In: Semiotics Theory and Applications ISBN 978-1-61728-992-7
Editor: Steven C. Hamel © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 11
INTERACTION AND INTERACTIVITY:
A SEMIOTIC COMMENTARY
Jan M. Broekman
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law
Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, USAABSTRACT
Law is the field in which today the application of semiotics remains essential. It has
furthermore "interaction" as a fundamental concept and guiding principle for its social
activities. However, legal discourse leaves important philosophical implications of this
principle untouched. The concept of interaction, theme of this commentary, shows a
static character despite its suggestion of dynamics, and a rigid sender-receiver scheme
qualifies its idea of interaction as "action between (inter) actors". These, however, do not
fit our experience that relating to others equals the unfolding of a dynamic vision and
interpretation of life! That other mode of experience is expressed with the concept of
"interactivity", which this commentary forwards as a semiotic alternative to "interaction".
The process of "being in a state of interactivity" thus changes the substance of
"interaction" when semiotics is applied to law.Interaction is not the same as interactivity—but neither word articulates the essence of
their difference. That simple observation goes for the context of social sciences as well as for
semiotics. Both use the notion of "interaction" to indicate the phenomenon of "the social"
without specifying any particular quality of action, which could eventually be meant by that
expression. Semiotics and social sciences are strongly intertwined, so that considerations
about the first concept immediately affect the second. This imports in particular since
"interaction" prevails in semiotic approaches of foundational discourses in modern society
that are implied in social sciences, such as law and legal discourse.
Long before law, there was medicine, a major field of semiotic application —
approximately two millennia, since the days of Galen until the second half of the 20th century.
The patient was understood as a bearer of signs, and the physician was expected to read them.