Metamorphoses of the Signifier in “Unnatural” Languages

The extent and force of metafiction, and especially of modern SF—of that intellectual adventure which could be called “cognitive subversion”—owes much to an increasing understanding of language. The construction of artificial languages, the exploration of knowledge systems and of cybernetics, and information theory generally all lead to a literature which exploits the connections between human, or “natural, ” semiotic systems and others which are artificial, or “unnatural.” To facilitate our comprehension of the latter, I would propose a preliminary scheme of classification based in two large groupings: leximatic and non-leximatic. The leximatic group comprises the following categories: (1) the signifier whose signified is absent (mis-sing, empty); (2) the signifier having a single signified (as in computer language, at least ideally); (3) the signifier whose signified obeys logical rules (as in cybernetics); and (4) the signifier whose signified is re-evaluated by its context (future, parallel, or whatnot). The non-leximatic group includes these categories: (5) the compact signifier (as in portmanteau words, techno-neologisms, etc.); (6) the modified signifier (derived through extrapolation from future languages); and (7) the “arbitrary,” or exolinguistic, signifier, for the most part a sign or icon whose motivation is, say, phonetic, visual, or anagrammatic. (The use of the arbitrary signifier usually depends on the insertion of a “motivated” sign into a semiotic system peculiar to the world of the text—depends, that is, on what Marc Angenot calls the “absent paradigm.”) How these diverse signifiers function and what they can tell us about the relationships between “natural” and “unnatural” languages as they figure in SF texts are questions best approached through Roland Barthes’ concepts of connotation and metalanguage, from the standpoint of which the capacity of fiction to transform and reinterpret chains of signification is most apparent. (MM)

Art · Linguistics · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism