46 Tahir Wood
reader. And so on. These are among the various indexical aspects of the ̳verbal signs‘ making
up a text.
Let it be noted that semiosis goes well beyond the mere signification that one associates
with the simple relation between signifier and signified, e.g. a word and its meaning. The
ideational content of expressions and their textual combination cannot be reduced to this
simple relation. Rather what is involved is an ideational complex that is much more than the
sum of the various signs that were used in the composition of the text. The ideational
structures range from meanings at a micro level, such as the level of a clause, up to a macro
level, which would be formed as a (subjective) summary or model of the text as a whole, or
indeed of a number of related texts. It is not really useful then to refer to a text, as a whole or
any of its constituent expressions, as a sign, nor to refer to its manifold of meaning potentials
as signification. Signification is a term that should probably retain its Saussurean association
of decontextualised langue (cf. Rastier, 1998, p. 196), while ideation is contrasted with this as
a synthetic product of mind. But there is a difficulty in this analytical distinction that we will
have to address in the next section.
2.4. Abstraction
Abstraction can be shown to occur in at least three degrees:Abstractiona: This abstraction is present in the derivation of the meanings of all categories,
even those that we associate with ̳concrete nouns‘. It is the process whereby categories
of concrete objects or qualities are separated, by a process of idealisation, from the
individual instantiations of the category (types from tokens). In cognition such categories
can generally be simulated as image schemas (Lakoff, 1987). They can also be
demonstrated to a language learner through acts of ostensive definition: ̳that is a chair‘,
̳this is a table‘, etc. They also exhibit prototype effects, whereby one member of a
category is a better exemplar of the category than another, i.e. more typical.
Abstractionb: Here we have to do with abstract nominals of the common kind. The abstraction
here is the process whereby an idealised narrative schema comes to form the meaning for
a lexical item. Narrative schemata of this kind are idealised from narratives about
common situations. The abstract category that emerges in such a process does not
correspond to any class of physical objects and cannot be simulated or defined
ostensively as in the case of abstractiona. But something rather like ostensive definition is
possible. One may help to create the narrative schema by telling a little story and then
saying ̳that is charity‘ or ̳that is disappointment‘. In this way categories at this degree of
abstraction can be defined in a quasi-ostensive way, so that the deictic gesture points, so
to speak, at the story that has been told, rather than at an object (Benzon and Hays, 1990;
Wood, 2006, 2009).
Abstractionc: This is hyper-abstraction. Hyper-abstract concepts cannot be demonstrated or
defined through basic narratives (let alone through acts of ostention) without severe
reduction of their meanings. Their meanings are constituted via bodies of heterogeneous
discourse, the more complex the concept the more heterogeneous the discourse that
constitutes its meaning.