Handbook of Semiotics

Verbal Communication: Introduction

Verbal Communication: Introduction The chapters on language and language-based codes form both the most central and the most incomplete section of this handbook. 1. Language and the Center of Semiotics The articles on verbal communication are central to the field of semiotics because language is the most highly developed and culturally most important of all semiotic systems. They are necessarily incomplete because an adequate treatment of language would require a more comprehensive survey of linguistics, the science of language. There are two reasons why this more complete survey of language studies cannot and need not be given here: economy of research and the actual research situation. For reasons of research economy and the history of linguistics, semiotics does not simply include linguistics. A handbook of semiotics therefore need not contain another handbook of linguistics. Although semiotics does include the field of language, linguistics with all its subdisciplines from phonetics to text linguistics has its own autonomous research tradition. Central topics of language study, such as morphology or syntax, therefore cannot be introduced in this handbook. The focus will be only on semiotic linguistics, approaches to language with a specific semiotic background. For reasons of the actual research situation, a handbook of semiotics can afford to omit central topics of linguistics since the reader can be referred to a number of excellent introductions (Bolinger 1975, Lyons 1981, Fromkin lSI: Rodman 1983) or encyclopedic handbooks of language and linguistics (Ducrot lSI: Todorov 1972, Althaus et al., eds. 1980, Crystal 1987). 2. Translinguistic Topics of the Semiotics of Language The semiotic interest in language is directed both at the foundations of language and at translinguistic extensions of verbal communication . The choice of the topics in this section results from these two directions of research. Topics concerning the semiotic foundations of language are discussed in the chapters on language and on arbitrariness and motivation of language signs, but the structures and functions of the semiotic system of language are also discussed in many other chapters of this handbook. As a translinguistic field of research, semiotics extends the scope of study from vocal verbal communication (language in the narrower 2. TRANSLINGUISTIC TOPICS OF THE SEMIOTICS OF LANGUAGE • 227 sense) to nonvocal modes of language and to language phenomena traditionally neglected or even ignored by linguists. This translinguistic scope is the reason for including the chapters on paralanguage, writing, universal language, sign language, and language substitutes in this section. There are other chapters in this handbook whose topic is the scope of "translinguistics ." Verbal communication beyond language as a system is the topic of the sections on text semiotics, while nonverbal and visual communication are two further sections in which the relationship between language and nonlinguistic phenomena is discussed. 228 • VERBAL COMMUNICATION: INTRODUCTION ...