Review and Criticism Philosophic

Review and Criticism Philosophical Approaches to Communication Theory

A review essay by John Lyne, University of Pittsburgh

Signs Grow: Semiosis and Life Processes. By Floyd Merrell. Toronto, Canada:

UniversityofTorontoPress,1996.xii+341pp.$24.95(soft),$65.00(hard).

Of Problematology: Philosophy, Science, and Language. By Michel Meyer. Trans.

by David Jamison in collaboration with Alan Hart. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press,1995.vii+310pp.$18.95(soft),$49.95(hard).

Beyond the Symbol Model: Reflections on the Representational Nature of Language.

Edited by John Stewart. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. vi + 343 pp. $21.95 (soft),

$65.50(hard).

Language as Articulate Contact: Toward a Post-Semiotic Philosophy of Communication. By John Stewart. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. vix + 303 pp. $19.95 (soft).

Irecalltakingaclasslongagoinwhichwewereaskedtolearnalistofdifferent

theories of how communication began. The theories were given catchy names for

mnemonic purposes. There was the “bow-wow” theory, for instance, which was

the position that communication originated in mimicking sounds in the environment. The “yo-he-ho” theory, by contrast, posited that the need to coordinate

work required a rhythmic sounding out. So on down the list, we picked up each

oftheconspicuoususesofcommunication.Onlyyearslaterdiditoccurtomethat

thesestoriesoforiginwerenotreallypointsofanthropologicaldisputebutcompeting ways of thinking about language and communication. Arguments from

originsareoftenthinlydisguisedexhortationstoembraceawayofthinking.

Giving historical primacy to what one regards as the most essential aspect of

communication is a common enough rhetorical strategy—in the origin stories

logical priority is buttressed by temporal priority. One might have expected the

retreat of philosophical foundationalism to eliminate the need to found and anchor communication in such ways. In fact, it seems only to have produced a shift

intherhetoricalstrategies.Thefamiliarimpulseremains,maybebecauseitisone

and the same as the philosophical impulse. The philosophical approaches reviewed here are engaged in a debate over rubrics, natures, and groundings. These

are not, nor do they attempt to be, balanced accounts, giving a nod in each

theoreticaldirection.Theyareinsteadfightingforthesoulofcommunication.

Copyright © 1998 International Communication Association

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JohnStewart’sLanguageasArticulateContactprovidesaclearanalysisofquite

a number of major figures in the history and philosophy of language. He is also

clear about his agenda to move communication theorists away from a representationalist paradigm (“the symbol model”), and so he makes an insistent case for an

alternative,which,asperthetitle,is“articulatecontact.”Inspiredbythetradition

of Heidegger and Gadamer, this model is hermeneutical rather than epistemological, and it has affinities with the dialogical approach of Mikhail Bahktin. In an

unusualturn,Stewartalsolookstoissuesineducationofthedeaftoaddscopeto

thenotionofarticulateness.

A collection of essays edited by Stewart, Beyond the Symbol Model, was published as a companion volume, in which writers from several disciplines were

invitedtodiscussthestatusoftherepresentationalmodeloflanguage.Mostembrace some version of the “postsemiotic” view, although one set of essays is

groupedtogetherasresuscitationefforts,whichistosay,asattemptstocritique

and preserve the symbolic function within the shifted framework. Unfortunately,

spacedoesnotpermitdiscussingeachessayinthisusefulcollection.Aparticularly imaginative one by Andrew Smith presents a fictional dialogue between a

followerofC.S.PeirceandaLyotardian.JohnShotternicelypresentshisdialogical Wittgenstinianism and argues for practical-moral knowledge as knowing of a

third kind. Figures who loom large in this volume are Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty,

Neitzsche,andothersofthecountertradition—onerapidlylosingitsmarginalized

status.

Thebasicproblemtobesurmounted,asStewartseesit(ArticulateContact),is

a two worlds conception, with symbol and symbolized, signifier and signified,

occupyingdifferentworlds.Itis,ashereadsit,alignedwithseveralotherfeatures

ofthetraditionalstory,includingconceptionsoflanguageasasystemgoverning

atomisticunitsandconstructingrepresentation.Thealternativeistotakelanguage

asconstitutive,notinthelimitedsenseofthe“rules”theorists,butinsomething

like the Heideggerian sense of the dwelling place of being. Such being, in this

case, is emphatically interactive and a matter of contact among human beings in

whatare,optimally,dialogicaleventsofarticulation.

For Stewart it seems that the contest between these two conceptions is a zero

sumgame:Ifoneallowsanysemiotic,referential,orrepresentationalfunctionto

language,oneisonacollisioncoursewithlanguageasarticulatecontact.Agood

deal of his book is about the history of the semiotic seduction, which can be

found even among those theorists who think they have resisted it. Semioticians

who pride themselves on moving beyond simple correspondence models, for

instance,retaintwocentralerrorsofthetradition:representationandsystematicity.

Whatever the success semiotics has had in recasting familiar objects as complex

signconstructions,Stewartbelievesitiscarryingthewaterfortheoldtwoworlds

theory.

The pragmatic reader might hope for some accommodation of the two opposing models. Granting that language originates in the attempt to make articulate

contactwithanother(callitthe“hithere”theory),whatprecludesmutuallycoordinatedactsofreferenceandrepresentation?Thisquestionisineffectaddressed

by several essays in the edited collection. Stewart’s answer is that one cannot

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plausiblyandcoherentlysubscribetoapositionthatadmitsbothpossibilities.He

argues that language cannot be both constitutive and instrumental, even though

thatis,forexample,exactlythepositionofthespeechacttheorists,whodonot

seemlogicallydefenseless.

Stewart’sdefininggesturedoesnotcallattentiontoitself:rejectingthevocabularyofcorrespondencesandembracingthatofcoherences.Attimesthisispersuasive,butitisdonesounsparinglythatonemightexpectthatthebanishedcorrespondence function will reenter under a different guise, such as adequacy of

“description,”forinstance.Stewartseemstobepushingthestrongcasepartlyfor

itsrhetoricalimpact—theallieshequotesactuallysaythatlanguageisnotsimply

a tool (Gadamer) or just a system of signs, etc. The two worlds terminology,

however, is uncomfortably grafted onto some of the theories in question. For

instance,Ithinkmostfanstosemioticswouldsaytheall-pervasivedistinctions

between word and world, sign and signified, name and object, far from sorting

out two worlds, are understood semiotically as internal to language, part of how

itgetstractionininferencemaking.

In the preface Stewart notes that some have questioned why the alternatives

must be mutually exclusive—why he could not position himself as arguing for a

theory of communication that is complementary to the semiotic one. I must confessthatthequestionneverleftthisreader’smind.Timeandagaininreviewinga

hostofdifferenttheorists,Stewartappliesthelitmustest.Few,itseems,areuncontaminated by representational views, although Volosinov, Kenneth Burke, and

CalvinSchragfarereasonablywell.Thetensionbetweensemioticandpostsemiotic

elements in fact proves a useful device here for interrogating these and other

writers. Why spoil it by knocking out one side of the interplay?

Wittgensteinsaidthelimitsofone’slanguagewerethelimitsofone’sworld.In

Signs Grow, Floyd Merrell has in a sense reversed this, making signifying a manifestationofanaturalorder.Inhislatestbookonsemiotics,Merrelldefiesmerely

conventionalist explanations of language. He wants an account that gives it a

naturallife,andinawaythatmightbetenableattheturnofthecurrentcentury,

when we can no longer appeal to the élan vital. The comparison of sign making

to DNA is more analogy than metaphor here—Merrell treats signs as “process

structures”andsemiosisasaliving,growingnaturalprocess.Thereisnonature–

culturedichotomytobefoundinthisanalysis.Maybethiswillcatchtheattention

of those who have recently been arguing for a biologically based theory of communication, but I suspect they would make odd company. His frame of reference

is populated by some unexpected allies, but especially by Peirce, and by the work

ofphysicistIlyaPrigogine.Merrelltakesusthroughaspiralofcosmology,physics, semiotics, and psychology, pursuing the theme of self-organization and tapping Eastern as well as Western tropes. The book has an expansive spirit of

“ecstaticnaturalism,”atermonceappliedtoPeirce.

Merrell and Stewart could hardly be more different in their interpretation of

Peirce.WhereasStewartunderstandshimasimplicatedinalonghistoricalprejudice toward representationalism, Merrell takes Peirce as a beacon to the future,

anticipating the best aspects of postmodern understanding. Such divergent readings of Peirce are not new. Like most seminal figures, his work becomes a kind of

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Rorschachtest,allowingaffiliationforverydifferent,sometimescontradictory,

reasons.ThecoreofMerrell’sworkisaninvestigationofPeirce’ssemiotics,emphasizingthegrowing,changing,asymmetricalprocessesofsignification.Merrell

is a determined symmetry-buster, well armed for that task. He pushes free of the

static conception of language as a system, represented in the widely used terminologyofrulesandgames;hefaultsSaussurianstructuralismforthesamereason.

With Prigogine, he argues that nonequilibrium is the key to growth and selforganizationinopensystems.Aswiththeuniverse,sowithsemiosis.Livingprocess is not simply transformation—it is growth. Merrell pursues imagery of an

unfolding (and folding back) across a formidable, occasionally eccentric, landscape of process theories and cosmologies (call it the “grow and go” theory).

Peirce serves equally well here as a theorist of signs and an anti-Cartesian

theorist of consciousness, coming into his own as an intellectual force with the

falteringofmodernism.Merrell’sPeirce-Prigoginealliance,whichseemsalready

justifiedinPrigogine’swork,isquiteforward-looking.ThisPeirceshowsnothing

of the two worlds view. Merrell quotes him saying that “every sign stands for an

objectindependentofitself;butitcanonlybeasignofthatobjectinsofarasthat

objectisitselfofthenatureofasignorthought”(p.63).Thepictureisofaworld

perfused with signs, in which our participation is dynamic and transformative.

Merrell would concur with Stewart on the point that language cannot be reduced

toasystem.

Michel Meyer is a professor of philosophy and rhetoric at the University of

Brussels.Hisproject,inOfProblematology,beginswiththetropeofthe“crisis”in

Western philosophy occasioned by the dissolution of a Cartesian subject in academic culture. It is as if the ground had been pulled from under us, and we lack

an anchor point. Rather than abandoning philosophy, though, Meyer holds that

we must again find a guiding principle, and that principle turns out to be the

principleofquestioning,especiallyself-questioning.Givingupfoundationalism

tolookforgroundinginbedrockprinciplemaysoundabitlikefryingpantofire

forsomereaders;IbelieveMeyer’sresponseisthatquestioningistheonlygrounding

thatperpetuallyproblematizesitself.ThisisclosetoSocrates’soracularinsight

that he was wise because he knew that he did not know. Socrates plays out as a

kind of hero in this, but a tragic one, whose death was inevitable. We have been

on the wrong road ever since—this is, among other things, the story of fateful

turning points. Modernist philosophy—and this traces to the Greeks—follows the

modelofpropositionaljustification.Itlaborsundertheillusionthatitcansecure

answers, putting the questions behind. By contrast, the philosophy of the unsettlingquestionistobecalled“problematology.”

There is a real tension in Meyer’s book between his postfoundationist outlook

and his quest for reliable origins. He wants a secure starting point, even while

problematology would keep the ground undulating. Much seems to hinge on the

radicalityofallthis(p.238),asthoughanythinglesswouldbecollusionwiththe

justificationist model. The tone of radicality is so strong here that one hardly

knows where to turn to find good models of such questioning (call it the “whywhy” theory). Science and the human sciences have pointed only toward objectificationandarethereforeofnohelp.Dialectic,somereaderswillbedisappointed

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to learn, is the bewitching enemy of problematology. The “dialecticization of

interrogation,”Meyersays,wasthefirststeptowarditsrepressionasontology(p.

124).Weneedtogetintothehabitoftreatinganswers,notassettlements,butas

openings to new questions. In one chapter Meyer turns to the notion of interactive argumentation as a model, and he illustrates his point by showing a number

of assertions that actually might be understood as opening new questions, expandingratherthanconcludingtheinquiry.Unfortunately,theseareratherpedestrianexamples,notmuchofapayoffforhavingembracedthespiritofradicalselfreflection.Thereisalsosomecommentaryonliteraryrhetoric.

“Problematology”isnotaninherentlybeautifulterm(andperhapssix-syllable

words do not make ready rallying cries), but Meyer is hoping to provide a worthy

antithesistopropositionality.Itisworthnotingthatthelatterdoctrinebecame

deeply rooted without actual use of that term. So maybe we should be thinking

aboutstylesofanalysisratherthandefendingthesovereigntyofarubric.Kenneth

Burke’s famous examination of metaphysical systems as the patient working out

oftheimplicationsofasingletermsuggestshowfaronecangetwithasteadfast

commitment to one dominant perspective. This is still much about naming. For

Burke, however, the lesson is that all perspectives are just that: perspectives,

responsibly judged by proportionality rather than purity. Viewed as a rhetorical

genre, questioning is one among many, and at some point “questioning” must

itselfbequestioned,lestweloseoutonconstitutinganddeclaringordisagreeing

andcontrolling.

Thegestureof“radicalreflection”canbecleansinguptoapoint.Thereisso

much radical reflection in this volume, though, that one begins to wonder how

thisoranyotherphilosophycouldpossiblythinkofitselfassoradicallyaccessible to itself—how it could find a shortcut to reality without making a detour

throughthechanginglandscapeofscience,media,andpolitics.Itisatleastinvigorating to see someone like Merrell thinking about the nature of communication within a wide range of human knowledge and practices. How could the

advent of quantum physics not be important to a present-day metaphysics? Or the

discovery of DNA? The internet? If those earth-shaking changes become only

incidental to our philosophies, then it seems to me we will have left ourselves

insufficientspaceforthetheoryofcommunication.Ourchallengeistostayopen

tothebeingsandrealitiesthatenterandexitourworld,andnotjusttothosethat

areontologicallygrandfatheredin.

The comingling of different forms of knowledge and different ontologies poses

some of our most interesting questions. If language gives us the power to articulate,toquestion,tounderstand,ortosignify,italsohaswaysofthwartingthose

things—or, for better or worse, of making us think we are achieving communion

when we are really only confused. It would be nice to see basic thinking on

communication more frequently take into its purview the problem of symbolic

confusion, otherwise known to Cool Hand Luke fans as failure to communicate.

This is perhaps the justification we would provide for our own work and livelihoods, should we be called before the legislature (call it the “keep working”

theory). Were the writers discussed here convened in a room, I doubt they would

becontenttotalkpasteachother.