How To Do Things With Signs: An Overview of Semiotics for Lawyers and Others

Click HERE for a link to my current draft of "How To Do Things With Signs: Semiotics in Legal Theory, Practice, and Education."

Abstract

Discussing federal statutes, Justice Scalia tells us that “[t]he stark reality is that the only thing that one can say for sure was agreed to by both houses and the president (on signing the bill) is the text of the statute. The rest is legal fiction."

How should we take this claim? If we take "text" to mean the printed text, that text without more is just a series of marks. If instead we take "text" (as we must) to refer to something off the page such as the "meaning" of the series of marks at issue, what is that meaning and how do we know that all the legislators "agreed" on that "meaning"? In seeking answers here, we necessarily delve into semiotics (i.e., the “general theory of signs”) by noting that meaningful ink marks ("signifiers) signify a meaning beyond themselves (the "signified.") Thus, understanding how signs function is integral to lawyers' textual and linguistic analysis. Additionally, as this article demonstrates, legal analysis and rhetoric are much impoverished if lawyers ignore nonverbal signs such as icons, indices, and nonverbal symbols.

In providing a broad overview of semiotics for lawyers, this article thus (1) begins with a general definition of signs and the related notion of intentionality. It then turns to, among other things, (2) the structure and concomitants of signs in more detail (including the signifier and the signified), (3) the possible correlations of the signifier and the signified that generate signs of interest to lawyers such as the index, the icon, and the symbol; (5) the expansion of legal rhetoric through use of the index, the icon, and the non-verbal as well as the verbal symbol, (6) the nature of various semiotic acts in public and private law (including assertives, commissives, directives, and verdictives); (7) the interpretation and construction of semiotic acts (including contracts as commissives and legislation as directives); (8) the role of speaker or reader meaning in the interpretation and construction of semiotic acts; (9) the semiotics of meaning, time, and the fixation of meaning debate; (10) the impact of signifier drift; (11) the distinction between sense and understanding; and (12) some brief reflections on semiotics and the First Amendment. This article also provides an Appendix of further terms and concepts useful to lawyers in their explorations of semiotics.

Keywords: semiotics, intentionality, signifier, sense, reference, meaning, index, icon, symbol, rhetoric, speech act, interpretation, construction, speaker meaning, reader meaning, originalism, first amendment, intent, contracts, legislation, Peirce, Shakespeare, directive, commissive, verdictive

Voltaire and the Semiotics of Dress

For those who doubt that there is a semiotics of dress, here is Voltaire wigged and wigless. Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. for displaying these busts in near tandem.

Strings of Thoughts

Recognizing I’ll never have time to put in finished prose or verse all the things I’d like to explore, I’m starting some strings of thoughts unfinished as of the dates entered below.  I’d enjoy hearing others’ responses to any of the strings.

Originalism and the Fall of Icarus

Well, here we go again. With Neil Gorsuch as the current Supreme Court nominee, once more we hear praises of “originalism” as a judicial interpretive philosophy. As Gorsuch puts it, judges should “apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be . . . .” Since law generally looks forward to govern future and not past behavior, and since context drives meaning in much more complex ways than Gorsuch’s words suggest, I’m amazed that people take this backward-looking and overly-simplistic philosophy seriously. I’ve written at length about the problems with such an approach but now also wonder if an old painting might more quickly dispatch such error.

Blake Within Blake Within Blake Without End

As I have written before, the great William Blake magnificently employed signs beyond mere words in his poetry.  His powerful illustrations of verse add much additional meaning to his work.  As I have noted before, his symbols such as words are greatly supplemented by other types of signs such as the iconic signs of his drawings.  He applied these same principles in reverse in his great illustrations of the verse of other poets such as Thomas Gray and Edward Young.  Such illustrated verse injects blocks of symbols within Blake's icons, and it can be fascinating to replace these blocks of others' symbols with additional iconic expressions by Blake himself.  Blake's illustrations repeat common themes and can build on each other in such fascinating exercises.  I think Blake would enjoy seeing others doing this with with his icons, and I would enjoy seeing how others might attempt the endless possibilities of such substitutions.  For example, in the illustration above I have replaced Gray's verses about the "Stern Rugged Nurse" with one of Blake's illustrations of Urizen, the severe god of reason who traps the imagination with his compasses and strict categories.  The compass in fact is an awful symbol for Blake.  It's no accident that the "Stern Rugged Nurse" has one in her hand just like Urizen.

Beyond Words Alone: Poets as Artists of the Intentional

 

In his wonderful The New Book of Forms, Lewis Turco tells us that poets “focus on mode, on language itself.”  Focusing on language, a poet in Turco’s view is therefore an “artist of language; his or her concentration is upon the language itself.”  Taken this way, “[p]oetry can thus be defined as the art of language.”

Though these definitions of poets and poetry are correct as far as they go, they do not go far enough. Poets are artists of the intentional; they are artists using signs that point to things beyond the signs themselves.  Since words are not the only signs, why should poets limit themselves to words?  Using C.S. Peirce’s terminology, there are in fact three kinds of signs: symbols (arbitrary signifiers such as words), icons (signifiers such as paintings that resemble what they signify), and indexes (signifiers like photographs or weathervanes that participate in what they signify).  In the realm of symbols, why should poets limit themselves to words?  In the broader realm of signs, why should poets ignore icons and indexes?  They should not of course, and William Blake gives us excellent proof.   

Ballade of Charles Sanders Peirce: That Common Measure of the Number Three (An Addition to "The Apology Box")

      Ballade of Charles Sanders Peirce

A "candle" burns a finger, lights a room--

The only sense that "candle" has is how

It might unfold in our experience.

Experience is "firstness" unified.

It's "secondness" upon division.  And

It's "thirdness" in relating separate parts.

Three categories mix.  We'll often see

That common measure of the number three.

A "candle" is a sign one can dissect.

Such word's a signifier pointing to

An object and a meaning of the word.

Since arbitrary, words are symbols though

Resemblance also signifies (icons)

As does participation (indices).

In parts and types of signs, again we see

That common measure of the number three.

We'd waste our time to doubt a sign unless

We're given cause within experience.

If so, we question what is plausible.

We then inquire what might be probable.

That done, we then examine likelihood.

In threes, hypotheses, deductions, and

Inductions wrestle doubt.  Again we see

That common measure of the number three.

James erred in his conception of the truth.

Instead, life's trinities are tilting toward

Real truth that casts a shadow we can see:

That common measure of the number three.


© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.