Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis 47A simple idealised narrative schema will not do for the meanings of these words. A
concept like globalisation may indeed be explicated or defined by one or two macro-
propositions, but it will inevitably be found that those propositions themselves contain highly
abstract terms (capital, finance, trade, nations, politics, international borders, export-import,
etc.). Thus we do not yet touch ground, as it were, by such processes of definition; rather we
throw up more abstractions that are equally in need of definition. This is where the difficulty
with ̳unlimited semiosis‘ arises. It is also where we reach the aporiae of interpretation that
were mentioned earlier and which act to place a limit upon semiosis.
The problem is that the meanings of hyper-abstract words are defined by all the contexts
in which the subject has encountered them before, and this will vary from one individual to
another. Consider a word like romantic for example. One might use this word without regard
to the contexts in which one‘s interlocutor has encountered it before. Does he or she know
anything about the chivalric romance, the cult of the medieval, courtly love, sturm und drang,
Byron or Shelley, Beethoven or Chopin, the gothic novel, the various manifestations of the
romantic in popular culture from Mills and Boon love stories to detective fiction to
Hollywood/Bollywood ̳romantic comedies‘ to the language of travel to exotic ( ̳romantic‘)
destinations, etc.? The fact is that a subject‘s understanding of such a term is nothing other
than the residue of prior discourse to which he or she has been exposed (Wood, 2006, 2009).
This is what makes abstraction of my third type hyper-abstraction. Unlike those abstractions
of the second type, one cannot define romantic by means of a simple narrative schema.
Rather its various meanings are tossed about unstably on the waves and currents of prior
discourse, which all of us, without exception, have experienced only partially.
Once one has to do with hyper-abstract terms an indeterminacy in interpretation arises,
which cannot be simply remedied by recourse to any rules or approved procedures of
interpretation. The limitlessness of interpretation that is found at this point may indeed be a
̳bad infinity‘; bad in the precise sense that it represents the breakdown of common
understanding and allows for a range of (mis)understandings that are potentially infinite in
number. This comes about because there is no telling exactly what interpretation another will
arrive at as the result of the use of such words.^6
While these words are signifiers and thus part of systematic langue, they are at the same
time dependant for their meanings on prior processing of discourse (this is also true of
abstractionb, but to a less problematic extent). This problem by no means requires us to
abandon our distinction between text meanings (ideation) and word meanings (signification);
on the contrary it is only via this distinction that the problem really comes to light.
A hyper-abstract word has nothing other than the experience of prior discourse to furnish
its meaning for a subject, and this meaning will consequently vary from one individual to
another, perhaps only slightly, perhaps greatly. This is where the theory of prototype effects –
whereby the consensual meanings of such words as dog, cat, table, chair, etc. are explained –
breaks down. Unpredictable variation in the meanings of the more abstract terms, by contrast,
comes about just because this meaning is strongly affected by one‘s prior experience of text
interpretation. Rather than the neat radial structure of prototype effects, we have rather a
range of meaning that is unstable and subject to unpredictable variation. It is also no doubt for
this reason that abstract nominals can often be used to impress or to deceive, so that this very
indeterminacy in meaning is in fact exploited.
(^6) In Austin‘s terms, one will not be able to predict the perlocutionary effect upon one‘s interlocutor.