Indexicality in Literary Semiosis

Harri VeivoUniversity of Helsinki

The Finnish Network University of Semiotics

Peirce on indexicality• For Peirce, indexicality is one of the three modes in

sign functioning (in addition to iconicity and symbolicity)

• Designates and ”existential” relation between the sign and its object– Causal relationship: smoke as sign for fire– Relation of continuity: sail as sign for ship– Pointing: fingers, arrows etc.

• In indexicality, the sign draws attention to the object (designator) and the object determines the meaning of the sign (reagent)– Basic examples of indexical signs in language are

demonstrative pronouns (this, that) and adverbs of time and location (today, yesterday, here): signification established in relation to context of enunciation

– Important to note: indexical signs may also refer to other signs, and also function self-reflectively within one text

Peirce on indexicality

“The index asserts nothing; it only says ‘There!’ It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops. Demonstrative and relative pronouns are nearly pure indices, because they denote things without describing them; so are the letters on a geometrical diagram, and the subscript numbers which in algebra distinguish one value from another without saying what those values are.” (C.P. 3.362)

Peirce on indexicality

• Indexicality taken in its large signification refers to the intertwinement of signs with the world, the connection between sign systems, representations and the experiential life-world– Pertains for the context of production as well as

for the context of reception

• Important to remember: indexicality, iconicity and symbolicity work together – not sign classes, but modes of sign functioning

• Other notions in use: shifters, deixis, deictic signs

Roman Jakobson on shifters

• Indexical elements of language are learned at a late stage only – and lost first (for ex. in aphasia)

• Shifters: indexical elements in langauge where the context is necessary for understanding (and code alone is not enough)– Examples: personal pronouns ”I” and ”you” – code

of language defines a basic signification, but depend on the act of enunciation

• Shifters are not ”simple” causal signs, but rather depend on complex relationships between language and the world

Benveniste on subjectivity• “Ego is the one who says ego”: “I” is semantically

unsaturated and acquires meaning only when enunciated (≈ Jakobson)

• Language provides a structure where– “I”, the one who speaks, is related to “you”, the one who is

addressed in speaking: “I” and “you” are included in the communication situation

– The third person, “he” or “she”, is excluded from the communication situation

• This structure is for Benveniste the ground for subjectivity in general: it is by appropriating the resources provided by language – by speaking as “ego” to someone – that one becomes a subject in culture

• Extreme conclusion: language fundamentally determines subjectivity?

• Dialogism (Bakhtin, Vološinov): the addressee (the receiver) is already effective before words are uttered – thus subjectivity and communication are fundamentally dialogical, always directed to and shaped by the other

Indexicality in literature• In face to face spoken language, the utterer and the

addressee share the context– Indexical signs are interpreted in relation to a shared

perceptible or known background• In written discourse, the utterer (the writer) and the

addressee (the reader) don’t share the context in a similar way– Indexical signs are interpreted in relation to the text and with

cultural (encyclopedic) knowledge– In this sense, deixis (the “pointing”) in literary texts is a

process that relies on reader’s active participation• Deixis opens “a creative space” that ties the reading

subject to the world to be interpreted (Nathalie Roelens)• “Reading fiction means to experience an interspace

between the external and the internal, between reference to a public world of shared experience and a private world of significations charged with desire.” (Dines Johansen)

Gomringer’s ”das schwarze geheimnis”

• Intratextual indexicality: ”hier” refers to the text itself (or to the white area within the text?)

• Indexicality creates ambiguity: the secret is black, but the area in between the text – the blank spot – is white demands active interpretation

The black secret / is here / here is / the black secret

Deictic centers• Deictic center: the place (“origo”) in relation to which deictic

elements in the text are organized• Temporal position

– The point of reference for adverbial expressions of time (“today” - “last week”, “tomorrow”…)

– Note: difference between deictic expressions of time and “universal” ones (like “January 22, 1667”)

• Spatial position– The point of reference for adverbial expressions of space (“here”,

“to the left”, “behind”…) and demonstrative pronouns (“this”, “that”)

• Focalisation– The point in time and place from where the world represented is

perceived– Can be attached to a person in the world represented (character-

narrator) or not (unmarked narration)• Note: deictic centers are not necessarily explicitly signalled and

there may be several centers in one text (and even in one phrase)

Deictic shifts

• Deictic centers are linguistic constructions: not determined “externally”, but created, maintained and effaced with linguistic means

• Deictic shift: move between deictic centers– 1) a move from the “real” world to the world of the text:

the fundamental step, “immersion”– 2) a move from a external narrator’s position to a

character’s position – and vice versa– 3) a move from one character’s position to another’s

position

• Important device in several respects: irony, tragedy (King Oedipus), comic effects

• To distinguish: who speaks and who perceives

Examples of deictic centers“I stretch my eyes wide. To my left, the jam-packed harbour of Santa Lucia. Straight ahead, the Castel del Angelo […] To my right, Vesuvius above the suburbs. The slate-thin cloud, tilting on the summit, dissolves as I watch. There’s the ruined mouth of the crater, dipping on one side and brimming with black mist.”

Andrew Motion: Salt Water (1997)

• “I” is the one who speaks (writes): in this case, all the information gathered in reading under the figure of the narrator (+ eventual knowledge of Andrew Motion)

• The deictic center: the spatial location in relation to which the indexical signs organize the scene represented– “Left”, “straight ahead” and “right” are not constant, but

always defined in relation to somebody (emphasized here with “my”)

• Note: indexicality (deixis) functions in concordance with iconicity (word-order mapping order of perception)

Examples of deictic centersWind from the northwestern quarter is lifting him high abovethe dove-gray, crimson, umber, brownConnecticut Valley. Far beneath,chickens daintily pause and moveunseen in the yard of the tumbledownfarmstead, chipmunks blend with the heath.

Now adrift on the airflow, unfurled, alone,all that he glimpses – the hill’s lofty, raggedridges, the silver stream that threadsquivering like a living boneof steel […][…] Through binoculars we foretokenhim, a glittering dot, a pearl. We hear something ring out in the sky,like some family crockery being broken,[…]

• Decitic centers: the hawk and the human observers on the ground– Explicit markers: “above”, “beneath”– Implicit: “unseen”

• Focalization and preception thematized: participate in the creation of deictic centers

– “stream.. like a living bone”– “through binoculars we foretoken”, “a glittering dot, a pearl”