Handbook of Semiotics

Zoosemiotics, Ethology, and Semiogenesis

Zoosemiotics, Ethology, and Semiogenesis Zoosemiotics, the study of the semiotic behavior of animals, is a transdisciplinary field of research. Situated between biology and anthropology, it investigates a domain located between nature and culture. Zoosemiotics reinterprets the age-old question of the language of animals in the light of modern linguistics and animal communication studies . It has a synchronic branch studying pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic aspects of animal communication and a diachronic branch investigating the evolution of animal semiosis. The latter branch falls into the domain of ethology. Whereas there has hardly ever been any doubt about the existence of signs in the animal kingdom, the assumption of semiosis in the sphere of plants, defended by the proponents of a new branch of semiotics called phytosemiotics, is still controversial. 1. Survey of Zoosemiotics Although zoosemiotics was not conceived of as a branch of semiotics until 1963, studies in animal communication systems have, of course, a much older tradition and are certainly not restricted to research carried out from an explicitly semiotic perspective. 1.1 The Zoosemiotic Branch of Semiotics Zoosemiotics is distinguished from other approaches to animal communication by its specific perspective, which has its foundation in the general theory of signs. There is some degree of vagueness in the delimitation of this branch of research from other branches of semiotics. 1.1.1 DEFINITION OF ZOOSEMIOTICS The term zoosemiotics, with the pronunciation [zo:~] as in zoological, was coined in 1963 by Sebeok (cf. 1972: 178-81). According to its first definition, zoosemiotics is "the discipline, within which the science of signs intersects with ethology, devoted to the scientific study of signalling behavior in and across animal species " (ibid.: 178). Later, Sebeok gave this somewhat extended definition: "Zoosemiotics [...] is that segment of the field which focuses on messages given off and received by animals, including important components of human nonverbal communication, but excluding man's language, and his secondary, languagederived semiotic systems, such as sign language or Morse code" (1981: 109). 1.1.2 ZOOSEMIOTICS AND ANTHROPOSEMIOTICS According to Sebeok's own subdivision of semiotics , zoosemiotics is one of the three major branches of semiotics, along with anthro1 . SURVEY OF ZOOSEMIOTICS • 147 posemiotics and endosemiotics (1972: 163~ 1976: 2- 3~ 1979: 38; cf. History 4. 2.3) . Sebeok adopts a very broad definition of zoosemiotics and includes paralinguistic, proxemic , and other nonverbal modes of human semiosis among the "zoosemiotic components of human communication" (1972: 133; 1979: 35). In contrast to this outline of the field, this handbook draws a different dividing line between anthroposemiotics and zoosemiotics by excluding human nonverbal communication from the scope of zoosemiotics. However, there is certainly an overlap between these two domains, especially in the field of human ethology. 1.1.3 ZOOSEMIOTICS AND BIOSEMIOTICS Biosemiotics is sometimes used as a synonym, and sometimes defined as a neighboring field, of zoosemiotics. Tembrock (1971 ~ 1973) investigates the field of "animal information transfer " under the designation of biocommunication and considers zoosemiotics a subfield of this study. Rothschild defines biosemiotic as the study of "the psychophysical nexus within the central nervous system and in other structures possessed of psychophysical functions within organisms" (1968: 163). In the field of molecular biology, Florkin (1974) studies among other things the biosemiotics of the flux of information from DNA and the biosemiotic characters of amino acids. These biosemiotic investigations cover essentially the field which Sebeok has defined as endosemiotics (cf. Code 5.1) and which also includes the field of neurosemiotics (cf. Ivanov 1978a~ 1979). Koch describes biosemiotics as a field covering both endosemiotics and zoosemiotics, distinguishing between semiobiology (research with emphasis on the biological perspective) and biosemiotics proper (research from the semiotic perspective) (1974a: 318~ 1986a). Krampen defines biosemiotics as the discipline studying the three areas of zoosemiotics, anthroposemiotics , and phytosemiotics (1981c: 187~ cf. 6.). Similarly, Jander defines biosemiotics as the study" concerned with living semiotic systems" (1981: 226-27), but Jander excludes cultural semiotics from biosemiotics as a semiotic domain of its own. 1.1.4 ZOOSEMIOTICS AND ETHOLOGY Zoosemiotics is closely related to ethology, but there are different interpretations of the relationship between these two fields. Whereas ethology focuses on evolutionary aspects of animal semiosis only, zoosemiotics also studies the synchronic systems and processes of animal communication. Sebeok characterizes ethology as "diachronic semiotics on a phylogenetic scale" (1979: 260). Whereas Tembrock restricts his survey of zoosemiotics only to synchronic aspects of animal communication (1971: 39-58), Sebeok (1972~ 1976) and Smith (1974) also include ethological topics in their survey of zoosemiotics...