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Semiotics

The field of semiotics examines meaning and the meaning-making process based on an analysis of various systems of communication, involving, for example, religious, legal, or political discourse. To locate meaning and its production, two semiotic axes inform the interpretive process: the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic axis. The paradigmatic axis refers to the selection of words or phrases in a given speech chain; it relates to semantics and word meanings. The syntagmatic axis refers to the organization or arrangement of words or phrases in a given speech sequence and represents the grammatical rules for correctly situating the selected paradigms into a narratively coherent system of communication. The paradigmatic-syntagmatic relationship is the starting point for any semiotic inquiry concerned with meaning production.

History

Europe

The application of semiotic theory and methodology to the field of law and society has its origins in developments in both America and Europe. The European tradition is based on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), Algirdas Greimas (1917–1992), and Bernard Jackson. The European model emphasizes structural and semantic inquiry, arguing that a deep structural level of meaning is ascertainable. To locate foundational meaning, one must analyze the various denotations of words or expressions (paradigmatic level) as specifically arranged in a given speech chain or written sequence (syntagmatic level). In this respect, then, the narrative is linear, coherent, chronological, and knowable.

The European approach to semiotics also promotes the binary nature of the sign. A sign is a word or phrase composed of two parts: the signifier and the signified. Signifiers represent the acoustic image or the psychic imprint; signifieds represent the mental image or concept invoked, given the word or phrase in question. In law, signifiers such as due process, reasonable person, diminished capacity, or dangerousness have specific meanings and, as such, specific signifieds attach to them. Finally, the European tradition maintains that meaning is internal to a coordinated system of communication, for instance, legal or medical. As such, a word or phrase in a signifiersignified relationship refers for its meaning to another signifier-signified relationship and this to another, and so on. This is the concept of nonreferentiality. For example, in law, to understand the signifier-signified meaning of “dangerousness,” one must refer to the signifiersignified meaning of “mental illness.” Decoding this meaning depends on various legal and psychiatric interpretations, as linked to state and federal statutes, as well as to clinical and diagnostic manuals.

United States

The American tradition depends on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), Charles Morris (1903–1979), and Roberta Kevelson. This semiotic model stresses the importance of pragmatism in establishing the meaning of a sign. Pragmatism acknowledges the contextual and situated nature of sense making. In other words, one cannot adequately interpret the signifier-signified relationship without also apprehending the social, economic, and political forces that affect and inform legal language and texts. Consistent with the emphasis on pragmatism, American semiotics argues that systems of communication, such as legal discourse, and jurisprudential signs, such as liberty or proprietorship, refer to something outside of themselves for meaning; that is, they refer to some particular object itself. In this respect, then, American semiotics endorses referentiality. For example, to utter the expressions a jury trial, death row execution, or civil commitment, one imagines the specific objects of a courtroom, a prison setting, or a psychiatric facility, respectively, with all of their ideological and unspoken contents.

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