Doctor of History
Associate Professor
The University of Georgia
Tbilisi, Georgia
ORCID: 0009-0001-2899-8963
nino.barnovi@gmail.com

Methods of Semiotics: the “Absent” Structure and Process (according to Umberto Eco)

Operativist semiotics provides us with a model of the mechanism of meaning production, which functions as a communicative chain. This model assumes that, at the moment of reaching the addressee, the message is “empty.” Yet, this emptiness is not that of a void; rather, it is the readiness of a certain apparatus of meaning-production to operate—an apparatus that has not yet been illuminated by the codes I, as the sender, select to disclose its meaning and essence.

But how does the addressee recognize that this is indeed a mechanism of meaning production?—By the fact that, at the moment of reception, they illuminate it through the application of certain fundamental codes. Which meanings, then, do we actually perceive? The very act of assigning a code to a message already constitutes a structural hypothesis—one that is no less risky or intriguing for the fact that we usually employ it blindly, tentatively. To propose a code is not to test a hypothesis nor to foresee what outcome may arise. The selected code reveals certain meanings, but then confronts other codes, lexicodes, and sub-lexicodes in order to ensure the exhaustion of its connotative potential. At this point, the movement or action begins precisely when the message—whether a conscious message (an artwork) or an unconscious one (a kinship relation)—collides with the massive “icebergs” of social conventions, i.e., codes and situations. These conventions condition the selection of codes and constitute parameters of reference that narrow and constrain the interpretive search, though they do not definitively determine the content of the message.

According to Umberto Eco, it is important to emphasize that the so-called “misleading impression” extends even to that branch of semiotics which appears immune from it—namely, semantics, understood as the science of meaning. When structural semantics attempts to systematize units of meaning, there arises a strong temptation to assume that—since we are faced with a system—we are dealing with a clearly defined reality.

As an example, Eco cites Claude Brémond’s critique of those authors who seek to analyze Qur’anic texts through structural and semantic approaches using perforated cards.

In summary, Eco inclines toward the view that the operativist approach proves to be particularly effective, precisely because it does not exclude alternative perspectives. We may, for instance, become interested in examining how established codes are transformed within new communicative structures.

 

Keywords: semiotic research, communicative chain, “absent/empty structure,” reference, communicative universals, convention.