Mikhail Ilyin
Social semiotics may well be called functional semiotics. In fact, Michael Halliday developed a model of language known as systemic functional linguistics. Its grammatical expression is systemic functional grammar. Thus, function and functionality were at the core of Halliday’s thinking and research. It is not by chance that one of the alternativeapproaches in linguistics that developed independently, yet in the same mode and even manner, was the functional stylistics of language. Designed to explore functional, or socially motivated, stylistic variations of a language, it emerged in the USSR in the post-war period.
The functional approach focuses on both the significance and role of language for its users. Even at the dawn of humanity, our ancestors evolved not only biologically but also and, above all, socially by reproducing their ‘small humankinds’. The social reproductive function was essentially a cognitive and communicative one. It provided us with thought and language. Both language and thought perform numerous functions and roles.
The divergence of the multiplicity of essentially human or social functions leads to their interaction and eventually convergence. Two major questions are addressed in the paper:
How does the basic anthropogenic function of the humankind’s reproduction diverge into the agentive and symbolic, social and cognitive ones?
How do the multiplying functions converge into social semiotics of our existence and furtherance?
The basic functions are those of the survival of the fittest. Biologically, it is the survival of our species and anthropologically it is the survival of humankind. The human survival (reproduction) function is primary and vitally essential. However, pragmatic challenges provoke specialisation. Primary functions can be divided into social and cognitive ones. Still, in the integrative context, they converge. This convergence could be best described as social semiotic functions. Political performative role of meaningful action or economic symbolic one of material exchange is just random occurrence of numerous patterns of social-semiotic convergence. Systemic elucidation of the vast variety of both functional divergence and convergence is crucial for the development of social semiotics.
The functional approach focuses on both the significance and role of language for its users. Even at the dawn of humanity, our ancestors evolved not only biologically but also and, above all, socially by reproducing their ‘small humankinds’. The social reproductive function was essentially a cognitive and communicative one. It provided us with thought and language. Both language and thought perform numerous functions and roles.
The divergence of the multiplicity of essentially human or social functions leads to their interaction and eventually convergence. Two major questions are addressed in the paper:
How does the basic anthropogenic function of the humankind’s reproduction diverge into the agentive and symbolic, social and cognitive ones?
How do the multiplying functions converge into social semiotics of our existence and furtherance?
The basic functions are those of the survival of the fittest. Biologically, it is the survival of our species and anthropologically it is the survival of humankind. The human survival (reproduction) function is primary and vitally essential. However, pragmatic challenges provoke specialisation. Primary functions can be divided into social and cognitive ones. Still, in the integrative context, they converge. This convergence could be best described as social semiotic functions. Political performative role of meaningful action or economic symbolic one of material exchange is just random occurrence of numerous patterns of social-semiotic convergence. Systemic elucidation of the vast variety of both functional divergence and convergence is crucial for the development of social semiotics.
Mikhail Ilyin,
tenured professor at the Higher School of Economics, head of the Centre for Advanced Methods in Social Sciences and Humanities at INION RAN, author of Words and Meanings: Describing Key Political Concepts (1997), What can semiotics contribute to political science? (2016), Semiotics of Political Discourse (2018) and other publications on political semiotics, discourse analysis and multimodal performative analysis.
tenured professor at the Higher School of Economics, head of the Centre for Advanced Methods in Social Sciences and Humanities at INION RAN, author of Words and Meanings: Describing Key Political Concepts (1997), What can semiotics contribute to political science? (2016), Semiotics of Political Discourse (2018) and other publications on political semiotics, discourse analysis and multimodal performative analysis.