Semiosis & Sign Exchange

design for a subjective situationism, including conceptual grounds of business information modeling

Pieter Wisse

prelude 9

From equating an engineered sign with an engineered cause it simply follows that a sign is an act. In fact, the Schopenhauerean action perspective has contributed to development of the sign’s representational structures (see Chapters 7 and 8) that differ widely from what traditional linguistics and language philosophy propose.

Rather than starting from a general action view, that is, a view that at the minimum brackets existing theories of language, the analytical philosophy of language has not radically challenged its own assumptions. It has elaborated into embracing action from the perspective of language. From the basic idea that speech involves either true or false statements about reality, another concept has evolved. The reasoning is that there is also a different kind of speech, i.e., the speech that acts. Built upon the positivist foundation of truth-value, or at least unable to radically deny it, the concept of speech act has arisen.

The anatomy of meaning in this treatise does not uphold a distinction as between, say, truth-speech and act-speech. It holds that every sign is an act.

Speech act theory, as the evolution of analytical philosophy of language is named, is very influential. Well-known proponents are Austin, his one-time student Searle and, labeling his theory that of communicative action, Habermas. Alone or together, their works are also referred to in theories of information modeling as constituting its language action paradigm.

Modeling theories based on the analytical language action paradigm have mostly uncritically appropriated concepts from speech act theory and from related developments such as the theory of communicative action. It is not difficult to see why. For traditional information modeling applies identical assumptions.

Chapters 9 through 12 attempt to fulfill the requirement for critical appraisal of some primary sources. A chapter on Mead, Chapter 11, is added to chapters devoted to the three theorists already mentioned. In itself, Mead’s ideas are already interesting. He is included here because of his strong influence on Habermas. The latter cannot be properly appreciated without first seeing key concepts from Mead (and from Austin and, to a lesser extent, Searle) in their original perspective.

This series of critical chapters starts with Austin. It is especially illuminating to see what the purely linguistic ground of his concept of illocution is, a term nevertheless echoed far and wide as a key concept for information modeling. From the perspective of this treatise, it adds an unnecessary distinction. As every sign is a request for compliance, grounds to explain meaning should be cleared from all primary propositional assumptions. All speech is act.

It is not that the language action paradigm does not go far enough. The problem is that it certainly introduces a much-needed theme, i.e., action, but regretfully develops it inconsistently and therefore continues theorizing in a direction that is unproductive for comprehension of variety. Whatever theories of information modeling are derived, they are bound to suffer from similar contradictions. Reviewing such modeling theories, too, has been left outside the scope of this treatise.

 

 

2002, web edition 2005 © Pieter Wisse

 

 

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