zdzis.wasik@gmail.com

Abstract

The subject matter of this lecture will constitute a phenomenological and linguistic typology of significative-communicative properties of man as a semiotic animal embedded in its ecological surrounding of living and non-living as well as natural and artificial systems. Focusing on the semiotic self as an investigative object, new semiotic studies following the solipsistic anthropocentrism are counterpoised to traditional semiotic studies governed by the rules of collective semiocentrism. Instead of dealing with sign- and referent-related properties of communicational products, practitioners of new semiotics are interested in the dynamic properties of human individuals on account of their sign- or meaning-processing activities. This lecture will investigate the difference between animals and humans as to the nature of their subjective universes on the basis of existential phenomenology, philosophy of biology, and biological semiotics. Furthermore, it will take a look on the defining characteristics of speech derivable from the contrast between the verbal and non-verbal means of animal and human communication from the perspective of anthropological linguistics.

Having compared the subjective states of organisms with respect to the absence or presence of intentionality, slave or master relationships, closeness and openness of their environments, existential phenomenologists have argued that animals are bound in totality to their subjective universe and humans may transcend it by going to another kind of reality. As conscious individuals humans are endowed with free will allowing them to change and to shape their world of everyday life. Animal organisms have been described as behaving instinctively and human organisms as comporting themselves with reflection and stance-taking. Semiotically inclined phenomenologists have applied the sign- and meaning-processing-oriented approach to ponder the existential modes of animals and humans in terms of their being in the world as immanence and being for the world as transcendence. Immanent subjects are regarded as existing in their environments and transcendent subjects as being able to go beyond their universe of life. Additional divergence between animals and humans have been observed in the their ego-related awareness of corporeality or intercorporeality and subjectivity or intersubjectivity status and in their conscious awareness of the meaning of being alive and the ability of taking stand to the existence in the surrounding or existing for the surrounding. Considering the organism’s relations to the world they live in, it is the matter of becoming in the world and becoming of the world as a result of these relations. Important are relationships of organisms to their environment in terms of how they affect it or how they are affected by it. Organisms differ, therefore, in the potential networks of affective relationships with their environments. In another context of scientific reflections, representatives of anthropological linguistics have derived the species-specific properties of animals and humans, with regard to their communicative means, from: immutability or interchangeability of sender-receiver roles, innateness or experientiality in generational acquisition and transmission, naturalness or conventionality of origin, constancy or variability and stability or changeability, boundedness or displacement ability in time and space, instinctiveness or intentionality, globality and continuity or segmentability and discreteness of patterning, etc.

1. Introductory remarks

The subject matter of this article constitutes a typology of significative-communicative properties of man as a semiotic animal embedded in its ecological surroundings of natural and artificial systems. With the focus on the self as an object of new semiotic studies, the solipsistic anthropocentrism is counterpoised here to the domain of traditional semiotic studies governed by the rules of collective semiocentrism. Instead of dealing with sign- and referent-related properties of communicational products, the article pays attention to the dynamic properties of human individuals on account of their sign- or meaning-processing activities while exposing the differences and similarities between Umwelt and Lebenswelt as the subjective universes of animals and humans on the basis of existential phenomenology, philosophy of biology and biological semiotics. Furthermore, it takes a look on the defining characteristics of speech derivable from the contrast between the verbal and non-verbal means of animal and human communication in the light of anthropological linguistics.

2. The subjective universe of organisms in the light of phenomenology

The first subpart of this article deals with phenomenological interpretations of differences or similarities between animal and human environments, confronting the notions of Umwelt and Lebenswelt. The term Umwelt ‘surrounding world’ applied to the subjective world of animal organisms by Jakob von Uexküll since 1909 (cf. 1921[1909]), is parallel to the term Funktionskreis(e) ‘functional circle(s)’, which was added in the second edition of Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere in 1921, and subsequently also to Umweltröhre(n) ‘environmental pipe(s)’, introduced along with the superordinated term Umwelttunnel ‘environmental tunnel’ slightly later by Uexküll in the second edition of his Theoretische Biologie (1928[1920]), cf. Uexküll (1926[1920]). Umwelt metaphorically modelled as a “soap bubble” refers to a particular environment of an animal acting at in a “functional circle” (Funktionskreis) of medium, food, enemy or sex (cf. Uexküll 1982[1940]: 59–60, especially 71), and Umweltröhren (cf. Uexküll 1928: 70, 108) illustrate a sequence of all environmental circles that the individual organism has to pass in a stroll throughout its whole life (cf. Uexküll 1957[1934).

2.1. Perceptual markers of subjective significance in the universe of animal organisms

Having studied the behavior of animal organisms entering into relationships with other objects from their environment, Uexküll noted that animals, from unicellular microorganisms to hominids, as living objects endowed with the so-called Ich-Ton (i.e., a property of subjectivity, rendered in the English translation of original German terms signifying musical tones by ‘ego-quality’), are capable of discerning meaning from environmental signals. Such meaning is attributable to objects, which possess qualities of being significant for the satisfaction of needs of a cognizing subject, as, e.g., Weg-Ton ‘path-quality’, Wurf-Ton ‘throw-quality’, Trink-Ton ‘drinking-quality’, Fress-Ton ‘eating-quality’, Sitz-Ton ‘sitting-quality’, Hindernis-Ton ‘obstacle-quality’, Kletter-Ton ‘climbing quality’, etc. (cf. Uexküll 1982: 27–31).

2.2. The life-world of humans as an investigative object of mundane phenomenology

Another kind of a subjective universe was proposed in phenomenology under the label of Lebenswelt describing the pre-given world in which humans live by Edmund Husserl (mainly 1970[1956{1935–1936}], cf., inter alia, also 1970[1913/1900/], 1970[1913/1901/], 1970[1913], and especially 2008/1916–1937/). The spherical dimension of human surroundings is visible in Edmund Husserl’s depiction: “In whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each ‘I-the-man’ and all of us together, belong to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our consciousness as existing precisely through this ‘living together’.” (1970[1956]1935–1936}]: 108). This term “life-world”, coming from mundane phenomenology as the translation from the German original by Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann (1973 [1975]), was abandoned by representatives of social constructivism Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966/1967) in favor of “the reality of everyday life”.

2.3. Ontological-ethological interpretations of the relationships of organisms to their natural environments

How the patterns of these relations that animals have to their Umwelt and humans to their Lebenswelt or, in general, that organisms have to their natural environments, are interpreted in existential phenomenology is shown on the basis of a comparative study on Jakob von Uexküll’s, Martin Heidegger’s, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s, and Gilles Deleuze’s onto-ethologies done by Brett Buchanan (1975). In Buchanan’s opinion (1975: 5, 39–114, ) contemporary biologists would be disappointed from Heidegger’s division of the beings in the world, in which, for example, the stone has no world, the animal is a captive of the world and the human – a world-forming being.

For Heidegger (1962[1927], 1995[1983]) the existence in the world, named after the German term Dasein (da-sein ‘being-there’), is a property of humans only. He describes behavior (Benehmen) of animals and their Umwelt in terms of restrictedness and functional boundedness in comparison to the comportment (Verhalten) of human Dasein, which is free and unbound in its opening to the world. Animals are admitted to have relations with things through the outward extension of their body, but they are said to lack an access to the things in themselves and to the being of these beings because they cannot transcend their captivation by things.

Recapitulating the position of Merleau-Ponty in his writings, Buchanan (1975) notices that Merleau-Ponty (1943/1938/[1983/1963/], 1945/1944/[1962], 1968[1964]) does not distinguish between various kinds of the world in which organisms live. For him the “environment”, “ambiance,” “entourage,” or “milieu” is a relational structure of organism’s behavior, whereas the organism is to be seen as a functional whole determined by perceptions of its experiencing body. Behavior forms thus a relational enclosure to such an extent that the organism is structurally united with its world.

In Deleuze’s (1992[1968], 1990[1969], 1988[1981/1970/]) philosophy of affections, elaborated after Benedict Spinoza (1883[1677]) and extended in cooperation with Félix Guattari (cf. Deleuze & Guattari 1987[1980], important are relationships of organisms to their environment how they affect it or how they are affected by incoming stimuli. Organisms are said to differ in potential networks of affective relationships with their social, cultural and natural environments.

3. The theoretical stance of existential semiotics toward the being forms of human individuals

In the second subpart, a search for the roots of existential semiotics launched as a conceptual and methodological framework by Eero Tarasti (2000, 2009, 2011, 2012) starts with rethinking the layouts of human-cantered semiotics in the light of philosophers who paid attention to “existence” and “transcendence”. Therefore, it goes back to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1977/1910/[1952/1807/]), who characterized his approach to reality as phenomenology while alluding to Immanuel Kant (1938[1781]), but who, unlike Kant, expressed his conviction that phenomena constitute a sufficient basis for a universal science of being.

3.1. Modes of human existence: Being in itself and being for itself

The main emphasis is put on Hegel’s categories of an-sich-sein ‘being-in-itself’ and für-sich-sein ‘being-for-itself’, which subsequently turned into subjective and objective being in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard (1941[1846]) when he spoke about an individual as an observer of him- or herself or the observed one who was a subject or such an individual who was what he/she was because he/she had become like it. Jean-Paul Sartre (1960/1991/[1936–1937], 1956 [1943]), a skeptical reader of Hegel and Kierkegaard in line, translated Hegelian concepts with être-en-soi and être-pour-soi. For Sartre, the being as such becomes aware of itself through an act of negation and, when becoming an observer of itself, it shits its attention into the position of being for itself. Having noticed a lack in its reality, this being begins with the first act of transcendence when it strives to fulfil what it lacks.

3.2. Modality acts of self-awareness in personal and subjective spheres of individual and social manifestation forms

Hegelian concepts of an-sich-sein and für-sich-sein, have been changed into an-mir-sein ‘being-in-myself’ and für-mich-sein ‘being-for-myself’ by Jacques Fontanille (2004). Following his contribution to somatic semiotics, one can detach the individual objective and subjective from social objective and subjective being forms of human body (soma) in a new phenomenological sense (séma), i.e., être-en-moi and être-en-soi from être-pour-moi and être-pour-soi.

Fontanille’s distinctions have influenced Tarasti (cf. 2011: 328–329) to classify the corporeal and mental, individual and social modes of human existence and transcendence into four modality acts of self-awareness, having been reconstituted here in a cohesive description as follows: (1) an-mir-sein – être-en-moi – ‘being-in-myself’, in which an individual is willing to appreciate his/her/its existential bodily self-worth; I represents bodily ego of human self which appears as kinetic energy, expressions of needs, wants or desires through gestures and intonations; (2) für-mich-sein – être-pour-moi – ‘being-for-myself’, in which the individual can reflect upon him-/her-/it-self while transcending to the position of an “observer”; the attitude of an “observer” shifting, for the lack of his, her or its existence, to the transcendental acts of an ego discovering his, her or its existential identity; (3) an-sich-sein – être-en-soi – ‘being-in-itself’, in which an individual transcends to probable chances, conveyed by purely conceptual and virtual norms, ideas, and values, which he/she/it must either actualize or not actualize in society; (4) für-sich-sein – être-pour-soi – ‘being-for-itself’, in which an individual refers to an actual role as realized by the conduct in his/hers/its world of existence, which are determined by aforementioned norms, ideas, and values.

Summarizing postmodern thought on semiotic phenomenology, one can consider the existence modes of animal and human subjects in terms of their being in the world as immanence and being for the world as transcendence. Immanent subjects are viewed as existing in their environments and transcendent subjects as being able to go beyond their universe of life.

4. Semiotic universals of language in animal and human communication

The subject matter of the third subpart constitutes the author’s (Zdzisław Wąsik 2007, and 2014: 65–78) classificatory elaborations and extensions of Charles Hockett’s (1959a[1958], 1959b, 1960a, 1960b, 1966[1963]), Stuart Altmann’s (1962), Hockett’s and Altmann’s (1968), as well as Charles Osgood’s (1980) approaches to defining characteristics of speech derivable from the contrast between verbal and non-verbal means of communication in the universe of animals and humans. Accordingly, semiotic universals of language have been divided into four groups: (I) form and structure of language; (II) substances of codes and channels of communication; (III) cognitive faculties and communicational abilities of human beings across cultures and generations; (IV) relationships between the signifying and signified sides of verbal means as well as between verbal means and their users (see Wąsik (2014: 72–73).

4.1. Structural-systemic set of semiotic universals of language

Group I embraces systemic properties of language making up domain of linguistics studies, such as: semantic referentiality where the semantic function of verbal signs results from their reference to reality and the relation between signs and their referents always repeats in a similar way although always in new contexts; conventional arbitrariness – the relationship between verbal signs and their referents is not natural by origin but depends upon the social usage and customs conditioned by free and non-motivated choices; discrete distinctiveness – verbal means are not continuous and global but articulated and segmented as mutually distinguishable and replaceable contextual entities, units or constructions; double articulateness – verbal means can be divided into the smallest meaningful text elements (morphemes) and smallest diacritic text elements (phonemes); morphological duality – verbal means can be divided into two classes of signs, grammatical and lexical morphemes; bipartite significance – verbal means as constituents of predication frames can be divided, on the syntactic level, into sentences and word phrases that realize, on the logical and semantic level, both the function of propositions and concepts; functional and compositional hierarchicality – on the subordinating level, text elements of lower order function within entities, units or constructions of higher order, as phonemes, morphemes, semantemes, words, phrases, sentences, utterances, discourses and texts, and, on the superordinating level, text elements of higher order consist at least of one entity, unit or construction of lower order, as text, discourse, utterance, sentence, phrase, word, semanteme, morpheme, and phoneme; binary isomorphism of text structures – segmental text structures, as syllable, stem, word, phrase, clause, sentence, are isomorphous as to their binary forms consisting of a constitutive component and an accessory component; for a syllable, the constitutive component is a vowel or semivowel, for a stem – a lexical morpheme, for a word – a stem, for a phrase – a determined word, for a clause – verbal phrase, for a sentence – the main clause; accessory, in turn, for a syllable is a consonant, for a stem – a derivational affix, for a word – an inflectional ending, for a phrase – a determining word, for a clause – a nominal phrase, for a sentence – a subordinated clause; syntagmatic integrativity and paradigmatic commutability – verbal signs can create entities, units and constructions appearing as segments and/or suprasegmental features; combinatorial-productive openness – the system of language functions as an open system, so that its users have the opportunity to produce an infinite number of signs from a finite number of simple elements and phraseological constructions.

The specification of characteristic features of language that belong to the domain of linguistics can lead to the formulation of its semiotic definition when language is confronted with other systems of understanding on the basis of searching for the genus proximum of the linguistic sign among the other semiotic objects. Examined on the syntagmatic level of utterances and locutions, both simple signs and composed signs are regarded as complex signs of higher order as to their global meaning, where the sum of their components does not equal the sum of their partial meanings. All meaningful forms as simple signs or composed signs are considered as members of the same paradigm when they replace each other within the same context of locutions and/or utterances.

4.2. Phonic realization of linguistic texts in speech as non-systemic properties of language

Non-systemic properties of language constituting group II should be relegated to the interest of physical acoustics. The object of study is reduced here to non-systemic properties of speech sounds, as follows: vocal-auditory, verbal signs have a phonic character, they are emitted through the vocal tract and received by ear; centrifugal transmission and directional reception – sound waves expand in all directions, but they are received from that direction in which the listener finds himself; evanescence in time – phonic substances of speech sounds due to physical laws are transitory and volatile; linear integration over time – receivers apprehend sound waves as a sequence of segments arranged in a line (cf. Wąsik 2014: 74–75).

4.3. Extrasystemic properties of language as an investigative object of the neighboring disciplines of linguistics

Groups III and IV, in turn, pertain to extrasystemic properties of language studied by human-centered semiotics. Group III has been précised in the following order: interchangeability of sender-receiver roles stating that the communicating individual who can be both a sender and a receiver of his or her signs and the signs of other individuals can produce, perceive and reproduce their own or foreign signs as many times as they want; complete (total) feedback – the sender, while speaking, can not only simultaneously perceive reactions of others, but he or she can also react to the form and content of what they emit him- or her-self, which also gives them the possibility of controlling and/or correcting their errors; cultural transmission – languages are not genetically inherited, but generationally transferred through education and participation in culture; creativity, learnability and forgetability – as far as speech faculties can be inherited, every representative of the species homo sapiens, understood also as homo animal symbolicum, can not only acquire every language but also create his or her own linguistic system or forget a given language, which they have learned; translatability – the feature of learnability implies also the feature of translatability of every language learned by users as a second, third or fourth, and so forth, language; conventionally determined changeability in time and variability in space – bearers of a given language, as members of communicative communities, can contribute, on the basis of social agreement or contacts between different languages or their different varieties, not only to the formation of new but also to mixed languages or their new functional and stylistic varieties as well as new expressions and utterances never heard before in a given language, etc.

Group IV encompasses: specialization stating that language has developed to perform various semantic and non-semantic functions; contextuality – the meanings of verbal means specify themselves in dependence of environments; translocation (displacement) – users of a given language may speak about things remote in time and space; metadesignation – a language may serve to speak about the language as an object of reality; prevarication – the extralingual reality of verbal signs can be both true and false, observed and inferred, as well as imagined and real, and the like; pragmaticity – linguistic utterances can be interpreted directly according to their locutionary meaning or indirectly as exerting an impact upon receivers due to their illocutionary force; intentionality – senders can deliberately manipulate with a sense of utterances; transparency or opacity – the meaning of expressions are either overt or covert when their receivers understand them immediately or interpret them only through paraphrases; gestalticity – verbal means possess a producer-oriented recognizable shape; fossilization (lexicalization) – verbal signs strive to become independent from their derivational meanings, motivation or etymology (see Wąsik 2014: 74–75).

Among the most relevant species-specific properties of animals and humans in communication, distinguished in the research on the semiotic universals of language, the following pair of oppositions might be distinguished: immutability vs. interchangeability of sender-receiver roles, innateness vs. experientiality in generational acquisition and transmission; naturalness of signaling means vs. conventionality of origin, constancy or variability and stability or changeability of language; boundedness vs. displacement facility in time and space; instinctiveness vs. intentionality; globality vs. continuity or segmentability and discreteness of patterning, etc.

5. Conclusions

To end with, it may be noticed that the ideas of transcendence, displacement, openness and metadesignation, as distinctive properties of humanity, are common for philosophers, psychologists, semioticians and linguists. What is important in the enumeration of differential characteristics of humans in comparison to animals are the convictions of philosophers pertaining, inter alia, to the awareness of being alive and taking stand to the existence in the surrounding and to existing for the surrounding, the endowments with the free will allowing to change and to shape the world of everyday life as well as to becoming in the world and becoming of the world as a result of organismic and interorganismic interrelationships.

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