Group 4: The Author Should Die

Group 4
A Semiotic and a Phenomenological

Discourse of Communication:
The Author Should Die

Group members:
1. Ngụy Như Phương Dung
2. Lê Ý Nhi
3. Ngô Hoàng Ry
4. Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nở
5. Nguyễn Thị Thuận An
6. Đỗ Thị Kim Chung
7. Nguyễn Thị Thanh Phương
8. Trần Thị Mỹ Dung
Content
 A Semiotic Discourse of Communication
 Signs and Indications
 Expressions and Communication
 Experience, Essence, and Communication

A Semiotic Discourse of
Communication
Chapter 7
A Semiotic Discourse of Communication
- Born: 5 January, 1932 (age 81)

- An Italian semiotician, essayist,
philosopher, literary critic, and
novelist
- Era: 20th/21st- century
philosophy
- Region: Western Philosophy
- School: Semiotics
Umberto Eco
Ngụy Như Phương Dung
What is semiotics?
The word “semiotics” comes from the Greek root
seme, as in semiotikos, an interpreter of signs in
which a sign is “everything that, on the grounds of a
previously established social convention, can be taken
as standing for something else” (Eco, 1976, p.16)

 The term “semiotics” originally referred to the branch of

medical science relating to the interpretation of symptoms
(Simpson & Weiner, 1989,Volume XIV, p.959).
 In its modern usage, semiotics is defined as “ the science

of communication studies through the interpretation of
signs and symbols as they operate in various fields, esp.
language” (Simpson & Weiner, 1989,Volume XIV, p.959).

The two key terms in both of these
definitions are “sign” and “interpretation”

SIGN > < INTERPRETATION

 Sign: can be taken as standing for something else”
E.g.: a text, an image, a building, the design of a car, a hairstyle…
 Interpretation: These signs are read and a meaning imputed
to them. The interpretation allows us to make sense of the
objects we encounter.
E.g. : in a text: the author transmits the content to the reader

E.g.: in medicine
• red spot “stand for” the measles.
• swollen neck glands “stand for” mumps
 “red spot” and “swollen neck

glands”are called signs

The words you are reading now are signs. The presence
of the words in themselves is not as important, or as
interesting, as the “something else” for which they
stand for; the content they convey.
Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

 How are you able to arrive at the content?
 What affects your comprehension when reading a text?
 How are you able to interpret these signs and make

sense of them?
To answer the problem of communication in these terms, it

is necessary to address the reader of the text rather than
the ideas of the writer.

 Each person has different backgrounds, education,
culture, knowledge, exposure to theories of
communication, motivation, and so on.
→ Each person understands differently.
 Umberto Eco suggests:
• Your knowledge of language as a vocabulary and set of
grammatical rules
• An encyclopedia of cultural knowledge and conventions.
• Your history of previous interpretations of other texts,
some of which may be related to semiotics, while many
others will not.

Why the Author Should Die?

 “THE AUTHOR SHOULD DIE” means that the
author should stop here when he has finished writing.
With a great of readers with different backgrounds and
experience, education, culture, and so on, they understand
the text with different levels.
 There is an interaction between author and text. The
readers maybe understand differently from the author.

THE MEANING OF TEXTS
THE PRODUCTS OF
READING TEXTS

The Meaning Of Texts
 Eco has noted “ the text is there, and produces its
own effect” (1983)
 Like Eco, Michel Foucault (1988) figure out What
this text means, the content it attempts to convey, is
not simply contained in these words nor in the
intentions of its author.

The Meaning Of Texts
 Richard Rorty (1992) suggests that “reading text is a
matter of reading them in light of other texts, people,
obsessions, bits of information… and then seeing what
happens.”
 A text can be read by a wide audience with different
background, culture, knowledge which leading to a number
of different “readings” of this text even though the actual
words and sentences remain the same for all readers.

The Products Of Reading Texts
One of the products of reading texts is
to create the Model Reader,
which is different from the Empirical Reader.
Empirical Reader Model Reader
The empirical reader is you, There are certain rules of
me or anyone when we read the games, and the model
a text. They can read in many reader is someone eager to
ways and there is no law play such a game.
telling them how to read.
One of the duties of the You will agree to abide by

text is to provide you with these rules in order for you
the rules by which it should to derive a coherent
be read. You need to understanding.
recognize and agree to the
rules of the particular game
that is being played.
An example of An example of
Some readers of Foucault's In “Little Red Riding Hood”, the
Pendulum, a novel by Umberto wolf can speak and the
Eco, have made a project of grandmother can be swallowed
tracing the main character's whole and alive by the wolf.
path through the streets of As model readers, we must
Paris. They actually recognized a agree to abide by the rules of
bar described in the story; the fairy tale, which can not
however, the bar was in fact an accept with a particular world
invention of the author. knowledge.

So, Eco points out, “every act of reading is a difficult
transaction between the competence of the reader (the
reader’s world knowledge) and the kind of competence that
a given text postulates in order to read in an economic
way” (1992)

Signs And Indications
Chapter 7
Signs and Indications
Edmund Husserl and “Logical Investigations”
 In the work, Husserl’s major objective was to develop
and articulate a refutation of psychologism, the view that
the laws of logic are descriptions of regularities in the way
we think.
 Communication does not rely on the premise that:
 Meaning is dependent upon ideas in the mind
 Or: communication has anything to do with the
transmission of ideas from place to another.
Nguyễn Thị Thuận An
 SIGN:
A sign is something that stands for something else such
as:
• smoke being a sign of fire,
• The flat being the sign of a nation,
 The sign is said to indicate or point to the presence
of something else.

 INDICATION:
Examples:
• Martian canals might indicate the existence of
intelligent beings on Mars.
• Fossil vertebrae might indicate the existence of
prehistory animals.
 Indication requires a preexisting state of knowledge
within the person to complete the relationship
between the sign and thing the sign stands for.

 INDICATION:
Indication is an act of judgement in which indicating and

indicated states of affairs become constituted by the
thinker.
Indication is always a relationship of probability, or of

contingency.

 NOTION OF COMMUNICATION
Husserl describes communication as the correlation of

corresponding mental experiences.
He gives an important conclusion : “All expressions in

communicative speech function as indications. They
serve the hearer as sign of the ‘thought’ of the speaker”

Both the person and the cat perform actions
The person The cat
- Utter sounds - Meow
- Give facial - Rub against your legs
expressions
- Make gestures
Actions Signs to someone who is perceiving them

 Actions as signs: Taken by perceiver
 Example: My students tell me about their cat’s
personality:

I: How do you know they have personality?
STs: Because he likes to snuggle on my lap. He

always wakes me up by licking my face in the
morning.
I: So what does this tell you about the

personality of your cat?
STs: It tells me:

- He’s friendly.
- He loves me.
- He is a happy cat..

 In Husserl’s term: COMMUNICATION
• The expressions of animals are performing an

intimating function.
• The perceiver takes the animal’s acts as a signs of

something else.
• The cat is really communicating some inner mental

content is anyone’s guess.
Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nở

 The hearer perceives the speaker as manifesting

certain inner experiences, and to that extent he also
perceives these experiences himself. However he
does not experience them, he has not an “ inner” but
an “outer” percept of them.
This outer percept is an inference

 Expression in communication operate indicatively
 The facial expression of the cat is not indicative of any real

”mood,” or “personality” of the cat.
 The connection between the expression and the mood is

created by the perceiver drawing upon a knowledge of
how things are related to each other.

UTTERANCE DOES NOT STAND FOR
SUCH A STATE IN ANY REAL SENSE.
Utterance “I feel happy”
 The person is telling a lie, be feeling sad or angry.
 This is an association made by the perceiver not the

sender.
 The facial expression, either by a person or by your cat,

means nothing.
 Husserl’s conclusion: “To mean is not particular way

of being a sign in the sense of indicating something”
 The existence of a mental state behind the words is

simply not necessary.
 A sign can have meaning without standing for a

mental state.

Example: You sit in quiet reflection.
 You are sitting in your favorite chair
 You are relaxed…
Your thoughts begin to roam:
 What do I need to accomplish tomorrow?
 How could I have handled that meeting better today?..
→ You are engaging in soliloquy, a dialogue with yourself.
You are thinking using verbal expressions.

As Husserl pointed out: “ When we live in the understanding
of a word, it expresses something and the same thing,
whether we address it to anyone or not”
 In soliloquy, words function as signs here as they do everywhere else.
They can be still said to point something. But they do not point to
mental state.
 In a monologue, word can perform no function of indicating the

existence of mental acts, since indication would be quite purposeless.
 Indication is not necessary for meaning.

 There is no separation of thought and sign. There is

no need to perceive the sign and then work back to
the mental state it points to. The two are joined in a
fundamental and we experience them as a UNITY
Example: look at this sign DOG

Expressions and Communication
Chapter 7
Husserl:
 meaning is something quite independent of any empirical

process, whether that process be the manner in which
an expression is expressed as a physical sign or by the
physical processes inherent in a living brain.
 meaning is not dependent on your thoughts or mental

imagery.
Đỗ Thị Kim Chung

E.g:
“My cat is beautiful”.
My cat is beautiful.

HUSSERL’s point is that no matter how I change:
- font
- size
- color
- case of speech: quickly, slowly, with a stutter, at a
high/low pitch

- particular psychological attitude: happy, sad, excited,
angry…
→ The meaning of the expression “My cat is beautiful”

remains the same

- The process of making sense of “My cat is beautiful” has its
own conditions and requirements apart from empirical nature
of its presentation.
- In order to study the structures of sense- making and
meaning structures in their own right, Husserl uses a method
called “bracketing” in which “all assumptions about nature and
empirical phenomena, all being, in brief all reality, must be
placed in parenthesis”, must be set aside as if it were an
irrelevant function in experience” (Pilotta & Mickunas, 1990)

“My cat is beautiful”
 We simply do not assume that the possibility of
communication is related to an empirical process. We do
not seek an explanation in terms of “something that
happens” in the mind or brain.
 We seek to understand communication in terms of
structures of meaning and sense-making that have no
physical counterpart.

Honda Accord
CAR
Ford Taurus
Mini- Coopers
Toyota Camry
Trương Thị Thanh Phương
 There are an infinite number of empirical differences
between the Honda and any other “car” in the parking lot
or in any countries in the world (different body shapes,
different colors).
 These particular examples are empirical tokens of a
particular eidetic type- “CAR”

is not physical. It is not a

memory, a mental state, or a
stored experience, or a neural
algorithm.
This
“CAR”
is meaning pure unto itself that
operates beyond the bounds of
empirical reality

Husserl
would not be is interested in
interested in the nature and
any particular structure of
physical car the “CAR”
 The nature and the structure of the “CAR” by which
you are able to perceive, identify and communicate
about the Honda in the parking lot.
Husserl’s view is not skeptical, however. It does not
deny the existence of reality, brains, or mental processes.
is intended to direct our attention
away from our naturalistic impulses.
BRACKETING
attempts to get us away from
questions such as: How does that
happen? How does the brain make
that happen?
reveals an absolute domain that is not
dependent on any physical manifestation
Activities: touch the book, feel it, walk around it, throw it
on the floor or put it on the bookself…
The same “book”
new
 shiny  pages become dog-eared, yellow.
 new book smell  you scribble notes
the glue in the spine will crumble ect.
 Despite these changes, the “book” before you remains
constant. It doesn’t become a different object just because it
changes shape and size.
 The “book” itself is totally distinct from the perceptual process.
 Husserl would say that the “book” is transcendent. It exists
apart from and outside of your perceptual process.
Pilotta and Mickunas (1990):
“Without the structure of identical and continuous “transcendent” object
and the variation of perceptual activities, no experience would be
possible.” (p.13)
 There must be another level of experience that is not
perceptual, but essential→ there must be an “essence”.
 Husserl brackets all claims to empirical reality → It is

enough to know that such essences are necessary.
 Experience is involved with essential insights.
 “The facts are contingent, the experiential insight into their

contingency is essential” (Pilotta & Mickunas, 1990, p.16)
Experience, Essence
& Communication
Chapter 7
Experience, Essence & Communication
The insight into essence in experience is one of the conditions for
communication.
“My cat is beautiful.”

What allows communication to happen
is the having of an insight into the
essence of what something is.
Trần Thị Mỹ Dung

My cat has a shiny coat.

has a shiny coat
My cat has a cute face

 The essence is not intrinsic to the experiencing

subject. It is a fundamental requirement of
communication.
 The structure of the communicative process, and

the objects of which this process is engaged is not
temporal. It is accessible to anyone at any time.

THANK YOU!

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Group 4

A Semiotic and a Phenomenological

The Author Should Die

 Signs and Indications

 Expressions and Communication

 Experience, Essence, and Communication

- Born: 5 January, 1932 (age 81)

Ngụy Như Phương Dung

 The term “semiotics” originally referred to the branch of

 In its modern usage, semiotics is defined as “ the science

Ngụy Như Phương Dung

The two key terms in both of these

definitions are “sign” and “interpretation”

Ngụy Như Phương Dung

SIGN > < INTERPRETATION

Ngụy Như Phương Dung

• swollen neck glands “stand for” mumps

 “red spot” and “swollen neck

Ngụy Như Phương Dung

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

 How are you able to arrive at the content?

 What affects your comprehension when reading a text?

 How are you able to interpret these signs and make

To answer the problem of communication in these terms, it

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

Why the Author Should Die?

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

THE MEANING OF TEXTS

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

One of the duties of the You will agree to abide by

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

Lê Ý Nhi & Ngô Hoàng Ry

Nguyễn Thị Thuận An

Nguyễn Thị Thuận An

Indication is an act of judgement in which indicating and

Indication is always a relationship of probability, or of

Nguyễn Thị Thuận An

Husserl describes communication as the correlation of

He gives an important conclusion : “All expressions in

Nguyễn Thị Thuận An

Actions Signs to someone who is perceiving them

 Actions as signs: Taken by perceiver

 Example: My students tell me about their cat’s

Nguyễn Thị Thuận An

STs: Because he likes to snuggle on my lap. He

I: So what does this tell you about the

STs: It tells me:

Nguyễn Thị Thuận An

 In Husserl’s term: COMMUNICATION

• The expressions of animals are performing an

• The perceiver takes the animal’s acts as a signs of

• The cat is really communicating some inner mental

Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nở

 The hearer perceives the speaker as manifesting

This outer percept is an inference

Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nở

 Expression in communication operate indicatively

 The facial expression of the cat is not indicative of any real

 The connection between the expression and the mood is

Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nở