SIGNS, SYMBOLS, AND MEANING DANIEL K. STEWMT* In research on communication one often encounters an attempted distinction between sign and symbol at the expense of critical attention to meaning. Somehow, during the signsymbol tilt of windmills, meaning always emerges as something physical, and, necessarily, therefore, communication has somehow been established at the very outset as primarily a physical phenomenon. When analyzing the nature of communication, it is true that there is a distinction to be made between sign and symbol, but it is not the one that is customarily made. As these terms are generally employed in the literature, the customary distinction shows that signs cannot logically be involved in human communication, whereas symbols can be, and are. Words, for example, are symbols intentionally employed in the communication process. And in many cases, they possess physical referents. This is the usual distinction which is made, and it is one which most researchers would understand as necessary. (On the other hand, it has been said in regard to this position that the suggestion that words are symbols for things, actions, qualities, relationships, et cetera, is naive, a gross simplification. ) [2] Now, it is the purpose of this paper to offer a suggestion as to what this discussion of sign and symbol is primarily about, and especially, what it implies for the meaning of meaning. Whereas the customary distinction between sign and symbol is clearly appreciated as far as it goes, it misplaces the emphasis in communication research by omitting the most critical point, which is where symbols are related to meaning. When employed in the communication process, symbols act as necessary contingencies for the elicitation of intended meaning. But if analyses of sign and symbol reduce meaning to something of a physical nature, then, in such research, the rela- * Dr. Stewart received his degree from Michigan State University in 1959, and is a former member of its faculty. Now with the Campbell- Ewald Company in Detroit, he is responsible for research in the sciences and arts pertaining to communication. 4
Signs, Symbols, and Meaning 5 tion between symbols and meaning become invalidated when predicated to the communication process. It seems apparent that unless, and until, the definitions of sign and symbol entail mutually exclusive classes when pertaining to the communication process, then their usage will be ambiguous, giving rise to the fallacy of equivocation. To be precise, if the scopes of intention of their definiens in mywise overlap, to this degree they are ambiguous, and if employed in a given unit of discourse as such, they are equivocal. It is the case that the relation between signs and symbols requires for its explanation a language system different from that relation between symbols and meaning. The former is logically inadequate to explain the latter, and this paper will attempt to show why this is so. One of the clearest expositions of the standard usage of sign and symbol is to be found in Lionel Ruby s textbook on logic. He states: Signs may be divided into two major types, natural and conventional. A natural sign is an event in our experience which refers to some other event because our experience has taught us that the two events are associated or connected in some fashion. Thus, a Kansan sees a dark cloud on the horizon, and he interprets what he sees as the sign of an approaching tornado. The cloud is a natural sign of the tornado. A conventional sign, which we shall call a symbol, is an artificial construct made by human beings for the purpose of referring to something. A symbol is a sign which is deliberateiy empioyed in order to convey a meaning. Spbols become part of a language when human beings agree that thq shall stand for given referents. Symbols are signs, but not all signs are symbols. C41 Ruby s remarks admirably illustrate the general usage of sign and symbol in matters dealing with communication. In it we note that all signs and all symbols share the common property of being physical, viz., (called signs, e.g., a dark cloud) (caued symbols, e.g., the letters oriole?)
6 Jozcml of Communication We note in the diagram that both natural and conventional signs are physical. We note, also, that natural signs possess a meaning for some interpreter but they are not part of the process of human communication. Their meanings are not intended by other human beings. [5] Moreover, in newspapers, radio, or television, where sound effects or pictures are employed as conventional signs for natural signs, it is noted that the conventional sign is no less physical than its referent. Now if this analysis of sign and symbol were simply a dispute over the use of words, as with Humpty-Dumpty, no one would really care. But the matter has a deeper significance in terms of what it assumes and what it implies. And when it is discussed in conjunction with communication it can obscure what is really at stake; namely, the meaning of meaning. And in the above usage of sign and symbol the problem of meaning is begged. It assumes at the outset that meaning is literally something given in physical reality, and, therefore, is a fallacy. We note that from the point of view of the interpreter, physical phenomena may be given as a dark cloud on the horizon (as symbols ) or as a dark cloud on the horizon (as a sign ), or perhaps in some other way. But as far as the interpreter is concerned, these all appear, first, as perceptions-as neurological excitations-and, subsequently, as ideas (if meuning is to be had for the interpreter at all). And, for communication research, the pertinent question to ask is this: Is the meaning of meaning to be found in physical phenomena-either as in the perception of a tornado preceded by a dark cloud (as in sign ) or as in the perception of the graphic marks dark cloud on horizon implies tornado (as in agreed upon symbols )? Is the meaning of meaning to be found in either case? The point to notice by this question is that if we permit the reduction of meaning, literally, to something physical, the ontological problem which it presents, and the problem of communication, is begged. To employ either sign or symbol when failing to explicate the relation between symbols and meaning commits the researcher to an unbalanced philosophical position. The omission of this relation implies that meaning has its referent in physical reality. On the contrary, how-
Signs, Symbols, and Meaning 7 ever, ideas are not things in the physical world, nor is meaning. If ideas exist at all, they are possessed by individual minds. The implication is, therefore, that meaning is a function of ideas. Other examples illustrating the ambiguity of the sign-symbol-meaning relation are unavoidable. This situation led Stephen Ullmann to remark: An attempt to differentiate between signs and symbols was made by Ogden and Richards when they defined symbols as those signs which men use to communicate one with another and as instruments of thought. This distinction, though useful in principle, is not consistent with the meaning of the term symbd in general usage... h the present book I have made no systematic distinction between signs and symbols.... [61 Ullmann s objection, while pertinent, is made for the wrong reason. Being not consistent on the basis of a band wagon type of psychology is a poor argument where a basic confusion of predicates is self-evident. If signs are predicated to physical phenomena, and symbols are defined as a species to this class, this makes the instruments of thought to be of a physical nature which seems very strange, and at least calls for some explanation and verification. Mind and body certainly interact. But this interaction does not occur by reducing thought to material phenomena, or by making material phenomena possess human qualities... as is implied by making physical symbols instruments of thought. In regard to this philosophical predilection, Max Black remarks on Ogden and Richards The Meaning of Meaning: Much of the language used by Ogden and Richards might suggest a doubt whether the structure which is the alleged cause of the act of interpretation is in fact intended to be a physical configuration of the brain. But while such terms as thoughts, feelings, experiences, are freely used as interchangeable with locutions concerning reactions to stimuli and adaptations of the organism ; and while the authors themselves claim that their doctrine is neutral in regard to psychoneural parallelism, interaction or double aspect hypotheses (p. 83, n. 5), there seems no doubt from the general progress of their argument that a behavioristic theory is being presented. This is demonstrated by such a passage as to be directly apprehended is to cause certain happenings in the mes ( p. 81 ), which is presented as the correct answer (im.) to questions concerning perception.... [ll And in regard to the actual restriction of having symbol
8 Journal of Communication refer to anything other than something physical, Professor Black comments on a direct quotation out of The Meaning of Meaning, viz., *A symbol refers to what it is actually used to refer to; not necessarily to what it might in good usage, or is intended by the interpreter, or is intended by the user, to refer to (p. 103). This might be taken as constituting, in conjunction with the other canons, a defrnrtron of referring, were it not the case that reference is a technical term in the theory, with a narrowly circumscribed meaning. A referent is by definition a particular physical event, or possibly a feature of such an event. Thus the Canon of Actuality functions as a prohibition against finding the denotation of a symbol in anything other than some specific physical event which would complement, in the manner already described, the event which caused the act of interpretation. [l] From these and other words dealing with the analysis of communication, one is reminded of Uriel Weinreich s excellent little essay on Travels Through Semantic Space. Weinreich is concerned about comparable difficulties with Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum s The Measurement of Meaning. He avers that A reading even of an elementary and relatively conservative presentation, such as Ullmann s Principles of Semantics, or of Morris Fvundutim of a Theory of Signs, would probably have made the authors more fully aware of the conventional forms of the problem of meaning and would have provided them with a more adequate terminology for the discussion of theoretical questions. [7] In conclusion, the point of this paper is to indicate that there is a critical relationship between sign, symbol, and meaning which merits more careful analysis. The implication is intended that a broader philosophical understanding of the meaning of meaning would appear to be desirable from the standpoint of achieving a greater balance in communication research programs. Such programs would yield an extended range of significance. REFERENCES 1. Black, Max. LANGUAGE AND ~OSOPHY. Ithaca, New York: Camell University Press, 1949, p. 192 (fn) and p. 194 (fn). 2. Cherry, Colin. & HUMAN COMMUNICATION. MIT Press and John Wiley, 1957, p, 10.
Signs, Symbols, and Meaning 9 3. 4. 5. 0. 7. Ogden, C. K. and I. A. Richards. THE MEANING OF MFANING. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 4 d., 1936, p. 23. Ruby, Lionel. AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC. Uppincott, 1950, p. 18. Stewart, Daniel K. Communication, Ideas, and Meaning. PSYCHO- LOGICAL &PORTS 10 (1Q85), pp. 885-892. Ullmann, Stephen. SFMANTICS, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF MEANING. Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1962, p. 13 (fn). Weinreich, Uriel. Travels Through Semantic Space. WORD 14 (1%8), pp. 358-359. PROGRESS REPORT The Greeks, especially, entertained very high conceptions of the end and objects of the fine arts generally, and of the art of speaking, among the rest. They were not satisfied, unless their efforts surprised, moved, delighted. They considered the true end of a fine art, was, to communicate a high degree of satisfaction to a cultivated taste; and they continued to labor, till they attained that end. Hence the long and painful preparatory exercises in speaking, to which they submitted, in the presence of their rhetorical masters. These, however, were, as regards EIocution, rather an appeal to the taste of those masters, than to any general standard of science; and the corrections must have been, for the most part, the result of individual feeling and judgment. JONATHAN BARBER A Grammar of Ebwtion 1832