from each tradition. An alternative term, designating the same principle, would be ‘semiological pragmatism’, but to avoid unnecessary complexity, I will use the former term exclusively.

It is commonly said that Peirce’s and Saussure’s definitions of the sign differ from each other on this basis: Peirce’s triadic definition of the sign involves the object-relation of the sign (object), the physical part of the sign (representamen or sign), and its interpretation (interpretant). By contrast, Saussure presents a twofold conceptual split of the sign into signifier and signified, leaving no place for referential relations. In what follows I offer a neostructuralist conception according to which the Saussurean sign is triadic in a way resembling the Peircean sign. This is so because the articulation of the signifier and the signified can be interpreted as forming the third component of the sign. Moreover, an isomorphic relation between the Saussurean and the Peircean sign can be presented, such that the signifier = representamen, the signified = object, and the articulation of signifier and signified = interpretant.

The core of this proposal for synthesis is the identification of articulation with the interpretant. Before turning to this idea, however, I deal with the other parts of the isomorphic relationship. The identification of the signifier and the representamen hardly raises objections, but the identification of the signified with the object-relation may be found less obvious. Hence, two specifications are necessary. To begin with, most readings of Peirce have put emphasis on his theory of arguments or scientific semiosis and, in addition to this, taken natural sciences as the paradigmatic model of science (Apel, 1981 [1967]; Hookway, 1985, for example). There is nothing wrong in this, since Peirce himself also saw this part of his work as important. Still, his merits in this field should not obscure the fact that the scope of the theory of semiosis is much broader than that of the theory of science. In this broader field, Peirce very often worked with a conception of semiosis in which the object of the sign was not a referent external to semiosis but a representation within it. Thus he could make claims such as ‘the object of representation can be nothing but a representation’ (1931–1966, 1: 339). In this more general semiotic field of culture, the object is identical with the Saussurean signified. In other words, it is a construction that stabilizes in the process of culture. There is use for the natural scientific conception of object in the human sciences, but the more general semiotic conception is even more important because in every society many central entities emerge that have an existence and influence only in semiosis.

Peirce’s semiotic objects were thus not always material entities such as objects of natural scientific arguments. For him semiosis was the way culture happens, and in this broader field of semiotic study, his understanding of the object came close to the way Saussure understood the signified. Peirce’s theory can therefore be interpreted from a Saussurean point of view. At the same time, however, it seems to me that we should proceed in the reverse order. Saussure did not go very far in developing the theme of arbitrariness vs. motivation. An extreme interpretation of his stand leads to the Cartesian dualism between nature and culture, which is still a prevalent interpretation today. An alternative interpretation pays attention to his discussion of the physiological structure of the human body (sound system and auditory sense). The latter makes it impossible for the forms of spoken language to vary without limits since our ability to produce and hear sounds is itself limited. If we proceed in this latter direction, we see that Peirce advanced much further in his discussion of the object-relation of the sign than did Saussure. In his theory of arguments, Peirce thought that referential objects external to semiosis can motivate the interpretations they receive in semiosis. This is how he presented a conception which is constructionist and materialistic at the same time: our interpretations of natural phenomena are our constructions, but we are not free to formulate these constructions as we please because the objects are not completely malleable in relation to our interpretations of them. As is well known, Peirce made a more specific division into iconic, indexical and symbolic aspects of the object-relation of the sign. The symbolic aspect equates to the completely arbitrary characteristics of the sign, but every sign also has iconic and indexical aspects. Different aspects dominate in different signs, but all three subsist in every sign. Adaptation of this line of thought to structuralism does not make semiology less effective. This is especially true if we follow Saussure and consider the arbitrary linguistic sign as the point of departure to which all other systems of signs are compared, and if we introduce information about the motivated nature of signs only in cases where there is a need to do so. In such cases, however, the Peircean method supplies the structuralist tradition with tools it has lacked until now.

We have now discussed two of the three apexes of the isomorphic triangle, i.e. the equations ‘signifier = representamen’ and ‘signified = object’. Now it is time to focus on the core of the issue, which is how the ‘articulation = interpretant’ equation enriches both the structuralist and the pragmatist traditions. In spite of all post- and neostructuralist aspirations, the structuralist tradition remains a static way of describing culture. Associative relations refer to the structure and, on the above interpretation, so do syntagmatic relations. What, then, refers to motion and change? The neostructuralist answer is: articulations, which can be understood as a temporal flow of the chain of Peircean interpretants. This is to say that the way the neostructuralist structure is in a constant process of articulation and rearticulation can be understood as Peircean semiosis. The reverse side of this interpretation of Peircean semiosis is that, in the light of the structuralist tradition, it must be seen as a process in which signs do not just ‘grow’, but they ‘grow’ in such a way that in every interpretation the whole meaning-structure is rearticulated though the associative and syntagmatic relations determining the identity of the sign. This is how we get the most general possible description of semiosis as a process in which culture as a structure of sign-relations is constantly rearticulated in the flow of interpretants. But what are interpretants and articulations, and where do they take place? To make my position on this issue clear, I next spend some time on a discussion of the conceptual toolbox of phenomenological sociology, even if it is not possible to accept the phenomenological view either without reformulation.

4 Phenomenological sociology

Edmund Husserl (1982 [1931]) and in his wake Alfred Schutz (1982 [1932]) defined meaning starting from the idea of an intentional act of consciousness, which they understood as the basic form of human experience. The phenomenologists did not, however, think that all intentional acts of consciousness are meaningful. Says Schutz, ‘Meaning does not lie in the experience. Rather, those experiences are meaningful which are grasped reflectively. The meaning is the way in which the Ego regards its experience. The meaning lies in the attitude of the Ego toward that part of its stream of consciousness which has already flowed by, toward its “elapsed duration”’(1982 [1932]: 69–70, original emphasis). Later, he specified that meaning is ‘the result of an interpretation of a past experience looked at from the present Now with a reflective attitude’ (Schutz, 1976a [1945]: 210).

For phenomenologists, then, life is an infinite temporal flow of experience (Erlebnis). This flow takes place in the form of a set of successive acts in which the attention of consciousness becomes attached to one and then another object. But an intentional act taken separately is not yet a meaning. It is made meaningful by another, succeeding intentional act, which has the previous intentional act as its object. This is how meaning emerges in everyday life. For Husserl, however, who was a philosopher of science in the Kantian sense, the ‘natural attitude’ of everyday life was only a point of departure from which he wanted to move, by means of ‘phenomenological reduction’ or ‘bracketing’ of the natural attitude, to the plane of ‘transcendental phenomenology’. The aim of transcendental phenomenology was to justify the intersubjective validity or universal nature of mathematics and theoretical natural sciences from the phenomenological point of view. The challenge in carrying this out was the phenomenological clause that the philosopher should proceed in his/her argument such that nothing can be taken as given other than such phenomena which appear to the consciousness in the form of intentional acts. After bracketing the natural attitude of mundane life, this point of departure, characterized by Husserl himself as radically ‘solipsistic’ (1982 [1931]: 30), led to problems so great in the attempt to ground the intersubjective validity of knowledge that, even if Husserl himself thought that he had managed to solve the puzzle, others have argued that what he managed to establish, at most, was that one consciousness is able to have an idea of another consciousness (Hammond et al., 1991: 222).

This is bad news and means more work for transcendental phenomenologists, but there is no need for us to stop here. This is so because Schutz established the possibility of phenomenological sociology by liberating the phenomenological approach from Husserl’s orientation to the Kantian critique of pure reason, and by concentrating instead on the philosophy of science and transcendental phenomenology in the phenomenology of mundane life and the natural attitude of everyday knowledge. In this sphere, the existence of the Alter is not a problem, since intersubjectivity and validity of knowledge are taken for granted so long as action based on these assumptions does not run into a crisis. ⁶ Still, this is but one half of the foundation of phenomenological sociology. Another move made by Schutz was to introduce social-scientific problems and social theory into the phenomenological frame of reference by integrating it with Max Weber’s (1922) action-theoretical approach. He was able to do this by directing attention to a specific class of intentional acts, which had not aroused Husserl’s interest, since the latter was oriented to the philosophy of science. Schutz termed this class ‘projects’. For Schutz, a project is an anticipated chain of actions, which is in an intentional act of consciousness ‘thought in the future perfect tense (modo futuri exacti)’ (1982 [1932]: 61). A project is, then, an intentional act directed to the future as an anticipated action. In Figure 1, I provide graphical representations for Schutz’s definitions of meaning and project (as a specific type of meaning).

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Figure 1.

Meaning and project in Schutz’s phenomenology.

Schutz established phenomenological sociology, but all his work was rather abstract and almost exclusively oriented to the justification of its philosophical and methodological foundation (for more on Schutz, see Heiskala, 2011). Because his seminal work, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1982 [1932]), was not translated into English until the 1970s (under the title The Phenomenology of the Social World), it was Schutz’s fate to achieve fame through his students. ⁷ In this respect, two books published in the US in the latter half of the 1960s were especially important. Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology (1984 [1967]) followed the Husserlian rather than the Weberian root of phenomenological sociology but tried to transform the phenomenology of everyday life into an empirical study, the most vital tradition of which is today constituted by conversational analysis (Heritage, 1984). Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966), in turn, followed the Weberian line, which it complemented with G.H. Mead’s (1934) socialization theory. This was how they created a phenomenologically based social theory. This was not easy to figure out, however, as the subtitle of the book was ‘a treatise in the sociology of knowledge’. Nonetheless, their definition of knowledge covered the whole sphere of everyday knowledge, and they set out to establish gradually, starting from everyday knowledge and habitualized behaviour, a conception of the totality of social institutions and their legitimation. They defined an ‘institution’ as a form of habitualized behaviour in which the kinds of actors and typical action schemes are reciprocally typified, and ‘legitimation’ as the discursive justification of an institution (as concerns its history of birth or function, for example). These definitions benefited social theory by making it unnecessary to draw a sharp line of demarcation between the cultural interpretations of meaning, on the one hand, and the institutional structure of society, on the other, and then to ask which determines which. ⁸ Instead, the route from interpretations of meaning to the facts of social structure was a continuum, wherein the relations of interdependence and determination of different elements can vary in contingent ways at different points in time.

In addition to its benefits, there are also problems involved in the phenomenological tradition. The most important of these is already present in the subtitle of Berger and Luckmann’s book. Why must a study in social theory be a ‘treatise in the sociology of knowledge’? The answer is included in the way phenomenological sociology defines meaning as a reflective intentional act. It is for this reason that Berger and Luckmann understand the study of everyday ‘knowledge’ as the basic level of cultural sociology; the basic concept of ethnomethodology is an accounting of the meaning of events immediately preceding the account; and, according to Schutz’s definition of meaning, the latter is not an intentional act but the reflective intentional act succeeding it. Compared to the theory of action, which deals only with means-and-ends chains, these definitions make it possible for the social scientist to expand considerably the area of the study of society. Yet they exclude those dimensions of culture that affect the actors but that escape their conscious reflection. In Peirce’s terms (1931–1966, 5: 480), we can say that, in the continuum habit–belief–veritable belief, the way Berger and Luckmann alter the focus of the sociology of knowledge is by a transition from the category of ‘veritable belief’ to the category of ‘belief’; but their concept of ‘habit’ is also defined at that level, and is unable to push to the more fundamental level of the Peircean notion of habit. This is the case with habits of interpretation as well as with other habits. As far as structuralism is concerned, we could also say that phenomenological sociology is not able to approach all articulations of meaning. ⁹ What conclusion should we draw from this?

One possibility is to conclude that phenomenological sociology provides the social scientist with a programmatic guideline but is unable to go all the way to the destination. This makes it necessary to seek help from the synthesis of structuralism and pragmatism, as developed in Sections 2 and 3. This can be integrated with phenomenological sociology by the idea that the articulation of meaning (Saussure) or the linking of the object and the sign by the interpretant (Peirce) can be understood as an ‘intentional act’. This idea has two implications for phenomenological sociology and two implications for neostructuralist semiotics.

First, the scope covered by phenomenological sociology expands, since the sphere of meaning is not restricted exclusively to reflective intentional acts; i.e. those habits of interpretation which are not everyday knowledge, are also included in its field of research. This naturally has the implication of opening up a subfield of research in which the actors themselves are not competent interpreters of their signification, and instead of or in addition to their interpretations, we need hypothetical interpretations by, for example, semioticians, critical sociologists or psychoanalysts (see Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]; Silverman, 1983). Second, phenomenological sociology is no longer compelled to define meaning as a relationship between the consciousness and a sign, which is present, in the sense that it appears to the consciousness (Heiskala, 1999: 15–22; MacCannell, 1983: 24–25). Instead, the structuralist theory of articulation introduces, in addition to the act of appearance of the sign to the consciousness, the associative and syntagmatic relations that the sign has to other signs. This is how the phenomenological approach is liberated from the ‘metaphysics of presence’ and an involved attempt to seek ‘internal speech’ (Husserl) or some other transcendental signified, which would not be polluted by the impact of signifiers (see Derrida, 1973 [1967], 1981 [1972]).

The reverse side of this synthetic idea is that, first, neostructuralist semiotics is enriched with a useful interpretation of the nature of articulation or chain of interpretants, which can be understood as a series of successive intentional acts in the stream of consciousness. Peirce’s analysis of the object-relation of the sign, however, frees the synthesis from Husserl’s solipsistic, underlying assumptions. Second, the synthesis provides a plethora of phenomenological social-theoretical concepts for neostructuralist semiotics. These concepts are, after the internal relationship to the metaphysics of presence and cognitivism has been jettisoned, readily available for further work.

5 Conclusion: Implications for cultural and social theory

I have presented here a programmatic synthesis which can be crystallized into the equation ‘articulation = interpretant = intentional act’. To conclude the argument, I try to answer the question: What can we do with the synthetic conception and in what direction should we proceed in the future?

As far as the theory of culture is concerned, the synthetic conception opens up a tripolar field consisting of Saussure, Peirce and Husserl/Schutz, i.e. structuralist semiology, pragmatist semiotics and phenomenology (see Figure 2). Between these three poles, three bipolar subfields of debate emerge, some of which have already been theorized up to a point. The relationship between Saussure and Husserl has been studied by Derrida (1974 [1967], 1978 [1962]), but he has done this only from the point of view of metaphilosophical criticism. The relationship between Saussure and Peirce, in turn, has been discussed by Heiskala (2003: 205–233), but there is still work to be done in this field. The least studied of the subfields, however, is the relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and Peirce’s ‘phaneroscopy’, on which relationship no literature seems to exist. It is equally difficult to find literature on the entire tripolar field, even though I have presented an outline of it in this paper.

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Figure 2.

The field for future work in cultural theory implied by the present synthesis.

As to social theory, I have already touched on this issue in this paper. The main idea was that, in neostructuralist semiotics, we have a basis for the theory of meaning which enables redefinition of phenomenological sociology in such a way that it is not tied to the ‘metaphysics of presence’, and which does not limit the sphere of meaning so that it consists exclusively of everyday knowledge or reflective interpretation of meaning. Nothing much was said here about the theory of action, but this line of thought can be extended to it, as Schutz (1982 [1932]) has already done, so that we can understand phenomenological sociology as a basis in cultural theory for action theories such as Weber’s or as a basis for rational-choice theory. This is how we arrive at Figure 3, which is built on the idea that each of the three approaches has its own area of application. If we progress from the narrowest application toward the more broad-based ones, it can be said that the theory of action makes certain types of social research possible. In Schutz’s terms, we are dealing here with enclaves of social reality that are organized by projects. Outside the sphere of projects, however, what is needed is a broader approach, exemplified by phenomenological sociology, which directs its attention to the totality of everyday knowledge in addition to projects. Yet even this totality does not cover the whole process of social semiosis. Hence, we need a neostructuralist semiotics, which, in addition to projects and everyday knowledge, is interested in articulations of meaning or habits of interpretation which are not projects or knowledge and yet make both of these possible.

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Figure 3.

The triangle model of meaning-analysis.

Two things should be noted in Figure 3. First, it determines the area of valid application for each approach. In this sense, it is an attempt to guide research so as to avoid mistakes and the use of residual categories, both of which arise when an approach is put to use outside its appropriate area of application (as happens, for example, in Habermas’s 1981 attempt to ground the whole theory of meaning in an action-theoretical model, or in the attempt of phenomenological sociologists to deal with non-reflective intentional acts with categories that tie the definition of meaning to reflective intentional acts). At the same time, it is a synthetic attempt to map the route through which it is possible to transition from one theoretical tradition to another whenever the research task at hand requires it. Second, it must be specified what exactly is implied by presenting the differences between the theoretical approaches in a cumulative way, so that phenomenological sociology covers all problems formulated in action theory and neostructuralist semiotics covers all problems formulated in phenomenological sociology. It is possible to read this formulation as a programmatic declaration that neostructuralist semiotics makes phenomenological sociology and action theory obsolete. But this is not what I mean, because there are serious reasons, having to do with the proper allocation of research resources, to hold to the principle that one should work with as simple as possible a theory in each individual research context. This should be clear, for example, to anyone who has ever transformed an action-theoretical description of a situation into an ethnomethodological or conversation-analytical type description of the procedural chain of conversational implicatures. Such a person knows only too well that the amount of research work, the time spent on it, and the space needed for publication of the results grows exponentially. Since the same thing happens when we move from a phenomenological approach to neostructuralist semiotics, these transitions are reasonable only in cases where we can assume that the benefits will outweigh the extra effort. In other cases, one must be content with the use of the simplest possible set of concepts, and it is for this reason that all three approaches in Figure 3 have an appropriate area of application.

Provided that what has been said above is accepted, what are the tasks for future work in sociological cultural theory? I mention only two issues here: power and articulation. As regards power, I have suggested (2001) that it would be fruitful to adopt a four-step scheme which enables moving from the simplest ‘distributive’ approach to power (action theory + zero-sum game perspective), through the ‘collective’ approach (abandonment of the assumption of a zero-sum game environment) and the ‘structural’ (Foucault’s dispositif), to the most complex ‘neostructuralist’ approach (abandonment of the assumption of moves as tactical devices under the control of a strategic dispositif). Here, again, the idea is that what creates the distinctions between the approaches is the scope of their area of application, and, as it increases, so does the complexity of analysis. This is why it is reasonable for the researcher, in analysing power, to work with as simple a theoretical procedure as possible. The scale of the forms of power-analysis can easily be integrated with the theory of meaning dealt with in this paper, since the first two approaches to power are versions of action theory and the two more complex approaches are versions of neostructuralism. What remains to be done is to link the scale of approaches to power with the analysis of various forms of the articulation of meaning in society.

Following Berger and Luckmann (1966), we can see that cultural meanings and the institutional structure of society are not two spheres externally related to each other but are instead a continuum. If this view is supplemented with a neostructuralist theory of meaning, we finally understand society as a layered totality of articulations of meaning. Elsewhere (Heiskala, 2003: 266–272), I have divided these layers of articulation into pre-reflective, reflective and constitutive, where the constitutive layer can be further differentiated into grammars, sets of rules and laws. This distinction is based on the type of articulation (i.e. pre-reflective/reflective) and the mode of producing, interpreting and protecting the meaning (an extreme case is the legal sign enacted by the parliament, interpreted in courts by judges, and protected by the state’s bureaucracy of organized violence). An important task for the future is to specify these ideas and bring them closer to the empirical study of actual societies. Theoretically speaking, it might prove useful to study this idea in connection with somewhat similar distinctions made by Weber (1922: 29–36) and Giddens (1976, 1984), even though neither of these is semiotically oriented in nature. This is especially advisable, since these theoreticians explicitly tie their distinctions to the problem of power. Giddens is particularly interesting here, because his definition of power as the subject’s ability to produce changes in his/her environment – whether the subject makes use of this ability as a conscious actor or as an agent who is not able to reflectively analyse his/her behaviour – comes close to the idea of the above, four-step approach to the interpretation of power.

In this article, and more extensively in Heiskala (2003), I have outlined a research programme for semiotic sociology. It is possible and important to develop this programme further on the level of cultural and social theory, but it may be even more important to note that the study of society, like the study of anything, attests to the truth of Immanuel Kant’s observation that categories without perceptions are empty, and perceptions without categories are blind. Therefore, the next step will be the application and development of the conception in varying contexts of empirical social research. Not until we can combine theoretical work and empirical studies will we be rewarded with the ability to find the most interesting things in real societies and in social theory.