The semiology of textualization

The Semiology of Textualization

R o y H a r r i s

Worcester College, Oxford

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes an 'integrational' approach to semiology, advocating the study of language and its functions as part of an integrated use of signs in human communication. As an example of the approach, textualization is considered. Here language complements and is complemented by non-linguistic signs in very complex interrelations. Textualization is selected for study because the modem world in- ereasingly relies upon a social competence organized by means of texts. Texts (written, printed, carved, etc.) appear on all kinds of artifacts and function siguifi- cantly in ways which are not adequately described by giving a narrowly 'linguistic' account of what the text says. A theory of textualization must come to terms with this fact. Textualization is a cultural practice which cannot be explained by treating language and artifact as semiologieally independent. Reading and writing are involved: but the semiology of textualization goes far beyond these basic skills. Textualization as such is not parasitic upon literacy: on the contrary, literacy is based upon certain techniques of textualization, and emerges as its most artifact-neutral form. The implications of an integrational approach to semiology have important consequences for our definition of the linguistic sign itself.

DEFINITION

By a text is meant , for the purposes o f this paper, an inscript ion, carving or

similar conf igura t ion of visible marks in some no ta t ion convent ional ly taken as

representing words, letters, or other linguistic elements. It does no t include oral

linguistic mater ial o f any k ind.

A text thus defined usually requires a surface of some kind on which to appear,

in cont rad is t inc t ion to spoken language which merely requires a physical medium,

such as air, for transmission. This requi rement perhaps suggests a possible division

of the procedures involved in the product ion o f texts into two broad classes,

depending on whether the surface and the materials used to mark it are manmade

or not . It is perfectly possible to scratch a text on a natural surface, such as a rock

face, by using a sui tably shaped natural object , such as a s tone or flint. On the

272 Language Sciences, Volume 6, Number 2 (1984)

other hand, in many civilizations we know of, a characteristic form of progress

has involved the development of specially prepared surfaces (such as parchment

or paper or wax tablets) designed specifically to receive texts, and likewise the

development of special instruments (such as the pen and the stylus) to mark those

surfaces with a text.

Over the course of time, more primitive techniques of textualization tend to

survive alongside more sophisticated ones. Modern civilization shows no sign as

yet of the abandonment of graffiti as a popular form of protest in urban environ-

ments. It is, indeed, not only popular but communicationally effective. The point

was put rather neatly a few years ago by a message chalked, amid many others,

on the outside wall of Ballio. College in Oxford at a time of widespread student

discontent. It said simply: 'These walls have a greater circulation than Cherwell'

(Cherwel! was the name of the Oxford student newspaper). The inscription of

graffiti on public buildings always seems to have been a recognized form of self-

expression, at least in Europe; and in certain cases modern scholarship owes a great

deal to the evidence it has provided. (The graffiti of Pompeii would be a case in point.)

TEXTUALIZATION

Texts are sometimes relegated to a relatively minor role in the artifact of which

they form part. On the other hand, there are cases in which the presence of the text may be regarded as a primary reason for the construction o f the artifact in

the first place. A wide variety of possible relationships between the two must be allowed for.

When Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, the best craftsmen were recruited for

the great work from all over India and Central Asia. They included, we are told,

r.ot only master masons and journeymen, stone-hewers, inlay workers and gold-

smiths, but also calligraphers. Why did Shah Jahan need to employ calligraphers

to build a mausoleum? Their expertise was required for the drafting and execution

of the Koranic texts which were to appear on its walls. The work of Shah Jahan's

calligraphers can still be admired today. The verses are picked out in coloured

stones set in a white marble ground - not perhaps the commonest form of

calligraphy. But these texts have a carefully planned and integral place not only

in the conception of the Taj Mahal as a monument but in its physical structure as

a building. As texts deliberately inserted into a predominantly non-textual

environment of great aesthetic merit, they presumably qualify semiologically as

what have been called 'semantic enclaves' (Wallis 1973).

The term semantic enclave is defined by Wallis as 'that part of a work of art

which consists of signs o f a different kind or from a different system than the signs

The Semiology of Text'ualization 273

of which the main body of that work of art consists'. Thus, on Wallis's definition, the French passages in the Russian text of Tolstoy's War and Peace would be

semantic enclaves. The words 'Johannes de eyck fuit hic /1434' in the portrait

of the Arnolfini would be a semantic enclave. The balloon saying 'I wish Batman

were here' issuing from the heroine's mouth in the comic strip would be a semantic

enclave. Wallis's particular concern is with inscriptions in paintings. He makes

it clear that by speaking of such inscriptions as 'semantic enclaves' he wishes to

emphasize that 'these enclaves are autonomous entities within those paintings in

which they occur, that they have a different semantic structure.'

The term semantic enclave thus defined raises a number of awkward questions.

One is 'What counts as a work of art?' A second closely related to it is 'Why is it

necessary to restrict the concept of a "semantic enclave" to works of art in any

case?' It is difficult to see how, for example, Tolstoy's use of French in War and

Peace is intrinsically different from, say, a bilingual speaker's use of both Russian and French in the course of conversation. Communication of all kinds presents

us with examples of semantic enclaves, irrespective of whether or not they occur in what is judged to be a 'work of art'.

Problems of a different order are raised by the term enclave itself, which seems

to take it for granted that it will in any given instance be clear what is included in what. The part-whole relation is notoriously difficult where different semiologies are concerned. For example, the front page of The Times on 15 July 1982 featured

a picture of a middle-aged man extending a clenched fist, below which appeared

the caption: 'Sir Peter Parker: "ready for long siege'". Now it is clear enough

that in some sense the picture of Sir Peter Parker was part of that issue of The

Times. But was it an 'enclave'? And, if so, by what criteria? Does one assume

that because in any issue more square inches of The Times are occupied by newsprint

than by reproduction of photographs, this automatically relegates any photograph

in The Times to 'enclave' status? But then how does that in turn affect the status

of the caption? Is the caption, as a mere appendage to the photograph, on that

account an enclave in an item predominantly pictorial? How, in that case, would

one count the quoted words 'ready for long siege', which do not make much sense

except by reference to the accompanying front-page article which reported Sir

Peter Parker's decision to close the British Rail network in response to a strike by

train drivers. To put the problem in more general terms, how does one decide

whether a picture supplements a text, or a text supplements a picture, or whether

both are equal partners in a complementary relationship, or whether each inde-

pendently complements the message contained in some third item?

To appreciate the complexity of what Wallis describes as 'forms of co-operation

of image and writing' it suffices to draw attention to the fact that very often

textualized artifacts presuppose - and, indeed, epitomize - whole episodes of


social history. For example, the text on a recently issued British postage stamp reads simply '14p' and '29 July 1981'. The first of these legends appears in the top right-hand comer immediately beneath a profile silhouette of a woman's head. The second appears in the bottom left-hand comer, reading vertically instead of horizontally, and is superimposed upon a head-and-shoulders picture of a smiling young man accompanied by a smiling young woman. The semiology of all this is extremely recherche, but there can hardly be any doubt that we are expected to recognize, for instance, the fact that the young man is the eldest son of the lady whose profile appears in the top right-hand corner, that the young woman is this man's bride, and that the 29th of July 1981 was the day on which they were married. How this in turn relates to the function of postage stamps is another story again.

Or, to take a quite different example, the design of a well known cigarette packet features a distinctly maritime iconography, with a stylised sailing ship on one side of the packet and an anchor on the reverse side. A band of gold on navy blue running round the top of the packet echoes a motif found in the design of jackets of officers of the Royal Navy. The most prominent part of the text on the packet features the words 'SENIOR SERVICE' printed in navy blue. What

all this has to do with the function of the packet as a container would be quite

obscure to anyone who knew nothing about the social stereotype presented by the naval officer in the context of early 20th-century British culture, the paradigms

of marketing psychology in the tobacco industry, the existence of other naval brand images, and so on.

It is doubtless a far cry from designing an Islamic mausoleum in the seventeenth century to designing such things as postage stamps and cigarette packets in the

twentieth. But postage stamps and cigarette packets have in common with the Taj Mahal at least two things: first, they are products of human design, having been c~nstructed for a specific purpose, and secondly, they are textualized. That is to say, part of their design function is reflected in the linguistic material which is incorporated into their structure. The text on the postage stamp will usually indicate the postal tariff for which it is valid, sometimes the country of origin, and sometimes other information as well. The text on the packet of cigarettes will usually indicate the brand and the maker. The mausoleum, the postage stamp and the cigarette packet serve very different purposes in human affairs; but in all three cases textualization has been utilized as one of the design resources available to the designer. Nowadays this resource is exploited on an ever-increasing scale.

It is coming to be increasingly difficult in Europe, the United States, and many other countries to go into a shop and buy manufactured articles which do not, somewhere or other, have a text of some kind printed on them or attached to them. It may be only the manufacturer's name, or the country of origin. Or it may be

The Semiology of Textualization 275

a text of a much more extended and complex kind. For a variety of reasons, it has come to be a normal practice that manufactured objects bear a verbal message or

messages which, it is assumed, the purchaser or user should be able to understand. This reliance on a textually competent public in the marketing of consumer goods goes hand-in-hand with a parallel reliance on the management of social order through the use of texts of all kinds. They range from signs which say 'No Smoking' to

census and income-tax forms. We live to an ever-increasing extent in a world which takes for granted a social competence organized by means of textualized artifacts

of many different varieties, and the ubiquity of these textualized artifacts is one of the most conspicuous features of modern life.

The twentieth-century expansion of the role which texts of all kinds play in

people's lives is commonly associated, and rightly so, with the dramatic increase in literacy brought about by modern systems of education. But it would be a

mistake to equate the communicational proficiency which textualization demands

simply with the ability to read and write. The semiology of textualization goes

- and always has gone - far beyond those basic skills. To take a simple illustration

of this point, it is not sufficient to have enough Arabic to be able to read the words

inlaid on the walls of the Taj Mahal. It is at least as important to grasp that these

are quotations from a sacred work and to know which the work in question is.

Anyone who failed to understand that would fail fully to understand the com-

municative purpose of the texts and their role in the design of Shah Jahan's building.

Furthermore, our modern concept of literacy is essentially the product of

a certain educational tradition, which already incorporates certain attitudes towards

the written word, its function, and its social value. Seen in a broader historical and

anthropological perspective, literacy involves no more than a subset of the kinds

of practical knowledge, skills and training which textualization in a given culture

may take for granted. Textualization as such is not parasitic upon literacy. On the contrary, literacy in our modern sense is an outgrowth from the development

of one particular set of techniques employed in textualization. In textualization we invariably find combined what are usually regarded as

two separate but distinctively human achievements: language and toolmaking.

Textualization integrates graphic surrogates for elements of speech with the design of manmade objects serving a variety of social purposes. But in different forms of

textualization the relationships between text and artifact are different. Writing

originated as the systematization of a highly flexible technique of textualization adapted to the individual requirements of particular languages and language

communities. It was for centuries, until the advent of modern reprographic

techniques, the most artifact-neutral variety of textualization, as well as being the

most highly specialized.

The different types of relationship between text and artifact are worth careful


examination, because they can tell us a great deal about what is presupposed concerning the communicational proficiency communities take for granted. Such

a study must recognize the fact that textualization in any form could not exist unless communication extended beyond mere mastery of languages. It would be

putting the cart before the horse to think that the kind of proficiency textualization

involves is simply an offshoot or corollary of anyone's knowledge of English, or

of Japanese, or of any other language. Nor, on the other hand, does it seem

plausible to trace this proficiency to any specific genetically endowed capacity.

For the particular cultural practices associated with different forms of textualization cover an enormously disparate range.

We find that typically different behavioral routines tend to be associated with

different types of textualized artifact. For instance, to take a simple case, no one

on buying a book peels off the dust-jacket, screws the dust-jacket into a ball, and

throws it into the nearest wastepaper basket. Yet that is quite a common form of

behavior with certain other kinds of protective wrapping: for example, with

paper bags and packaging of various kinds. But one does not do that with book

jackets, at least not in contemporary Western culture. Anyone who did that would

immediately mark himself out as coming from an alien culture: quite literally,

we would interpret this as an indication that he was not used to books, that he

did not really understand what kind of object he was dealing with. The implications

of communicational proficiency for normal patterns of behavior extend must further than one might without reflexion suppose. It would be possible to give

many, many other examples, ranging from the routines viewers use in operating a

television set to the routines motorists use in following road signs. If you come

to a road junction, and you find a fingerpost, it is no use being able to read the

word Oxford on the arm, unless you also know what a Fingerpost is. A Martian

invader who could read English tolerably well but knew nothing at all about the

organization of traffic in England might conceivably suppose that the post was

some kind of shrine dedicated to a deity called Oxford, or that it marked the grave

of a local worthy of that name, or any other o f a hundred and one logically enter- tainable hypotheses, which just happen to be totally wrong. In short, it is quite literally part of one's communicational proficiency to be able to recognize a signpost

as a signpost, which involves knowing the appropriate behavioral routines associated with that object in its normal cultural setting.

Modern linguistic theory, however, does not deal with things like signposts.

It deals only with the linguistic entities which might or might not be represented

on a signpost. In short, it is committed to divorcing the text from the object. By

implication, it dismisses the object as irrelevant to the identification of the linguistic

sign. Whereas the plain fact is that anyone who does know what a fingerpost is

is also in a position to identify the word Oxford on the arm of the post as one


particular kind of linguistic sign, a place name. This immediately supplies a more plausible explanation as to how we are able - and indeed - expected to decode the

signpost message than supposing, for instance, that it is a question of treating the

single word Oxford as an elliptical surface form actually representing the deep structure of some such sentence as This is the road to Oxford, or even perhaps I f you want to get to Oxford, follow the direction in which this arm o f the post

is pointing. Nor can current speech-act theory give a very convincing account of the function

of signposts. It is certainly true that any hypothetical dunderhead who did not know what a signpost was, and hence failed to grasp why the word Oxford appeared

on the arm, would have failed to grasp the illocutionary force of the message. Specifically, he would have failed to identify it as a direction, even though he might

know that Oxford is the name of a certain university city. But, in terms of

speech-act theory, this would be simply on a par with failing to take the words

'This bull is dangerous' as a warning (Austin 1962: 62). There is an important

difference, in other words, between the kind of relationship speech-act theory

attempts to deal with and the kind of relationship which is central to textualization

as such. This we shall come to shortly.

First, however, let us note the general reason why analyses of the kind offered

by linguists and speech-act theorists are likely to throw little if any light upon the

semiology of textualization. As far as linguistics is concerned, the existence of

textualized artifacts is merely incidental. There is nothing special about them or

about the way they function as signs.

Current speech-act theory, like modern linguistic theory as a whole, simply

disregards as irrelevant to its concerns the specific physical forms in which a text

might be instantiated. The possible varieties o f those forms are classed alike as

tokens of the same type, and it is the postulated type in question which is taken

to be the true object for analysis. This amounts to dismissing from consideration

a whole range of factors which can be of semiotic relevance and which are, moreover,

regularly exploited in the design of textualized artifacts. For this reason alone,

a different approach becomes necessary if we wish to come to terms with what is

unique about textualization as communication. A theory of textualization must accommodate from the outset the fact that

in textualized artifacts the text always functions as a sign in ways which are not

exhaustively described by giving a merely 'linguistic' account of what the text says, of the linguistic forms used, and of their meanings as contrasted with other forms

available in the language. Linguistic considerations in this narrow sense are

important; but it is no less important to consider what kind of object the artifact

is. For that is a consideration which cannot fail to have been foremost in the mind

of whoever designed the artifact and decided on its textualization in the first place.


In short, a theory o f textualization must assume that language and object are, as it

were, potentially equipollent in the communicational enterprise. Otherwise, the

text would be superfluous or the object superfluous. A text, as a graphic configuration of some kind, has to appear on or in something. And recognizing what that

something is must be assumed to be as potentially relevant to the message as recognizing the linguistic form of particular marks which appear there.

One reason why it is easy to lose sight of this fact must be mentioned here.

Western education has conferred supreme importance upon one particular variety of textualized artifact: the book. As a result, educated people commonly fail to

see that the book represents a by no means archetypal form of textualization. In

the case of books, the primary purpose of the artifact is merely to act as a vehicle

for the text. Since the presence of the vehicle is intellectually discounted by the

Western reader, to the point of virtually being ignored, there is no incentive to

analyse in any detail the rather complex relations which obtain between text and

artifact. It remains nonetheless true that it is impossible to comprehend the text

unless one knows how to use the artifact, and part of our communicational

proficiency vis-il-vis books consists in understanding the mechanisms of this

particular form of textualization. For example, we have to understand the

convention whereby text follows on consecutively in the standard Western book

from bottom recto to top verso of the same sheet of paper. That is not a convention

which normally applies to a newspaper. So anyone who tried to read a newspaper

according to the convention for books would find it extremely difficult to make

sense of what he read. It is part of our communicational proficiency as educated

readers to grasp this and many other differences between books and newspapers as textualized artifacts.

Furthermore, we have to understand that books as such do not employ any uniform set of principles governing the organization of a text even within the same

language community. That is another reason why textual competence is not to

be equated with mastery of any language in the usual pedagogical sense. For instance, anyone who supposed that the same principles applied to an English

telephone directory as to a novel by Charles Dickens might find it almost impossible to cope with either one text or the other. It is part of the communicational

proficiency of someone who can use a telephone directory to grasp, for instance, the fact that each entry presents a self-contained item of information which does

not have to be related to its immediate successor. Whereas anyone who supposed that this applied to the individual sentences of a novel would automatically fail

to understand even the first page of Oliver Twis t .

Books themselves, moreover, do not invariably exemplify the general relation-

ship whereby priority is assigned to the text as ' information', and non-priority to

the object as 'vehicle'. Paradoxically, books are also among the most striking


examples of a relationship of quite the reverse kind: that is to say, where the text is, as it were, simply a vehicle for the object. We see the recognition of this relationship carried to what many would regard as an absurd degree in those examples

of modem f'me printing which remain forever unread, because to open the pages would be automatically to lower the market value of a collector's item. It would

be naive to think that such books happen fortuitously to become collectors' items. On the contrary, they are for the most part designed and produced to be that.

This is simply one illustration of a more general point. The study of textualiza-

tion requires methods which will enable us to analyse these rather complex and

varied relations between text and object: but not as relations constituting a separate

semiotic organization for each case or type of case. To treat the integration of

text and object as a closed system would be just as misguided as to treat the text

alone as a structure isolable from that of the object. In both instances, this would

be to deny the most important organizing principle operative in textualization

- namely, that the text serves communicational needs which relate to the cultural

function of the object and are in that sense external to it. But such needs, it seems,

vary unpredictably across cultures. On what general basis, then, might an analysis

of textualization proceed? The next section of this paper will attempt to sketch

the outlines of an answer to this question.

DISCUSSION

Broadly speaking, it seems that we need an approach to semiological facts

which distinguishes three scales. These three scales correspond to three possible perspectives on communication. I shall call them 'biomechanical', 'macrosocial' and 'integrational'. The biomechanical scale is concerned with investigation of

phenomena which pertain primarily to the organic and neurophysiological mechanisms which underlie communicative behaviour. Traditional articulatory

phonetics, for example, is a typical biomechanical investigation in this sense.

Biomechantcal phenomena are often phenomena which escape the conscious analytic

attention of those engaged in communication, even though the participants may have finely tuned control of and reactions to the various processes involved. Few

people apart from phoneticians, for example, are consciously aware of what

precisely they have to do with their vocal apparatus in order to make the requisite

distinctions between the sounds their speech utilizes: but they are quite expert

at pronouncing the sounds nonetheless. They have acquired the requisite bio-

mechanical proficiency. The macrosocial scale is concerned with phenomena which, again, participants

may be not consciously or only dimly aware of. But in this case their lack of

awareness will relate to the fact that as participants they are not in any position to


grasp a much broader pattern, o f which their own communicational behavior

forms only part. Linguistic change, as traditionally studied, is a typically macrosocial

phenomenon. Only certain aspects of it ever enter into the ordinary individual's experience of language, even though his own behavior is instrumental in bringing

such change about. Macrosocial features o f communication show up clearly only

when communicative behavior is studied e n m a s s e . Nonetheless, macrosocial

proficiency ,of certain kinds is important if individuals are to achieve their com-

municational purposes, and insensitivity to macrosocial features can give rise to

serious communicational breakdowns. An individual may simply fail to realize,

for example, that some feature of his communicational behavior is unacceptable

or liable to misinterpretation once he moves outside his familiar communicational

environment into situations where he is in contact with individuals of a different

racial or social background.

The integrational scale is concerned with the fitting together of various patterns

and features of communicational behavior in ways which make sense to the participants. The articulation of events in a particular communication situation or type

of situation cannot be structured randomly, or without due regard for the physical and social conditions obtaining. Here, one is dealing with the results of biomechani-

cal and macrosocial proficiency used to further communicational objectives. Studies on the integrational scale are concerned essentially with how people have to integrate

various forms of proficiency in order to achieve interactional aims in given situations.

It is, in short, the study of communicational proficiency, envisaged as a semiologi-

cally focussed hermeneutics. As such it shares in common with all hermeneutic

approaches a concern to explain human actions and reactions primarily by reference to the relevance they have for the participants themselves.

These three scales correspond to three different perspectives not only on

communication but on all forms of human behavior. The assumption is that

communication involves activity of some kind by the participants, and this activity

- like any other - is constrained in various ways by factors o f three different kinds.

They are: what the human being is physiologically equipped to do, what the human

being is collectively conditioned to do, and what the human being is individually

aiming to do in given circumstances.

Now, any textualized artifact may be analysed in terms of the type of com-

municational proficiency it presupposes, and this can conveniently be described

by reference to the three scales just mentioned. Such an analysis will provide,

in effect, a systematic account of the communicationai relevance o f the various

features of the text, and their relations to the object in question.

For example, if I go into any supermarket or grocery store in Oxford and

buy a carton of milk, I am likely to find that the textualization of this object

conforms to certain fairly stringent constrainls along the three scales we are


considering.

First, the macrosocial scale. 1 am likely to find that the text on the carton

is in what I was brought up to call 'English'. This relates very directly to the

marketing intentions of the manufacturers. It may well be that their product is

manufactured abroad, in a non-English-speaking country. But the language selected

tbr textualization will be a consumer-oriented choice. If they choose Hungarian

or Eskimo for the text on the carton, it is very likely to remain a long time unsold

in an Oxford shop: for a very good reason. The chances of an Oxford purchaser

being able to understand what the carton contains if the text is in Hungarian or

Eskimo are very much reduced. If he is not sure what the carton contains, he is

less likely to buy it. If he doesn' t buy it, the shopkeeper will not want to stock

it. The manufacturer will lose money. In short, he re 'we have a case where

textualization is directly related on the macrosocial scale to the economic and

marketing structures of the society in question.

Next, the biomechanical scale. 1 am likely to find that the text on my carton

comes in print of various sizes, and these sizes are fairly directly related to bio-

mechanical factors. The fact is that the human eye cannot easily scan printed

characters of less than a certain size, which depends on variables in the relevant

viewing conditions. This has nothing to do with language conventions. It is a

biomechanical matter , of the same order as the factors which the optician takes

into account when testing people 's eyesight. Just as the manufacturer cannot afford

to textualize his carton with words the customers cannot comprehend, equally

he cannot afford to use words the customers cannot read. However, what they

can read depends to some extent on the distance they are from the text, and whether

or not they are standing still. Hence, it is quite typical on a textualized carton to

find text in different sizes of print, some of which can be read at a distance or

while walking by the object, whereas other sizes presuppose that one is holding

the object steady in one's hand; that is to say at a distance from eye to object of

twelve or eighteen inches. Now in order to understand the reason for that, one has

to move to a third scale of analysis: the integrational.

The reason for having different sizes of print on the object in question relates

to integrational factors arising from the type of communication situation in which

the text is expected to function. At the crudest level of analysis, one can distinguish

between two types of function which the words on a carton might be expected

to have. I will call these two types of function ' identificational ' and 'amplifica-

t~onal'. The identificational function will be that of telling you what the carton

contains. The amplificational function will be that of telling you certain facts

about the contents thus identified. The point to note there is that there is no

macrosocial or biomechanical distinction involved between the two functions:

we are dealing here with purely integrational matters. And this involves asking


questions like 'How does a member of late 20th-century European civilization set about the task of finding out which of the various cartons, bottles, tins and packets he might be confronted with contain the contents he is interested in?' The answers to such questions turn out to be extremely complex. But they are essential to giving any realistic account of communicational proficiency in a culture such as

OURS.

As regards the size of print on modern milk cartons, two of the relevant integra-

tional considerations are these. The purchaser will often be confronted with the task of picking out visually which of a large number of roughly similar cartons

or bottles on a shelf or tray in a shop display contain the type of liquid he wants.

It is only when that initial problem of identification has been solved that there

is any point in moving on to subsidiary questions, such as how much it costs, what

quantity the carton contains, how long it will keep,'and so on. So there is an

integrational priority in the order of questions to be asked from the customer's

point of view. But that would not p e r se explain the different type sizes in the carton text. The crucial factor is that in the relevant communication situation

the customer often seeks to answer the first question while moving around the

shop on a general tour of inspection. He does not stop immediately upon entering

and start picking up the objects nearest to him in order to read the labels. If he

did, shopping would take up so much time that there would be nothing left for

any other form of activity during the average 24 hours.

It follows that, given the biomechanical constraints on legibility, one might

expect the largest size of print to be allocated, all other things being equal, to that

portion of the text which answers the question which has integrational priority for the customer. Casual observation suggests that this expectation is, if not

invariably, at least very con]monly fulfilled. Again, the reason is quite directly related to the economics of communication between producer and consumer. If

the customer looking for milk in a shop cannot quickly identify the producer's carton as one containing milk, then he is less likely to buy it. So there is a con-

vergence between the communicational interests of the producer and the communicational interests of the consumer. This maximizes the effectiveness of having

part of the text picked out typographically in a manner determined by the bio-

mechanics of reading under certain situationally determined conditions. On the other hand, print size is not the only relevant factor. Lettering shapes

and color contrasts may play a part in giving prominence to a certain portion

of the text. Nor is it inevitable that the identificational function should be allocated

primarily to the text at all . Pictorial or iconic representations of various kinds

may to a large extent reduce the identificational function of the text to an ancillary

role. The total design of the carton as communication will depend on the interplay

of a variety of considerations, which will in turn depend on how the particular


product is marketed, and what consequential importance its textualization has. There is no way in which the textualization of the artifact can be explained in isolation, and hence no way in which the communicational proficiency implied in that textualization can be explained in terms of 'purely linguistic' factors, even if we could separate out the 'purely linguistic' factors from others.

CONCLU~ON

In the concluding section of this paper, I should like to draw attention to a

number of consequences and implications which this approach to textualization has for semiological analysis in general, including linguistic analysis.

Before doing so, it is perhaps worth re-emphasizing that the scalar distinctions we are drawing are quite general ones. They apply, for instance, no less to the textualization of a milk carton than to the textualization of the Taj Mahal. In

fact, if we compare the milk carton to the Taj Mahal, the parallels are striking. On the macrosocial scale, Shah Jahan had no option but to have his texts in Arabic, given the political and religious structures prevailing in seventeenth-century Agra.

The choice of any other language would have been tantamount to a declaration of unorthodoxy of a very serious kind.

On the biomechanical scale, Shah Jahan's designers showed that they were perfectly well aware of the fact that legibility is in part dependent on viewing distance. They turned this to their advantage by making the text serve a dual function in the design of the faqade. As the visitor approaches the front of the mausoleum, the eye cannot at first distinguish bands of script from bands of abstract floral patterns. This biomechanical fact allows both to be used decoratively. They function visually to contrast at a distance with the brilliant white of the marble walls, and pick out certain architectural features and proportions.

As the visitor draws closer, however, he begins to see that some of those bands are not merely decorative. From the garden below the main platform on which the mausoleum stands he already begins to identify the principal text which frames the central porch. The word 'identify' is important, for here we move from biomechanical to integrational considerations. The visitor is manifestly intended to identify the text, rather than to read it. Its sheer length, calligraphic complexity

and disposition pose severe problems for the eye of a reader, whereas casual scanning by the eye of a visitor thoroughly familiar with the Koran will suffice to identify

the well known passage in question. Furthermore, anyone not familiar with the Koran would in any case be

perplexed to understand why the words in question appear there at all.l They make

no obvious reference to death, mortality or grief, as one might perhaps expect of an inscription on a mausoleum. On the contrary, they speak of 'warning a people


whose fathers were not warned and therefore lived in heedlessness' and of sentencing them to live in unbelief. The relevance of the text cannot fail to baffle anyone

who does not know that these are the opening verses of the famous sura 36, Y~i

S~n, reputedly described by Muhammad himself as 'the heart of the Koran', and

traditionally the text recited to the dying throughout the Muslim world. 2 Thus

the transition by which, to the visitor's eye on approaching the mausoleum, what

began as a delicately decorative ormentation gradually resolves itself into the words

of Y~ Sin, is itself an architect's metaphorical expression of the transition from

the awareness of visual beauty to the awareness of imminent death. That metaphor

is articulated on the integrational level with a subtlety that marks the work of a great artist.

To treat such a text as forming a 'semantic enclave' within the architectural

semiology of the building as a whole is theoretically unsatisfactory for a number

of reasons which should already, in the light of the foregoing discussion, be evident. One might perhaps summarize some of these reasons by making the general point that it is absurd to suppose that elements from different semiotic systems can simply be juxtaposed randomly and interpreted separately as independent sets o f signs.

That would be as fatuous as trying to analyse code-switching in a bilingual conversa-

tion on the assumption that what was being said in one language must make sense

independently of what was being said in the other. In short the notion of an 'enclave' in the manner defined by Wallis is inadequate precisely because it implies

that what is contained within the enclave is, as Wallis puts it, an 'autonomous ' entity.

A second general point is that by treating a passage of text as autonomous,

we often find ourselves at a loss to explain quite conspicuous features of its organiza-

tion. For example, there would be no explanation available for the different sizes of print on a milk carton. Nor can we hope to explain why a Koranic text happens

to be written so as to form three adjacent sides of a rectangular panel unless our analysis can somehow take into account how and why the text is designed to outline the doorway of a building. Divorcing the text from the object invariably leaves us

in a theoretical impasse. For then we must either ignore certain quite deliberate

features of textual organization as being semiologically irrelevant; or else we must

seek their semiological relevance in a system which does not belong to the text

per se, but adventitiously uses textual features for quite different purposes. Neither of these unwelcome alternatives comes to grips convincingly with the fact that

textualization itself is a process which physically integrates word and object. This

integration is not an occasional consequence but an intrinsic feature of the phenomenon.

If, on the other hand, we adopt an analysis which distinguishes from the outset

between biomechanical, macrosocial and integrational factors as having potential


relevance at all levels of semiological organization, there is no such theoretical impasse. What this means, however, should not be underestimated. It means that we are committed theoretically to two important propositions. These two propositions stand in approximately the same relation to semiology as Saussure's famous principles of linearity and arbitrariness stand to Saussurean linguistics. They are the basic axioms of an integrational semiology.

The first is that what constitutes a sign is not given independently of the situation in which it occurs or of its material manifestation in that situation.

The second is that the value of a sign is a function of the integrational proficiency which its identification and interpretation presuppose.

Acceptance of these two axioms has very far-reaching consequences for

semiology which can only be briefly indicated here. Perhaps the most obvious is that it follows that there is an important sense in which the sign is not arbitrary, and the investigation of this non-arbitrary domain automatically becomes one of the major tasks of an integrational semiology.

Secondly, it follows that for an integrational semiology signs, as part of human

behavior, cannot be considered in abstraction from the specific ways in which they are involved in communicational interaction. In other words, there is no

priority of signs over the use of signs. Sign behavior as such cannot be treated simply as the exercise of individual choice from among a pre-determined inventory or system of signs. On the contrary, the status of being a sign is itself relative to a communation situation and determined by relevant features of that situation. Signs,

in brief, are defined for an integrational semiology by communicational relevance in a situation and not by criteria for membership of some previously established typology.

What makes textualization a practice of particular interest for an integrational semiology is the fact that it documents in a remarkably detailed and concrete way the situational factors which communities are prepared to treat as relevant in conferring sign status upon an arrangement or configuration of visual elements. In spite of the great diversity of textualization, what unites its many forms and justifies treating textualization semiologically as a single modality is the following fact. In all cases, it is the physical relationship guaranteed by the material construction of a particular artifact which is used as the basis for establishing semiotic significance. The design of textualized artifacts makes intrinsic use of that physical relationship, and that is why no theoretically satisfactory analysis of textualization

can afford to neglect the integration of text and object. There is a formal and functional interdependence between the two which determines the whole gamut of

semiotic possibilities which can be realized in any particular instance. Semiologically, that physical relationship is translated into one of complementary contextualization:

the text is automatically contextualized by the artifact at the same time as the


artifact is by the text. Neither contextualization is - or could be - prior to the other, since both are manifested in one and the same physical realization. Seeing and exploiting the communicational possibilities of that relationship was one of the greatest intellectual steps homo sapiens ever took. Textualized artifacts are, in this sense, an entirely original creation in the history of man's development as a maker of his own environment.

Considered from the point of view of an integrational semiology, textualization offers a rich field of research which has largely been neglected by linguists and others, because their own theoretical stance obscures the existence of this field and access to it. As a result, we still have no good descriptions of what people are expected to know and be able to do in order to achieve average communicational

proficiency in any one of the hundreds of different areas of standard communicative

behavior involving texts. Yet such descriptions would seem indispensable if contemporary programmes of education, for instance, are to be saved from falling

increasingly out of touch with the linguistic world in which people actually live today. A first step in this direction would be to attempt a classification of textualized objects on the basis of the situations in which they commonly function,

the relations exhibited between text and object in each type of case, and the

communicational implications involved. Only in this way can semiology keep abreast of the creativity by which modern society is constantly evolving new forms of communication and forging new semiological links between texts and other symbolic systems.

NOTES

1. For comments on the Koranic text I am indebted to my colleague, D.S. Richards

of the Oriental Institute, Oxford. 2. Everyman ed. (tr. J.M. Rodwell), p. 130, fn. 2.

REFERENCES

Austin, John.

1962 How to do Things with Words, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Wallis, M. 1973 "Inscriptions in Painting," Semiotica 9, 1-28.

Rodwell, J. M. (tr.)

1909 The Koran, London: Dent (Everyman ed.).

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The semiology of textualization

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