106 Agnes Petocz
structuralism, feminism, discourse analysis, ideology critique), with which it was seen to have
an affinity "based on their common interest in the revelation of hidden codes that shape
perception and behaviour" (Scholes, 1982, p. xiii).
Both as subject matter and as method semiotics spread and fragmented across disciplines,
and became a kind of cross-disciplinary surfer and looter (Bouissac, 1998). It was felt that,
since a sign can be anything, "the object of semiotics is bound to dissolve and 'perfuse' the
universe" (Bouissac, 1998, p. 738). Signals transfer information and then "lose their being as
signs and dissipate into noise. As relation rather than substance, their fleeting existence is in
perpetual transition and transformation" (p. 739). Bouissac remarks that this makes semiotics
appear to be "up for grabs", its technical language adjustable to Christian theologian, Marxist,
phenomenologist, neo-Darwinian, deconstructionist, neo-positivist, and so on. Who, then, can
blame the mainstream experimental psychologist for steering well clear?
It is understandable that most psychologists trained in the empirical methods to
investigate fine-grained processes and to follow bottom-up reasoning procedures find it
difficult to relate to the semiotic discourse, whose core notion is so general and
ambiguous. From their point of view, semiotics looks more like a brand of folk
psychology and its results appear either trivial or purely speculative. (Bouissac, 1998, p.
742)The View that Semiotics has Little Concern with the Sign User
Related to the third factor is the fourth reason for psychology's negative attitude towards
semiotics. In addition to the perception that much of semiotics is hostile to realism and
science, even the briefest glance at the semiotic literature reveals that semiotics has little to
say about the person - the sign user. This is not a mere oversight; it has long been part of the
official position of semiotics, despite at least one major early warning from within semiotics,^4
and despite other internal movements towards functionalism (Halliday, 1973) and "third
force" social semiotics (Hodge & Kress, 1988; van Leeuwen, 2005).^5
The semiotics of the latter half of the twentieth century was based on one of two
divergent strains of structuralism, namely "linguistic/semiotic" (in contrast to "biogenetic").
This type of structuralism is illustrated in the work of Saussure and Lévi-Strauss, and is
characterised by a non-biological, formalist, synchronic conception of structure (D'Aquili,
Laughlin & McManus, 1979; Piaget, 1971). In the linguistic structuralism of semiotics, the
focus is on the systemic aspects of sign-systems, independent of their development or use by
people. Not only is the signifier primary, its status is elevated at the expense of the signified
and the person, such that the latter two terms tend to become collapsed into the first. That is,
the signified becomes merely another signifier (epitomised in the concept of the "semiotic
circle"), and the person becomes merely the point of intersection in a network of signifiers.
As Bell (2002) observes, the delineation of semiotics as a field separate from psychology
(^4) Kristeva (1973) criticised the increasing formalism of semiotics, its abandonment of historical and psychological
approaches, and its neglect of a theory of a "speaking subject" in favour of "a transcendental ego, cut off from
5 its body, its unconscious, and also its history" (p. 1249).
As Milic (2008) notes of Halliday's functionalism, "While such an approach represents an advance on more
formalist approaches, there is still very little consideration of how psychological aspects of subjects, such as
beliefs, values and motivations, might interact with semiotic resources" (p. 12).