Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs

Significs, Semiotics, Philosophy of Language

Susan Petrilli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351295987
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Victoria Welby (1837–1912) dedicated her research to the relationship between signs and values. She exchanged ideas with important exponents of the language and sign sciences, such as Charles S. Peirce and Charles S. Ogden. She examined themes she believed crucially important both in the use of signs and in reflection on signs. But Welby's research can also be understood in ideal dialogue with authors she could never have met in real life, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Susanne Langer, and Genevieve Vaughan.

Welby contends that signifying cannot be constrained to any one system, type of sign, language, field of discourse, or area of experience. On the contrary, it is ever more developed, enhanced, and rigorous, the more it develops across different fields, disciplines, and areas of experience. For example, to understand meaning, Welby evidences the advantage of translating it into another word even from the same language or resorting to metaphor to express what would otherwise be difficult to conceive.

Welby aims for full awareness of the expressive potential of signifying resources. Her reflections make an important contribution to problems connected with communication, expression, interpretation, translation, and creativity.

Part I

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On Signs in the Direction of Significs

1

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Significs: A New Approach to Signs and Language

A philosophical distinction emerges gradually into consciousness; there is no moment in history before which it is altogether unrecognized, and after which it is perfectly luminous.

(Charles S. Peirce, CP 2.392)

1.1 The Scope of Significs, or “Semioethics”

The term “significs” was coined by Victoria Lady Welby toward the end of the nineteenth century to designate her theory of sign and meaning and its special orientation in the direction of the connection between signs and values. Significs transcends pure descriptivism and emerges as a method for the analysis of signs beyond logical-epistemological limitations. Welby evidenced the relation of signs to values with a particular focus on language—in addition to strictly semantic, syntactical, and linguistic value, she inquired into the ethical, aesthetic and pragmatic dimensions of signifying behavior. Consequently, she focused on the relation of signs to sense, significance, and behavior, and therefore on the practical consequences for human behavior of such interrelation. The notion that significs should be concerned with the problem of significance beyond the study of meaning understood in gnoseological terms leads to addressing such issues as the problems of responsibility, freedom, dialectic-dialogic answerability, and the human capacity for creativity and innovation. Welby analyzed meaning in terms of the triad “sense,” “meaning,” and “significance,” where the distinction between “meaning” and “significance” clearly evidences the axiological implications of her research. Moreover, with the term “significs” she differentiated her own approach from such others as “semantics,” “semiotics,” “sematology,” and “semasiology.” Welby described her significs as a “philosophy of interpretation,” “translation,” and “significance.” Today, the term “semioethics”—which has its origins in the early 1980s with “ethosemiotics”—has also been introduced in relation to significs (Petrilli and Ponzio 2003, 2010). Semioethics is intended to convey the broad scope of Welby’s particular perspective and focus on the relation between sign theory and value theory.

Welby distanced herself from the traditional terms of philological-historical semantics as developed by Michel Bréal (Petrilli 2009a: 253–300). Nor did she limit her attention to what today is known as speech act theory or text linguistics. She was interested in the generation of signifying behaviors, in the processes that produce them, in their dynamical capacity for development and transformation. Such processes are thematized by Welby as a condition for the evolution of mankind’s experiential, cognitive, and expressive capacities, where the relation to values is no less than structural. She characteristically described the development of values as inherent in the development of signifying processes. The “significal method,” or “methodics,” to use Ferruccio Rossi-Landi’s terminology (1985), arises from the special focus achieved by joining the study of sign and meaning to the study of values. This connection is not merely the object of study of significs, but rather it constitutes its very point of view. Significs concerns problems of language, meaning, and communication, of sign activity in general, and as such it is relevant to all spheres of life. Even more, Welby’s specific focus on significance is connected with her ultimate concern for the relation of sign and meaning to the quality of life in all its aspects.

Welby investigated the signifying universe in its entirety, though her special interest was expression in the human world, particularly verbal language. However, she also knew that to deal with her special interest adequately, it was necessary to contextualize in ever larger signifying totalities—her gaze was capable of detotalization as it extended beyond the verbal to the nonverbal, beyond the human to the nonhuman, beyond the organic to the inorganic, thereby evidencing the interconnection between one sign system and another (Petrilli 2013a: 22–25). Welby’s approach is a prefiguration of present-day semiotics as conceived by Thomas A. Sebeok and his “global semiotics” (Sebeok 2001), the maximum expression of his “biosemiotics”) which inquires into the connection between semiosis and evolution, semiosis and life, and which asks the question, “Semiosis and Semiotics: What Lies in Their Future?” (Sebeok 1991b: 97–99). Moreover, given its special focus on sense, significance, and human behavior, Welby’s significs may be read as working toward a new form of humanism, what with Emmanuel Levinas in more recent times has been denominated the “humanism of otherness,” in contrast to semiotic analyses conducted exclusively in gnoseological terms (Petrilli 2010a: ch. 7).

1.2 Problems of Language and Terminology

To carry out research adequately, verbal language, the main working instrument at our disposal, must be in good order. Consequently, for Welby, the problem of reflecting on language and meaning in general immediately took on a dual orientation. It concerned not only the object of research but also the very possibility of articulating discourse. Welby was faced with the problem of constructing a language in which to formulate her ideas adequately—she had quickly realized that a fundamental problem in reflection on language and meaning concerns the language itself, the medium through which such reflection takes place. She considered the linguistic apparatus at her disposal to be antiquated and rhetorical, subject to those same limits she wished to overcome and to those same defects she aimed to correct. In her commitment to logical, expressive, behavioral, ethical, and aesthetic regeneration, she advocated the need to develop a “linguistic conscience” against a “bad use of language,” which inevitably involved poor reasoning, bad use of logic, or incoherent argumentation. The very need to coin the term “significs”—difficult to translate into other languages, as discussed in her correspondence, for example with Michel Bréal or André Lalande regarding French and Giovanni Vailati regarding Italian—was a clear indication in itself of the existence of terminological obstacles to development in philosophical-linguistic analysis. Her condition was typical of a thinker living in a revolutionary era of transformation and of innovation in knowledge: she was faced with the task of communicating new ideas, which involved renewing the language through which she was communicating.

Welby was sensitive to problems of everyday language, and in proposing the term “significs” she in fact kept account of the everyday expression “what does it signify?,” given its focus on the sign’s ultimate value and significance beyond semantic meaning. Yet Welby’s commitment to the term “significs” risked appearing as the expression of a whimsical desire for novelty, given that such terms as “semiotics” and “semantics” were already available. Charles Peirce and Giovanni Vailati were among those who did not initially understand her proposal, believing that the introduction of a new term could be avoided. Yet she quickly converted them to her view by demonstrating that terminological availability was in fact only apparent, for none of the words in use adequately accounted for her own special approach to sign and meaning. Despite having proposed a neologism for the study of language, she did not fall into the trap of technicalism, just as her aim—her constant efforts to render expression as precise as possible notwithstanding—was not to (fallaciously) eliminate the ambiguity of words, that is, their polysemy, whose fundamental role in language and communication she theorized and constantly underlined. Welby intended to describe aspects of the problem of language, expression, and signifying processes at large, which had not yet been contemplated or which had largely been left aside by traditional approaches. More precisely, she was proposing to reconsider the same problems in a completely different light, from a different perspective: the significal.

In her effort to invent a new terminological apparatus, Welby offered alternatives to terms sanctioned by usage. She introduced the term “sensal” as a qualifier for sense in its prevalently instinctive aspect (though it also recalls the concept of signifying value), as opposed to the term “verbal,” which is connected to specifically linguistic or verbal signs, graphic and phonic. The term “interpretation” appears in the title of her 1896 essay and was initially proposed to designate a particular phase in the signifying process. Subsequently, upon realizing that it designated an activity present throughout all phases of signifying processes, she replaced the term “interpretation” in her meaning triad with “significance”; this gives an example of how Welby’s terminological quest was motivated by concrete problems of expression and understanding. Unlike “semantics,” “semasiology,” and “semiotics,” the word “significs” was completely free from technical associations (see below, 5.5). As such, it appeared suitable to Welby as the name of a new science that intended to focus on the connection between sign and sense, meaning and value (pragmatic, social, aesthetic, and ethical), as she explains in a letter to the German philosopher and sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, winner of the “Welby Prize” of 1896 for the best essay on significal questions.

Other neologisms related to “significs” included the noun “significian” for one who practices significs, and “significal” is the qualifier. The verbs “to signify” and “to signalize” are used more specifically to indicate, respectively, maximum signifying value and the act of investing a sign with meaning. In her 1896 essay, “Sense, Meaning and Interpretation,” Welby had proposed the term “sensifics” along with the corresponding verb “to sensify.” These were subsequently abandoned as being too closely related to the world of the senses. But even when Welby used terms that were readily available, including those forming her meaning triad, “sense,” “meaning,” and “significance,” she did so in the context of an impressively articulate theoretical apparatus that clarified the sense of her special use of these terms.

1.3 Significs and Theory of Meaning

In Welby’s terminology “sense,” “meaning,” and “significance” indicate different aspects of signifying processes characteristic of human experience, which largely interact in the development of our expressive, interpretative and operative-ethical capacities. As she explains in her monograph of 1903, What Is Meaning?, her main theoretical work on sign and meaning published during her lifetime:

There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the Sense of a word, but only the sense in which it is used—the circumstances, state of mind, reference, “universe of discourse” belonging to it. The Meaning of a word is the intent which it is desired to convey—the intention of the user. The Significance is always manifold, and intensifies its sense as well as its meaning, by expressing its importance, its appeal to us, its moment for us, its emotional force, its ideal value, its moral aspects, its universal or at least social range. (Welby 1983 [1903]: 5–6)

In addition to this terminology, and in the effort to evidence different aspects of meaning in live communication, Welby translates her meaning triad into the terms of other triads including “signification,” “intention,” and “ideal value,” which correspond respectively to “sense,” “meaning,” and “significance.” Furthermore, as Welby says, the reference of sense is prevalently instinctive or “sensal,” that of meaning is “volitional, intentional,” and that of significance is “moral.” The term “sense” is also used to indicate the overall import of an expression, its signifying value. But within the context of her meaning triad, “sense” denotes prerational life, the initial stages of perception, undifferentiated immediate response to the environment and practical use of signs. As such, “sense” indicates a necessary condition for all experience; “meaning” concerns rational life, the intentional, volitional aspects of signification; and “significance” implies sense, though not necessarily meaning, and concerns the import and ultimate value that signs have for each one of us, their overall bearing, relevance, import (for which we may also use the term “sense”). Adjectives corresponding to her meaning triad are used by Welby to formulate her conception of language:

Language, like conduct and thought, ought to be Sensal: (a) expressive of sense-experience; (b) expressive of “what makes sense” and is ultimately “good sense,” or seen to be purposely “funny.” Intentional: (expressive of a coherent, orderly, rational, logical meaning). Significant: expressive of the implicative, the indirectly indicative; or suggestive of further or larger issues. (Welby 1983 [1903]: 12)

Immediately after the passage above, Welby continues as follows: “Recognising the fact that meaning is first of all intention, we ought to be able to say of an utterance or an action that it is sensal, or intentional, or significant, or all three”. She then goes on to explain further her meaning of the word “sensal” (see also 3.4 below for Welby’s 1902 dictionary entry, “Sensal,” co-authored with George Stout):

The word “sensal” is here used in preference to “sensible” because in ordinary usage when a man does a sensible thing or takes a sensible view or course, the idea of intention is always present. None of the other current derivatives of sense, such as sensuous, sensual, sensitive, etc. would meet the case. This, therefore, is another reason for adopting the terms “sensal,” which would ensure the required neutrality. (Welby 1983 [1903]: 12)

In the preface to her book of 1911, Significs and Language, Welby describes significs as “the study of the nature of Significance in all its forms and relations, and thus of its workings in every possible sphere of human interest and purpose” (1985a [1911]: vii) and the interpretative function as “that which naturally precedes and is the very condition of human intercourse, as of man’s mastery of his world” (1985a [1911]: vii). In Significs and Language, as in all her writings, Welby is concerned with the production of values as a part of the production of meaning. The link between sign and values fosters and orients the human capacity for establishing relations with the real world, with oneself and with others, as well as the ability to translate our interpretations from one sphere of knowledge into another, and on the level of praxis, from one action into another. “Significance” denotes the disposition toward evaluation, the value of meaning, the condition of being significant, the capacity for maximum involvement or implication in signifying processes. This notion may be associated with Charles Morris’s conception of “significance” as developed in his book Signification and Significance (1964).

The cognitive, pragmatic, and ethical perspectives of sign activity emerge, according to Welby, in the unconsciously philosophical questions of the man in the street when he asks, “What do you mean by . . . ?,” “What does it signify?,” etc. Indeed, in the face of accumulating knowledge and experience, the significian, from whatever walk of life, is urged to ask such questions as, “What is the sense of . . . ?,” “What do we intend by . . . ?,” “What is the meaning of . . . ?,” “Why do we take an interest in such things as beauty, truth, goodness?,” “Why do we give value to experience?,” and “What is the expression value of a certain experience?” Such questions and their responses, with their focus on the sense, meaning, and significance of sign processes, induce the significian to reflect upon the value of all experience. Upon such questions rest all cognitive, aesthetic, ethical, and religious controversies.

The significal method applies to all aspects of life and knowledge not because of some claim to semiotic omniscience, but simply because it turns its attention upon meaning in all its signifying complexity. It ensues that the value of this method rests in the fact that it can be shared by all practical and speculative experience. In particular, the significal theory of meaning theorizes the dimension of signifying otherness and therefore the capacity for signifying excess with respect to meaning as understood in the strict sense as related to intentionality. The logical and ethical, or semioethical, capacity for signifying, interpreting, and distinguishing among signs differentiates human beings from the rest of the animal world, while also favoring maximum development of animal instincts, sensations, and feelings through continuous accumulation of experience and knowledge and their qualitative transformations.

In a letter to Welby of 14 March 1909 (in Hardwick 1977: 108–130), Peirce himself established a correspondence between Welby’s trichotomy of sense, meaning, and significance and his own tripartite division of the interpretant into “immediate interpretant,” “dynamical interpretant,” and “final interpretant,” identifying the main discrepancy between his “dynamical interpretant” and Welby’s “meaning.” Peirce’s “immediate interpretant” concerns meaning as it is used ordinarily and habitually by the interpreter; therefore, as Welby says in relation to sense, it concerns the interpreter’s immediate response to signs. The “dynamical interpretant” concerns the sign’s signification in a specific context; therefore, similarly to Welby’s meaning, it concerns the effect of the sign on the interpreter. But whereas for Peirce reference is to the actual effect produced by the sign, Welby underlines intended effect, the utterer’s specific intentionality. Even more interesting is the connection established by Peirce between his concept of “final interpretant” and Welby’s “significance” (see below, ch. 5). According to Peirce, the final interpretant concerns the sign at the extreme limits of its interpretative possibilities. In other words, it concerns all possible responses provoked by a sign in a potentially unlimited sequence of interpretants; it alludes to the infinitely creative potential of signs. Furthermore, as attested by the correspondence that he establishes between his “final interpretant” and Welby’s “significance,” for Peirce, too, signifying potential is also related to evaluational attitudes:

I now find that my division nearly coincides with yours, as it ought to do exactly, if both are correct.

Let us see how well we do agree. The greatest discrepancy appears to lie in my Dynamical Interpretant as compared with your “Meaning”. If I understand the latter, it consists in the effect upon the mind of the Interpreter that the utterer (whether vocally or by writing) of the sign intends to produce. My Dynamical Interpretant consists in direct effect actually produced by a Sign upon an Interpreter of it. They agree in being effects of the Sign upon an individual mind, I think, or upon a number of actual individual minds by independent action upon each. My Final Interpretant is, I believe, exactly the same as your Significance; namely, the effect the Sign would produce upon any mind upon which circumstances should permit it to work out its full effect. My Immediate Interpretant is, I think, very nearly, if not quite, the same as your “sense”; for I understand the former to be the total unanalyzed effect that the Sign is calculated to produce; and I have been accustomed to identify this with the effect the sign first produces or may produce upon a mind, without any reflection upon it. I am not aware that you have ever attempted to define your term “sense”; but I gather from reading over what you say that it is the first effect that a sign would have upon a mind well-qualified to comprehend it. Since you say that it is Sensal and has no Volitional element, I suppose it is of the nature of an “impression”. It is thus, as far as I can see, exactly my Immediate Interpretant. (Peirce to Welby 14 March 1909, in Hardwick 1977: 109–110)

1.4 Iconicity and Translative Processes in Language and Knowledge

Welby describes the human signifying capacity in terms of “translative thinking,” an automatic process “in which everything suggests or reminds us of something else” (Welby 1983 [1903]: 34). In semi-otic terms, we could say that translative thinking is a semiosic process in which something stands for something...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: Prefigurations and Developments in the Study of Signs
• Part I On Signs in the Direction of Significs
• Part II Among Masters of the Sign
• References
• Name and Subject Index