Notes on “Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language”, Umberto Eco

As someone who has been stubbornly struggling with post-structural, post-modern, etc., etc. writers for a while I found this text useful for unpacking some of the terms these other writers use.

Eco’s approach is to try and find, by an almost genealogical approach, definitions, or at least understandings, for common semiotic terms.

Things that stood out where mainly the conclusions of some of the earlier chapters (I admit I stopped paying as much attention toward the end: while he tries to keep things clear some terms and references flew past me and I struggled to keep up in some chapters).

Signs as inferential, always. There was no need to consider signs as identities or substitions for things. Rather, Eco unearthed a definition that meant signs are always of the form if x, then y. Where x and y correspond, loosely, to the signifier and the signified.

The chapter on signs also helped (a little) clear up my understanding of Hjelmslevian semiotics and the differences between form-matter and expression-content.

Also of interest was the idea of linguistics as encyclopedic rather than dictionary based (aka “meaning” only comes from a vast nebula of related signs, not a stock definition or tree). This kind of confirmed existing understanding, however, rather than anything new. He even mentions the rhizome here, so no big revelations.

After these two I felt the chapters grew a little dense for me, specifically the one on metaphor was very referential (ironically) and not super clear. After that I slowly lost interest.

I think aside from the chapters on signs and encyclopedias, this book is more useful as a reference for a project, rather than read standalone. I think I’ll come back to it for specifics if I want to clarify any of the concepts it discusses in reference to something else.