Life and language: Is meaning biosemiotic?

• Published in: Language sciences (Oxford) 2018-05, Vol.67, p.46-58
• Main Author: Cowley, Stephen J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biology of cognition; Biology of meaning; Biosemiotics; Chomsky, Noam; Cognition & reasoning; Deixis; Dialogism; Dialogue; Distributed language; Ecolinguistics; Ecological psychology; Enactivism; Ethics; Language culture relationship; Literacy; Meaning; Ontology; Philosophy of language; Pragmatics; Scalarity (Semantics); Semiotics
• ISSN: 0388-0001; 1873-5746
• DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2018.04.004

Since the multi-scalarity of life encompasses bodies, language and human experience, Timo Järvilehto's (1998) ‘one-system’ view can be applied to acts of meaning, knowing and ethics. Here, I use Paul Cobley's Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (2016) to explore a semiotic construal of such a position. Interpretation, he argues, shows symbolic, indexical and iconic ‘layers’ of living. While lauding Cobley's breadth of vision, as a linguist, I baulk at linking ‘knowing’ too closely with the ‘symbolic’ qua what can be said, diagrammed or signed. This is because, given first-order experience (which can be deemed indexical/iconic), humans use observations (by others and self) to self-construct as embodied individuals. While symbolic semiosis matters, I trace it to, not languaging, but the rise of literacy, graphics and pictorial art. Unlike Chomsky and Deely, I find no epigenic break between the symbolic and the iconic/indexical. The difference leads one to ontology. I invite the reader to consider, if, as Cobley suggests, meaning depends on modelling systems (with ententional powers) and/or if, as Gibson prefers, we depend on encounters with whatever is out-there. Whereas Cobley identifies the semiotic with the known, for others, living beings actively apprehend what is observable (for them). Wherever the reader stands, I claim that all one-system views fall in line with Cobley's ‘anti-humanist’ challenge. Ethics, he argues, can only arise from participating in the living. Knowing, and coming to know, use repression and selection that can only be captured by non-disciplinary views of meaning. As part of how life and language unfold, humans owe a duty of care to all of the living world: hence, action is needed now. •Language and life critiques Paul Cobley’s semiotic view of life, culture and language.•Without appealing to mentalism, it traces language to its basis in life's epistemology.•It is argues that, before the invention of writing, the symbolic was inextricable from the indexical/iconic.•Symbolic semiosis is ascribed to literacy, graphics and pictorial art – it does not reflect an evolutionary gap.•The paper endorses Cobley’s ‘anti-humanist’ view that we owe a duty of care to the living world.•The roots of ethics lie in, not humanity, but experience a part of the living world.