Lotman‘s discussion of language is closely related to his discussion on modeling systems and semiosphere. It is because, for Lotman, language is a function, ‗a cluster of semiotic spaces and their boundaries‘ (Lotman, 1990:124). In Lotman (1977c), language is described as the mechanism that enables communication to elastically flow between the individual and the collective. Moreover, language also creates the exchanges that are at the same time ―equivalent but different‖ in communication (ibid.:96). The ‗equivalent-different‘ antithesis may seem contradictory. But this later becomes the ground for Lotman to contend that language creates both comprehension (i.e. preserving information) and meaning-generation (i.e. innovation). In Lotman and Uspensky (1987), they start to eliminate the distinction between primary and secondary modeling systems43 and see language and culture as an inseparable unity:
‗[n]o language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have, as its center, the structure of natural language‘ (Lotman
& Uspensky, 1987:212). In this regard, culture is the mechanism that organizes and preserves information in social life. It generates the structuredness and the memory pool of social life. And language, as the inseparable half of culture, is then the
43 For the Moscow-Tartu school, primary modeling systems often refers to the system of language while secondary modeling system refers to the cultural system. (See Sebeok, 1991)
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embodiment of the structuredness of culture. The embodiment of culture, however, does not imply that language results from a linear process of
‗input-structuredness-output‘. Instead, it is language that enriches the inner structure of culture. The heterogeneity between systems in culture; the ‗organized vs.
non-organized‘ antithesis between the center and the periphery in culture; as well as the ‗consciousness‘ of culture (i.e. the meta-description of culture)—by all of which culture may be able to function as a unity—all come from the embodiment of language. For individual systems, language enables them to ‗exchange‘ information with other systems and ‗grow‘ at different velocity (i.e. the central ones to be more organized, more ‗mature‘ to regulate other systems while the peripheral ones to be less organized, less ‗mature‘). On the other hand, for the mechanism of culture as a whole, language functions as the ‗presumption of communicability‘ (ibid.: 229), without which the unity of cultural systems may not materialize. This suggests that language is a constantly changing wholeness that pre-exists any individual linguistic act. Meanwhile language is also the embodiment of the different structures among systems. Hence, language, for Lotman, is not built up by words or sentences, but by the relation between structures of texts/systems. To identify language as the structuredness of cultural systems suggests a poly-lingual viewpoint of language (i.e.
the structures of different system equal different languages). As mentioned in section 1, semiosis, for Lotman, arises from semiosphere, i.e. the ‗semiotic universe‘ which is
‗regarded as the totality of individual texts and isolated languages as they relate to each other‘ (p.208). To put it in another way, with language standing for the structures of cultural systems, the unity of semiotic space is built upon the interaction between different systems. Hence, a mechanism that guarantees inter-systemic interaction in the semiosphere is needed. This mechanism, to Lotman, is translation.
What should be noted here is that I am not getting ahead of myself by bringing
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up the target of our inquiry ‗translation‘ here. What is referred to as ‗translation‘ here is a Lotmanian usage, which is an accompanying mechanism of the language/system in his theorization. As mentioned, in the semiosphere, language/system is always poly-lingual (or, at least bilingual)44. Hence, the heterogeneous systems imply the existence of boundaries that define each system‘s territory and identity. And to form the unity of the semiosphere (i.e. intersectedness of the semiotic space by interaction), neither boundary nor translation can be absent. Without boundaries between texts/systems, there is no distinction that separates the semiotic from non-semiotic and extra-semiotic (i.e. ‗lingual‘ and ‗non-lingual‘). And without translation, the texts/systems in the semiosphere cannot interact or exchange information with other texts, which thus renders none dynamics in semiosphere. Hence, it is by the mechanisms of boundary and translation that a language/system may distinguish itself from other languages/systems and at the same time interact with them. Translation and boundary are therefore the keys to Lotman‘s ultimate concern for how a system can ‗develop and yet remain true to itself‘ (Lotman, 2009:1). Following this vein, we can assume that ‗text production‘ in a Lotmanian sense is ‗translation‘—the need to exchange information or to interact with other systems. Such a mechanism of text production is not merely transferring information. Rather, translation brings in transformation to the semiosphere as, for two systems to interact, it always implies changing the foreign information into the self, which enables the representation of ‗a source of adjustment of the extra-lingual object to its reflection in the world of languages‘ (ibid.:2).
Based on the review of Matarana‘s and Lotman‘s discussions on language, I
44 The word ‗lingual‘ in the Lotmanian theorization refers to information that is recognized to be part of a system. Hence, ‗bilingual‘ or ‗poly-lingual‘ suggests the different structures of different systems, which is the prerequisite for cultural semiosis. As Lotman suggests, ‗[t]he boundary is bilingual and polylingual. The boundary is a mechanism for translating texts of an alien semiot ics into ‗our ‘ language;
it is the place where what is ‗external‘ is transformed into what is ‗internal‘(1990:136-137).
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would contend that despite the different focuses in their discussions (i.e. Maturana cares more on the dynamics between pairs of consensual behaviors, while Lotman concerns more on the hierarchy and dynamics between the systemic interaction within the semiosphere), they indeed share a similar viewpoint on language. To begin with, they both stress the need to have a pre-existing space for communication/semiosis (i.e.
the network of conversation and semiosphere). This suggests that both of them are seeing language as the combination of the constructing and the constructed consensuality between unities. Without the pre-existence of consensuality, language cannot function. Language then is the unified wholeness constructed by the intersecting interactions between series of linguistic acts/texts. Following this vein, communication/semiosis and consequently text production can only take place within the interactions that transforms non-intersecting consensual domains or systems into the intersecting ones. In this case, from the perspective of communication, the Maturanaian and Lotmanian models might not be as distant as they might seem. Their shared emphasis on intersected structures (either consensual domains or semiosphere) indicates the inseparable connection between communication and interaction.
However, this should not be taken as a commonsensical equation ‗to communicate equals to interact‘ because under such a connection lie layers and layers of consensuality. That is to say, interaction does not arise from the juxtaposition of any two different linguistic acts or systems, but from the structural intersectedness between them. Even though each text or each description produced in communication can be conceived as an individual linguistic act, texts/descriptions to Maturana and Lotman are still united by layers of consensuality/intersectedness. In this case, to answer the questions raised in section 1, we have to see if the consensuality built in text as a linguistic act and as part of multi-layered consensuality are different, which leads us to the discussion of text interactions in the next section.
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