Abstract The paper rethinks a proposal for a unified cognitive semiotic framework, The Semiotic Hierarchy, in explicitly phenomenological terms, following above all the work of Merleau-Ponty. The main changes to the earlier formulation of the theory are the following. First, the claim that a general concept of meaning can be understood as the value-based relationship between the subject and the...
The Semiodc Hierarchy: Life, consciousness, signs and languageUlis article oudines a general theory of meaning, T6e SemiofU Hierardij, distiaguishes between four major levels in the otganizaäon of meanijDg: consäousness, siffi fitnction and langfuff, ^tdiete eadi of tfaese, in this Order, both rests on the previous level, and makes possible the attainment of the next This is shown to be one...
For years now, leading representatives of theoretical linguistics have been arguing that humans, being gov-erned by a blind ‘language instinct’, can be exhaus-tively described in physico-biological terms. … [T]his conception has been shown to be fundamentally false. Humans are also, and crucially, social, normative, and conscious beings, occasionally capable of acts of free will. Esa Itkonen,...