Sémiotique : concepts et applications en sociologie (Cours 3/5)

Hello everyone, we are going to resume with a third session of this course Signs, Sound, Image. A session I called " Concepts and applications in sociology". So far in the course, we have talked to different companies about signs, symbols, symptoms,

of a vocabulary that revolves around signs, but we did it in a relatively unspecific way. So, the purpose of this course is to be more precise and specific on the use of these semiotic terms, that is to say the use of these terms related to signs, and to develop a relatively precise vocabulary on the question that you can then put to work in your analyses.

To do this, we will have the help of two authors and the theoretical system of two authors. On the one hand, Karl Bühler, who is a psychologist and an Austrian linguist, who worked in the 1920s and 1930s, who wrote a book that

The French translation is called "the theory of language" which develops a theory of the language sign. It is someone who works on language and discourse but who will treat language semiotically, that is to say, who will be interested in language as a sign, also insisting on the dimension of the reception of language and interpretation by the listener. A semiotic conception of language is a conception that will accentuate the reception and interpretation pole,

proposed to say that in the end, all the statements represent a set of signs that can be interpreted in one way or another and that the work of the receiver or the listener is just as important in the signification process as the work of the transmitter/speaker. So, next to this semiotic of language at Bueller, we will look at the semiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. So, Peirce, P-E-I-C-E,

RCE, sometimes we say "Peirce" but it seems that the correct pronunciation of his last name is "Pearse", the pioneer of semiotics in the United States. He is also a philosopher and a logician associated with pragmatism. And we will see that in fact, whether at Bueller's or at Pearse, this interest for signs and the fact that one and the other have developed a theory of sign, is articulated in fact to

pragmatic concerns, that is to say concerns related to action. In fact, if he looks at the functioning of signs, it is to understand how these signs act.

How are they followed by consequences? How do they perform? In both cases, in Buller and in Peirce, a common interest would be to ask oneself: "How to do things with signs?" How to do things with signs? A formula that we associate with the title

of John Austin's book, How to Do Things with Words. And we'll see it in a moment, the pragmatism of language has really clarified this question of the performativity of language, the way language can create social reality by acting on others and on the world. But the most correct formula could be, finally, How to Do Things with Signs, How to...

produce effects and do things with signs. So before looking at this pragmatic and performative dimension of signification in Buller and Peirce, we will say a word about the way in which this question of performativity has been addressed by language philosophers through what we called the theory of language acts, or the theory of discourse acts,

Speech Act Theory, in English. So in How to Do Things with Words, translated by Quand Dire C'est Faire, Austin takes a descriptive illusion in language studies, as he calls it, an illusion according to which language would essentially serve to know the world or to represent it. For him, this is far from the case. Language also serves to act on the world, to transform the world, even in a rather partial and situated way.

When you ask a question, when you give an order, when you exclaim through language, well, you do something else than denoting the world or representing it. We are not interested here in

I

create a reality, the new status of the baptised. When I say "I order you to be silent", I try to act and regulate the behaviour of the other. When I say "I promise you that I will come tomorrow", by saying these words, I take an engagement.

different types of language acts, which it is possible to form a sort of typology, and that's what John Searle will try to do in 1969 in a book called Speech Acts. John Searle will distinguish assertive acts, directives acts, promissive acts, expressive acts, and declarative acts. These different types of language acts will differ in particular in terms of their purpose, that is, in terms of what they aim to accomplish.

Assertive acts involve the responsibility of the speaker on the existence of a state of things or the truth of a proposition. When I support that, I affirm that, I swear that, or I try to prove that something, well, I engage an assertive act. Directive acts aim to make something to the listener. When I ask, I order, I order, I beg, I pray, I invite,

I warn, I advise, etc. Well, I carry out a series of directives, that is to say that I try to direct the behavior of others through my language acts. Thirdly, with the promissive acts,

The act of language forces the speaker to adopt a certain behavior. The fact of promising, of committing to, of guaranteeing that, of agreeing that, well, there are so many acts of language that force me, as a speaker, to adopt a certain behavior. Fourthly, the expressive acts, which, quite clearly here, aim to express the specific psychological stage associated with the act of language.

The fact of wishing someone welcome, to thank someone, to congratulate someone, to apologize, to mourn something, to present one's condolences, etc. are expressive language acts. The goal is to manifest a particular psychological state. Finally, declarative acts aim to create a state of things through the use of language itself. I already said it earlier, but I declare you husband and wife, I baptize you,

you are fired, the session is over, there are so many declarative acts by which I create a state of things that did not exist until now by the use of language. I declare you married woman, the declaration itself creates the state of things of marriage. If the objectives of these different acts of language will differ according to the types,

The means that will be put together in each of these types of language acts will also be different. Each type of language act will ask the speaker to put together different success conditions.

what Austin calls "conditions of felicity". And for that, we will have to follow certain rules. Johnson reminds us that speaking a language is engaging in a behavior governed by rules of a very complex type. This behavior governed by rules, which is language and which are acts of language, will ask us at any time to respect a whole series of rules

which will allow, if they are followed and if they are respected, our language acts to perform, to be followed, the effects and consequences that we are looking for. Since obviously, language acts will also be able to create a whole series of effects and consequences that are not aimed by the language act, that are not sought after. For example, if I engage in a directive act of the type

to make a request, to order something, well, what I aim for in my act of language is to get what I want, to be able to influence the behavior of others by my request or by my order. However, it is very possible that the main consequence

of my act of language, or to provoke in the other person the impression that I am an authoritarian person, or that I allow myself to make a whole series of demands and orders. So there, obviously, there are consequences and effects that are not those that I aim for in my act. We can understand that it is a derivative or secondary effect, but it is not the effect that is directly aimed by the demand or by the order. So we will obviously have distinctions between the types of effects aimed, the types of effects that are involuntary,

But the conditions of felicity, as Austin calls them, concern precisely these conditions that we must bring together to achieve the goal aimed by the act of language. So to grasp the extent of these rules and the extent of these conditions of felicity that must be followed in the production of acts of language, if we want these acts of language to perform in the targeted direction,

"Austin will be interested in all possible and imaginable ways for language acts not to act in the intended sense, to be unhappy, as we say. Unhappy words or unhappy words are words or words that have been badly engaged or expressed, announced, and that do not manage to create the effects that are pursued by the speaker. When we say that someone has had unhappy words,

we imply the fact that they aimed to accomplish something through an intervention, for example an intervention in a televised debate, and finally these words did not work as they heard them and on the contrary they could, for example, offend, shock, etc. and so we will speak

of a unfortunate language act as an act of language that fails to produce the effects intended and which, in addition, produces a series of involuntary or not intended effects. In French, the act of unfortunate language, "infélicitus" in English, says Austin, is therefore the doctrine of unhappiness, of unfortunate language acts, which will be

presented by Austin, like all possible and imaginable ways of faking an act of language. It is quite fascinating that this doctrine of infallibility, Austin presents a fairly complete painting that I reproduce here of these different types of infallibility. Unfortunately, we cannot go into the details of this painting, I will refer you to works that

which presents a series of these unfulfilled wishes in a more complete way. Here we will focus on the right part, the one that presents the unfulfilled wishes related to what Austin calls "abuse of language acts". When a speaker commits an abuse, his act of language is, Austin tells us, a hollow act, a purely verbal act. This is the case especially when the act of language is insincere.

If we go back to the typology of Searle that I just presented, the different types of language acts involve a certain sincerity condition. Among the conditions of happiness, among the conditions that will make a language act happy or at least not unhappy, we count what we will be able to call sincerity conditions. There is much more than sincerity that must be

present in the language act that we are trying to do, but among these different conditions that we must bring together, there is a condition of sincerity. So, obviously, the expressive acts, I have given you the typology of language acts according to CERN, the expressive acts require that the psychological states associated with the act are real and sincere.

For example, when you welcome someone, it works better if you are smiling, warm, and if you accompany your speech with welcoming gestures, for example by offering a chair to someone who comes into the room.

It works better if we follow these expressive formalities than if you say it coldly without looking the person in the eyes. The welcome effect that you wish for the other is contradicted in some way by the

Your acts and gestures are expressive on the question. If you don't look at the person, if you say it coldly, you don't realize the expressive act of welcome in the right way. You do it by transgressing conditions of sincerity. Show that you are not extremely hot to see the other arrive. Likewise, if you apologize, it is better to appear really sorry. If you present your condolences, it is better to appear

really sad, etc. All these expressive acts require a certain type of sincerity and a certain type of expressiveness. But beyond the expressive acts, and this is where it becomes important and interesting in relation to our interest in signs, but beyond the expressive acts, the other types of language acts will also assume that a particular condition of sincerity is respected. For example,

an assertive act supposes that I really believe

in what I say, in what I assert, and that I show a certain self-confidence when I do it. When I assert something, I have to show that I am assertive enough for my act to work as such. This is the case for an expert who expresses himself on the description or the observation of a certain state of affairs in the world, a state of affairs in which he is supposed to be the expert, and therefore he has to show enough assertiveness and confidence for his speech to work.

But it is the case of a whole series of very different acts of language in which we will assert realities that will suppose trust and belief in oneself and in what we say. We will take a very different example from that of expertise or the speaking of an expert

with the language acts produced by rappers in the context of a rap battle. You know, these fights between rappers who send punchlines, which is a modality of this assertive language act, in the

rap battles, the different competitors send punchlines to each other, which are generally observations or assertions towards the other, insults most of the time on the other, on his mother, whatever. And so producing these punchlines is obviously also showing assertiveness, showing expressiveness that is appropriate,

which represents this very particular sincerity condition which will be that of the act of language of the type punchline in rap battle. So I put you in image what could give a suitable and appropriate expressiveness for a punchline in a

in a rap battle, you see the right opponent who is the rapper Nekfeu when he was quite young on these images, you see the tenacity, the expressiveness of the face, the assurance of the rapper in what he says, the assurance of the competitor in his superiority over the other and in his ability to push the other through a whole series of

insults and punchlines that carry strong while the other is already how to say in the process of lowering the gaze to lower the head to show too much timorous shy and not confident enough for these punchlines to reach their goal and manage to win over his opponent so we see here how on the one hand we will have an act of happy language

in the sense and according to the rules set by the rap battle, which will be supported by this strong and confident expressiveness.

and on the other side, unfortunate language acts, that is to say an attempt to produce a series of punchlines but which will fail, in particular due to lack of expressiveness, lack of assurance from the speaker. Another type of language act that will suppose a specific expressiveness is the directive language act. An act, for example, that communicates a request or an order will also

a condition of particular sincerity and which is the will of the speaker to obtain what he asks or what he orders. We can imagine, for example, in the context of a baptismal kiss that a comitare

orders something completely crazy or completely extreme, I will not give an example here, and that you can ask yourself the question of the sincerity of his request, his order. Is he serious? Does he really ask me? Does he really want me to do this act? So in a whole series of situations, we will be able to question the sincere will of the speaker

the Holy Will behind his request or his order. This is the case for a directive act, it can also be the case for a declarative act. For example, when I declare "you are fired", in a certain context, the condition of sincerity, that is to say my will to really see you put out the door

will be very real and in other cases it will be a joke. We can imagine a joke, more or less good, that a superior makes to his subordinate when they go to drink a glass together. The subordinate says something wrong and his superior tells him: "You're fired!" Obviously, he only hears jokes. And in this case, obviously, the declarative act will not work as such.

We can also imagine the conditions of sincerity that are hidden behind a promissive act. It seems quite obvious to me in the case of a promise, a certain condition of sincerity must be fulfilled. And this condition is of course the intention of the speaker to realize what he has committed to do or what he has promised to do.

Obviously, a promise that would not show this intention would also be a sad promise, a promise that would not act as such. Concretely, in real-life situations of speech, how do we identify the sincerity or the insincerity of a language act? If not through a series of expressive signs, taken in situation, which are congruent with the act professed and with the situation,

or which are either incongruous in relation to what the act supposes. We will be able to rely not only on what the person says and on what she claims to do through the fact of saying, but also on a whole series of signs, in particular signs related to facial expressions, to prosody, that is to say to the modulation of the word, to tonalities, to inflections, to intonations.

accentuations, a whole series of signs related to the face, to the speech, why not also to posture, to the maintenance of the body, all these signs will

show themselves congruent with the act of language, that is to say that they will come to complete the form of the act of language that is attempted by the person, or on the contrary they will present themselves as incongruent with the act of language aimed or displayed and by the same will be able to make it fail

in its own performativity, always, that is to say in relation to the effects that are actually aimed by the act of language. They will be able to create other effects than the targeted effects, for example, effects of ridicule or humorous effects, but also effects of bizarreness, even effects of great concern in relation to what we see.

I have placed here three examples that we can quickly go through, in which the language acts that are involved are not accompanied by the expressive signs that are appropriate, and on the contrary, give rise to an expressiveness that is completely incongruous, which makes the act of language fail and which produces a strange meaning in relation to the situation. So we have in particular here the first image that shows us

an individual called Martin Crowley who was called several times the most hated man in the United States. So why is he the most hated man in the United States? Well, because he is an actor of the American pharmaceutical business who, as CEO of a pharmaceutical company,

had, overnight, multiplied by 60 the price of a medicine for serious pathologies. So we can imagine that overnight, people could no longer afford this medicine. So in front of this situation, Martin Shkreli was not only condemned morally by the American population, but also prosecuted in court.

a very cynical character in terms of his business, but also on the expressive level, especially here in the image we see him swear in front of the American Congress that he will tell the whole truth and only the truth in his testimonies. On the one hand, we have the conventional act of language of the fact of solemnly swearing something in front of the Congress, but at the same time we have the

facial expression, in this case a cynical or sarcastic rictus that comes to expressly contradict what the act of language, the solennel, supposes.

The second image, which is cold in the back, is of course Abdelhamid Abaoud, this sinister character who was presumably one of the brains of the Paris attacks of November 2015. You may have seen this video clip where Abaoud is filmed at the wheel of a pickup truck

in Syria, a vehicle that tracks the corpses of its victims and where it presents itself through a series of acts of language that have a religious connotation or that aim to make it appear like a soldier of Allah and a faithful believer and at the same time, expressively, we have a kind of puerile and

and sadistic, which in my eyes completely denies this purity shown by his supposed religious integrity. The third image shows us the former president of the Helvetic Confederation,

during a speech he makes during the day of the disease. He makes a speech where he addresses the sick people and in a completely crazy way, he will introduce in his speech the question of laughter.

and the fact that it is good for sick people to laugh, and that laughing is good for health, and that it is also healthy to send clowns to hospitals to make little sick people laugh, etc. So we can wonder here what the problem is. In fact, you have to see the video because it is both a bit sinister and quite desopilant too. We see here

this extremely serious, very severe gentleman who will talk to you about laughter. So he will talk about laughter already in the context of the disease, which could seem a little bit displaced, but not only there is this inappropriate character if we want, or displaced to speak or to ask very sick people to laugh at the shots, but in addition he does it with an almost sinister expressiveness which

brings absolutely nothing funny in all this and completely denies, if you will, the vaguely humorous dimension that he had tried to introduce. So it gives rise to something completely bizarre and relatively desolating, but to the depends of this individual, obviously. The question of insincerity, under these different forms, according to the type of act of engaged language, is only one of the forms of the unhappiness that Austin calls abuse. The other form of abuse, we see it in the painting,

is the question of the non-accomplishment of the act of language. I can look sincere, or even be authentically sincere when I promise you to give you the 1000 euros you lent me. It may be that I drag too much to do it, or that I never do it, by forgetting, by procrastination, or because it is not the priority for me, because I simply do not have the money, possibly. In this case, the unfulfillment of the act is due to its non-accomplishment.

that is known to the concerned actors only to the extent that they followed the practical consequences of the act of language and the material signs of its accomplishment or its non-accomplishment. The person did not see the 1000 euros come back for a week, a month, two months, three months, a year and therefore can conclude a non-accomplishment of my promise. My promise is canceled as an act of language. My promise was a hollow act, as Austin says.

So here we see a distinction between sincerity and non-accomplishment. I could very sincerely promise you to give you your 1000 euros and then in the meantime, I don't know, things happened in my disfavor or I forgot, I didn't have a round anymore, what do I know, I just couldn't accomplish my act and so I made this one as hollow as it would have been if I had been insincere.

The infelicity of the abuse type is therefore determined by the interface between, on the one hand, the insincerity and, on the other hand, the non-accomplishment. And by the way in which the material signs of non-accomplishment will lead us to read and reinterpret the expressive signs from which we had evaluated the sincerity of the speaker. We can give, for example,

The allocation made by President Bill Clinton to swear to the Americans that he had no sexual relations with his trainee, Monica Lewinsky.

Well, if you could believe Bill Clinton at the time, if you could think that his act of promise, or the fact that he swore not to have had these sexual relationships, fulfilled the conditions of sincerity, and that he really believed in what he said, well, you will read these expressive signs in a completely different way when you will know, like everyone else, that a whole series of material signs have found that there had been such sexual relationships. And so,

the non-accomplishment of this assertive act by which he swore or promised something, makes us finally read this act of language as an act of unfortunate language that did not meet the necessary condition of sincerity. So obviously, people whose abuse of language acts are known to others, either by direct experience, or by reputation, or by appearance,

and by showing a series of signs or stigmas that will be associated with these language abuse, all these people will be able to be discredited. When you make promises that you do not keep, when you swear things that you do not believe in or that are not true, you will be able to be "grilled", as they say, you will be able to be prevented from creating the adhesion to your language acts.

And this possibility of engaging in a happy way in language acts, we will deprive you of it, either by direct experience, if you have, I don't know, a friend who constantly abuses language acts, you will be able to no longer believe it, no longer take it seriously, etc. But it will also be the case by reputation, you will be able to have a bad reputation with other people and therefore

A whole series of individuals will not adhere to your acts of language, even if they did not have a direct experience with you that was negative on the matter. It will also be the case when you show a series of stigmas that will be associated with abuses and that will be associated with discredit. And there we obviously join

the stigmas at Goffman. We can imagine that a person presents physical stigmas that make us infer alcoholic or toxicomaniac behaviors in the person. The person who commits a promise shows a certain sincerity, shows his intention to conform to his promise. We can imagine that the person really, expressively

shows himself sincere in his promise, but that next to this sincere expression that she gives, she exudes a sign that will make us doubt this promise. This is the difference that Goffman establishes between the expressions "given" and "given of". Here the expression "given", the expression that we give, is a sincere expression: "I promise you, I will really do it." And then the expression that is "given of", it is precisely, for example, this smell of alcohol that we release and which will be able, why not,

that the interpreter or the listener will doubt our intention to really promise, or in any case our ability to fulfill this infinite promise. We can undoubtedly speak of conditions of reliability as a set of conditions of a higher and more general level, whose conditions of sincerity would be one of the dimensions. If the conditions of sincerity are presented through expressive signs,

the conditions of reliability are determined through expressive signs, both "given" and "given off", and at the same time through material traces of accomplishment. Fundamentally, what seems very important to me in all this, is that the production of signs is here coordinated with the production of language acts.

as the signs, here expressive signs and material signs, intervene in a crucial way in our ability to evaluate, validate or invalidate language acts. Expressivity is a fundamental dimension of language acts and of all language acts.

There would be something misleading to think that, alongside expressive language acts as Searle calls them, other types of language acts would not be charged with a certain expressiveness, in a way that would condition success. We have seen it: all language acts, whatever their type, assertive, declarative, directive, expressive, of course,

are supported or not by congruent signs that complete them and with which they compose or not the form of promise, the form of declaration, the form of order, etc. This widening of the words of language acts to semiotic acts and the importance of considering expressiveness as a dimension always present in the background of the competent uses of language are precisely the enlightenings that the work of Carl Bühler brings.

which we will say a word now. For the Austrian psychologist and linguist Karl Bühler, born in 1879 and died in 1963, language as a sign system represents a guiding instrument that allows us to guide ourselves and guide others in situations where we find ourselves engaged. So it's a profusion of signs that are emitted and received and from which we practically manage to guide ourselves

and to indicate to others a step to follow. By the way, Bühler will regularly mobilize the metaphor of road signaling, of these signals, of this ethical signal, of these traffic lights that finally organize traffic and interactions on the road.

Well, it's a metaphor that he uses from time to time to talk to us about language as a guide instrument. Since that's what it's about, it's an instrument that will allow us to find ourselves and others in the interactions. I quote Perrine Martelot, who is an expert in Bühler: "Language is a system of signs that a speaker uses to act in the world or to interact with a receiver.

The dimension of the tool is therefore immediately active, and it involves the inscription in a communication situation. I take a tool to do something here to establish a link. Bühler therefore conceives language above all as an instrument, allowing to interact with others or to act on others by the mediation of signs.

a means for a transmitter to enter into a relationship with a receiver via the signals and their ability to represent objects and states of things. This relationship established between a speaker and his interlocutor has several dimensions and language several functions. For Bühler, communicating is indeed doing three things: to represent objects and states of things in the world, but also to express his state, his intentions, and to call the other

a certain attitude, a certain reaction. Three things. So we find these three poles in the diagram that I put here, where we have on the left a sender, a transmitter, which is related to a "Nemfanger", a receiver, about certain objects and states of things, in German "Gegenstand und Sachverhalt",

and we do it through the use of signs, and the sign is symbolized by the Z here in the Zeichel diagram, which means sign. So you see, you have these three poles of the emitter, the receiver, the objects and a lot of things, and the Zeichel signs will refer to the objects and a lot of things in the world, they will represent, this is what Bühler calls the representation, the Darstellung,

Or these signs will indicate a certain psychological state of the speaker, of the transmitter. And there it will be the dimension of expression, "ausdruck". Or these signs will seek to trigger a certain attitude or a certain reaction in the other. And there it will be the dimension of appeal. Do you want to play with me in the battle of pillows? In the battle of what? Of pillows.

So, you have to know that, in addition, depending on the sign is addressed for its cognitive function, for its expressive function, or for its appellative function, we will have a different terminology.

The sign as it refers to objects and states of things in the world, that is, the sign taken in its cognitive function, well, Bühler calls it "symbol". The sign heard in its expressive function, that is, as it refers to the psychological state of the speaker, Bühler will call it "symptom". Finally, the sign as it aims to

trigger a certain behavior in the receptor, Buller calls it "signal". This tri-partition of language functions in Buller will serve as a reference to a theory of communication that is more known to sociologists and which is the theory of pretensions to validity of Jürgen Habermas. For Habermas, engaging in a communicative interaction is to maintain certain pretensions to validity of his own statements and maintain expectations

as to the fact that interlocutors try themselves to make valid contributions. These universal pretensions to validity are: truth, veracity, justice. I quote Habermas: "When a speaker makes a statement, when he affirms, tells, explains, presents, predicts, discusses something, he seeks with the listener a agreement based on the recognition of a pretension to the truth.

When the speaker expresses in a sentence an experience lived, when he reveals, delivers, confesses, reveals something, an agreement can only intervene on the basis of the recognition of a claim to veracity. When the speaker gives an order or makes a promise, promiscuous or admonishable,

an agreement will depend on the fairness that the participants will have to make valid for this action. We notice that these three claims to validity correspond to the three functions identified by Bühler in his instrumental model of language: the cognitive function, the expressive function, the appellative function. So what does Habermas do in this extract? Finally, and we see it in the present scheme, he takes up Bühler's instrumental model with these three functions: the representation function, the

expression and the function of appeal and he will finally use these three functions as a structure from which our main acts of language differ.

We have acts of language that are rather in the order of representation. This is the beginning of the quote when he says: "When a speaker makes a statement, when he affirms, tells, explains, etc. " Well, he presents here a whole series of acts of language aimed at representation.

Further, he talks about the fact that a speaker can express in a sentence an experience lived, confess, reveal something, etc. Well, there, he identifies acts of language of expressive order. And then, thirdly, when the speaker gives an order or makes a promise, promotes or admonishes, etc., well, he identifies a whole series of acts of language that are specialized, we will say, in the function of appeal.

In fact, Habermas uses the Bühler model to structure the main uses of language, but also to identify qualitative criteria that make language acts aimed at representation, aimed at expression or aimed at appeal, can be recognized as valid, can be recognized and accepted by the interlocutors, or on the contrary, that they must be invalidated or that they are asked to be criticized.

And so these qualitative criteria, these criteria of validity, what are they? Well, they are simply the truth for the acts of language aimed at representation, from the moment I try, I see things, or I make a observation, I make an assertion on objects, lots of things in the world, the validity of my act of language is due to the fact that what I say is true, it is the truth that counts here.

If I engage myself on an expressive mode, if I make known my inner states, etc., what counts here will be veracity, and this refers roughly to the question of sincerity or insincerity, whether the one who engages himself on an expressive mode does it sincerely or not. And finally, if I engage myself on a mode that is rather that of appeal, that is to say if I aim rather in my act of language to create a reaction in the other person and trigger an attitude or an action,

the qualitative criterion here will be that of the correctness of my act of language. If I try to influence someone else, if I try to act on their behavior, what I pretend to do must be fair or can be explained or justified from standards. If Habermas has well retained from Bühler's model the question of the triplicity of the functions of language,

it may not have sufficiently honored the question of their simultaneity. So what does it mean, the simultaneity of the functions of language? It's simply the fact that the language sign is not only, or a symbol, that is to say,

a sign that refers to objects and things in the world, or a symptom, that is to say a sign that refers to the psychological stages of the speaker, or a signal, that is to say a sign that aims to trigger a reaction, an attitude in the receiver, it can be the three at the same time, it can simultaneously be a symbol, a symptom and a signal. And that's what will do, and we will insist on it, the semiotic dimension of the model of the language of Bühler.

is that language is constantly symptomatic, symbolic and signaletic. It is the three at the same time and simultaneously. And it will belong to the listener and the interpreter

to identify or cut out what interests him in the language and to make prevail a certain dimension of the sign over another. And so it is this simultaneity of functions of representation, expression and appeal that we lose a little in the theory of pretensions to the validity of Abormas, since finally this one will

dissociate these different language functions by attributing them to specific language acts classes, since it will fix each of these functions around a type of language act, an expressive language act, a constative language act, or a regulating language act.

And thus, Abormaz presents a view of language and communication theorists which is quite interesting but also quite abstract because, in the end, to dissociate the functions of language

and classed in a very clear and clear way the uses of language as resulting from expressive acts or acts of representation or acts of regulation, well, it went past the reality of communication and the fact in particular that all this has never stopped once and for all. We have a simultaneity

of these different functions and finally the auditors, receivers will be able to pick up in the language acts that we address them what interests them. For example here

I am busy conducting a whole series of language acts in which cognitive function has a lot of importance, of course. I'm talking to you about signs, I'm talking to you about buller, I'm talking to you about language at buller, etc. So there is a whole series of references, of objects and lots of things in the world related to these matters which I am talking to you about, okay? I make use of my language

which has a strong cognitive dimension and you are obviously entitled to expect what I am telling you to be as true as possible, that is to say that the truth plays here as a qualitative criterion or as a pretension to validity quite important.

but it is very possible that I, who try to put in shape my statements so that the cognitive function plays to the maximum, well, I can not determine the fact that it is the function that is prime for you. It could be that behind this cognitive function, you are much more attentive to the expressive function of language and the way in which what I say

that tells you about my psychological state, about my person. And in this case, all the signs that I produce and that I imagine to be symbols or function on a symbolic level, that is to say by referring to objects and states of things in the world, you receive them rather as symptoms, that is to say as signs that tell you about my state.

Or it may be that through this course, and despite the distance, my main challenge as a speaker is to create signals, that is to say signs that make you act in a certain way, that trigger certain attitudes in you, such as a devouring passion for semiotics.

driven by the issues of the appellative type. I try to make my language speak to you, call something into you, trigger something into you. But you, you can simply receive what I tell you on a purely cognitive level, that is to say,

These language signals do not work as much as the signals I send you, but rather as simple symbols, these signals that send us to certain objects and many things, in this case here the theory of the chabuleur language. It seems interesting to me to keep this question of the simultaneity of language functions and the indeterminacy

As for the function that is the most important in communication, between what the speaker puts in the formation of his language and what is held or taken from the receiver, there is often a kind of misunderstanding. The utterances themselves only produce signs. So there is always a certain indeterminacy that planes on the processes

meaning. All this remains relatively opaque and relatively undetermined. We have on the one hand a speaker who tries to shape signs in a certain way, so he makes his own selections, and in there we have a receiver who will himself select or pick up what interests him in some way, and it is in this kind of

between the selection of a speaker and the selection of a receiver that the meaning is established. It is the idea of abstract pertinence. Faced with a calibration enunciation in a certain way by a speaker who can try to make it prime a function on another, the receiver shows selective attention and operates its own preludes. I quote here Buller: "The psychological systems of the partners of speech produce and treat the flatus voci,

that is, the oral flow, in a completely different way from the one that the old simplistic formula presupposes. As a receiver, psychophysical systems are selectors, and they function according to the principle of abstractive pertinence. As emitters, these psychophysical systems are formatting stations. Both are part of the proper communication arrangement by signals,

So you see, we find this idea that in fact we have the language which represents a guiding tool, a signal communication. On the one hand, we have a speaker which is a formatting station which tries to shape a whole series of useful signs and which should be followed in a certain way.

and on the other hand, we have a receiver who will make his own selections and will abstract or take away what interests him in the enunciation. So this idea of ​​abstract relevance, the fact that for a receiver it is about removing from the enunciation what appears relevant to him and what could be a symbolical sign, a signaletic sign or a symptomatic sign.

An example of what this distinction could be between the selection of the speaker and the selection of the receiver, I don't know if you are familiar with American basketball and the NBA, but even if you are not a specialist, you must have heard about the fact that in January 2020, the legend of American basketball, Kobe Bryant, died in a helicopter accident. And so the next day,

of this accident. All the American basketball stars, but more broadly the show business stars, rushed to post a whole series of messages about Kobe Bryant on their Instagram site, messages accompanied by photos. And what seems to me very obvious in most of these messages is the way

the most of the photographs

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in a very valued way. So here it seems interesting to me to show how in an act of condolence or in an act that aims to honor the other, most of these great stars can not help but to do as if all this was about them, as if finally the expressive dimension and the dimension of appearance of their person and their ego should take it away.

That's the interpretation I can make. We will find this primate of the dimension of interpretation in its dynamic and uncertain nature in Charles Sanders Peirce, born in 1839 and died in 1914, who is the real pioneer of semiotics in the United States. A contemporary of Peirce was the Frenchman Ferdinand de Saussure and had himself created

a sign theory that he called semiology, which we will not address in this course. A semiology which, at Saussure, was based on the distinction between the signifier and the signifier. However, the theory of the sign of Peirce, the semiotics of Peirce, envisages the sign as a structure, not binary, signifier and signifier, but as a triadic structure.

through the definition of the sign it gives: "A sign is what stands for something, to something" So we understand the triadic structure of the sign well. A sign is what stands for something, to something. These three dimensions are in order, what we will call the "representamen", the object, and the interpreter.

So, what holds place, the holding place, is what he calls the "representamen", that is to say the sign in its material dimension. What holds place of something, the something is the object of the sign, that to which the sign refers. And what holds place of something for something, this for something, it will be what Peirce will call the interpreter, and not the interpreter. So that's pretty interesting and important.

A sign is what takes place of something for something, I don't mean a sign is what takes place of something for someone. That is to say that the interpreter is not an interpreter in the sense that it would necessarily be a human being. The meaning, or semios, as Peirce says,

is itself conceived as a process by which something becomes a sign and functions as such, a process of "media-tized knowledge-taking", as Maurice would say. The sign in its triadic structure, it has been said, was articulated, a representamen, to an object and an interpreter.

The "representamen" is what acts materially and induces the knowledge. The "representamen" is the Lord Himself. The object is what the Lord sends back, what knowledge is taken from.

And the interpreter is the effect by which a thing acts like the sign of another. It is very important here the idea that the interpreter is an effect. The interpreter is not just the human interpreter, it is not just the mental procedures of interpretation, it will be the effect produced by the sign. Moreover, an interpreter is not necessarily a thought or a mental procedure, it can be an action or a reaction or an emotion.

This is where things get complicated, since Peirce will indeed spend his life exploring these relationships between representations, objects and interpreters, showing that there are several types of representations, several types of objects, several types of interpreters, but also several ways of sending the representations to the object, and several types of relationships between representations and interpreters.

Depending on these many variations, which will be deployed by triad and combinations between these different variations, the semiose will proceed according to very different modes. It is useful, and according to some quite exciting, to explore the logic of these variations. Behind all possible variations of the meaning, there is, in Charles Sanders Peirce, the thesis that the world appears to us fundamentally in three possible ways: as pure quality,

as a concrete relationship as a logical representation He names these three fundamental ways of apprehending the world priméité, secondéité, tiercéité or in English firstness, secondness, thirdness and from these three fundamental categories

he will elaborate the different types of representations, the different types of objects, the different types of interpreters, and the relationship between these different signals. To understand these relationships between primaeity, secondaeity and tierceeity, imagine the situation of someone who falls asleep in front of the TV while smoking a cigarette and who wakes up

burned by this cigarette which, falling from its beak, pierced its t-shirt and then we came to burn it to the chest. With this example, we will first illustrate the question of primacy and which is the way in which, finally, the world can be apprehended as pure quality, as pure sensation and as pure feeling.

Imagine the first moment of the person's awakening. The way he perceives or receives the reality or the world at that moment is like a pure burning sensation. Everything is burning, everything is burning, if you will. We have a pure burning quality that is imposed on him.

It's the world as pure quality, everything is just burning at that moment, at the moment 0 of awakening. Very quickly after that, he will relate to the world on the mode of the second deity, that is to say that starting from this situation where the world around him is only burning, he will make the distinction between himself and what burns him, that is to say that there is something that burns him, that,

"Ça me brûle", "ça brûle", okay? And so there we will not have a single term, not this total feeling of burning, but a difference that will settle between the burning and the burning, we could say between the burning body and the burning body, between

The object under his T-shirt is perhaps even undetermined at this moment, he is looking for what he is burning, but at least from that moment on, the burning situation is represented as a concrete relationship

between these two terms. This prevention of the world through concrete relationships is the mode of the second deity. Quite quickly again in the process of interpretation which goes very quickly obviously when you wake up burned you do these steps very quickly but the third step is

the leap through which we are no longer in, how to say, something still a bit instinctive where we say "it burns, something burns me" but we realize obviously that it is a cigarette and therefore apprehending

The experience on this third mode, on the CIT shot, is to understand that the cigarette burns me. So we are no longer in the primacy mode where we are in a pure burning sensation, we are no longer in the second deity mode where we distinguish

a burning of a burned, a burning body of a burning body, we are in a situation where the terms are defined in a certain way and where it is slipped the cigarette category and the representation of the cigarette as something that can burn me and that generally will burn me if I drop it in my t-shirt. So there,

compared to the previous categories, the Tiersaïté integrates general rules, laws, which allow to establish the full intelligibility of the phenomenon, here the fact that the tip of a cigarette lit burns in general. We also understand in this example how these three modes of apprehension of the Real can be succeeded dynamically. So Peirce will systematically apply, and a bit maniacally, this theory of the three fundamental categories to all of his semiotics.

talking about the fact that he was a bit maniac around triads, we will also talk about his subject of triadomania, we will see him as a triadomaniac, he saw triads everywhere. This fundamental triad of the three categories will be applied first to its triadic structure of the sign, we said it earlier, representing the same interpreting object. Then

Each of these poles will be the object of a triad. We will have a triad developed for the representative, a triad developed for the object, a triad developed for the interpreter. And above the market, the organizations of the relations between representative and object and between representative and interpreter

will be triadic themselves. Here we will focus on the triad, which qualifies the relations between the different terms of the sign, and the triad, which are centered on the interpreter, as shown by this diagram. You see that it is the relationship between the representative and the object that will take three forms: the relationship between the representative and the interpreter, the segment of the triangle between the representative and the interpreter, which will also take three forms, and finally,

will quickly present two triads of the interpreter. The triad of the sign in its relation to the object, finally what does it mean here? It's just the fact that a sign can be sent back to its object in three different ways. A sign can take place of something according to three modes and these three modes

Peirce calls them icons, clues and symbols. An icon is a sign that copies, imitates, simulates its object. It is a sign that refers to its object in the mode of resemblance.

and which partially shares a quality with its object. So an iconic designating mode of an object is for example the mime, the imitation. When I imitate my wife speaking, I refer to her own oral behavior on an iconic mode, that is to say on the one of imitation, resemblance, or my own oral or linguistic behavior

is the sign of an object that is its oral behavior. Another example of an icon is the onomatopoeia, which is the way for language to imitate sounds. We can write, for example, in a crack or plouf comic strip to imitate

the sound of a branch that cracks, precisely, or a stone that falls into a marsh. We have here an iconic design of the object, which is the real natural noise of the branch that breaks and the stone that falls into the marsh. We have an iconic design of this object from the moment the words and their pronunciation

pronunciation looks like enough to the object. Then we understand how this resemblance is partial. The word "sniff" only partially shares qualities with the real sniffing of the person who is crying. Okay? When I say "sniff sniff", I understand what I'm talking about and I aim at a behavior that would consist of sniffing repeatedly, for example when we are sad or when we cry.

but nobody, when they cry, really sniffs. It would be funny, but it rarely happens. So quite important, and it is well pointed out by the question of onomatopoeia, as a sign that copies, that imitates, that simulates, the icon is also approximative in its reference to the object. Another example: a diagram or a diagram is an icon

of a more complex reasoning which should normally be developed in propositions and in language but which here is reduced under a form, under a sketch

in this case a visual simplification, a drawing, a diagram. For example, you can imagine more or less complex relationships by which an element A will affect an element B and simplify all this in an iconic way by drawing an arrow that starts from A to B. So we have forms of visual simplifications.

visual or schematic diagrammatic. The index is a sign that indicates its object, a sign that refers to its object by means of a real connection with this one. First example of index: simply the finger that we point towards an object, the pointed index, which will indicate its reference, its object, by means of a real connection with this object. If I have my

index which is pointed here towards the small hair lamp you see there and well my index does not indicate that in the measure where he maintains a real connection a real continuity with this object or that in any case it is pointed towards the object in a way which is aligned with the object if I move my finger it does not indicate at all

the hair lamp, it may even indicate that it does not indicate much since you do not see much above me. If I could show the photos that are there, obviously. So we have a sign that is eminently variable since it will depend on the context and it will depend on the type of relationship that establishes it with

of real objects and the contiguity that we will find between the sign and its reference, the sign and the object. Another example of a clue: the "jirouette" which is the clue of the direction of the wind. The "jirouette" is

really affected by the direction of the wind. When the wind changes direction, the pirouette follows it. So here we have a real connection between a sign and its object, between the direction of the pirouette and the direction of the wind. Other examples of clues, for example the cry, the cry that we hear when we are in the street,

we hear someone screaming, obviously we turn to the situation since something seems to be happening, the scream tells us that something important is happening. We also have another aspect of the index here which is its effect, as we say, psychodynamic, that is to say that the index is a sign that invites us to pay attention to its object. Another example of a

A footprints in the sand, for example, indicates that someone has passed through there. And if the footprints are the index of the situation, it's because someone has walked on the sand at this place. We have a real connection between the sign and its object, between the sign "trace of steps" and the object "step". The index here is a trace.

Obviously, what would be interesting is to consider the fact that the foot trace index also has an iconic character in the sense that the footprint of the shoe in the sand looks like and has the same formal properties as the sole of the shoe that actually fell to the ground in this place. So an index can also have an iconic dimension.

This is the case with photographs. Photographs are indexes with iconic dimension, if you will, where they associate the modes of signification of the icon and the index. They are not pure icons.

because a photograph is not just a sketch of a portrait, it is a trace of a situation that really existed and that we still have this sign, this photograph as a visual imprint of a situation. It is the equivalent of the

the footprints. We have a situation that is printed on paper. The fact that a real situation that has really happened is printed on paper, it makes its character of a clue. By the way, obviously, the photography of my mother sharing the shapes and qualities of my mother's face, it also refers to my mother in a way

if we want, iconic, by copy. It's a copy of my mother's face. And then we will have a whole series of clues that will work in the language, or a series of indexical terms, words. Indexical are words that work like clues, a bit like earlier on, onomatopoeias were words that worked like icons, that sent back in an iconic way to sounds.

Okay? What are indexic terms? Well, it can be terms like, for example, "I" here, "now" are indexic terms of people, place and time. If "I" says "I" or if you say "I",

the reference of "I" changes and the meaning changes. "Ici" is an indexical term of place, since obviously, depending on whether I'm sitting on my chair in this room or on the other side of my apartment,

When I say "here", I will obviously go back to points in the different space. This variation of the contiguity between the sign and its reference shows us well in what it is indexical. It's the same thing obviously with time indices. If I say "now" and if a few seconds later I say "now", I have the same sign.

the sign now, but whose reference has changed from the moment it is indexed on other points in time. Finally, of course, there is the symbol, which is a sign that refers to its object in virtue of a convention, a law, a habit. We have taken the cultural habit that the Christian religion is represented by a cross, for example.

where, obviously, the dictionary's words are symbols, in the sense that

the fact that, for example, the word "chaise" refers to the material object made of wood on which we sit, it's a convention, it's a pure convention that wants us to say "chaise" rather than "schmurf". We see here, in fact, how the three categories we talked about earlier, priméité, secondéité, tiercéité, firstness, secondness, thirdness, apply to the relation of the sign to its object, since, obviously,

You probably understood it. The icon is a sign marked by primacy. The index is a sign marked by secondality. And the symbol is a sign of thirdness. The icon is a sign that refers to its object in virtue of a pure quality that it shares with its object. You remember that earlier when we talked about primacy, we were talking about this relationship to the world that was made on the mode of a pure quality.

The index is a sign that refers to its object in virtue of a concrete relation between the sign and the object. The second deity is precisely the relation to the world marked by the concrete relations. And finally, the symbol is a sign that refers to its object in virtue of a convention, of a law. And so it is the property of the third deity that marks a relation to the world

which is mediated by conventions, by rules, by laws. It was simply to show how this triad of the relationship between the sign and its object is built from the fundamental categories of primacy, secondality, tertiary, and this will be the case for all the triads developed by Peirce, which concern a segment

of the constitution of the sign, which concerns rather the representative, rather the object, rather the interpreter, rather the relations between each other, well, each time these triads

will present a first dimension which is that of pure quality, a second dimension which is that of real connection, and a third dimension which is that of generality and convention. So here, we must pay attention to the fact that when we talk about the relationship between the sign and its object as being iconic, indicial or symbolic, we will talk about a certain aspect of the sign. The signs to which we can pay attention can be at the same time

iconic and indicial can be both indicial and symbolic for example. Often it will be the case, we will have signs that will combine several modes of return to their object and what will interest us particularly when we carry out analyzes is sometimes to spot the dominant aspect, the role

the dominant semiotic role in a sign that will make us see it as a symbol, as an index or as an icon.

Besides that, we have to say that these different aspects can be present in a single sign. We talked earlier about the foot mark. The foot mark is a clue that someone has passed by, that someone left a mark with their shoe. But it is also an icon, since the mark of the foot has the quality of the shoe, obviously.

We can find terms that are both symbolic and indicial. For example, the word "now" is a symbol in the sense that it is a word and like all words, they have a symbolic dimension.

a somewhat arbitrary convention that wants us to say "now" "now" So "now" is a symbol but "now" is also a clue from the moment I mobilize it to mark a certain moment in time, a certain moment that obviously ceases to change

A clue can also have a symbolic dimension. We can follow a signage that imposes us to turn right. Well, it's both a clue

but it's also a symbol since it's an official, conventional sign that everyone will read and follow in the same way. Finally, a sign can be both iconic, indicative and symbolic. Here I give you an example: this sign "man" on the toilet door. Well, at the same time it has an iconic dimension since it represents

roughly what makes the physiognomy of a man compared to a woman and therefore this resemblance between the drawing and the masculine gender works on the iconic level but it is also a symbol since again it is a conventional sign that we will find roughly on all the toilets of the world and

and at the same time it is a clue because the little man panel must be well placed on the right door of the right toilets to work and to correctly indicate the toilets of men there is really a need that the sign maintains a real continuity and a real connection with the right door so that it works correctly as a clue. So we finally have these different

The concept of representation.

and the different forms of political representation that could have been considered by Anna Pitkin were interpreted on a semiotic mode by a researcher called Cecile Cuny. We can read the different concepts of political representation of Anna Pitkin in semiotic terms by understanding a symbolic form of political representation, an iconic form of political representation,

and a third form of indicial political representation. The symbolic political representation, we will find it from the moment when the representative

of the population is constituted as such in virtue of a rule, a law, for example, the electoral system wants those who get the majority of votes to be constituted as our representatives and therefore this procedure, this rule and this law

symbolically and conventionally constitutes the representative as such. A political representation will function in an iconic way from the moment the representative resembles

to the population they represent, from the moment they share notable and visible qualities with the population they represent. So here, the representation is not done by the mediation of a law or a rule, but more directly, by the sharing of a quality, by a resemblance established between the representative and the represented, for example, the sharing of the same skin color.

This idea of iconic representation that a black person can reproach a white representative in a city or in a neighborhood with a strong black population, can reproach him for not representing the population precisely because he does not do it, especially on this iconic mode, he does not share this visible quality. A third

the way of political representation would be a political representation of an index order by which the person would represent the population or the representative would represent the representative

by establishing a real connection, which is the point of the index, by the existence of a real connection between the representative and the represented, that is to say, by the fact that he has encountered experiences similar to those of his representatives, that he has developed a field experience, that he has really evolved among the population.

that it represents, that it establishes again a strong contiguity, a real connection with the object of the representation. So we find the theory of the index in this idea of index representation. We will address another triad, the one that associates the sign with the interpreter.

or the way a sign will produce an interpreter. This relationship, Peirce envisages it on three different modes, in the same way he established three modes by which a sign can send to the object, he will think of three ways by which a sign will produce an interpreter. These three modes, he calls them the "rème",

the "this sign" and the argument. And again, it will be three modalities which will be constituted by the three fundamental categories of Peirce. So we will have a first relationship between the sign and its interpreter which will be of a simple quality order, a second relationship which will be characterized by a concrete relationship, and a third relationship which will be

constituted by a rule or a law. So first of all, what is a rhyme? A rhyme is the most elementary way by which a sign creates an interpreter. A rhyme is a sign that produces an interpreter that is simply possible,

is possible. We have a sub-determination of the meaning in the case of the rhyme, we have a sign that in fact produces a possible meaning but certainly not necessary, certainly not the only meaning

What is a "rheumatic" meaning? What is a "rheum"? Well, it's for example the "baby's" baby. When my little daughter was one or two years old and she came to "gazouiller"

in my ears, well, I could see in these signs a possible meaning. I could, how to say, if I heard "baboubu", I could, why not, understand "tatoubu". Okay? But it was only an eventuality, only a possibility. Well, here we have an example of "rem", that is to say, we have a sign that suggests a possible interpretation. Okay? It is the most ambiguous form, the most under-determined of the meaning.

Another example of rhyme, we can think of a whole series of signs whose meaning is under-determined, like verses of poetry that can be interpreted in a whole series of possible ways, or of course music, which will also be able to provoke interpreters, interpretations, but which are only

possibilities, eventualities that will be able to vary from one person to another in a phenomenal way. Next to that, we have a second mode which is also imprinted on the category of the second deity and which is that of the "dissi sign". So what is the "dissi sign"? It is a sign that says its interpretation.

which tells us how it should be interpreted. So here we already have a more determined sign, let's say, than the REM, since the REM only evoked a possibility, well, the DISSY sign tells us how it should be interpreted. Which does not mean that it creates a necessary interpretation. I'll give you an example: when I

"heart" without doing it on purpose in the subway and that I say "désolé" well, the fact that I say "désolé" is a sign in the sense that it indicates that my term must be interpreted as I am sorry. But obviously I can say "désolé" by reflex without, how to say, feeling deeply sorry for having you a little bit shaken, okay? So this conventional reaction that I have to say "désolé"

Well, it tells you to read my terms as the fact that I am really sorry, but you can very well believe that this is not the case, okay? So a "this sign" is a sign that says its interpretation, that says how it should be interpreted. Most of our language acts have a self-interpreting character

interpretable, that is to say that they say how they must be interpreted. Another example of "this is sign" can be, for example, the legend of a painting in a museum. You have, I don't know, a painting and then the legend announces that it is Napoleon, okay? Is stuck at the bottom of the painting the name "Napoleon". Well,

This sign tells you how it should be interpreted. It tells you that it is Napoleon and you are invited to trust what is said, what is indicated. But obviously, there is nothing necessary in this interpretation either. There is nothing that prevents us from thinking that we were wrong by sticking the bad legend under the table. That we have interpreted legends

as we could have interpreted the toilet signs "man" and "woman" in the example of earlier, okay? We have a third type of relationship between the sign and the interpreter, which is the argument. And an argument is a sign that determines its interpretation. So, where the rhyme was underdetermined, did not determine anything,

suggest possible interpretations, where the "this is" sign indicates its interpretation, the argument weighs heavily on its interpretation and the argument obliges to a certain interpretation.

An example can be a demonstration or a mathematical theorem. The logical demonstration or the mathematical theorem gradually lead you to accept the conclusion. There is a certain need to interpret it in this way.

Beyond arguments that are communicated in the formal language, we remember what we mentioned in the first class, the possibility that there are also body arguments, like those that were linked to the palpation of the aesthetic surgeon on the patient and which seemed to be proven by the gesture

that it was about intervening on the area in question, by coming to palpate the ungrateful area, well, in a way, we proved the need to carry out the operation. So, to finish, we will quickly focus on the interpreter. So, the interpreter, I remind you, is the real effect that will be caused by a sign. These are the consequences, in fact, of the sign.

And these interpreters, Peirce will propose at least two triads. I say "at least" because I'm not quite sure, since he has multiplied the triads. I know he proposed at least two triads of the interpreter, two different ways to vary the interpreter three times. So the first triad of interpreters will distinguish what Peirce calls an emotional interpreter, an energetic interpreter and a logical interpreter.

So the emotional interpreter is simply when the sign produces an affect or a feeling. The energetic interpreter is when the sign produces an action or a practical reaction. Thirdly, an interpreter is called logical when the sign produces a logical effect via thought and language. So in the first case, that of the emotional interpreter, the sign produces an affect or a feeling.

It can be the case, obviously, we were talking about music, and well, obviously, music will be able to produce emotional interpreters, it will even be often the case, and that's why we're looking for it, but music will also be able to produce energetic interpreters.

It will be able to put us on the spot, for example, or it will be able to place us in a kind of cadence. When you listen to hip-hop or rap beats, well, what is a beat? It's precisely a pulse, it's something that is repetitive, but that is entrainant and that places you on a certain rhythm.

We have here the possibility for music to produce an energetic interpreter, or on the contrary, you will be able to listen to contemplative music, or even hyper melancholic, even depressive, and which will plunge you into an extremely energetic state.

attenuated and that's maybe why you're going to try to listen to them but the music you don't necessarily have to

to these lower levels of interpreters. Music will not only produce emotional interpreters nor energetic interpreters, it will also produce logical interpreters. Imagine the way music critics, for example, will approach a work or listen to a piece, and directly they get a whole series of arguments, a whole series of comments and propos that they will want to do or share on the internet with others, etc.

So what I mean here is that a certain type of sign or a certain medium should not be condemned, if you will, to produce a certain type of interpreter. For example, music which probably produces interpreters, let's say, rather underdetermined, which would only be possible or possible, well, it will also be able, in some cases,

generate more elaborate interpreters and who will go further towards thinking and towards language. Or even towards languages extremely formalized. If you are a musicologist,

or if you follow very closely the measures of an extremely complex music, well, we are far from simple emotional and energetic interpretations. You are in the logical reconstruction of what is being played for you.

In the same way, we will be able to have signs that will appear extremely formalized or extremely complex and that will be able to produce interpreters of a very low level.

So, let's imagine, I don't know, I don't know it at all, but let's imagine a very complex, original and innovative mathematical demonstration, for those who understand it, obviously. Well, obviously,

such a demonstration will be able to provoke a logical interpreter. This is what we think of immediately, since we will obviously have to follow this language very attentively and very expertly to be able to get to the end of the demonstration. But at the same time, this mathematical demonstration will also, why not, produce

an energetic interpreter in the sense that it will produce a practical action, a reaction. For example, it will be able to be extremely stimulating, it will be able to, how to say, enthuse the person who discovers it and

to feed a momentum to continue, a conatus as we say, and it will be energizing, if you will, by its originality, by the way it is there to innovate on what had been established in mathematics up to now.

And finally, we can also imagine that a discourse as complex as a mathematical demonstration can produce an emotional interpreter. I think it's Peirce himself who was talking about the emotion he felt when he discovered a mathematical demonstration. So we have here situations in which signs, a priori,

rather simple will be able to produce very elaborate interpreters and conversely the way in which signs

which refer to their object in an extremely complex way, will be able to produce interpreters of a level, if we want, quite low. In any case, interpreters of affective or emotional type. The second triad of the interpreter, it will not, like the first one, distinguish interpreters of different natures, or which would be more or less elaborated according to their nature, emotional, energetic or psychological.

she will rather be interested in the phases of interpretation and in the way in which we can finally consider successive interpreters. Since finally Peirce will think of the process of signification, or what he calls the semios, as an interpretative chain in which we would not have a single sign that gives rise to a single interpreter, but a sign that produces an interpreter, this interpreter will himself constitute

a sign that will produce an interpreter itself, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. It's the question of the spiral of interpretation, or the possibility that an interpretation never stops, or does not reach this chlore.

I told you in another class that it was the problem of the paranoiac, in particular, that he could not stop his investigations or close his interpretations. The immediate interpreter is the sign as it can be interpreted literally. The dynamic interpreter is the sign as it is interpreted effectively. The final interpreter is the sign as it could be interpreted ultimately.

I will give examples of this

an example in particular since we will have to conclude this course already very long and I will have to give myself a simple example given by Peirce when he speaks of a situation where his wife asks him the question "what time does it?" So in front of this question "what time does it?" Peirce will give the example of what could be the immediate interpreter, the dynamic interpreter and the final interpreter. The immediate interpreter is simply

the literal interpretation of what is asked by the woman, that is to say a question intelligible at the level of the weather and the time he does outside. Peirce, if he had held on to the immediate interpreter, could simply answer his wife: "I don't know the time he's doing" since they are both in the living room, that he doesn't see the time he's doing outside, that he is not aware

of the weather forecast of the day and that, as she is, he is ignorant about these questions, he could simply say: "I don't know, darling." Obviously, that's not what he does, Peirce, since the question of his wife "what time does he do it?" will provoke in him a dynamic interpreter, in this case

energetic, as we said earlier, he will get up, in good husband, he will get up, he will go to the window, the time he makes. At the window, he sees that the sky is cloudy and so he answers his wife: "The sky is covered." What his wife would answer: "It's a shame, I thought I was going for a walk this afternoon with you." What he would answer:

"But you know, it's not raining, the sky is just cloudy." To which she would ultimately answer: "Too bad, we'll go for a walk tomorrow." In fact, "too bad, we'll go for a walk tomorrow" represents in the terms of Peirce here the final interpreter of the question "what time is it?" Okay? So we have a conclusion, if you will, in this interpreter, which temporarily closes, we will see it, the process of meaning initiated by this question. Okay?

So here we have the immediate interpreter, the literal meaning of the question, a whole series of dynamic interpreters that will be these movements, these actions and gestures, these exchanges that will follow the question to try to clarify what is going on, and then we have a denouement in the abandonment

of the project to go for a walk. But what is interesting here is that in fact the final interpreter, such as the present Perth, is an interpreter who is always likely to be relaunched. It is always possible to reopen the interpretation or to reopen the investigation into the meaning of the question. Provisionaly here, the final interpreter has been

that the couple, according to the woman, had to put their walk back the next day. But let's imagine that 20 years later, Peirce separates from his wife and remembers this situation. Let's imagine that

this situation remembered by Peirce and then mingled with many others in which his wife had a tendency to give up activities that could have been pleasant too easily. Well, here we have an example in which this question finds its final interpreter

20 years later, in the conclusion that he draws from Peirce, and that does not concern here the possibility or not to go for a walk, but concerns a way of determining the personality of his wife. So we have here a series of elements that have been

developed around Carl Bühler's semiotics and then Peirce's semiotics. So we went into things obviously much more technical at the level of sign and signification processes. Obviously I do not ask you to apply everything, nor even obviously to remember everything, I just tried to interest you in this particular vocabulary both at Bühler and at Peirce's semiotics.

I am also aware that we have remained to something often quite abstract in terms of concepts and that the few applications that I have suggested are rather ad hoc examples, that the sociological applications of all this should still appear in a much more

and I propose to do it, whether through bibliographic references that I will communicate to you in the coming days,

whether it be through a series of examples of analysis, of sociological investigation that I will take up again during the next class. I will start the next class by quoting a series of empirical analyses that have been borrowed from the semiotics of Bühler and the semiotics of Peirce. Thank you very much for your attention and we will meet again after the Easter holidays

Take good care of yourself again and good luck for this period a little bit complicated. See you soon!