VERSUS n. 114 (january-june 2012)

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In a way, the very expression “semiotics of culture” is tautological: even when semiologists examine the interpretative mechanisms generating natural (unintentional) signs, their attention is drawn towards the encyclopaedic mediation that makes such inferential processes possible, preventing us from reducing them to mere sequences of stimulus-response dyads. But if semiosis is necessarily cultural, what is the distinction (if any) between a semiotics of culture and semiotics tout court? A possible answer would be to define a semiotics of culture as that branch of our discipline that deals with objects considered as cultural by a given community. However, this would clearly be a circular and elusive definition, inasmuch as it would avoid dealing with the most problematic (and therefore interesting) aspects of this field of study. Rather, the point we ought to focus on is: What are the questions that semiologists ask when confronted with the objects of their analyses, and what methods do they apply in a bid to answer those questions? Our working hypothesis is that all relevant textual analyses – including the most rigorous structuralist ones – presuppose some form of explicative (and not merely descriptive) model of the various phenomena subjected to study . What other reason would there be to analyze cultural texts if not to further our understanding of the genesis and/or the functioning of such texts, and/or the processes through which they are registered in (or removed from) the collective Ecnyclopedia, the relationship with other texts, and (or) the ways in which they interact with the cognitive structures and the habits of those who interpret them and use them in order to pursue their various adaptive purposes? In the light of such considerations, it seems useful to encourage a comparison of different views of the semiotics of culture: how should it be understood, and what is its scope? What is it that sets it apart from similar disciplines and approaches? A certain way of focusing on the object of analysis, a set of hypotheses about the way in which cultural phenomena communicate, a specific understanding of the concept of “culture”, a particular investigative method, the rigorous adoption of a technical metalanguage as a guarantee of a scientific approach...? As the articles in this volume show, the current semiotic community is rather divided on the subject. An in-depth analysis of a discipline’s state of the art cannot be made on the basis of the responses to a call for papers. However, if we regard the proposals which we received as symptoms of general tendencies within the semiotic community, this edition of Versus indicates that a majority of papers take as their point of reference an established structuralist paradigm, albeit one that is criss-crossed by methodological differences and subtle internal debates. Interpretative semiotics, on the other hand, was represented scarcely, if at all, even though it could have an interest in deepening the interface between Lotman’s Semiosphere and Eco’s Encyclopedia, in investigating the ways in which meaning is culturally negotiated, and maybe even in taking up the challenge recently set by the cognitive sciences (unwitting debtors of Peirce and Vygotskij) in order to develop new models with which to study the complex retroactive mechanisms involving cognitive mechanisms, semiotic systems, and symbolic artefacts through which human communities create, model and transform the cultural niches in which they live and survive.