The idea of a general science of signs is, rooted in fallacy. What makes a science? There is a science of fish because fish are similarly constituted, obey similar laws, have a discoverable essence, over and above the evident facts which lead us so to label them. (Fish constitute a ‘natural kind’.)
Buttons, by contrast, have no such essence, and no common identity besides the function which we already know. There can be no general science of the constitution of buttons: if there is a science of buttons, it is a science of their function.
Now signs are clearly more like buttons than like fish, and a general science of signs will therefore be a science not of constitution but of function. But what is this function?
Semiology refers us to language, road signs, facial expressions, food, clothes, photography, architecture, heraldry, basket-weaving, music. Are all these ‘signs’ in the same sense, or in any sense? The word ‘sign’ means many things, and points to many functions. Do we suppose that a cloud signifies rain in the way that Je m’ennuie signifies that ‘I am bored’? Of course not, since no cloud can have the function of a sentence. From a, scientific point of view, one suspects that there is not one thing here but thousands. What is common is only a small feature of the surface of each, usually as familiar to us as the function of buttons. If there is a common essence of ‘signs’ it is sure to be very shallow; semiology pretends that it is deep.
But there is more to be said. There are sciences whose subject-matter is contested and speculative, based on analogy and hypothesis, rather than on any intuitive knowledge of the existence of a natural or functional kind. Perhaps linguistics itself is such a science: at least, its subj
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