Sociální studia (Apr 2018)
Nepochopená setkání: sémiotika a sociální věda o médiích
Abstract
The main goal of this mostly theoretical and polemic paper is to discuss common mistakes connected to misinterpreted theories of signs in selected theoretical researches in the discourse of Czech media studies. I argue that many theoretical concepts in this discourse are built upon confusions caused by the reading of secondary literature while ignoring the primary texts written by the founders of semiotics. The guiding principles of these mistakes, which are described in the article, have mostly two forms: i) the form of reducing Peirce’s complex semiotic theory to the triplet (popularized by Jakobson) of alleged similarity (in the case of sign–icon), causality (in the case of the sign–index) and convention (sign–symbol); and ii) the form of interpretation of Saussure’s purely mental sign as something which has in itself “materiality of sound” (ergo the signifier is something physical). I would like to show that the original conceptions of semiotics and semiology have nothing to do with these wild misreadings of secondary sources that, moreover, cannot be crossbred, which brings problems into the theoretical frames of research.
