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The Difficult Coexistence of Hjelmslev and Peirce in the Semiotics of Umberto Eco

in Versus n. 117, Miscellaneo, pp.55-69

Abstract (italiano)

In this article I try to provide a critical rereading of Umberto Eco’s attempt to accommodate both Hjelmslev and Peirce in his semiotic theory. The hypothesis I attempt to defend is that
in A Theory of Semiotics and in Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language what we see is not so much the two authors coexisting as Hjelmslev being superseded by Peirce, since both in the concept
of meaning and in the method of analysis the basic principles of Hjelmslev’s theory (the principle of immanence, the use of an
interdefined metalanguage etc.) are discarded. Hjelmslev and Peirce do come together, however, in the theory of knowledge proposed by Eco in Kant and the Platypus: in this context it is
suggested that a certain form of content (Hjelmslev) is continually modified and remodelled in the circuit of semiosis (Peirce). But in this theory Hjelmslev’s involvement is very partial, because this “unstable equilibrium” of knowledge described by Eco has no particular methodological or analytical implications.